Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Greg Weeks, and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
Transcriber's Note:
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the
U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
[Illustration: _Horrified with fear, the men threw themselves
to the deck_]
A RICK BRANT SCIENCE-ADVENTURE STORY
THE
ELECTRONIC
MIND READER
BY JOHN BLAINE
GROSSET & DUNLAP PUBLISHERS
NEW YORK, N. Y.
(C) BY GROSSET & DUNLAP, INC., 1957
* * * * *
Contents
CHAPTER PAGE
I THE MILLION-DOLLAR GIMMICK 1
II THE INVASION OF SPINDRIFT 10
III A SYSTEM WITHIN A SYSTEM 24
IV A HAIRCUT AND A WINK 33
V JANIG RUNS A SECURITY CHECK 45
VI A CALM PRECEDES A STORM 55
VII THE PERIPATETIC BARBER 65
VIII THE MIND READER STRIKES 74
IX DAGGER OF THE MIND 86
X SEARCH FOR STRANGERS 94
XI THE DANGEROUS RESEMBLANCE 105
XII THE COAST GUARD DRAWS A BLANK 119
XIII THE MEGABUCK MOB ACTS 130
XIV SURVEILLANCE--WITH CEREAL 148
XV A MATTER OF BRAIN WAVES 154
XVI THE VANISHING MERMAIDS 164
XVII POINTER TO DISASTER 179
XVIII THE ONE-MAN BOARDING PARTY 186
XIX TAPED FOR TROUBLE 194
XX JANIG CLOSES IN 202
* * * * *
THE ELECTRONIC MIND READER
CHAPTER I
The Million-Dollar Gimmick
Rick Brant stretched luxuriously and slid down to a half-reclining,
half-sitting position in his dad's favorite library armchair. He
called, "Barby! Hurry up!"
Don Scott looked up from his adjustment of the television picture.
"What's the rush? The show hasn't started yet."
Rick explained, "She likes the commercials."
A moment later Barbara Brant appeared in the doorway, hastily
finishing a doughnut. Rick cocked an eyebrow at her. "If you're going
to eat, you might at least bring a plateful, so we can have some,
too."
Barby gulped. "Sorry. I didn't intend to have a doughnut. I went to
the kitchen to see if Mom and Dad wanted to watch the show, and they
were having doughnuts and milk."
"Never mind," Scotty said. "We forgive you. We'll get ours later. Are
Mom and Dad coming?"
"Maybe later. Now be quiet, please, so I can hear the commercial."
Dismal, the Brant pup, wandered in and paused at Rick's chair to have
his ears scratched before taking up his favorite position, under the
TV table. Rick obliged and the shaggy pup groaned with pleasure.
"Why all the interest in a breakfast-food commercial?" Scotty asked.
"The announcer is cute," Barby stated.
This made no sense to Scotty. He stretched out on the rug in front of
the set, then rolled over on his back and looked up at the girl. "I
don't get it. Then why do you eat Crummies for breakfast instead of
the hay this guy sells?"
"The Crummies announcer is cuter," Barby explained patiently.
The boys grinned and fell silent as the cereal salesman went into his
spiel. Barby perched on the edge of a chair and listened attentively.
Rick watched his sister's expressive face, chuckling to himself. Barby
always listened to the commercials. It was only fair, she insisted,
and the boys went along with her wishes. Come right down to it, Rick
thought, listening to commercials was the price that had to be paid
for entertainment. Not listening meant not paying the price. He didn't
think that the point was particularly important, but there was a small
element of justice in Barby's view.
Their Sunday evenings on Spindrift, the private island off the New
Jersey coast, usually ended with this particular program. The members
of the Spindrift staff were not TV enthusiasts at best, and they cared
little about the program. Mr. and Mrs. Brant sometimes watched, more
for the sake of being companionable than for the sake of the program.
But usually the three young people watched alone.
