Danny Dunn and the Anti-Gravity Paint (8 page)

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Danny Wakes the Ship

Dinner was over, and they were still sitting around the table. The boys were tied to their seats as usual, for comfort's sake. The Professor and Dr. Grimes were sipping coffee out of sealed plastic bottles. Joe was munching a piece of chocolate.

The Professor said, “Well, let's go over it again. We are very close to what we've called the bounce zone. Whatever we do we must do within the next ten hours, before we get to the point at which the earth's gravity will bounce us away again.

“We've tried banging against the inside of the hull to jar the relay loose. No good. We can't get outside because we haven't any space suits. The outside wiring is a separate circuit from that inside, and works off the solar battery. I can't think of anything else.”

Dr. Grimes folded his arms. “What about the rockets? We have a belt of rocket exhausts all round the outside of the ship for steering. If our momentum carries us close enough, we can use the rockets to force ourselves into the earth's atmosphere. The heat of the friction may loosen the switch.”

“Yes. It may also burn up the ship, however,” said the Professor.

“It's a chance we ought to take. I'm surprised at you, Bullfinch. Didn't I hear you telling young Dan that a scientist must sometimes be daring?”

“Quite true. I'm not saying that we shouldn't try that. I'm just wondering what our chances of survival are.”

“Rubbish!” Dr. Grimes banged the table with his fist. “The fact is, you just don't like rockets. You've got yourself single-tracked on anti-gravity.”

“Don't be silly, Grimes. In the first place, I don't think we can come close enough to the atmosphere—”

There was an empty jam jar with a magnetic metal base on the table. They had filled it with roses to give the rather severe-looking cabin a more homey air. As the two scientists argued and as Dr. Grimes went on banging the table with his fist, this jar jumped slightly and began to slide toward the edge of the table.

Danny was the only one who noticed it. He didn't think about it until it got to the very edge. Just then Dr. Grimes shouted, “Fiddlesticks! I'm sure that a blast from all the rockets on one side—”

He gave the table a heavy bang. The jar leaped and went off the edge.

“Watch it!” Danny cried, and made a grab for the jar. He missed. The jar dropped to the deck, where its magnetic base clamped it fast. But the air was filled with roses and blobs of water. The argument ended as the scientists and the boys dodged floating water drops and chased the thorny roses.

Later, when everyone had gone to bed, Danny found himself unable to sleep. He tossed and turned in the air, drifting about at the end of his cord, restless and uncomfortable.

There had been something in that scene between the Professor and Dr. Grimes that almost seemed to him as if it had happened before: the two of them arguing, and a vase falling and breaking…

Then suddenly it came to him. Of course! They had been playing music together at home, long ago. A vase had fallen off the sideboard. His mother had come running in and they had argued about how it had happened.

He thought of his mother. What was she doing now, he wondered. Worrying about him, maybe weeping, keeping his things for him just as they had been when he left …

He had a vivid image of his own room at home, of all the familiar things, of his mother saying, “It will be hard, but we'll get you to college, Danny.” College! He wondered whether he'd ever see home again, whether they'd ever be all together again in those familiar scenes—the Professor with his bull fiddle, Dr. Grimes with his little piccolo, making music, all comfortable and happy and snug…

And suddenly he came wide awake. “Hey!” he said aloud. “That's it!”

A moment later he had snapped on the lights and was shouting, “Professor Bullfinch! Dr. Grimes! Wake up! I've got it! I know how we can loosen the switch!”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

More Music

The Professor awoke with a start. Automatically he unbuckled his safety belt, and went sailing out of bed so swiftly that he bumped his head.

“What?” he gasped. “What's happened?”

He caught a loop of rope to steady himself. “What on earth is the matter?”

“I've got it!” Danny cried. “Vibrations!”

The Professor shook his head to clear it and rubbed his eyes. “You've got vibrations? Where?”

“I mean I know how we can shake the switch loose. I've got an idea,” Danny said.

“Oh, Dan!” said the Professor, and there was a hint of exasperation in his voice. “I thought something had happened to you. For heaven's sake, boy, when will you ever learn—”

Dr. Grimes, sitting up in his bunk, snapped, “This is the last straw. Throw him out the air lock! Now he won't even let us sleep.”

“But listen!” Danny yelled. “Give me a chance to explain!”

The Professor took a deep breath. “Dan,” he said, “I think I have been very patient with you. But now—”

Danny kicked against the wall and sent himself shooting toward the table. He caught hold of the edge of it.

“Please,” he begged. “Listen to me. That jam jar. When Dr. Grimes banged the table, the vibrations of his banging made it slide off the edge—isn't that so? Just like that time when you and he were playing music, and the vibrations of the piccolo made that vase fall and break. Why couldn't we do the same thing to the switch?”

The two scientists stared at him. Then Dr. Grimes said, “It wasn't the piccolo. But maybe you've got a point.”

“By George!” said the Professor. “You mean shake the switch loose with a high note from a musical instrument? Danny, my boy—this is certainly worth thinking about.”

