The Best Made Plans

""As every citizen of Oredan knows," says the news reporter, "this nation has been swept by a wave of terrorism during the few days past. Indeed, the now notorious Waern affair is so serious our Prime Minister is taking personal command of the Enforcement Corps and is directing the search for the terrorists himself . . . ""

It is a time when individualism has become uncommon . . . and now, when an "extremely" individual soul appears, who turns out to have a high degree of empathic power, he proves a danger to society.

"A fully developed person of this type could do almost as he pleased, and there would be no one who would be able to deny him," says the man named Rayson, one of two who have felt the criminal's empathic powers.

Masterson, the second, stares contemplatively into space. "Yes," he said. "A person like that could demand almost anything from almost anyone -- and get it So how will we stop him?"

"The Best Made Plans," by the author of "The Philosophical Corps," first appeared in 1959 in "Astounding Science Fiction,"