een opened up and the round and square medallions on it
examined. One decoration was undoubtedly the case for the
sensory-linkage apparatus. There was a way to turn it on and off. It
contained a couple of eccentrically shaped bits of metal. That was all.
Duplicated, the duplicates did nothing whatever. The other medallions
seemed to contain apparatus for purposes yet unguessed-at. One actually
had a minute moving part in it. But what it did was past imagining.

Captain Moggs said authoritatively:

"It will take time but we'll find out what it does. Of course right now
all research is concentrated on the telepathic device. It will be
developed and before long we will be thoroughly informed about the
weapons and the councils of other nations. It will be magnificent! We'll
no longer have reason to be apprehensive of attack, and we can evaluate
every military situation with absolute precision!"

"Dammit!" snapped Soames. "The gadgets aren't telepathic! They don't
transmit thoughts! They only exchange sensory information! And there's
no danger of the children finding out anything by telepathy when they
can only share the sensations of someone wearing a special device! What
would they do with military information if they had it?"

Captain Moggs looked mysterious. She departed, and Soames again cursed
bitterly the situation he'd happened to create. But still he did not see
how he could have done otherwise than to destroy the children's
high-power signalling device when they would have used it back on
Antarctica. Yet he was not happy about the consequences of his act.

* * * * *

He found time to get in touch with the physicists who'd come out to the
Rocky Mountain base. They'd found a few others who could put themselves
into the mental state of castaways who knew that a given device could be
made, and then tried to make something which wasn't it but had some of
its properties. In a way it was deliberate self-deception, but it was
deliberate to circumvent a natural habit of the educated mind. A trained
man almost invariably tries to see what can be done with what he has and
knows, instead of imagining what he wants and then trying to make
something more or less like it, even if he has to look for the knowledge
he will need. It took a particular type of mind to use Soames' trick. It
was necessary, for example, to imagine limitations to the operation of a
desired device, or one's starting-point