A Well of Soul...

2356A.D./14 JULY/CITY OF BARTLET, PLANET SKROVNIK

Allen Stark was excercising. During the short trip by hovership to his office, he ran through his daily regimen of mental excercises. Being the Director of Field Operations for the Legion required him to try and anticipate and counter the moves of any variety of psychic or telepath, so he had to stay sharp. He often mused it was like trying to catch one particular butterfly in a swarm of millions. Without a net. But, he had his ways. After all, he had the works and wisdom of the Legion founders to help guide him through some of the trickier spots.

The men who had founded the Legion were the pioneers in controlling the then emerging psychic and telepathic talents showing up in adolescents. This was around 2180 A.D., around the same time as the indications that the Terran system, with its settlements and some mining on Mars, the Moon, and a large, high orbiting space station around Earth, was being aggressively probed my a hitherto unknown race. Humankind had yet to make direct, personal contact with an alien race. Long range contact with a race calling themselves the Sootan had been established first with a probe. By then sending a more up-to-date message over a laser-message system, they were able to cut the delay time from 12 years for the probe, to three months. There were ships on the way to rendezvous at the half way point between the two planets, when the Hubble III telescope took pictures of alien craft popping in and out of the orbit of Neptune. A live feed probe had been sent to investigate, but mysteriously lost all power. A second probe had sent live feed of a smallish alien craft that fired a missile and destroyed the probe just outside the asteroid belt radius. Armed shuttles began an active defensive sweep, and the fear grew that humans were about to be attacked.

The Legion founders were among the first to master the principles to make use of the gift, instead of allowing it to use you. After a well trained and well schooled telepath began shipping out on the combat missions, they found they could fairly easily find out what the enemy was thinking when the ships got in close proximity to each other. They had no idea how to understand their language, but they got mental images that were clear and unmistakable.

A major alien attack was discovered by one of these telepaths. That attacking force was ambushed by fifteen squadrons of the new space fighter jet. Before they could retreat, all of the ships in the alien fleet were destroyed, ensuring humans would make safe contact with the Sootan.

They were the draftees of the Code of Moral Law, which laid down the law on the moral and ethical use of psychic and telepathic powers. Massive numbers of complaints concerning criminal use of mental powers were slowly dwindled down to only those involving people mentally unstable or simply criminal in nature. Humans had slowly become used to having these wonderful new abilities thanks to the guidance of the Legion founders.

And the Legion evolved with humanity. When humankind and the Sootan came together and created the quantum drive space vehicle, the horizons for expansion exploded outwards. The Legion was in the forefront, as contact with other telepathic species occured with enough regularity to warrant the Legion being involved with all first contact missions. Now, human influence spanned seven percent of the Saggitarius arm. And growing. The Legion had gained the respect of the populace, and was possibly the most respected agency in the pax humanus.

Allens' hovership pulled up in front of the main entrance to Legion Command. The Legion command building was a fairly non-descript rectangle. Most of the building was underground. The thirty floors above ground was the literal tip of the iceburg. Constant research was conducted in a huge area two hundred feet below ground. New ways to use the minds powers were constantly being discovered. New agents trained, troubled psychics were counseled, dangerous psychics were restrained, and the large communications complex received and sent the huge volume of tightbeam subspace radio that kept the Legion on top of things.

Communications was the key to maintaining any kind of control. The fact that humans could exercise their abilities over subspace radio made a lot of travel unnecessary, and Allen could carry out the vast majority of his duties from his office. Allens specialty was linking with people, and removing their violent tendencies. He could place his own calm, and controlled will in the place of the disturbed psyche. He used it only on the most dangerous and erratic psychics. To use this control for pleasure would constitute a mental rape of the most horrific kind.

Upon arrival at the headquarters, he showed his I.D., then stood relaxed as the guard scanned his cerebral cortex. This sophisticated scan would show if these brain waves belonged with this body. Somebody who was being manipulated would show abberations in their brain patterns. It was installed after the Rejak Freedom Fighters attempted to assassinate the previous Chief Director.

When the scan was complete, Allen walked up to the guard. Sam was a normal man. That is to say, he had no psychic powers of any kind. His brain simply didn't work in the proper frequencies. This made it very difficult to affect him mentally. He was a perfect guard for a psychic facility.