An Interesting Psi Device

[Timerover51]

Here is an interesting concept for a Psi device from a Murray Leinster story.

"In the same way," said Brink, "you can try to perform violent actions in a strong psi field—a field made especially to act on violence. When you first try it you get something like eddy currents. Warnings. It can be arranged that such psi eddy currents make your eyelids twitch. Keep it up, and probability changes to shift the most-likely consequences of the violence. This is like a spinning copper disk getting hot. Then, if you're obstinate about it, you get the equivalent of the copper disk melting. Probability gets so drastically changed that the violent thing you're trying to do becomes something that can't happen. Hm-m-m. ... You can't spin a copper disk in a magnetic field when it melts. You can't commit a murder in a certain kind of psi field when probability goes hog-wild. Any other thing can happen to anybody else—to you, for example—but no violence can happen to the thing or person you're trying to do something violent to. The psi field has melted down ordinary probabilities. The violence you intend has become the most improbable of all conceivable things. You see?"

The story is The Ambulance Made Two Trips, and it can be found on Project Gutenberg here.

The Ambulance Made Two Trips

www.gutenberg.org

Murray also has an excellent short series covering Planetary Survey, and his outstanding Med Ship Man series which are also on Project Gutenberg.