"Nope," admitted Thomas. "I won't ask questions, Elaine. I'll just be glad you came."
"I'm glad you're glad."
Elaine flirted with him shamelessly, and then turned toward the laboratory building. He followed, and they kept up a running fire of light talk all the way.
"The first thing I have to do is to see what the engineer was doing last," remarked Thomas as he opened the laboratory door.
"You are a strange fellow," smiled Elaine. "You respect each other's possessions and beliefs, though you argue madly through impersonal mediums. Still writing nasty letters?"
"Uh-huh. And playing chess."
"What's he been doing?" asked Elaine innocently.
"Don't really know. Aside from some experiments on the poltergeist effect—reducing them to practice—I wouldn't know. I doubt that he's been doing much else. I do happen to know that he's deeply interested in the epicenter effect. He may find the key to it, too."
The laboratory was about as he remembered it. There were some changes. A few of the pieces of equipment were moved; some of them were converted; and a couple of them had been built in to other, larger pieces. All of the workmanship was clean and shining.
The cyclospectrograph had been worked on with a vengeance. It had lost its haywire appearance. The D plates were all neatly machined and the high frequency plumbing was all rearranged into mathematical and technical symmetry. The hours-use counter showed constant operation for several days solid, which interested the physicist.