Alien Minds Read Free Page B

them in group maneuvers, having learned how to handle them individually. It was a weird feeling, dissociating part of his mind and placing it in that of a rock, and with that portion of his mind consciously controlling the animal's brain to direct its nerves and muscles to do what he wanted done. And when he did this to eight roches simultaneously—well, even though he had done similar things before, it was still hard to get used to the idea that it was possible.
    So hard had he been working that he was surprised when he happened to notice how dark it was getting. He went over and looked out of the window in his room, and saw it was night outside. A glance at the Estrellan time-teller on the wall, and he saw it was the dinner hour.
    He rose and stretched, yawning vigorously. "Better get out and get some fresh air," he thought. He took the dogs for a half hour's run outside, then brought them back, fed and watered them. He impressed on their minds that when they were finished they were to go to sleep. Then again he left the building.
    He couldn't help grinning a bit as he was walking down the street, thinking of the screwy way these people handled the problem of where to live. For the common, ordinary, not-too-rich people, there were apartments buildings, such as the one in which he lived, owned and operated by the government. When anyone wanted a room or an apartment, lie merely hunted around in the district in which he wished to live until he found an empty place that suited him, then moved in. There was no landlord, no rent. Taxes paid for it.
    You were supposed to take care of your own cleaning and minor repairs, or any special decorating you wanted done. Major repairs were handled upon request, by men paid by the government. If your furniture wore out, or no longer suited you, you simply moved to a place you liked better—and some other poorer person had to take what you had left, if all other rooms were occupied. Yet so consid erate of others were the average Estrellans, that they seldom (lid this, preferring to replace the worn-out things them selves, if financially able to do so.
    "Imagine the average Terran doing that," Hanlon had thought, wonderingly, when he first heard of it.
    He had been lucky enough to find a three-room apart ment fairly close to the downtown section of the city, yet far enough away so the crowd-noise did not bother him. The building in which he lived was of four stories, and he was on the second floor, near the back.
    It was the third place he had looked at when he first came to Estrella. He could not at first make himself believe that all the rooms had such bad smells in them. But he soon found it to be true, largely because these natives had nothing that could be called efficient plumbing. When he had finally picked these rooms, he spent a full day airing them out, cleaning them thoroughly, and using what disinfectants and smell-eradicators he was able to find and buy in the stalls here.
    The peculiar-looking, five-sided rooms were comfort ably furnished, by Estrellan standards, and not too bad even from Earthly ones. The walls and ceilings and floors were painted in fairly harmonious colors, and there was a sort of half-matting, half-carpet rug on the floors. What cor responded to the living room contained two of their low, backless stools, and one quite comfortable lounging chair. There was a large and a small table, and an empty case where one could store any reading scrolls he might possess.
    The bedroom had a low, foot-high, five-sided bed, but it was hard and uncomfortable until Hanlon figured how to make it softer, and more to his liking. There were several pegs on the wall from which to hang his clothing, two more of the backless stools, and the open place—a sort of well running from roof to basement—that was the toilet. Hanlon found a large piece of heavy cloth something like canvas, in one of the stalls, and made a hanging to cover this in lieu of a door, which shut out some of