Read The Mind Pool for Free Online

progress, or had managed to expand the frontier exceptionally fast. Beyond the Perimeter lay the unknown and the inaccessible. Within it, instantaneous transmission of messages and materials could be accomplished. The probes contained their own Mattin Links, and through them more equipment, including Links, could be transferred.
    Every century the probes, creeping out at a fraction of light speed, extended the Perimeter by a few light-years. And somewhere near its extreme edge, in the three-lightyears-thick shell that comprised the little-explored Boundary Layer, lurked almost certainly the fugitive Morgan Construct.
    “But where, for Shannon’s sake?” Flammarion had followed Mondrian’s look, and thought he understood it. “Maybe we’ll find the Construct out there—but where will we find the candidates ? If you’re thinking, the Colonies, I don’t believe it. I’ve tried them before. They need every pair of hands they can get for their own projects.”
    “Quite true. I don’t look for assistance from the Colonies.”
    “There’s nowhere else.” Flammarion scratched his unshaven chin. “You’re saying what I thought when I read the directive—we’ll never staff the Pursuit Teams. It’s an impossible job.”
    But Mondrian had turned to face another wall of his office, where a display showed a view from Ceres looking inward towards Sol. “Not impossible, Captain—just tricky. We tend to forget that one planet of the solar system still refuses to be part of the Federation. And people there seem ready for anything, including trading their offspring . . . if the price is right.” He pressed a control on his desk, and the display went into high speed zoom.
    “Sir!” Kubo Flammarion knew that only one planet lay in that direction. “You don’t really mean it, do you?”
    “Why don’t I? Have you ever been there, Captain?”
    “Yessir. But it was a long time ago, before I was with the service. Everything I hear, it’s got even worse now than it was. And it was crazy then. You know what Commander Brachis says? He says it’s the world of madmen.”
    “Indeed?” Mondrian smiled at Flammarion, but his voice took on a cold, bitter tone. “The world of madmen, eh? That’s the way the Stellar Group views all humans. To them every human world is a world of madmen. And what about you? Do you agree with Commander Brachis?”
    “Well, I don’t know. From all I’ve seen—”
    “Of course you do. Don’t start being polite to me now, Captain—you never have before. Now listen closely. You have the memorandum from the Ambassador. I want you to review it in detail, and think about it hard. Then if you can bring me within forty-eight hours a proposal that will provide the necessary human members of the Pursuit Teams, I will consider it. But unless that happens, you will—within seventy-two hours—begin making arrangements for a visit. A visit to Earth. For you, me, and Commander Brachis. We’ll all see his ‘madworld’ at firsthand.”
    He turned away, with a gesture of dismissal.
    “Yes, sir. As you say, sir.” Kubo Flammarion rubbed his sleeve across his nose and tiptoed from the room. At the door he turned and took a long look at the display, now glowing with the cloudy blue-white ball of Earth at its center.
    “Madworld,” he muttered to himself. “We’re going to madworld, are we? God help us all if it comes to that.”

Chapter 3
    “No. Phoebe Willard. That’s who I want. Not the inventory. See, I already looked at that. Phoebe Willard. Where is she? Can you take me to her?”
    The guard stared, first at Luther Brachis and then at the screen showing a segment of the dump contents. His eyes were puzzled.
    Brachis sighed, and waited again for a reply. Patiently, although through the solar system he was not known as a patient man; because if there was one place where patience was a necessity, it was the Dump. Brachis knew that he was the cause of his own problem. He, personally, had made all