Free What Thin Partitions by Mark Clifton

bang against the ceiling. It weighed about what it ought to weigh. He tossed the cylinder, contemptuously, back into the pile, scattering them over the table. He pushed back his chair, got to his feet, and stalked out of the room without looking at any of us.
    The Swami made a determined effort to recapture the spotlight.
    "I'm afraid I must have help to walk to the car,” he whispered. “I am completely exhausted. Ah, this work takes so much out of me. Why do I go on with it? Why? Why? Why?
    He drooped in his chair, then made a valiantly brave effort to rise under his own power when he felt the lieutenant's hands lifting him up. He was leaning heavily on the lieutenant as they went out the door.
    Sara looked at me dubiously.
    "Will there be anything else?” she asked. Her tone suggested that since nothing had been accomplished, perhaps we should get some work out before she left.
    "No, Sara,” I answered. “Good night. See you in the morning."
    She nodded and went out the door.
    Apparently none of them had seen what I saw. I wondered if Auerbach had. He was a trained observer. He was standing beside the table looking down at the cylinders. He reached over and poked at one of them with his forefinger. He was pushing it back and forth. It gave him no resistance beyond normal inertia. He pushed it a little farther out of parallel with true North. It did not try to swing back.
    So he 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 séance-seance?, hah!-they were lying 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 laid 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 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