The program was a typical quiz. Contestants who were expert on a
particular category returned week after week on their build-up to a
grand prize, which was a quarter of a million dollars. This quiz,
however, had elements that the younger Brants liked. In the first
place, the contestants were ordinary people. The producer didn't seem
to go in for odd characters as other programs did.
For the past few weeks the hero-contestant had been an
eighteen-year-old coal miner from Pennsylvania. There was nothing
unusual about him, except for one thing: he had become interested in
the mining of precious stones, and from there he had studied their
history. He was an expert on historical gems.
Now, as the master of ceremonies greeted the miner, Barby said with
admiration, "He has a wonderful personality. And imagine him knowing
so much about gems!"
Rick draped a leg over the chair arm. "See, Scotty? The perfect
reaction."
"What do you mean?" Barby demanded indignantly. "He absolutely does
have a wonderful personality, and I think it's amazing that a coal
miner should know so much about gems."
Scotty grinned up at her. "Rick means people can't get on quiz shows
unless they have good TV personalities. And how much appeal would the
show have if a gem expert answered questions on gems?"
"I see what you mean," Barby agreed.
"That's it," Rick nodded. "Anyway, I agree that the miner has a swell
personality, and he certainly knows his gems."
The three fell quiet as the quiz began. The questions were really
tough, filled with the kind of detail no one could be expected to
remember, but which good contestants always did. Then, at a crucial
moment, the miner hesitated over identification of a date in the long
and bloody history of the Koh-i-noor diamond.
"If only we could help him," Barby wailed.
"We don't know, either," Scotty reminded.
But Rick suddenly realized that they did know--or, at least, had the
answer available. He was certain it could be found in one of his
father's books, if not in the encyclopedia. But even if they had time
to look it up, which they didn't, the contestant couldn't hear them in
a soundproof booth. Or could they get a message to him if they were
part of the studio audience? Or was there some other way? It was
typical of Rick, when faced with an apparently insoluble problem, to
look for an answer.
The miner finally remembered, and the three breathed a mutual sigh of
relief. But the ordeal was not yet over, because the questioning had
several parts. Next came a quiz on the Star of Africa.
The questions asked, the camera began switching from the contestant's
face to the tense faces in the audience. A woman, probably the miner's
mother ... a man with a beard ... a man with a hearing aid ...
Rick suddenly sat up straight. He had it! He knew how the information
could be handed to the contestant! At least he knew in theory. He sat
back and started to work out the details.
The miner made it. Limp and happy, he came out of the booth, shook
hands with the MC, and staggered off with an armload of books
containing answers to next week's series of questions. The announcer
went into the final commercial, with Barby and Scotty listening
attentively. Rick didn't listen. He had a wonderful idea on which he
was putting the finishing touches.
As programs shifted, Scotty reached up and turned off the set. Dismal
left his place under the table and trotted off to the kitchen.
"Me for a doughnut," Scotty announced.
Barby was still spellbound by the miner's success. "It's just
fantastic, utterly, how much he knows." She shook her smooth blond
head. "I wish I knew that much about something."
"Want to win a million?" Rick asked.
"Who doesn't?" Barby returned dreamily. Suddenly she stared. "You
have a Look on your face," she stated. "Rick Brant, you're cooking up
something!"
Rick grinned. "I can win the quiz," he said casually. "It's easy. Let
me know if either of you want to win. Of course you might end up in
jail if you're not real careful, but I think it'll work."
Scotty looked his disbelief. "Easy, huh? What are you expert on?"
"Nothing," Rick said airily. "And anything. Of course we all know
you're an expert on eating, but that's not a category, it's a
capacity."
Barby gave what might be described as a lady-like sneer.
Rick shook his head. "It's terrible the way people in this house have
no faith in genius. Just terrible." He sighed heavily.
Scotty watched him suspiciously. "All right, Doctor Brant. Give with
the great idea."
"Okay." Rick waved at the encircling shelves of books. "Pick a
subject. Any subject, so long as it is contained in a very few
references. Like the life of the bee, or the Adventures of Sherlock
Holmes, or the Life of Dickens."
