The Age Altertron (2 page)

hen the boys reached the Professor’s house they found
the tall, thin man (who looked a little like Abraham Lincoln, but without the
beard and the stovepipe hat) diligently at work in his laboratory in the back.
The laboratory had its own door, which was almost never locked. There was a
good reason for this; when the professor was busy with one of his new machines,
he was hardly ever aware of the sounds around him, including knocks—even very
loud ones. So, Rodney and Wayne had gotten into the habit of letting themselves
in and waiting for the Professor to notice their presence with a nod and a smile
and a very long description of what he had just been doing. Sometimes his explanation
made perfect sense. For example, he would say, “Boys, I am putting a metal plate
here so all this delicate circuitry won’t be exposed.” At other times what he
said made no sense at all. For example: “Boys, the master diode has a flux of
seven when I require at least an eight-point-two.”

Rodney and Wayne and the Professor had become very good friends since the day
he had come to their door eleven months earlier. With their dad now gone, the
twins looked up to him as sons would look up to their father. The Professor
was happy to have the boys for assistants and also to have them as his friends.
The life of a college physics professor—a life spent teaching and reading and
working on contraptions in his home lab that would save a town from all manner
of continuing calamities—was a fairly lonely life. Rodney and Wayne made good
company for the solitary professor, even when they weren’t handing him a wrench
or a screwdriver.

“Hello, boys,” said the Professor. “Your timing could not have been better.
How do you like my Peach Pigment Evanescizer? I have just this minute completed
its construction.”

“Well,” said Rodney, looking over the machine, “it looks very much like your
Lemon Pigment Evanescizer.”
“An astute observation,” said the Professor, wiping his dirty hands on his lab
coat. “It works very much like the Evanescizer we used to remove all the lemon
color from the town two months ago.” The Professor took a bite from the sandwich
that his housekeeper and cook Mrs. Ferrell had left for him before she went
off to the grocery store. It was the Professor’s favorite sandwich. In fact,
it was the only kind of sandwich he would eat: sardines and Swiss cheese. Rodney
and Wayne had tried it themselves once and secretly called it “Professor Johnson’s
‘Yuck’ sandwich.”
“It sounds to me,” said Rodney, running his hand along the smooth aluminum housing
of the machine, “that the peach color will be just as easy to remove as the
lemon color was.”
“One would
think
so,” said the Professor, extracting a small peach-colored
sardine from his sandwich to give to his fish-loving half-Persian/half Siamese
cat Gizmo. Gizmo sniffed the small fish (because it didn’t look familiar to
her). Then, satisfied that it was fishy in nature, she took it directly from
her master’s hand and gobbled it down. Then she carried her very furry body
over to her sleeping pillow and began to clean the fish oil from her mouth with
a spitty paw.
“But here is the thing,” the Professor went on. “The color known as
lemon
is very similar to its parent color
yellow
. There is very little variation
in hue at all. And what do we know about the color
yellow
?”
“That it is a primary color?” asked Rodney.
“You’re exactly right. Whereas peach is a combination of several different primary
and secondary colors. It’s a much more complicated sort of color to dispense
with. So, my frequency generator will have to be tuned to a much higher pitch.
And do we know what happens when a frequency generator is tuned to a higher
pitch?”
Rodney shrugged. Wayne shrugged.
“Think about it, boys. It has something to do with dogs. It has something to
do with every dog in the town of Pitcherville.”
“I think it must be a frequency that only dogs can hear!” said Wayne proudly.
“But more than that—”
The boys thought about this for a moment but could not arrive at the answer.
“Dogs may be the only creatures to hear the high frequency, but will they like
it?” hinted the Professor.
Wayne shook his head in large part because Professor Johnson was shaking
his
head to steer him to the correct answer.
“No siree, boys, they won’t take to it at all. We’ll have quite a bit of yelping
and yowling to deal with until all the pigment has been shaken loose from this
town, and you can bet that Officer Wall from the Pitcherville Police Department’s
Loud Noises Unit will be at my door lickety split to write me a summons. Just
you wait.”
“And there’s no other way to do what we have to do?” asked Rodney.
“I’m afraid there isn’t. It is the price that we must pay for science. Now,
I have a very important job for the both of you. Here is a screwdriver for you,
Rodney, and here is one for you, Wayne, and here are some canine earmuffs I
have made for my little terrier Tesla. You will be custodian of those, Wayne.
Now…when Tesla comes running in here howling and yowling you must catch him
and put these on his ears, for it will be loudest here inside my house and I
do not wish for him to be made too uncomfortable.”
