He dressed slowly, and as he entered his kitchenette to prepare breakfast, he saw a new notebook on the table. He picked it up, riffled the pages first, and then read the lettering on the front page. PHYSICAL DATA AND OBSERVATIONS MADE ON THE OCCURRENCE OF THE MANIPULATION OF NATURAL FORCES WHICH HAVE NO EXPLANATION IN THE KNOWN REALM OF PHYSICS. Contents: 173 pages of text. 77 pages of calculations. 48 tables of figures. 67 photographs. 13 statements made by unbiased--but not trained--observers. 7 similar incidents not given scientific attention. 29 graphs and curves. 25 pages of description and data pertaining to: meteorological conditions. terran constants--gravity and magnetism. sunspot activity. chemical analyses of earth at discrete intervals near the occurrence. analysis of atmosphere during phenomena. Accompanying information and data are samples of earth mentioned above. Atmospheric samples were contaminated during analysis and have therefore been destroyed. "Little Tommy has been a busy lad," mused the physicist. "'No explanation' huh? That's a laugh. _Anything_ can be explained. Well, my engineering friend, let's see what you have cooked up for me." Thomas Lionel started to read the "173 pages of text" and got down as far as the bottom of the first page. He blinked, did a double take, and reread it. "Great howling entropy," he grunted. "The unmitigated screwball has spent weeks in the compilation of data on his own, personal observations of a _poltergeist_ in action!" Thomas took the cigarette case from his pocket and extracted a cigarette. He snapped the lighter and was amazed to see the colors on the case. They were scintillating, iridescent, and beautiful. They danced and changed as he moved the lighter, and the swift play of color across the surface of the case caught his fancy. It also caught his scientific sense. He looked at the case carefully and swore. Tom had been using the ruling engine. The surface of the cigarette case was a mirror-grating and it was as good a job as the ruling engine could produce. Thomas fumed. The idea! And then he smiled a bit. For the engineer's use of the ruling engine to decorate a cigarette case was a sort of prostitution of the machine, but it had not harmed the engine in any way. And it was certainly no worse on the physicist's nerves than the irrelevant mixture of precision and utter sloppiness that characterized the physicist's work. It was, the physicist admitted, beautiful. He returned to the engineering data. * * * * * A poltergeist! The "throwing-ghost" of the ancient lore and myth. The fearsome manifestation of unrealism. Superstition! Sheer superstition!