Randall Garrett 41 min read

In an unremarkable brick building near the Capitol, a secret organization hides in plain sight, for there is no cover-story so convincing as a truth the other fellow already knows for sure.

Randall Garrett's 1960 story is a clever psi-powers and social-SF spy tale. Sharp, engaging golden-age SF. Read it for an inventive Cold War story of a covert agency of psychic operatives and the cunning misdirection that shields them, in a well-turned golden-age piece about espionage, hidden talents, and the art of hiding a secret behind an accepted lie.

In its time

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

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Kelly Freas