Star Ship on Saddle Mountain by Richard Ackley Read Free Book Online Page A

thoughts, even though he hadn't spoken, as when he was
back inside the Shack.
"Primitive?"
"Yes?" Charlie replied, though he didn't much care
for the name.
"I can also read the thoughts of your animal, since
they register on the mental lanes, too."
    "They do ?" Charlie said, glancing at
Navajo.
    "Yes. The animal is now thinking
of something called apples"
Charlie laughed a little bit in the darkness, as
the old horse sighed lightly and continued on with his own personal
thoughts.
    "You mean, you're really using telepathy,
to talk to me from another deck—and you're not around here
somewhere, where I can't see you?"
    "Yes, Primitive, if telepathy is
what you term the mental interplanetary tongue. From my own
understanding of your tongue, I believe you mean, when you
say telepathy ,
what we call the Interplanetary language. Do you not?"
"Yes ... I guess so, uh—" and Charlie hesitated.
"What did you say your name is?"
"Dondee," replied the impulse promptly. "Dondee
Bin."
"Mine is Charlie. Charles Holt."
"How many periods are you, Prim—I mean,
Charles?"
"Periods? I don't know—"
    "Oh," came the flash impulse, "I
meant your time ,
what you call your years of age?" "I'm going on fourteen, Dondee.
I'm thirteen now." "That makes us about the same number of
periods—I mean,
years," came the happy impulse from Dondee. "Only,
I have the period of fourteen years already! I'm older than you,
Charles." "Well, you don't have to rub it in," Charlie said under
his breath. "That last thought, Charles," Dondee said, "wasn't
clear to me." "I'm glad it wasn't," Charlie said, already sorry
about it. "Just forget it, Dondee. It doesn't matter."
"We are about the same age, almost exactly,
Charles."
"I'm glad of that," Charlie agreed. "A few months
is nothing anyway. Or periods, as you say." Charlie felt much
better now, glad that Dondee wasn't going to push the fact that he
was a little bit older.
"Do you," he asked, "come from pretty far
away?"
"Yes," came the immediate response, "from the
Barrier
    World. Or as your island calls
ours, Charles, the Planet Saturn."
"Oh!" and Charlie gave a low whistle.
    "Did you just laugh?" he asked. "I
know it sounds crazy and all, to hear a laugh in your mind, but—well,
I just got the feeling that you laughed, Dondee."
"Yes, Charles! I did laugh. When I caught your
astonishment at how far away my home is. I thought it surprised,
you!"
"It sure did! But I don't see how—" Charlie said,
"just how I can understand your telepathy, since I never even tried
to use it before."
"That is easy, Charles. All members of the human
species are physically equipped with the mental gland. But some
world islands have grown away from it, or stuck to their primitive
forms of communication and never learned it. The gland, Charles, is
the mental reserve cell in you, the cell that provides the
extra-sensory power which activates your brain, especially the part
of your brain which many races know very little about, such as your
own world's race, Charles. But I am glad your cells in the gland
are working fairly well. Otherwise we would not be able to talk
like this now."
"I never knew about that gland. Maybe I'll have to
quit talking soon. My throat—my tonsils, I guess, they're getting
pretty sore."
"Tonsils?"
    "Sure," Charlie said, "you know,
the glands you got in—" he stopped abruptly, feeling his throat
very carefully now, even as he thought of the word glands. "Dondee—just
where are those mental reserve glands, the ones you use for
telepathy?"
"Beneath the jaws, Charles. There is a gland in
either side of your neck, right beneath your right and left
jaw."
For some moments Charlie couldn't reply. All he
could do was tenderly feel about his neck, and wonder at the
amazing thing he had just learned. He remembered
Miss Tisdale, back in school, and how she once told science class
that the tonsils, like the appendix, had long outgrown their use.
They were parts of the body which appeared to have no use any
longer, as far as