"Where is the menaudo for our subject?" he snapped.
The man stared stupidly. "In the vaults, Master. I did not know you would want one."
"Fool! You should have known. Let me have yours."
The assistant paled. "No, no, Master! I will get another one quickly. See, I run—"
"You will not be harmed, dolt!" said Harg coldly. "You may get another for yourself immediately—but now I need one for Miss Day. Come, the menaudo!"
Reluctantly, fearfully, the assistant stripped the telepathic device from his hairless pate, passed it to Harg. Harg handed it to Sandra. "You will put this on. While my menaudo allows us to converse normally, the experiment we are about to try requires complete flux between both minds. This is only possible when each person wears the menaudo."
Sandra understood, now, why her innermost thoughts, her conversations with Larry, had not been intercepted. Telepathy was a matter of willed direction. Thought beams, being electrical, radiated only toward a focused object. Harg could only receive the messages she allowed him to get.
Her eyes flickered lightly over the assistant who had already started for the door. Now was the time to test her theory. She scraped one sandalled foot raspingly across the rung of her chair. The noise was a tiny, grating squeak, barely audible—but the assistant's face contorted in swift agony. His eyes bulged with alarm; he clapped his hands to his ears and raced from the chamber.
"Hurry, woman!" Harg was growing impatient. Subduing her smile of triumph with an effort, Sandra buckled on the menaudo. As she did so, a wild giddiness assailed her; she grasped the arms of the chair for support. A powerful wave length of forces unsuspected burst through her brain. She caught the faint, amused hauteur of the assistant across the room; felt Harg's keen, scalpel-like mentality probing the depths of her mind. The giddiness passed as she became accustomed to the strange sensation. The turmoil in her brain settled, from its chaos came clear-cut order.
"You must relax now. Clear your mind of all extraneous thought. I wish to learn something of your former existences...."