All That Goes Up.

by Kirby Brooks.

At fifty, a man should be too old to go around flying off the handle, or wandering around on the ceiling. But what could a man do when he had a son who insisted on being a genius?

For a man my age, the middle 50's, life has a number of compensations.

There're children--we have two; there's a good wife, and I'm certainly blessed in that respect with Mary; and there's the joy of coming home, slipping on my slippers, having a good dinner, then relaxing with coffee and a pipe. There's no compensation for being plastered to the ceiling. But, more of that later.

The after dinner coffee with a dash of rum in it, tasted very good, and so did the pipe. The meal was satisfying too. Thank goodness for that meal, because it was the last decent one I've had for quite some time. Oh, I've eaten all right, but you'd have to stretch your imagination to call any of it a meal. Can you picture eating food that keeps trying to move away from your face? That is, if you can keep the plate from moving away too?

As I say, Mary and I had just finished dinner, when Jim, our 22-year-old gangly son, who's home on summer vacation from MIT, called me.

"Can you come here a minute, Dad?"

"Sure," I said, heading down the hall to his combination laboratory, dark room, aviary, and just plain bedroom. Fortunately it was a big room so there was s.p.a.ce for a bed in addition to all the stuff a boy can collect who becomes enamored of science while in High School, and who consummates the wedding with studying electronics in college.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

I pushed his door open a little wider and looked in before entering; a trick the family had acquired when Jim was in the Zoological-Biological, or frog-collecting age. "What do you want, son?"

"Just want to show you something," he said, pointing to the floor. He was bent over looking intently at what seemed to be a sheet of that fluorescent plastic that's used for signs. It was lying on the floor, was about two feet square, and was glowing a dim pink. Whether from light within itself, or from the desk lamp, I couldn't tell.

"What is it?"

"I don't really know, Dad, but watch what happens." So saying, he picked up a glove from the desk, tossed it onto the plastic plate. I should say he tossed it _at_ the plate, because it didn't land, but rose fast, straight up! I watched it hit the ceiling with a splat!

Where it stuck. It was then I noticed several other things all plastered to the panelling too; the mate to the glove, a package of cigarettes, a cigarette lighter and a golf ball or two.

Well, I had learned years ago in the Prestidigitation Age, or, "You too can amaze your friends with feats of Magic" that quite often Jim would go to great lengths to mystify anybody handy. I wasn't too impressed.

"Next thing will be to make a rope stand up, or saw a woman in half, I suppose?"

"No, Dad, this is no trick. Fact is, I think I've stumbled onto something that could be important ... anti-gravity. Or, something that looks like it."

"Well," I said, "It could be, but just what is this thing?"

"Up at school I started fooling around with various metals, and one idea I had was to suspend them in tiny particles, colloidally almost, in plastic. Then I'd run various voltages and varying frequencies through the plastic."

"Yes, but why?"

"Well, the thing I had in mind originally was a wall or ceiling panel that would serve as a source of either cold light using a given voltage and frequency, or as a source of radiant heat, using some other voltage and frequency. All from the same panel."

"And you wind up with this?"

"Yes, and I'll be darned if I can explain just what this is. I'm really going to have to do some digging."

While Jim was talking, I had been looking the rig over. It consisted of the plastic plate lying on the floor, with two sets of wires running into it, and out of it. In turn, these four wires led into what I took to be a transformer of some sort. Such as you'd use for a toy electric train. It had roughly calibrated dials on the top of it.

A regular AC line from the transformer was plugged into the wall socket.

"What I can't figure," Jim mused, "Is why it does what it does. The measly three years I've spent at school don't even qualify me to make a good guess. Does it only work on small things that can be lifted without too much effort anyway? Or, if I increase the size of the plate will I also have to increase the voltage? Will it...?"

"Look boy, I'm confused enough already. What do you say we sit down and think about this a bit? It'll give you a chance to collect your wits, and besides that, I want another cup of coffee."