Barby said obligingly, "All right. I pick Ben Franklin. Now what?"
"We get the major books on old Ben, plus the copy of the encyclopedia
we need. Then we set up an index, and we put principal categories of
information on file cards. For Ben, we'd need the Sayings of Poor
Richard, and the dates they appeared, and where. And we'd need a list
of his inventions, plus dates. And so on. Generally, we fix things so
we can find any answer in a few seconds."
Barby shook her head. "That would be awfully hard. It would take
weeks, and whoever operated the file would have to know it nearly by
heart."
Rick agreed. "But isn't a million bucks worth a few weeks of effort?"
Rick's famous father, Hartson Brant, walked into the library in time
to hear the last comment. His eyebrows went up. "What's all this
megabuck talk?"
That was a new word to Barby. "What talk?"
"In the metric system, 'meg' means million. So a megabuck is a million
bucks, if you'll pardon the slang."
"Oh--well Rick is going to win a megabuck."
Rick explained rapidly about choosing a subject that could be
cross-indexed for ease of reference, then went on. "After we get the
subject all set, we choose the contestant. It has to be a real person.
We'd need several contestants, because the gimmick could be worked on
every big money quiz. Maybe more than once on each. Of course the
contestants would have to be members of the Megabuck Mob, as we'll
call it."
"I like that," Barby said enthusiastically. "That would make me a
Megabuck Moll, wouldn't it?"
"Yep," Scotty agreed. "And Rick can be the Megabuck Mole."
"And you can be the Megabuck Moose, you big ox," Rick finished. He was
warming up to his subject now. There had to be a hole in it somewhere,
but he hadn't found it yet. "Anyway, we have Ben Franklin on file
cards and Barby has studied carefully to be the first contestant. Then
what?"
"Someone asks who Ben Franklin was, and I say that he started a chain
of department stores," Barby said helpfully.
"Not you," Rick denied. "You know all the right answers. And why?
Because the Megabuck Mob is behind you. The Megabuck Moose is going
through the cards, and the Megabuck Mole is feeding the answers into
the Megabuck Memory Machine, and the Megabuck Moll in maidenly modesty
mumbles madly--"
"Help him," Scotty interrupted. "His lips are stuck together. He can't
say anything but mmmmm."
But Barby was interested now. "And how does the Memory Machine madly
machinate and murmur the answers?"
"Mmm," Rick murmured. "That is the secret!"
Hartson Brant threatened his son with a handy volume of the Physics
Handbook. "Out with it, young man. This is no time to keep secrets,
now that we're all partners in the deal."
Rick sighed. He waved at Barby. "Look at her. So young, so smart, so
pretty. But the poor girl has a very slight handicap. She has to wear
a hearing aid...."
Scotty got it then. "Hey! Rick, that's great! The hearing aid would be
a radio receiver!"
Barby got it, too. She finished in a rush, "And the Megabuck Mob would
be watching on TV, and digging out the answers, and the Memory Machine
would be a radio transmitter ..."
"It wouldn't matter about the soundproof booth," Scotty chimed in,
"because radio will go right through the walls!"
Hartson Brant held both hands to his head in mock horror. "To think
that my only son should turn out to be a halfway criminal genius!"
Rick glanced up at his father suspiciously. "Halfway?" He knew from
the word that the scientist had immediately spotted some reason why
his gimmick wouldn't work.
"Never mind, son." Hartson Brant put a hand on Rick's shoulder. "The
Megabuck Moll can bake you a cake with a file in it, so you can break
out of jail. I'm sure you won't mind being a fugitive from justice."
A harsh growl from the doorway caused them all to whirl around,
startled. "He'll never get a chance. The Megabuck Mob is pinched as of
right now. The federal government is taking over this island!"
Crouched in the doorway, submachine gun cradled in his arms, was an
officer of the United States Coast Guard!