Lee did as he was bidden, but hesitant and suspiciously. He hated medical exams, especially those where parts of one's body were hooked up to a lot of impressive machinery. Of this there obviously was a good deal. The two medics seemed determined literally to wall him in with gadgetry. From the ceiling they lowered a huge, heavy-looking disk; not lights, but more like an electro-magnet beset with protruding needles. Lee couldn't see the cables but hoped they were strong, for the thing weighed at least a ton and, overhanging him, looked much more ominous than the sword of Damocles. They wheeled a silver screen to the foot of the table and batteries of what appeared to be thermo-therapeutic equipment to both sides. He wasn't being hooked up to anything, but there was much activity with testing of circuits, button-pushings and shiftings of relay-levers. And then all of a sudden lights went out in the room.
"Say, what is the meaning of all this?" Lee raised his head uneasily from the hard cushion. All he could see now were arrays of luminous dials and the faint radiations from electronic tubes filtering through metal screens inside the apparatus which fenced him in. From behind his head a suave voice—was it Bondy's or Mellish's answered out of the dark.
"This is a subconscious analysis and mental reactions test, Dr. Lee. It's an entirely new method made possible only by The Brain. It has tremendous possibilities; they might include your own work as well."
"Oh Lord," Lee moaned. "Something like psychoanalysis? Have you got it mechanized by now? How terrible."
There was a low chuckle from the other side of his head; they both appeared to have drawn up chairs beyond his field of vision. Lee didn't like it; he liked none of it, in fact. He felt trapped.
"No, Dr. Lee," said the chuckling voice. "This isn't psychoanalysis in the old sense at all. You are not exposed to any fanciful human interpretation, and it isn't wholly mechanical either as you seem to think. The Brain is going to show you certain images and by way of spontaneous psychosomatic reaction you are going to produce certain images in response. Results are visual, immediate and as convincing as a reflection in a mirror; that's the new beauty of it. And now, concentrate your mind upon your body. Do you feel anything touching you?"
"Y-e-s," Lee said, "I think I do—it's—it's uncanny: it's like spiders' feet—millions of them. It's running all over my skin. What is it?"
"I think he's warming up," whispered the second voice; then came the first again.
"It's feeler rays, Dr. Lee; the first wave, low penetration surface rays."