Page:Fantastic v08n11 1959-11.djvu/79

And of course, beyond all else, he was fearful that the fall had somehow ruined the battery forever. For instance, if its ability to generate gravitic energy depended on some rare and delicate spontaneous chemical transformation that had taken place inside it, then even something as slight as a sudden jar might well reverse the transformation.

He switched on the light and picked up the battery as if it were a wounded bird. He was considerably relieved to find that the wire had jarred loose from one of the terminals. He reconnected it, the battery surged in his hand, and his relief was complete.

But thereafter his carefulness was doubled and also tainted with suspicion.

He made a number of other interesting discoveries about the battery besides the epiphenomenon of the white glow. For instance, it turned out to be the insulation on the wire that carried the gravitic current. A bare copper wire didn't work at all. A nylon cord worked beautifully, provided he wrapped it in tinfoil so that it didn't short itself out. In fact, there seemed to be a half dozen new sciences implicit in the battery and Ronald would have liked nothing better than to spend the next six months in investigating them all, provided he had a dozen batteries to work with, or even just one to hold in reserve.

That was the fly in the ointment, of course. His battery was goose and golden egg rolled into one, a bird in the hand but none at all in the bushes. So about the middle of the next afternoon he sat down to do some serious, really serious thinking—meaning of course thinking about how he could use his great discovery to profit himself.

First he carefully locked away the battery and went out into the garden to meditate it through, but he found he couldn't bear to be that far away from his find, so he went back to his garage apartment and sat beside the window that looked into the garden, feeling a little giddy from lack of sleep.

His aunt had noted his abstracted and somewhat agitated behavior, however, from one of her lace-curtained watch-windows, just as she'd early that morning been aware of him poking around in the basement without her permission. She frowned, remembering his distinctly odd behavior with her battery. She hadn't discussed the mat-