Randall Garrett

“ As a human mind increases its ability to understand another human mind, it eventually reaches a critical point, and the mind itself changes. And, at that point, the Greek letter psi ceases to be a symbol for the unknown.
When understanding has passed the critical point, conversation as it is carried on by most human beings becomes unnecessarily redundant. Even in ordinary conversation, a single gesture—a shrug of the shoulders, a snap of the fingers, or a nose pinched between thumb and forefinger—can express an idea that would take many words and much more time. ”

“ If our only base on the moon is destroyed, the Soviets will have the whole moon to themselves. Have you any suggestions?"
"Sure," said Taggert. "Ask yourself one question: What is the purpose of Moonbase One?"
Slowly, a beatific smile spread itself over the senator's face.
The whole discussion had taken exactly ninety seconds.
"Mrs. Jesser," said Brian Taggert to the well-rounded, fortyish woman behind the reception desk at S.M.M.R. headquarters, "this is Dr. Forsythe. He has established a reputation as one of the finest seers living today." ”

“ Brian Taggert admitted.
"Nor can I. There it is. Every single one of his valid predictions, every single one of his precognitive intuitions—without exception—has been based on the actions of human beings. He can predict stock market fluctuations, and family squabbles, and South American election results. His disaster predictions, every one of them, were due to human error, human failure—not Acts of God. ”

“ To leave the Boardwalk during the summer would, as far as Forsythe was concerned, be tantamount to economic suicide. He had to be offered not only an income better than the one he was making, but better security as well. At fifty-four, one does not lightly throw over the work of a lifetime.
Still, he had plenty of safeguards. The rent was paid on his Boardwalk office, he had a guaranteed salary while he was working, and a "research bonus," designed to keep him working until the Society was finished with that phase of its work. ”

“ I'm no telepath—and they're getting a pretty good idea of what's going on in Forsythe's mind.
"Every once in a while, he gets a real flash of something, and it apparently comes pretty fast. The team is trying to analyze the fine-grain structure of the process now.
"The rest of the time, he simply gives out with the old guff that phony crystal-ball gazers have been giving out for centuries. Even when he gets a real flash, he piles on a lot of intuitive extrapolation. And the farther he gets from that central flash, the less reliable the predictions are." ”

“ We still don't know whether or not Forsythe's predictions will ever do us any good or not. Every time we've taken steps to avoid one of his prophesied catastrophes, we've done the very thing that brought them about."
The senator puffed his cigar in thoughtful silence.
"We'll just have to keep working with him," Taggert said. "Maybe we'll eventually make sense out of this precognition thing.
"At least we've got what we wanted. The Soviets think they've put us back ten years; they figure they've got more time, now, to get their own program a long ways ahead. ”

“ Balfour was a crackpot, and it was his job to take care of other crackpots—a job he enjoyed immensely and wholeheartedly, feeling, as he did, that that sort of thing was the only reason for the Society's existence. Of course, Mr. Balfour never considered himself or the others in the least bit crackpottish, in which he was just as much in error as he was in his assumption of the Society's raison d'être.
Ninety per cent of the members of the Society for Mystical and Metaphysical Research were just what you would expect them to be. ”

“ Taggert continued. "You know the type I'm sure."
The senator nodded silently. The woods were full of that kind of thing. Complete, reliable control of any kind of psionic power requires understanding and sanity, but the ability lies dormant in many minds that cannot control it, and it can and does burst forth erratically at times. Finding a physical analogy for the phenomenon is difficult, since mental activities are, of necessity, of a higher order than physical activities. ”

“ Peter Forsythe that he should leave his little place on the Boardwalk and come down to Arlington to work. It isn't easy to persuade a man to leave a business that he's built up over a long period of years, especially during the busy season. ”

“ Ch'ien and we have to scramble like maniacs to get him back before they find out that he's building a space drive that will make the rocket industry obsolete. Then we have to find out what's causing the rash of accidents that is holding up Dr. Theodore Nordred's antigravity project. And now, just as everything is coming to a head in both departments, we find that a meteor is going to hit Moonbase One sometime between thirty and sixty days from now." He spread apart the middle and ring fingers of the hand that covered his eyes and looked at Taggert through one eye. ”

“ Your own Society, senator, admits that we've stirred the Soviets up with this space lift thing. They've got ships of their own going out there now. According to reports from Space Force intelligence, Chinese Moon cars have been prowling around Moonbase One, trying to find out what's going on. ”

“ Evidently, once he gets a flash about a certain event, he can't get any more data on that particular area of the future, or we could get more data on the Moonbase accident. I think, if we can boost his basic understanding up past the critical point, we'll have a man with controlled prescience, and we need that man. ”

“ By the time he arrived at the brownstone building in Arlington and was pushing open the door of Brian Taggert's office, Taggert had received reports from New York and had started other chains of action. As soon as Senator Kerotski came in, Taggert pushed the letter across the desk toward him. "Check that."
Kerotski read the letter, and a look of relief came over his round face. "Not the same typewriter or paper, but this is him, all right. What more do we know?" ”

“ All the money in the world isn't enough to pay for that." The oddly worried look had come back into her eyes. "Doc, I don't know how you knew that ship was going to go, and I won't ask. I don't want to know. ”

“ The boys are trying to get more information on him now, and they're going to do a little deep probing, if they can get him set up right; maybe they'll be able to trigger off another flash on that moon-hit—but I doubt it. ”