Steve grinned. "Unfriendly agents. Seriously, Jan, we aren't sure about their employers. It will take some backbreaking investigation to get the whole story, because the files show nothing on any of them. That means they were deep-cover agents, kept hidden until there was something important enough to bring them out. We may never get the whole story."
"Won't they talk?" Scotty asked.
"They haven't yet. They may. But, anyway, we'd have to check on their stories. Any other questions? Okay, I'm finished. Dr. Winston will take over at this point."
The cyberneticist came to the front of the room. "We have something here," he stated, "but we don't yet know what it is. And, curiously enough, from the crude nature of the machines, I doubt that the enemy knows, either. If we have to speculate—and I guess we do—we might guess that sometime, in an enemy EEG laboratory, some experiment resulted in a subject having his mind erased. It was probably an accident that the enemy exploited without knowing how it worked."
"Can't we even guess how it works?" Weiss asked.
"Approximately, without knowing the physiology of it. The EEG recording is simply fed into a gadget that modulates a carrier wave. The carrier is an average frequency for brain patterns. In effect, the thing simply transmits the man's own pattern back to him. Why that should produce trauma of the kind we have seen is a mystery." The scientist gestured to the TV receiver. "The transmitter is incorporated into the TV chassis, and the 'rabbit ears' act as an antenna when adjusted properly. The recorder is a simple EEG mechanism."
Winston smiled. "You may be sure we're not through with this apparatus. I'm leaving the project immediately to set up a new team with Chavez, for the investigation of this phenomena. It may be another major key to the physiology of the brain."
"Do you mean we know nothing more than you've told us?" Rick asked.
"Nothing more, Rick. Oh, are you wondering about the barber's machine? Actually, the massage gadgets acted as electrodes, and the massage oil did very well in making good contact. It was a simple setup."
There were no questions for Parnell Winston. Steve took over. "In a short time we'll take the prisoners off your hands. Joe Blake and two men will remain as guards, but I think we have nothing more to worry about beyond routine security."