Alien Minds Read Free

studied it carefully and, at our suggestion, sent a picked group of statesmen, scientists and merchants on a trip to our various worlds in one of our ships. These men and women seemed delighted with what they found, and enthusiastic about their world joining us. But, shortly after their return home and before the final treaties were signed, opposition began to develop."
    "What kind of . . .?"
    "All kinds. Enough to make the plans slow down and halt. The embassy sent there couldn't discover the reason—we have trouble enough understanding their way of thinking at all—and they yelled for help. We sent a couple of SS men there, and when they failed, I went there myself, to help them, and the embassy came home."
    He shook his head. "I can't find a thing, either, that seems significant. Oh, the surface opposition is easily dis cernable. Papers, handbills, inflammatory speeches by spell binders, whispering campaigns, all calling for keeping Es trella for the Estrellans and running out all foreigners bent on plundering the planet for their own enrichment—that sort of thing."
    "Maybe some natives who want to take over, themselves," Hanlon ventured.
    "Could be. We've thought of that, but have found no proof. We have no proof of anything except the opposition. Only one thing, that may or may not have something to do with this. We've discovered that almost simultaneously with this opposition an unprecedented crime wave started there —every type of criminal activity imaginable, and that is almost unheard of on that world. But we can't even get the first leads as to who is behind it all. That's why I sug gested you be called in, and the staff agreed."
    The admiral paused and his piercing gray eyes bored earnestly into the blue ones of his son. "Keep this in mind at all times, Spence, for it is most important. We must succeed there. This is the first non-Terran world we've found equal in cultural advancement to ours. But surely it won't be the last. And we must win them over. All civilized worlds must band together for mutual growth and well being. So this is our most important project just now."
    "Yes," seriously, "I can see that. Also, that if we do get them to join us, we can point out that fact to any other planets we may discover and try to bring into the Federation in the future."
    And lying at ease on a heavily-padded bench before the control board of a space cruiser, a stranger looked deeply into a multiphased scanner that worked on scientific principles not yet discovered by humans.
    For long, long months its mind had been studying this new world and its inhabitants. The language had been learned, after a fashion, as had much of the planetary economics and governmental intricacies. Now the minds of the people were being studied; it was searching, always searching, for certain types.
    But part of that mind remained continually in that of one certain Estrellan it had long ago selected.
     

 
    CHAPTER 2
     
     
     
    SO NOW SSM GEORGE HANLON WAS HERE ON this planet they called Estrella, trying to see what he could find out. It was hard, devilishly and maddeningly hard, to discern what these people were really thinking. It wasn't their language—that had been fairly easy to sleep-learn from the reels. No, it was their mental processes—the way they thought. He was not too sure of himself yet, even with his ability to read their surface thoughts, for so often those thoughts held connotations he was not sure he understood.
    For the Estrellan mind was so different from those of humans—its texture was coarser, for one thing, and the thought-concept symbols largely non-understandable to him so far. He had studied—he winced to think how hard he had studied—and he had practiced assiduously since arriving here. But he still could get only an occasional thought-idea of whose meaning he felt at all sure . . . it was far worse than with humans. True, he was making some progress, but it was so—he grinned mirthlessly—"fast like