The next thought came without warning from the back of the room. "Have you heard anything else of the listener?"
I swallowed a deep hot draught of coffee, scalding my throat. Bending low over the counter, I struggled to keep from choking and coughing. The cup rattled in the saucer as I set it down.
I knew that I was the listener.
"Whispers. Nothing I could be sure of."
The question had come from the back, the answer was closer. I was convinced that the reply came from one of the four students in the booth not more than fifteen feet away from me.
Then I saw a hand move at the table of the last booth near the rear of the restaurant. A man's hand stirring coffee absently. He sat with his back toward me, concealed behind the high back of the booth. His was the older, heavier mental voice.
"He must be found," the man's thought came.
"Could it be—a foreign intruder? Perhaps even one of us who—"
"No. Soon we will be many—when I come back. But now we are the only ones. He must be human."
"But he speaks with the mind."