Randall Garrett 40 min read

Through the chill drizzle of Arlington, an ordinary-looking man in a blue topcoat walks with quiet purpose, Senator Gonzales, casting a fine-webbed mental net for the slightest touch of another mind.

Randall Garrett's 1960 story is a sharp psi-and-social-SF tale of telepaths, politics, and hidden power. Clever, tense golden-age SF. Read it for a story where a secretly gifted senator hunts through a crowd for others of his kind, in a nation that doesn't know they exist.

In its time

Published in 1960, during the 1960s, new wave revolutionizes the genre.

Reading it

40 min read (a novelette, room for a turn or two).

Illustrated by

H. R. Van Dongen