Wayne nodded. He held a screwdriver in one hand and the canine earmuffs in the
other. “But Professor,” said Wayne, “what are the screwdrivers for?”
“Perhaps your brother Rodney knows?”
Rodney thought for a moment while scratching his forehead with the business
end of his screwdriver. Then his face brightened. “Well, I remember that the
other machine—the one you built this one from…”
“The Lemon Pigment Evanescizer. Yes, go on…”
“Well, I remember that once it started really going, it began to rattle, and
before we finished, it was rattling quite a lot, and some of the screws that
were holding it together almost shook themselves out of their grooves. I suppose,
Professor, that this one rattles even more than that one did.”
“Your supposition is correct.”
“So we’ll have to work even harder to keep
these
screws from coming out.”
“And to keep the Evanescizer from totally dismantling itself! Rodney, my boy,
that was a crackerjack observation—quite astute, right on the money!”
Wayne’s heart sank. He had been excited and eager to do his part to save the
town of Pitcherville from its latest disaster, but now the happy feeling was
gone. He bowed his head and looked down at the floor so that Rodney and the
Professor couldn’t see in his face how badly he felt.
Wayne could not help it that he felt things stronger than his brother. That
was just the way he was. And it wasn’t that he minded hearing that Rodney had
just made a crackerjack observation that was astute and right on the money.
He only wished that every now and then the Professor might say the same thing
about
him.
Wayne wondered sometimes if the Professor and his Aunt Mildred and all his friends
and perhaps even his father thought he wasn’t as smart as his twin brother Rodney.
Once he had even found the courage to ask his Aunt about it—to find out if it
were true. “Rodney smarter than you? Oh, for Heaven’s sake, what a question!”
she had replied. As she tousled his hair with affection, she had added, “You’re
both equally bright young men. It’s just that Rodney reads more than you do
and pours a lot more information into his head.”
After talking to his aunt, Wayne had felt a little better. He also vowed to
read more books and start pouring more information into his own head. He started
with
Treasure Island
but he could not get very far with it. Then he picked
up
Huckleberry Finn
but could not get very far with this book either.
He kept reading the lines over and over again, because his mind kept wandering,
and he could not stop thinking that there were three whole
Mighty Mike
comic books, which his friend Grover had lent him, that were still untouched
on his nightstand—just lying there waiting for him— calling to him: “Hey, Wayne!
Come read
me
! It’s your pal, Mighty Mike! Who needs pirates and Tom Sawyer
and all those…
words!
”
The Professor must have sensed that Wayne had lost some of his cheer, for he
chucked him under the chin with his knuckles in a fatherly way and said, “If
we succeed in our latest mission, I will treat the both of you to a hamburger
at the Hungry Chef Diner.” The thought of eating his favorite hamburger piled
high with pickles and tomato and onion was just the thing to return Wayne to
his former good mood, though his chin now smelled a little of sardines.
“Now let us take our stations, gentlemen, and put this baby into gear!” The
Professor put Wayne at one end of the machine, which looked very much like a
washing machine with knobs and dials in odd places, and he put Rodney at the
opposite end. And he put himself at the controls. “Now boys, our implementation
must be careful and gradual so that the pigment atoms detach themselves slowly
and individually and do not affix themselves even harder through molecular trauma.
Remember that when the frequency is potted all the way up, boys, the machine
will begin to vibrate and then to shake quite fiercely and you must be quick
about screwing everything back in before it all falls apart. Now we cannot have
that
, can we?”
Rodney and Wayne shook their heads as one. Rodney took a deep breath. Wayne
steadied himself before the machine.
With a flip of the switch the Peach Pigment Evanescizer began to hum.
“It’s building up steam,” said the Professor. “Not real steam. That is just
an expression.”
The hum grew louder and then became a groan. The groan grew louder and then
became a whine. The whine then became raised in pitch as if someone were playing
a flute and taking the notes higher and higher. When the whine had reached a
shrill screech it was hard for the twins not to drop their screwdrivers and
Wayne to drop his canine earmuffs and throw their hands over their ears. (Wayne
had considered putting on the earmuffs himself, but they were much too small
to be wholly useful.) At that very same time the Evanescizer began to vibrate,
just as the Professor had said it would, and now it looked like a washing machine
in a different way, for it had begun to bounce and agitate as if someone had
filled it with a load of heavy shoes. Gizmo decided quickly that she had had
enough of the racket and went scampering out.
Within moments, the whole laboratory was shivering and shaking, and a long row
of glass test tubes on one of the Professor’s worktables began to tremble and
clink and then one by one each of the test tubes began to
pop!
in just
the way that crystal glasses shatter when an opera singer reaches a high note.
