The Forerunners

The telepaths were a danger and a threat — to a world grown monstrous. But the human mind can unlock a multitude of doors.


Excerpt
He felt it when he awoke — the dull, persistent throbbing deep within his head — and he knew that no human mind would be closed to him today.
For thirty-two of his thirty-four years Neville Brandt had been a normal person. He had risen rapidly in the Cybernetics Division of Central Metals, Inc., and was now one of the youngest experts in the country. But he was no longer normal.
The throbbing continued while he dressed and while he ate his breakfast. It lingered with him during the drive to the jet port. It hung over him like a mantle of fire while he waited for the express, and it accompanied him aboard.
The jet train screamed along the monorail toward East City. Brandt watched the landscape rush by in a blurred fantasia of color. He stared through the window at the fascinating smear until he became dizzy. And the painful throbbing pounded on in his skull.
The express roared over the Appalachians, soaring up and through the man-made cuts and passes, and then sweeping down the eastern slope with its speed unabated. Still, the pain persisted.
Suddenly it was gone.
Brandt closed his eyes and relaxed into the cushions of his seat, the absence of the nagging pain soothing him like a balm. With his eyes shut, and smiling to himself, he sent telepathic feelers into the minds of his neighbors on the train. Gently, experimentally, his mental fingers touched one mind, then another. Reception was good.