James Stamers

“ The divers are not really on the same space-time reference as the physical world, but that makes them all the more useful, because our minds aren't either."
"Did you say reading other people's thoughts, like a telepath?" she persisted.
"Exactly like a telepath, or any other class of psi. We're really living on a much wider scale than we're conscious of, but our mind only tracks down one point in time-space in a straight line, which happens to fit our bodies. ”

“ There was a slight blue haze round the skeleton's head. When I examined it more closely, it looked less like a skeleton of bare bones and more like a physician's chart of the human nervous system, traced out in thin lines of mush ... little close-packed lines of energy, fixed in relation to each other but flexible as a whole.
It occurred to me I was looking at a human being, in terms of energy. ”

“ In fact, your diver is over by the window now. But, having evolved this far, they came across a little difficulty and couldn't evolve any further. So there they are, handy little minds for teleporting whatever you want moved, and reading other people's thoughts."
She gasped. "Did you say reading other people's thoughts?
"Certainly," I said. "As a matter of fact, that's what stopped the divers from evolving further. If they brush against any thinking creature, they pick up whatever thought is in the creature's conscious mind. ”

“ This time, I'll choose a nuclear device that is expected to explode and eat it before it does, while everyone is watching.
It wasn't difficult to find. There was a long smear of food in the air all round the world, as if a lot of clumsy e eaters had dribbled. ”

“ No energy means no evaporation, thus no clouds and no rain for vegetation. And that means no carbon dioxide layer to protect the planet, in turn leading to excessive radiation when I stopped eating, hence deserts and a boiling ocean and parts of the land frozen solid.
Not a very good message.
Well, I cleaned up as best I could, but it was drudgery sipping up the dull, flat-tasting thermal energy of the oceans. Tidal forces and magnetic flows are stodgy, uninteresting diets. You might as well eat straight mush. ”

“ I thought one of the medium asteroids would do for a base for Sol Jones Intragalactic Transport. I could see it all, vast warehouses and immediate delivery of anything from anywhere. I wondered if there was a limit to the diver's capacity, so Florence desired an encyclopedia and in it came, floating through the doorway.
"It says," she read, "not much is known about Antimony IX divers because none have ever been known to leave their planet."
"They probably need the stimulus of an educated mind," I said. "Anyway, this one can get diamonds from Jupiter and so on, and that's what matters." ”

“ They are very curious creatures, inquisitive, always chasing new ideas, and I thought that should hold the diver happily for several days. Meanwhile, I had booked adjoining rooms at the Asteroid-Central.
The Asteroid-Central advertised in the video yellow pages that it practiced the Most Rigid Discrimination—meaning no telepaths, clairvoyants, clairaudients or psychometrists. Life was hard on a psi outside Government circles. But life was much harder on the rest of the world seeking secluded privacy and discretion. ”

“ Our subliminal mind is way out in every direction, including time—and when you pick up fragments of this consciously, you're a psi, that's all. So the divers got thoroughly confused—that's what it amounts to—and never evolved any further. So you see, honey, it's all perfectly natural. ”

“ A magnetic storm on the sun would certainly send a harvest out through space for e beings. But it would louse up the planetary radio system.
And there I had an answer. All I had to do was remove the radio interference in a planned way and every receiver on half the world would receive my signals. How easy it was!
So I went back up to the first layer of the doughnut round the Earth where there was a field of fresh energy. As the food came flooding in from the sun I gobbled it up. Mouthful. Pause. Mouthful, mouthful. Pause. Mouthful, mouthful, mouthful. Pause. ”

“ You know that."
"I don't."
"Oh, you go wandering all over the Galaxy—but my friends—what could I say to my friends if they learned I had something like a telepath in the apartment?"
"It's only a baby diver, I keep telling you, honey. And anyway, you'll be able to tell what they're really thinking about you."
Florence looked thoughtful. "And what they've been doing?"
"Sometimes they will do what they think they'll do. And sometimes they don't make it. But it's what their subliminal plans to have happen, yes."
She kissed me. "I think it's a lovely present, Sol." ”

“ But they also pick up the subliminal activity, if you follow me—and down at that level of a mind such as man's, his thoughts are not only the present unconscious thoughts but also a good slice of what is to him still the future. ”

“ W. J. Kilner (1847-1920) for the study of the human aura in sickness and health. After a little practice, which I was not going to allow the Lamavic inspectors, the retina became sufficiently sensitive to see the micro-wave aura when you looked through the dicyanin screen. As was true of most of these psi pioneers at that time, nothing was done to further Kilner's work when he died. I noticed, without surprise, that the inspectors had a mental field of very limited extent and that the little diver had survived the journey nicely. ”

“ The conversion was as massive as the energy I ate, and I found out what the silver beads Doctor McPherson had put in the jar were. Energy eaten by e beings converts into sound and ozone. And the conversion of the nuclear explosion sent great balls of sound rolling over the country, deafening the people, flattening structures by vibration, and releasing flows of raw ozone, which promptly started fires ”

“ We may not employ a telepath instrument on any unconvicted person."
They looked sorry, but I wasn't. A telepath would have told them immediately where I had Florence's pet, and all about it. I smiled at them. They paid no attention, took my passport and began turning up the Lamavic manual on Antimony IX, Livestock of, Prohibited Forms. I had just come from there and so had Florence's little diver, which I had brought as a happy surprise. I sat down. The two inspectors looked as if they were going to say something, then continued flipping pages of their manual. ”

“ I saw him bend his nervous skeleton over Joe's body and straighten up with a string of little silver beads sticking to his hand.
"Makes a noise. Quite musical. Adheres to skin. Light. What is it?"
"There's some more of that stuff in the jeep engine," one of the repair crew noticed.
"And on the doc's jets...."
"And in our truck...."
I watched and gathered I was leaving some form of conversion product around the place. I didn't like that thought. If an e being eats energy as food and drink, what does an e being's conversion product make? The answer might be important ... ”

“ The man ahead of me had a dragon in his baggage. So the Lamavic boys confiscated it. Lamavic—Livestock, Animal, Mineral and Vegetable, International Customs—does not like to find dragons curled up in a thermos. And since this antipathy was a two-way exchange, the Lamavic inspectors at Philadelphia International were singed and heated all ways by the time they got to me. I knew them well.
"Mr. Sol Jones?"
"That's right," I said, watching the would-be dragon smuggler being marched away. A very amateur job. I could have told him. There are only two ways to smuggle a dragon nowadays. ”