and watch him try to
command psi effects to happen. That would be like commanding some random
copper wire and metallic cores to start generating electricity.

For once I could have overlooked the interference with my department if
I didn't know, from past experience, that I'd be blamed for the
consequent failure. That's a cute little trick of top executives,
generally. They get into something they don't understand, really louse
it up, then, because it is your department, you are the one who failed.
Ordinarily I liked my job, but if this sort of thing went too far--

But more than saving my job, I had the feeling that if I were allowed to
go along, carefully and experimentally, I just might discover a few of
the laws about psi. There was the tantalizing feeling that I was on the
verge of knowing at least something.

The Pentagon people had been right. The Swami was an obvious phony of
the baldest fakery, yet he had something. He had something, but how was
I to get hold of it? Just what kind of turns with what around what did
you make to generate a psi force? It took two thousand years for man to
move from the concept that amber was a stone with a soul to the concept
of static electricity. Was there any chance I could find some shortcuts
in reducing the laws governing psi? The one bright spot of my morning
was that Auerbach hadn't denied seeing the evidence of the cylinders
pointing North.

It turned out to be the only bright spot. I had no more than got to my
office and sorted out the routine urgencies which had to be handled
immediately from those which could be put off a little longer, when Sara
announced the lieutenant and the Swami. So I put everything else off,
and told her to send them right in.

The Swami was in an incoherent rage. The lieutenant was contracting his
eyebrows in a scowl and clenching his fists in frustration. In a voice,
soaring into the falsetto, the Swami demanded that he be sent back to
Brooklyn where he was appreciated. The lieutenant had orders to stay
with the Swami, but he didn't have any orders about returning either to
Brooklyn or the Pentagon. I managed, at last, to get the lieutenant
seated in a straight chair, but the Swami couldn't stay still long
enough. He stalked up and down the room, swirling his slightly odorous
black cloak on the turns. Gradually the story came out.

* * * * *

Old Stone Face, a strong advocate of Do It Now, hadn't wasted any