It has been deduced often before, but usually with so much religious implication that the scientific facts were distorted all out of shape.
"And a great many human traits tend to prove it. Hypnotism, for one thing. Mental telepathy, for another. What the Indian Yogis are able to do. And, remember, they were among the first to realize the potentialities of this Tree of Life!"
"You're crazy!" Horace Gibson shouted. He leaped up, lit a cigar with trembling fingers, eyeing me warily.
I laughed, a little wildly.
"No, strangely enough, I'm not crazy. My cosmic mind-radio proves all this!"
He twitched uneasily. It tickled me to see complacent back-slapping Horace Gibson so jumpy.
"How come we don't sense all this, in our own minds?" Gibson asked, frowning in deep thought.
"Perhaps early man did realize it, being nearer its source, but the more involved human existence became, the further mind-parts drifted apart from each other. . . .
"The whole network of sex motivation suggests a veiled attempt to merge matching parts of this great Earth-mind back together again!"
"KEEP it clean," Gibson growled, mangling his cigar. Then he went bluntly to the part of the discovery that interested him most. "You mean to say that this cosmic what-not of yours can get into other people's minds?"
His pig-eyes glittered.
"Why not?" I retorted, with some smugness. "It can read 'other' minds by exercising its prerogative as belonging to the original source of conscious Earth life. My mind is linked to everyone else's, being only part of a whole, obviously I can read 'other' minds—by use of this mind-radio.
"And not only that," I bragged, "why, by the use of it I could control either individual parts of this one vast mind—or the whole Earth-Mind itself! By use of this apparatus, I could completely dictate the mental actions of everyone on this Earth!"
Then, looking over at him triumphantly, I froze. The look that came into his red-rimmed eyes! The diabolical gleam of a would-be tyrant!
What had I done? Spouting recklessly about absolute control over the world—to a potential dictator like Horace Gibson! Gibson, who already cracked the whip over the humble mine-workers of Luke's Gap!
Why, a man like Horace Gibson would stop at nothing short of world dictatorship. . . .
Gibson pursued his flabby lips, and whistled.
"Ah-ha!" He expanded like a toy balloon. "Mark Tyme, my lad, maybe you have got something here after all. Why didn't you tell me that last part before you spoke?" He guffawed at his feeble joke, slapping my back.
My mind raced wildly. I had to do something—quick. Just let Horace Gibson get that cosmic mind-radio strapped on his head only once—and the result would be disastrous!
"LEMME test it out," he grinned diabolically, rubbing his beefy hands together in anticipation.
"Not just now," I said hastily. "I'll have to adjust—"
Gibson made noises like a bear. "Not fifteen minutes ago you told me the machine was in perfect shape! I want to try the thing out now!"
He glared at me with his piggy eyes, as though I were a side of beef he meant to butcher. His fingers twitched.
