Danny Dunn and the Anti-Gravity Paint (6 page)

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Broken Speech

“Help!” yelled Joe. “Let me out of here!”

Danny caught his friend's arm. “Stop it,” he hissed. “Quit acting like a baby.”

Joe looked at him with wide eyes. Then he was silent, except for the chattering of his teeth. Dr. Grimes had sunk down into the pilot's seat and was holding his head between his hands. Only Professor Bullfinch seemed in command of himself.

“Keep calm, all of you,” he said in a strong voice. “Grimes, I'm ashamed of you. Is this how a scientist should act? Look at Danny.”

Grimes lifted a haggard face. “Danny!” he snarled. “Yes, look at him! It's his fault, the whole thing!”

Danny bit his lip. “You're right,” he said. “I'm—I'm to blame. I don't know what to—”

The Professor interrupted him. “It no longer matters who's to blame. Let's try to find out what's wrong and get it fixed.”

Grimes simply moaned. “What hope is there?”

“I don't know yet. But whether we like it or not, we are the crew of this ship. Let's act like crewmen.”

He turned toward the boys with a smile. Danny said, “We're ready. Tell us what to do.” He nudged Joe, who nodded, still unable to talk.

“Good,” said the Professor. “You know something about radio, Dan. Get on the set and see if you can make contact with our base.”

Delighted at the chance to act, Danny sprang to the radio. The Professor, seeing that Joe needed something to keep his mind off their predicament, set him to watch the television screen. By that time Dr. Grimes had pulled himself together, and he and the Professor began to check over the lever mechanism.

From where he sat at the radio Danny could see the observation port. Consequently, he was the first to see a round silver globe swing into view. The receiver broke into wild peeps and squeals.

“Professor!” he shouted. “Look! We've reached the Moon!”

Professor Bullfinch ran to the window. “The Moon? Nonsense, Danny. You should recognize that,” he said. “It's the satellite.”

Danny stared. Now he remembered it: the bright metal sphere with antennas poking out of two sides. It seemed years since that day he had peered at it through the Professor's telescope. In a way, that had been the start of this whole adventure.

He bent over the radio again. And suddenly a voice came through the speaker:

“—which at first was thought to be an enemy missile and then a flying saucer, is now revealed to be an experimental spaceship, the government announced a few minutes ago.

“The ship, which is believed to operate on a secret principle developed by Professor Euclid Bullfinch of Midston University, took off unexpectedly at 10:20 A.M. without a pilot. However, the inventor and Dr. A. J. Grimes of the International Rocket Society may be aboard. We'll bring you further bulletins as they come in.”

Joe said, “Hey! They didn't even mention us.”

“Never mind the news,” said the Professor. “Keep trying to reach the base, Dan.”

Danny flipped the broadcast switch once more. “Hello! Mr. Willoughby! Mr. Willoughby! Come in, Mr. Willoughby!”

He snapped the switch again. Almost at once a voice said sharply, “It's about time you called. Bullfinch! Are you there?”

The Professor leaned over Danny's shoulder and said into the microphone, “Willoughby, this is Bullfinch. We're in trouble.”

“You bet you are!” Mr. Willoughby replied. “Washington is seething. But that's the least of it. I have two hysterical mothers on my hands right here. Now, what's it all about?”

In a few hasty words Professor Bullfinch explained to the startled project head how they had happened to take off so abruptly and why they couldn't return.

“I see,” said Mr. Willoughby. “Stand by, Bullfinch. I'll get Colonel Beach. Maybe he—” He stopped. Then they heard him say, “Madam, please!” There was a scuffling sound. “Madam! No! Ouch!”

A woman's voice in the speaker said, “Joe! Joseph! Are you all right?”

Joe gasped, “It's my mother.”

“Joe!” said his mother's voice. “Answer me this minute!”

Danny snapped the switch and pushed Joe in front of the microphone.

“Y-y-yes,” Joe said. “I'm all right. I'm fine, Ma.”

“I phoned your father. He'll be here soon, and he'll take care of everything. Oh, Joe—why did you do it?”

Joe looked helplessly at Danny. “But it wasn't my fault. Honest, Ma!”

Then Mrs. Dunn's voice cut in. “Danny?”

“Yes, Mom?” Danny said, his throat closing at the sound of his mother's worried tone.

“Danny, take care of yourself. I can't talk long—here comes Colonel Beach. I know you'll be all right, darling, with the Professor there. Oh, Danny—be careful!”