Four cups and two pipes later, after Johnny, that's our fourteen-year-old, and Mary had gone to bed, Jim and I were still just sitting. He was obviously thinking, and I was mostly sitting. Not much thinking. The trouble with my thinking was that a background of selling everything from Encyclopedias to, at present, used cars, and an education consisting mostly of high school and hard knocks just didn't qualify me in Jim's league. The silence lengthened. Pretty soon he stirred in his chair, cleared his throat and said, "Let's go look again."

"Have you come to any conclusions?"

"Well, yes and no," Jim said. "Look at it this way Pop; suppose this is not a fluke and I'm able to duplicate this thing. Suppose I'm able to take this transformer and duplicate it too. All on a larger scale.

How could it be used to good advantage? It'd probably do away with elevators in most cases, except you'd have to walk down. But then, by making the field weaker, maybe I could fix it so's you'd float down.

Then too, I wonder if it can be applied to aircraft of any kind ... I suppose you could take it and ..." his eyes were shining.

I interrupted; "Jim, you haven't really tested what the thing will do and it _is_ late, so before you go into many more schemes, let's sleep on it. We can get right after it in the morning. You can, that is, because all I can do is watch."

The next morning bright and early I was awakened by Johnny, who was dancing around the room, shouting something on the order of "Hey!

Somebody's gottoget'erdown! Somebody's gottoget'erdown!"

Making myself heard over the din, I hollered, "Who's got to get who down? For Pete's sake, stop yelling so loud!"

Having been out-shouted, Johnny calmed down enough to catch his breath and gasp, "Say, Dad, d.u.c.h.ess is in Jim's room and she's on the ceiling, and yougottoget'erdown!"

Well, it dawned on me then what he was talking about. d.u.c.h.ess is our nine-months-old Great Dane pup. Weighs about a hundred pounds. So, pulling on bathrobe and slippers, I went down stairs, and hurried into Jim's room. Sure enough, plastered on the ceiling and looking mighty scared and sick and sheepish was d.u.c.h.ess. When I came in she wagged a feeble tail at me and squirmed a bit. Mary, Johnny and Jim were all standing looking at her.

"Dad, I don't know how it happened," Jim said. "Guess I forgot to pull the plug last night. First I knew was when I heard a thump and a yelp ... woke up and she was practically right over my bed."

d.u.c.h.ess was apparently unhurt, so I walked over and reached up to coax her down. Just then Jim shouted, "Dad! Don't do...!" And my head hit the ceiling! Like a fool I had walked right over the plastic plate!

As soon as I could get my eyes to focus properly, I shut them again quickly. I was lying, (lying!) next to d.u.c.h.ess, on the ceiling, and she was thrashing me in the face with her tail. As soon as I pushed her around so my face was out of range I could see the dumbfounded looks on the rest of the family.

"Ralph," said Mary, in a tone of exasperation, "You and that dog come right down from there this minute!"

"Honey, I'd just be delighted to come down there, and if you and the boys will shove that bed under us, we'll try. Soon as Jim turns this d.a.m.n thing off."

By this time, Johnny was lying on the floor about to bust a gusset laughing at his father and long-legged d.u.c.h.ess sprawled on the ceiling, and even Jim, who is always rather straight-faced, was beginning to grin a little around the edges. Mary still seemed convinced that d.u.c.h.ess and I had done it on purpose.

Jim finally gathered his wits enough to start pushing the bed under us. Between the three of them they managed to bypa.s.s the wires to the plastic plate and set the bed over it. I noticed that it bucked a little as the edge went over the plate, but I didn't get time to see much because no sooner had the bed been pushed over it than the whole thing with the exception of the frame, rose straight up and smothered the dog and me very effectively! After the first moment of panic, consisting of flailing arms, legs, m.u.f.fled barks and curses, I was able to shove the bedding aside so we could breathe again. I had just started to yell at Jim to turn the thing off and stand aside, when that's just what he did. I clutched at d.u.c.h.ess, hoping to break both our falls I guess, but nothing happened!

I looked at Jim, and he was looking at the plug in his hand. There was a dazed look on his face, and I'm sure there was one on mine too.