"Dad," Dan began, "I didn't mean--"

The man swiveled and glared at him.

"I've told you to stay out of here when I'm working," he said.

"I know. But I thought that maybe this time--"

"You thought! You thought! It's time you started doing what you're told!"

"I'm sor--"

Michael Chain began to rise from his stool and the boy backed away. Then Dan heard his mother's footsteps at his back. He turned and hugged her.

"I'm sorry," he finished.

"Again?" Gloria said, looking over him at her husband.

"Again," Michael answered. "The kid's a jinx."

The pencil-can began rattling atop the small table beside the drawing board. Michael turned and stared at it, fascinated. It tipped, fell to its side, rolled toward the table's edge.

He lunged, but it passed over the edge and fell to the floor before he could reach it. Cursing, he straightened then and banged his head on the nearest corner.

"Get him out of here!" he roared. "The kid's got a pet poltergeist!"

"Come on," Gloria said, leading him away, "We know it's not something you want to do...."

The window blew open. Papers swirled. There came a sharp rapping from within the wall. A book fell from its shelf.

"... It's just something that sometimes happens," she finished, as they departed.

Michael sighed, picked things up, rose, closed the window. When he returned to his machine, it was functioning normally. He glared at it. He did not like things that he could not understand. Was it a wave phenomenon that the kid propagated--intensified somehow when he became upset? He had tried several times to detect something of that sort, using various instruments. Alway unsuccessfully. The instruments themselves usually--

"Now you've done it. He's crying and the place is a shambles," Gloria said, entering the room again. "If you'd be a little more gentle with him when it starts, things probably wouldn't get so bad. I can usually head them off, just by being nice to him."