Well, Kitten, it seems impossible that three grand, successful years of work could end so suddenly with us lying in a ditch or anticipating, ESPwise, an occasional bullet fired from the guns of friends but there it is. God, what a complicated being this so-called modern man is! He seems to be born cloaked with complexities which get even more complex as he grows. No wonder he has been so long on the road, being engaged in a continual battle between ethics and emotions as he has.
So here we are, the bridge, the first rungs of a ladder leading to a new and delightful plane of existence for all mankind, wallowing in the mud of an irrigation ditch instead of glorying in the divine world of the mind. If we can but make them see! Maybe the professors were right when they told us to teach under the protection of the university instead of hardheadedly going out on our own.
Princess, do you remember Lucille? She was our best pupil, after you, of course. She's the one who turned over the stone that freed our personal gremlin. Oh, it's not really her fault, though she did break our one and only cardinal rule by bringing in an outsider herself instead of leaving such choices to us. Actually the fault was ours because—well, who knows? That wonderful control we practiced for so many years slipped, no matter the reason. It was just one of those inexplicably foolish things people will do when they think they're in love. Guess we thought we could save her some embarrassment or some such thing.
You had just left on a long vacation when that one showed up. He was the man that Lucille brought up with her as a prospective pupil, the one that—one wing of them is closing in on us now, Kitten. We'll have to try for the swamp ahead of us. We'll have to lose them for a while if we want time to figure a way out, though we aren't really very good at this sort of cat and mouse game. We can give our own boys a little credit, though. They aren't really trying to hit us. They shoot well enough to be able to make it look very good. All we really have to worry about is Thurlow and his trained deputy, Trainor.
There, that was nice. The sheriff himself just spotted us and started a pincer movement—fifty yards in back of us. Good old boy. Hope he doesn't get in trouble over us.
At last! If this patch of swampy brush is really as thick as we ESP it we're made, providing the highway troopers of this state don't get too smart and take over the operation. Our sheriff is in charge so far. Lord, if we only weren't so tired!
Anyhow, Lucy brought Thurlow in and we gave him the usual treatment. The only trouble is we overdid it slightly and it scared him. Besides telling him what he had for breakfast we ESPed his wallet and told him its contents and when he reached for it in a sort of stunned reflex
action we levitated it into his hand. It was a pretty big mistake in view of the fact that he was one of that bunch that was fairly sensitive mentally, but whom we couldn't read thoroughly. We could telepath only the very surface of his mind. He would have made a wonderful adept with the proper training.
He was awed but shocked and scared, too. It was outside his realm of experience and he was superstitious in spite of his fine education. Some folks don't let learning sink in to open the rusty locks of prejudice and inhibition.