A sudden thought brought a grin onto the young man's lips. He tried to get into the puppy's mind ... and got a real surprise. For after a few anxious moments of testing and trying, he did it—actually got the dog's thoughts of pleasure at finding such a wonderful new friend with such a nose-appealing effluvium. Hanlon then tried to see if he could get into the deeper parts of the dog's mind, and using what knowledge of the technique he had deduced in his previous though unsuccessful attempts with humans, found after many more anxious minutes he could follow the thought-and-memory tracks back and back until the dog's whole mind was open to him.
The puppy had far more of a mentality than Hanlon had ever guessed dogs had—and he knew they were far from stupid. This one's mind, he could now see, was immature but latently capable.
Say, this was great! Hanlon probed some more, and found many sketchy facts—sketchy because the thoughts were incomplete to the puppy, beyond its experience, and not because the man couldn't read perfectly what was there. The dog apparently knew a woman—Hanlon got the impression of skirts—and answered when that goddess called the word "Gypsy."
"Gypsy, eh?" Hanlon said aloud, and immediately the dog wriggled from beneath his restraining hand, and again tried to climb up and lick Hanlon's face in a frenzy of adoration.
"Lie down, sir, and be quiet!" Hanlon said sternly, and the puppy did so instantly, without question or hesitation.
Hanlon thrilled, realizing at once that it was not what he had said that did the trick—but the fact that he was still inside the dog's mind, and that it had obeyed his will rather than his words.
"Hey, this needs looking into!"
Without saying the words aloud this time, Hanlon commanded the dog—or rather, he impressed the command directly onto the puppy's mind with his own—to get down off his lap onto the deck.
Instantly it leaped down.
"Lie down." The dog did so.