tty emacs ESC Delay problem

[Cameron Matheson]

Hello,

I've just recently begun using Emacs.  Being a convert from Vim, I use
VIPER mode, which works wonderfully for me as long as I'm using the X
(gtk) version of Emacs.  I have a problem when using the TTY version
though.  Pressing ESC switches from visual mode to ex mode, but if I'm
using emacs in a terminal (or linux console), there is a short delay
in which I cannot press another key or else Emacs will interpret the
keypresses as C-foo instead of whatever command I wanted to issue in
ex mode.  That is to say, if I hit <ESC>, pause, and then hit 'j', my
cursor moves to the next line as expected.  But if I hit <ESC>
(release), and then immediately press 'j', the newline-and-indent
function is issued.  I can't figure out why it's only an issue in the
non-X version of Emacs.  How can I go about eliminating this pause?

Thanks,
Cameron