Free What Thin Partitions by Mark Clifton Page A

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. And there was something else, too; 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 from those which had to be handled immediately, when Sara announced the lieutenant and the Swami. 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 time. From his home he had called the Swami at his hotel and commanded him to report to the general manager's office at once. They all got there about the same time, and Henry had waded right in.
    Apparently Henry, too, had spent a restless night. He accused the Swami of inefficiency, bungling, fraud, deliberate insubordination, and a few other assorted faults for having made a fool out of us all at the seance. He'd as much as commanded the Swami to cut out all the shilly-shallying and get down to the business of activating antigrav cylinders, or else. He hadn't been specific about what the “or else” would entail.
    "Now I'm sure he really didn't mean—” I began to pour oil on the troubled waters. “With your deep insight, Swami—The fate of great martyrs throughout the ages—” Gradually the ego-building phrases calmed him down. He grew willing to listen, if for no more than the anticipation of hearing more of them.
    He settled down into the crying chair at last, his valence shifting from outraged anger to a vast and noble forgiveness. This much was not difficult. To get him to cooperate, consciously and enthusiastically, might not be so easy.
    Each trade has its own special techniques. The analytical chemist has a series of routines he tries when he wishes to reduce an unknown compound to its constituents. To the chemically uneducated, this may appear to be a fumbling, hit or miss, kind of procedure. The personnel man, too, has his series of techniques, which may appear to be no more than random, pointless conversation.
    I first tried the routine process of reasoning. I didn't expect it to work; it seldom does, but it can't be eliminated until it has been tested.
    "You must understand,” I said slowly, soothingly, “that our intentions are constructive. We are simply trying to apply the scientific method to something which has, heretofore, been wrapped in mysticism."
    The shocked freezing of his facial muscles gave me the answer to that.
    "Science understands nothing, nothing at all!” he