Wayne and Rodney watched as the Professor turned the frequency dial even farther
in its clockwise direction, taking care not to pot it up too quickly. The sound
rose even higher in pitch, and now other glass objects began to shatter all
about the room, including the glass panes in all the windows! Rodney wondered
if this would be the means by which the peach pigment problem would be solved—by
destroying everything to which the color was attached!
A moment later the boys heard the sound of someone pounding his fist upon the
Professor’s back door. When no one went to open it, the door flew open on its
own, revealing Officer Wall of the Pitcherville Police Department’s Loud Noises
Unit. Officer Wall stood with his hands over his ears shouting, “We cannot have
this, Professor Johnson! No, no, no, sir! This cannot be! I will have to cite
you! I will have to cite you!”
But the Professor paid Officer Wall no heed at all. He turned the dial even
farther to the right, and then suddenly the high shrill screech gave way to
silence. Or, rather, the machine moved to a frequency that could no longer be
heard by human ears.
“Now, that’s more like it!” said Officer Wall, enjoying the sudden quiet. He
remained in the doorway, poking his fingers into his ears as if clearing his
ear canals were a way to restore his temporarily-crippled hearing.
“Not done yet, Officer,” said Professor Johnson from the control deck of the Evanescizer. The Professor had
hardly gotten the words out of his mouth when a howling began in the next room—just as he had predicted. Then
the howling moved into the laboratory, and there was the little dog that was doing it: the Professor’s Scottish
terrier Tesla. With one hand Wayne continued to screw in the wobbling screws that were working their way out on
his side of the machine and with the other he tried to put the canine earmuffs around Tesla’s head as he had
been instructed to do. But it was not an easy thing to do because Tesla would not remain still. He kept running
back and forth and wailing and complaining, and it was almost heartbreaking to see him in such a state. After a
little struggle, Wayne finally succeeded in getting the muffs around Tesla’s delicate ears, and it was no time
at all before the little dog stopped complaining and sat down to study what the humans in the room were doing.
Unfortunately, the other dogs in the town of Pitcherville had no one to put
canine earmuffs on
them
and so they all began to moan and howl and whimper
and caterwaul and bark and some to growl in one great town-sized canine chorus.
And then something very strange happened! Every dog that was able to get itself
out of its house or yard took it to mind to come directly to the Professor’s
house, some perhaps to discover the source of their discomfort and put an end
to it, others in obedient response to the loudest dog whistle they’d ever heard.
A couple of old junkyard mutts who were deaf joined the large pack of dogs for
the sheer fun of joining a large pack of dogs!
Together they stampeded through the gate that had been left open by Officer
Wall, and then scrambled and tumbled right up to the back door and then right
through
the back door—all dust and fur and peach-colored paws and peach-colored
muzzles and jangling collars and scruffy collarless ruffs and wagging tails
and a few bared fangs. Right through the door they came, knocking Officer Wall
completely off his feet. And down upon the floor
he
went, landing with
a thud and then promptly becoming—against his own wishes—one very trampled human
dog mat.
Within a moment or two, the laboratory was filled with yowling, howling, insistent
dogs, all demanding in their dog-like way that Professor Johnson put an end
to the hurtful noise that only they could hear, even as the noise had begun
to do its job. You see, the sound vibrations emitted by the Evanescizer had
begun to make the pigment detach itself from everything that it had affixed
itself
to
—from Mr. Lipe’s car and Mr. Edwards’ car; from Mrs. Carter’s
bruised head and Mrs. Wyatt’s bruised head; from every tree and every mailbox
and every tiny blade of grass; from all the dog muzzles and Tesla’s canine earmuffs;
from the cushions of the booth at the Hungry Chef Diner where the boys would
soon be enjoying their well-deserved hamburgers; from all of Aunt Mildred’s
spice jars (each of which contained only cinnamon) and all the town’s television
antennas; and even from Officer Wall’s Noise Complaint Citation pad, which was
now stamped with muddy paw prints.
“Look around! It’s working!” cried Rodney, as a Great Dane whined right into
his ear.
“Another moment longer and everything will be restored to its natural color,”
said the Professor. ”There will be tons and tons of pigment dust to be cleaned
up from this town, but at least it won’t be attached to anything.”
“My bottom hurts,” said Officer Wall, rubbing the place where he had fallen
so heavily.
“Arf!” said Tesla, who seemed to like his noise-proof canine earmuffs and the
company of all of his dog pals.
Gizmo, for her part, had retreated to the Professor’s bedroom upstairs, where
she was vengefully using one of his walnut bedposts as a brand new scratching
post.