"Give me a quick run-down," Gonzales said. "I've got to explain this to the President."
"Did you ever hear of the Pauli Effect?" MacHeath asked.
"Something about the number of electrons that—"
"No," MacHeath said quickly. "That's the Pauli principle, better known as the Exclusion Principle. The Pauli Effect is a different thing entirely, a psionic effect.
"It used to be said that a theoretical physicist was judged by his inability to handle research apparatus; the clumsier he was in research, the better he was with theory. But Wolfgang Pauli was a lot more than clumsy. Apparatus would break, topple over, go to pieces, or burn up if Pauli just walked into the room.
"Up to the time he died, in 1958, his colleagues kidded about it, without really believing there was anything behind it. But it is recorded that the explosion of some vacuum equipment in a laboratory at the University of Göttingen was the direct result of the Pauli Effect. It was definitely established that the explosion occurred at the precise moment that a train on which Pauli was traveling stopped for a short time at the Göttingen railway station."
The senator said: "The poltergeist phenomenon."
"Not exactly," MacHeath said, "although there is a similarity. The poltergeist phenomenon is usually spectacular and is nearly always associated with teen-age neurotics. Then there's the pyrotic; fires always start in his vicinity."
"But there's always a reason for psionic phenomena to react violently under subconscious control," Senator Gonzales pointed out. "There's always a psychological quirk."
"Sure. And I almost fell into the same trap, myself."