He propelled himself awkwardly into his bunk and struggled into his magnetic shoes. Dr. Grimes already had his on and was clumping about enthusiastically. Joe, wakened by the noise at last, yawned enormously and asked, “What's going on? Have we landed?”

He joined the others sitting at the table and added, “I knew there was something about this trip I didn't like: I forgot to bring a toothbrush.”

The Professor said, “In the first place, how could we get outside to play a note at the switch?”

“I've already thought of that,” Danny said proudly. “The TV would do. We've got a speaker on the outside of the hull along with the cameras, and a mike in here. We can use the controls to set the speaker near the switch.”

“That's right!” the Professor exclaimed, beaming. “You've really worked it all out.”

“Hm!” Dr. Grimes sniffed. “Only one thing's been forgotten. We haven't got one of your vibrating bull fiddles, Bullfinch.”

The Professor tugged at his beard. “We can make one,” he answered. “The body and neck could be made of wood from some of the supply cases. The bow could be made of heavy-gauge wire, bent into shape.”

“What would you string the fiddle with?” Dr. Grimes asked.

“All we need is one string—the higher in pitch the better, perhaps. A violin
E
-string is fine aluminum wire; I'm sure we have some somewhere on the ship.”

“Yes, but won't we need horsehair on the bow?” said Grimes.

Joe yawned. “How about using your beards for that?” he suggested.

They looked at him in surprise. “Why, Joe! What a good idea!” said the Professor.

“Oh, it was nothing,” Joe said modestly. “It probably won't work anyway.”

Full of enthusiasm, they went to work at once. Dr. Grimes broke up a packing case, and Danny and Joe, using small nails from one of Danny's pockets, put together a rough square box with a hole in the front. To one end they fastened a long slat. A skate key from another pocket made a good peg with which to tighten the string, which the Professor made from some fine wire. Dr. Grimes bent heavier wire into the proper shape for the bow, and the Professor found, again in one of Danny's pockets, a piece of his own bull-fiddle rosin.

“We need a bridge too,” he said.

“What's that?” Danny asked.

“Something to hold the string up off the body of the instrument.”

“Oh.” Danny fished thoughtfully in his pockets again.

“Would this do?” He brought out a flat, strangely shaped piece of plastic. “I told you it might be good for something.”

The Professor and Dr. Grimes cut several hairs from their beards, and in a surprisingly short time the “space fiddle,” as the Professor called it, was ready.

They waited until their instruments told them they were almost at the “bounce zone.” Then Dr. Grimes sat down before the knobs which controlled the position of the TV camera and microphone on the outside of the hull. Danny and Joe held on to loops of rope and watched the screen. Carefully Dr. Grimes maneuvered the outside speaker until it was only a few inches away from the switch. In the screen they could clearly see the plastic housing which covered the relay. Many times in the past months they had stared hopelessly at it, wishing they could somehow get to it. Now, each of them felt, this was really the last chance—the last time they might look at the simple little device on which their lives hung.

The Professor turned the control lever of the ship to the “off” position. He sat down and placed the space fiddle between his knees. Experimentally he drew the bow across the string. There was a long-drawn-out screech.

“Ow!” Joe said. “That went right through my head!”

Danny gritted his teeth and kept his eyes on the screen.

“Put the volume up a little, Grimes,” said the Professor.

Dr. Grimes did so. The Professor turned the skate key and tightened the wire string. Once more he drew the bow across it.

Danny shuddered. The noise was so awful that he felt his teeth were jarring loose. The image on the TV screen wavered as if static were going through it.

Joe said, “Must be a plane going overhead. Oops! No, I forgot.”

The Professor gave the key another half turn and played another note.

“Great heavens!” Dr. Grimes moaned. “I can't stand much more of this.”

“It moved!” Danny shouted. “That time I saw it! It really moved!”

“I can't turn the key much more,” gasped Professor Bullfinch. “I'm afraid the wire will snap.”

Once again he played a long, dreadful note: SCREECH!

Once again their hair stood on end, and shivers ran down their backbones. The sound was exactly like that of someone scraping a piece of chalk over a blackboard—only shriller, higher, and more piercing.

SCREECH!

“Look!” Danny cried at the top of his voice.

Pla-a-anggg! The wire snapped.

And at the same time, in the screen, they saw the relay pop open.

The neck of the space fiddle broke off. The clumsy, crudely made body flew apart.

“Ouch!” said Professor Bullfinch as the wire hit him across the fingers.

The air was full of drifting pieces of wood, fragments of wire, strands of beard, and nails. Then slowly everything began to settle to the floor. Both Danny and Joe felt themselves growing heavier. They sank down through the air until their feet touched the deck.

“What is it? What's happening?” they asked.

“What's happening?” repeated the Professor. “It worked—that's what's happening. We're inside the field of earth's gravity, and we're falling. Turn on the power again, Grimes, to brake the ship. We're going home!”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Danny Delivers

The school bell rang.

“Class dismissed,” said Miss Arnold. Then she added, “Danny Dunn and Joe Pearson, will you both stay for a moment after the others go?”

Danny and Joe glanced at each other and sighed. Their first day back in school had been rather hectic, with the other boys and girls constantly turning to point at them and whispering and passing notes. But it wasn't
their
fault.

