MO-SANSHON!

By Bryce Walton

Only Professor Ward knew they were on Earth, could almost hear them rustling behind their humanoid faces. Then Red came to help him, and of course he had to trust Red. But—could he?

[Transcriber’s Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Summer 1947. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

His gaunt figure slumped wearily in the only chair in the otherwise bare cube, while the telaudio pronounced its immutable sentence.

The world psychometric council finds you. Doctor Jonathan Ward, a paranoic with advanced delusions of persecution and of grandeur. Your belief in a super-insect menace threatening humanoid culture we find unsupported by logical evidence. You will be subjected to the reconditioning and readjustment clinics as authorized in Title C, Section 890, Article 72, Paragraph 18, Lines 72-86, Revised Solar Statutes, 2166. Section C-890-72, Article 18-1-W, Solar Statutory Psychometry.

As the dry and precise voice faded from the six-by-six screen, long suppressed panic hit Ward like a sudden sickness. He ran to the smooth panel of the door.

An irrational reflex! Both door and single exit window could be activated only from the outside. He was two hundred floors up, isolated in a Verdict Cube in Washington’s Federal Building. Administrative Guards would be here soon to take him away. And when they released him from the clinics he wouldn’t be John Ward any more. He would be someone else; it wouldn’t matter who, because by then the Mo-Sanshon would have accomplished their purpose. The solar humanoid culture would have become only a passing incident in geological history together with the giant ferns, the saurians, and now—super insects! God, no wonder they labeled him psycho! No one believed. It was too ridiculous. It had been trite thematic material for emotionalizing fiction for so long—

But the Martian subterranean ant-like culture, the Mo-Sanshon, were directly responsible for his failure! Somehow, he didn’t know even tentatively, they had infiltrated. They either controlled humanoids in high, influential positions by telepathy, or could, in some ingenious physiogenic way, assume human form. He knew that Vasco and Greever on the Psychometric Council had been prejudiced by some influence other than reason.

He ran to 

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