if you can only unravel the information contained in my data. You,
as a physicist, surely must be able to explain the manifestation in
terms that satisfy all and sundry. Once you decide what makes, I'll
be interested. Until that date I am stumped, admit it, and happy
that I am able to hand the problem to one who by all the evidence,
has the personality and character that will not permit these pages
of painstaking data to molder in the dust.
Please--old fellow, tell me what's with a poltergeist.
And don't refer vaguely to space warps or fourth dimensional animals.
That's strictly for _Corny Stories or Vulturesome Tales_.
Interestedly,
Tom Lionel,
Consulting Engineer.
P.S. That junk you bought made it possible to make these
measurements. Surely the same stuff should enable you to figure out
the answer. You and your monomolecular films.
You and your monomolecular films, Thomas snorted.
* * * * *
That was the start. Then, for eight solid weeks, the laboratory lights
burned by night, and the machinery turned at all and odd hours of the
clock. Measurements were conducted on all sorts of things; including at
one instance, the astronomical data pertaining to planetary line-up of
the solar system. That one was stamped with a large reject sign; not
only it didn't apply, but it didn't make sense either. Trips to the
library were frequent, and many's the ancient tome that Thomas read
until his eyes burned.
The equations, graphs, and tabulations came in for their study and he
located a percentage of dispersion in them. It was either experimental
error or true dispersion of effect.
The engineer had done his work well. He had compiled his information,
and then had presented it in such a manner that left no doubt. And
it proved conclusively that something was there and at the same time
pointed out that if there was something there, it could be analyzed,
and possibly reproduced.
The physicist knew that no answer would be satisfactory until the
phenomenon could be reproduced.
And both he and the engineer knew that the chances were more than
possible that a high-order physical effect might be the basic cause.
An effect for which mankind had no instruments; radio as a natural
phenomenon would be inexplicable to a race that had never discovered a
means of detection; the mathematical prediction of radio occurred years
before the original experiments.