Page:Fantastic v08n11 1959-11.djvu/78

However, he retained at least minimal prudence and added only six turns. He told himself that if the effect wasn't enough, he could always add more.

He was glad that he had been conservative. The repulsive pole was downward when he touched the return wire to the second terminal, and the battery tugged his hand sharply upward, as if it were, not a small, but say a medium-size bird trying to escape. Or maybe a weather balloon. The sensation was peculiarly delightful—his hand was not only tugged but indescribably tickled (presumably by the curving components of the dipolar gravitic field)—and despite his concern about the battery running down, it was all Ronald could do not to stand there all night holding the up-surging battery with a happy, dazed smile on his face.

And in fact Ronald did not disconnect it right away. He'd got the impression that the wire of the coil had changed color in some way and on an impulse he switched off the light he'd been working by, a hanging and unshaded 150-watt globe (which he kept secret from his aunt, for she had a thing about wasting electricity and kept nothing stronger than 40 watts in her whole mansion).

The consequences were sudden, spectacular, and almost disastrous.

In the darkness the coil was outlined in bright white light.

Ronald was so startled that he opened his hand.

The white-spiraled battery sprang upward and for an instant Ronald had the dreadful fear that the thing had got away from him forever, and from the earth too, although he knew very well that the ceiling of his garage apartment must stop it.

But then almost immediately, without touching the ceiling, the thing flipped over, dove down, and hit the floor with a sharp crack.

Its light went out.

Ronald's feelings were intense and mixed. He was relieved that the battery hadn't escaped, doubly relieved to discover that apparently it couldn't escape from earth—that released repulsive pole down it would simply flip over and dive. (There was the possibility that he had started the battery flipping over with a twist of his hand when he released it, but that possibility didn't bulk large in his mind.)