“I will, Mom,” Danny said.

Then they heard a deep voice say, “This is Beach. What's wrong, Professor Bullfinch?”

The Professor replied, “I'm not sure. Unfortunately neither Grimes nor I are mechanics or electricians. We are both physicists.”

“Well, Professor, can you describe to me exactly what happened?” asked Colonel Beach.

The Professor did so and gave him the readings of the various instruments.

“Sounds to me,” the Colonel said when the Professor had finished, “as if maybe your power relay is stuck. That's the switch that relays power from the solar battery through the anti-gravity paint. Tell you what. Set your TV camera on the upper track. You'll be able to see the relay just below the battery housing. Then try switching your power down. If the relay doesn't move, that may be it. Check it and get back to me. Meantime I'll try to figure out how you can fix it without going outside the ship.”

The Professor and Dr. Grimes did as he suggested. Watching the television screen, they could see the little relay. The Professor moved the lever. The switch remained motionless.

“That's it, then,” the Professor said.

They looked with relief and joy at each other.

Joe muttered, “Unless it's something else too,” but nobody paid any attention to him.

“We'll be home soon,” said the Professor. “Dan, let me get at the radio.”

He snapped the sending switch. “Colonel Beach! This is Bullfinch. You were right—it was the relay. It didn't—Oops!”

Without warning his feet had left the deck. His body floated out horizontally like a banner in the wind.

Startled, he kicked frantically to right himself. Instead he shot forward. He put out a hand to steady himself, and his hand went right through the speaker of the radio. There was a crash.

The Professor shot backward through the air like a torpedo. And after him came floating a cloud of little pieces of metal and glass—the fragments of broken radio tubes.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

“They Float through the Air”

Dr. Grimes gave a strangled cry. He was drifting in the air between the Professor and the hopelessly broken radio. At the same time Joe with a yell went sailing up off the floor.

Danny had been holding the back of the pilot's seat. He stared at the others. Then he reached up to pull Joe down. At once he too drifted up from the deck, slowly turned upside down, and hung helpless in midair.

Professor Bullfinch was the first to recover.

“I fear,” he said, brushing aside a few small bits of radio that floated before his face, “we'll never learn whether Beach figured out a way to fix the relay.”

Joe, who was hanging near the ceiling, said in a shaking voice, “I'm dead. I'm an angel.”

“Not quite yet, Joe,” said the Professor. “We are simply completely free of the earth's gravity. To all intents and purposes we simply don't weigh anything.”

Joe felt himself nervously. “I guess you're right.” He looked down at the deck, eight feet below him, and groaned. “But I don't know,” he said. “Maybe being dead would be easier.”

Dr. Grimes growled, “Don't worry. We'll all be dead soon enough. Well, Bullfinch, what do you propose to do about this?”

At this Danny broke in. “Yes, before you do anything else, why don't you all get right side up?”

The Professor looked at him and chuckled. “I have news for you, Danny,” he said. “You're the one who's upside down. That is, if there can be said to be any
right
side up where there's no gravity.”

“But—but—” Danny stammered, “I don't feel upside down.”

“That's partly because without gravity the blood cannot rush to your head, nor can you orient yourself. Just a minute.”

The Professor began to make awkward swimming motions and succeeded in thrashing his way over to a locker. Hanging on to the door handle with one hand, he fished out a pair of boots with magnetic soles. He struggled into them, and at once his feet swung down and clicked against the metal deck. He took out another pair and handed them to Grimes. Then he reached up, took hold of the boys, and fished them down out of the air.

“You'll have to learn how to pull yourselves around by handholds,” he said. “There are only two pairs of boots, and I'm afraid they were made for men, not boys. For the time being hang on to the edge of the table. Grimes, are you all right?”

“I'm all right in an all-wrong sort of way,” Grimes puffed angrily. He clumped to a chair and sat down. Danny now noticed for the first time that all the furniture was bolted to the deck, and he understood why.

“We had better hold a council of war,” the Professor said, sitting down at the head of the table.

Danny tried to smile, although he was feeling far from happy. Part of his misery came as a result of hearing his mother's voice and realizing just how far away she was. And part of it was a sense of guilt that all this was his fault and his alone.

The Professor said, “I can see that our two junior members are feeling better. Now, let's face the facts. At this moment I don't know where we're going or how we're ever going to get back. I do know this, however: as a scientist I'm not afraid.”

