e had seen it. When I'd laid the cylinders down on the table they
were in random positions. During the seance there had been no jarring of
the table, not even so much as a rap or quiver which could have been
caused by the Swami's lifted knee. When we'd shifted the table, after
the Swami had changed his chair, the cylinders hadn't been disturbed.
When Old Stone Face had been staring at them during the seance--seance?,
hah!--they were laying in inert, random positions.

But when the lights came back on, and just before Henry had picked one
up and tossed it back to scatter them, every cylinder had been laying in
orderly parallel--and with one end pointing to true North!

I stood there beside Auerbach, and we both poked at the cylinders some
more. They gave us no resistance, nor showed that they had any ideas
about it one way or the other.

"It's like so many things," I said morosely. "If you do just happen to
notice anything out of the ordinary at all, it doesn't seem to mean
anything."

"Maybe that's because you're judging it outside of its own framework,"
Auerbach answered. I couldn't tell whether he was being sarcastic or
speculative. "What I don't understand," he went on, "is that once the
cylinders having been activated by whatever force there was in
action--all right, call it psi--well, why didn't they retain it, the way
the other cylinders retained the antigrav force?"

I thought for a moment. Something about the conditional setup seemed to
give me an idea.

"You take a photographic plate," I reasoned. "Give it a weak exposure to
light, then give it a strong blast of overexposure. The first exposure
is going to be blanked out by the second. Old Stone Face was feeling
pretty strongly toward the whole matter."

Auerbach looked at me, unbelieving.

"There isn't any rule about who can have psi talent," I argued. "I'm
just wondering if I shouldn't wire General Sanfordwaithe and tell him
to cut our order for poltergeists down to five."

* * * * *

I spent a glum, restless night. I knew, with certainty, that Old Stone
Face was going to give me trouble. I didn't need any psi talent for
that, it was an inevitable part of his pattern. He had made up his mind
to take charge of this antigrav operation, and he wouldn't let one bogus
seance stop him more than momentarily.

If it weren't so close to direct interference with my department, I'd
have been delighted to sit on the side lines