The Psilent Partner

Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from Fantastic Universe March 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
Without stressing the technological aspects of the strange powers of the widely-talented ones—the psis, espers, telepaths which have been so painstakingly forecast by Stapledon, van Vogt, Weinbaum, Vance and others—Messieurs Peterson and Staub have whipped fantasy, forecasts and facts into a stirring and mentally titillating story of a too-imaginative mind.
A pstrange probing mind that crossed pstate lines, the pseas, even high in the psky—to bring psomething new to Wall Pstreet.
He had never cast his consciousness so far before. It floated high above New York, perceiving in the noonday sky the thin, faint crescent of a waning moon. He wondered if one day he might cast his mind even to the moon, knew with a mounting exultation that his powers were already great enough.
Yet he was as afraid to launch it on that awesome transit as he still was to send it delving into the tight subway tunnels in the rock of Manhattan. Phobias were too real now. Perhaps it would be different later....
He was young, as a man, younger as a recognized developing psi. As his consciousness floated there above the bustling city, exultant, free, it sensed that back where his body lay a bell was ringing. And the bell meant it—his consciousness—must return now to that body....
Dale V. Lawrence needed a lawyer urgently. Not that he hadn't a score of legal minds at his disposal; a corporation president must maintain a sizable legal staff. You can't build an industrial empire without treading on people's toes. And you need lawyers when you tread.
He sat behind his massive mahogany desk, a stocky, slightly-balding, stern-looking man of middle age who was psychosomatically creating another ulcer as he worried about the business transaction which he could not handle personally because of the ulcer operation he was about to have. Neither the business transaction nor the operation could be delayed.