He paused and looked round at the others. Then he said solemnly, “The unknown is not to be feared, but studied. If this is to be the end, I intend to see and learn all I can before I die. But to waste time in worry is useless and unscientific. And death is itself only one more experience for a scientist.”

Dr. Grimes frowned. “Bullfinch,” he said, “if you are implying that I'm wasting time, you're wrong. I'll admit I was a little startled, that's all.”

The Professor smiled. “Fine. I don't know what I'd do if you weren't ready to argue with me and keep me on my toes.”

Joe said slowly, “I don't seem to be as scared as I was. I guess I'm getting used to it.”

“How do you feel, Danny?” the Professor asked.

“Oh, I'm all right.” Danny sighed. “Only I wish there was something I could do to—to make up for getting you into this mess.”

“There is,” said the Professor gently. “Forget about it. We have too many other things to do.”

“Yes, sir,” Danny said almost in a whisper.

“Well, then, we're all squared away. We'll have to plan a routine and assign jobs. To begin with, suppose you and Joe get some dinner ready. Dr. Grimes, why don't you try to figure roughly what our course is? There's an automatic course plotter into which you can feed data. I'll get to work on the relay and see if I can think of some way to repair it.”

The two boys quickly learned how to handle themselves in the absence of gravity. They found they could get about quickly by shoving against walls or decks with their feet or hands and shooting through the air. They also learned to hook their toes under open drawers or chair seats when they wanted to stand still, for the slightest push would send them drifting off.

It was like their dreams of flying come true. They never tired of the games they could play zipping through the air from place to place. And when they were tired, they found there was nothing more pleasant than to lie still, floating like thistledown on the faint air currents that moved through the ship.

They had a little difficulty at first with the food. They could slice solid things like cheese and meat, but they had to handle them with care. Putting a sandwich down too hard would cause it to float away in separate pieces.

At one point Joe tried to pour some milk out of a container. Instead of pouring, it dropped out in round white globules which went bouncing like bubbles all over the cabin. Dan and Joe swam after them through the air, but when they tried to catch one it bounded away and broke into a number of even smaller bubbles.

“What we need for this,” Joe panted, “is a butterfly net. How are we going to drink this stuff?”

“Not too difficult,” said the Professor, looking up from his work. “We'll simply trap one in a glass and stick a straw into it. Sucking and swallowing don't depend on gravity.”

Joe managed at last to assemble the pieces of milk in a container. Danny meantime had opened a package of cheese, but as he held it down on the table, the knife went sailing away. He reached into his pants pocket and fished out his own knife. But the handle caught in his pocket lining, and the pocket turned inside out. The next instant the air was full of a strange assortment of things from his pocket, and Danny dropped everything in a wild attempt to get them back.

The Professor glanced up in surprise as a pencil missed his nose by an inch.

“Dear me,” he said. “Is the storeroom leaking?

Joe dodged a marble and swam through the air to the galley. He got a strainer and began scooping objects in. Eventually everything was rounded up.

Professor Bullfinch came over to watch Danny putting his treasures away. As he stowed them in his pocket, the Professor ticked them off on his fingers.

“String, a pencil stub, two nails, five paper clips, a marble, a piece of wire, a used pipe cleaner. I ought to make a study of the expandable nature of boys' pockets,” he said. “What's this?”

“It's a watch spring,” Danny explained. “It's useful too. I read once that a man cut his way out of jail with one.”

“I see. I hope you never have to use it. And what's this odd coin?”

“Oh, Miss Arnold once gave me that. It's a lempira from Honduras. I keep it because I like the name.”

“And this?”

“Well, that's a jingle from a cowboy spur. And this thing is the inside of a radio tube.”

“Heavens! I'm out of fingers,” said the Professor. “And here's an old cough drop. At least, I think it's a cough drop.”

“Yes. That's in case I'm ever hungry.”

“I see. And what is this thing?” the Professor finished, holding up a flat piece of plastic.

Danny scratched his head. “I don't remember what it is,” he said, “but it must be good for something, or I'd have thrown it away.”

“That is quite a collection,” the Professor said. “Please don't turn out any other pockets if you can help it.”

Danny grinned. “I know. Sometimes I'm afraid to put my hands in my pockets, because I never know
what
I'll find.”

Dr. Grimes, who had been bending over the pilot's table paying no attention to what was going on, now turned around.

“Bullfinch,” he said, “I've got our course worked out.”

“Ah! Where are we heading?”

Dr. Grimes passed a weary hand over his eyes. When he spoke, it was to say only one word: “Mars.”