It took longer than usual for the class to leave. “Snitcher” Philips came to ask Danny for his autograph, and Danny, who was used to this sort of thing after almost a month of it, wrote his name with a flourish. Finally everyone had gone, and Miss Arnold closed the classroom door and looked at the two space travelers.

“Well!” she said. “This has been quite a day. Sit down, boys.”

They did so. Miss Arnold fixed her sharp eyes on them severely.

“In the first place,” she said, “I'm glad to see that you haven't changed too much. Danny, your arithmetic is certainly excellent now, but you must learn to pay more attention during Social Studies. And Joe—you'll
have
to stop writing poetry during class time.”

They opened their mouths to protest, but she held up her hand, smiling. “I'm not really going to scold you,” she said. “I know how exciting it is to be home again. Why, you're both famous! You've been on radio and television programs, you've been in all the papers, and you have both met the President of the United States. It will be hard for you to settle down to school again after all that.”

Danny cleared his throat. “Yes, ma'am,” he said, “but we're going to do it. We're going to settle down.”

“Good. Don't let your fame go to your heads. There will be other adventures. The whole world is open to you. I want you to remember that now you're preparing for the rest of your lives.”

“I'm going to college,” Danny said. “We made enough money out of magazine articles and appearances on TV so that my Mom doesn't have to worry any more about that. I'm going to be a scientist.”

“That's fine. What about you, Joe?”

“Well…” Joe scratched his head. “I don't know. I'm sort of interested in science now, though I never used to be.”

There was a tap at the door. Miss Arnold called, “Come in.”

Professor Bullfinch entered. “Oh, sorry to bother you,” he said. “I didn't know the boys would still be here.”

“I can let them go now if you want them, Professor,” said Miss Arnold.

“Oh, no. I wanted to see you. I thought I'd ask you how they had adjusted to their first day back in school.”

“Very well indeed,” Miss Arnold said. “It will take us a few days to get back to normal, I suppose.”

“How's Dr. Grimes?” Danny asked. “Did he go back to Washington this morning?”

“Oh, yes. He got word that he has been elected President of the new Anti-gravity Space Travel Society,” said Professor Bullfinch. “You know—that used to be the International Rocket Society. He said to tell you he'd send you new lapel pins when they're ready.”

“Well,” said Miss Arnold, “I think that's all, then. I hope, Dan, that you'll buckle down to Social Studies. And—I know it will be hard, but I do hope you've given up daydreaming in class for good.”

“I have, Miss Arnold,” Danny said earnestly. “I'm going to work hard so I can get to college. But that reminds me—”

He went to his desk and pulled out a brown manila envelope. From it he took a sheaf of paper.

“I brought this in this morning and meant to give it to you, but I forgot,” he said.

“What is it?”

“Five hundred sentences,” Danny said with a mischievous smile. “Don't you remember? ‘Space flight is a hundred years away.' ”

Miss Arnold turned pink. Then she said, “Oh.”

“I wrote them during our flight,” Danny explained. “Between Mars and Saturn.”

“When on earth did you have time to write five hundred sentences?” the Professor asked. “Or perhaps I should say, ‘when
off
earth.' ”

“When I checked the supplies every day,” Danny grinned. “I used to write a few sentences each time.”

Professor Bullfinch snorted with amusement. Then he said, “You certainly are a determined boy. But Danny, how could you be so sure you'd get back again with your sentences?”

Danny smiled at him. “You were there, Professor,” he replied. “I knew you'd find a way.”

The Professor clapped him on the back. “Thank you, my boy,” he said, “but it was you who found the way.”

Danny blushed and was silent.

The Professor added, almost to himself, “Yes—you young people, you are the hope and future of science.”

Miss Arnold, still holding the sentences, had a most peculiar expression on her face.

She said, “Danny, I'll keep these as a souvenir of you and of the first space flight. But there's one thing I'd like to ask you, and I'd like a frank answer. Did you do these just to—to get even with me because it was a kind of old-fashioned punishment?”

Danny turned to her. “Why, no! Gee, of course not, Miss Arnold. You gave me that assignment, and you told me that I shouldn't forget to bring my work in to school, so I did them. I thought you'd be happy.”

“I am. But you didn't get my message?”

“Your message? When?”

“On that Saturday morning when you and Joe began your trip. At about ten o'clock—”

“At ten we were just crawling under the barn, I guess.”

“I see. Well it's—it's really too bad.”

Miss Arnold suddenly bit her lip and became very red in the face.

“Your mother phoned me,” she went on. “She explained that you had written the sentences but that Professor Bullfinch had carried them off by accident. She said you'd gone to try to get them back. So I told her you were excused. I said you needn't write the sentences again.”

“What?” cried Danny. “I was excused?”

Miss Arnold couldn't hold in her laughter any longer and exploded. “Oh, dear,” she gasped. “I'm so sorry, Dan. I just can't help it.”

Both Joe and the Professor began to laugh too.

Danny stared from one to the other.

“Five hundred—” he said. “Oh—!”

Then he began to giggle too. And soon he was laughing louder than any of the others.