Danny Dunn and the Anti-Gravity Paint

by Jay Williams

  Professor Bullfinch nodded. He clasped his hands behind his back and began to walk up and down the room.

  “Quite true,” he said. “Sometimes knowledge is worth a burned finger. A scientist must always be asking, ‘How? What? Why?’ As a matter of fact, I’ve been asking myself those questions all day—especially ‘Why?’”

  “Why what?”

  The Professor pointed to the stone-topped laboratory bench. On it, amongst a litter of equipment, was a metal stand on which was a glass beaker. It contained a curious liquid that glowed and quivered as if it were full of sunlight.

  Danny walked over to stare at it.

  “As you know,” said the Professor, “I’ve been working on a type of insulating paint for rockets. I was positive I had it, and in fact I invited a Mr. Willoughby from the National Research Council to come and discuss it with me. But then, unexpectedly, this odd effect began this morning.”

  “What is it?” Danny said.

  “I don’t know. I’ve been waiting to see if it will do anything else.”

  The Professor paused with his head on one side, looking at the liquid. “I think I can understand why it glows,” he said. “But why does it quiver?”

  Danny leaned forward. “Listen, Professor,” he said eagerly, reaching out toward the flask. “Maybe it’s—”

  “Look out!” cried Professor Bullfinch. “You’re too—”

  Danny’s finger jerked. The flask, unbalanced, fell off its stand and crashed to the floor.

  “—headstrong,” Professor Bullfinch finished in a mild voice.

  * * * * *

  Danny stared in horror at what he had done. Splinters of glass were mixed with glowing globules of the liquid. Some of the quivering stuff dripped from the edge of the stone bench and formed a pool on the floor.

  In all the years since he had first known the Professor, he had never seen him lose his temper. But, he reminded himself, there always has to be a first time for everything—and the first time is sometimes the worst. He was almost afraid to look up.

  However, the Professor’s face hadn’t changed. It was as round and calm as ever. He said, “Accidents will happen, Dan. Here, give me a hand. Let’s see if we can scoop up enough of it for analysis.

  He was moving even as he spoke. Quickly he slipped on a pair of heavy gloves. He caught up a handful of test tubes from the bench. The glowing liquid was somewhat heavier than water—more like light oil—and, working speedily, he was able to get quite a bit of it into the tubes.

  He directed Danny to place a rack handy. He set the test tubes in the rack. Danny fetched a mop and cleaned up what was left on the floor. The Professor stuffed the mop-head into the incinerator.

  Then he turned to Danny. In a kindly voice he said, “Let’s forget it, Dan. I was even worse at your age. They used to call me ‘Bullhead Bullfinch,’ and I got over it. There’s not too much damage done. I may have to pick a little dust and fluff out of the stuff—that’s all.”

  “I’m sorry,” Danny said in a small voice.

  “Don’t worry about it.” The Professor rumpled Danny’s hair. “But you can file this away for the future: a scientist must spend a lot of time thinking and studying before he acts.”

  Danny nodded. “I understand. I won’t do it again.”

  The Professor sighed. “I’ll be satisfied if you don’t do it again today,” he said.

  Before they could discuss the matter further, Mrs. Dunn poked her head in at the door.

  “Company’s here, Mr. Bullfinch,” she said.

  They all went down the hallway that led from the lab to the front of the house. In the living room two men were waiting for the Professor. One was a tall, heavy-set, angry-looking man in a dark suit. The other seemed more pleasant and wore gold-rimmed spectacles, behind which his blue eyes sparkled cheerily.

  The blue-eyed man said, “How do you do, Professor Bullfinch. I am Mr. Willoughby of the National Research Council. We spoke together on the phone.”

  “Ah, yes,” said the Professor.

  “And this,” said Mr. Willoughby, indicating the angry-looking man, “is Dr. Grimes, President of the International Rocket Society.”

  “Of course,” said the Professor. “Your name is certainly well known to me, Dr. Grimes.”

  “Thank you,” growled Grimes.

  The Professor stepped forward to shake hands. As his fingers touched those of Mr. Willoughby, there was a faint crackle. Mr. Willoughby snatched his hand away with a startled exclamation.

  “Oh!” said Professor Bullfinch. “I’m—”

  He had no time to say more. Before their astounded eyes he shot up off the floor. There was a dull thud as his head banged against the ceiling.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “We Have Conquered Gravity!”

  For a moment there was a stunned silence. Mr. Willoughby’s mouth hung open like a new-caught fish’s. Mrs. Dunn, who had been on her way to the kitchen, sank back against the wall, staring. Danny’s eyes bulged. Only Dr. Grimes kept his stern and rigid expression.

  Then Mr. Willoughby said weakly, “Er—Professor Bullfinch. What are you standing on?”

  The Professor bent his head to look down at the others. He winced, for he had given himself a severe bump.

  “It is difficult,” he replied with irritation, “to say whether I am hanging, floating, or lying vertically. However, I am certainly not standing.”

  Dr. Grimes broke the silence. “It’s a trick!” he said harshly. “Come down at once.”

  “Look here,” said the Professor. “I don’t see—”

  “It is hardly dignified for a man in your position—” Dr. Grimes went on.

  “Gentlemen, please!” Mr. Willoughby put in, as soothingly as he could. “Let’s not argue.” He stared up at the ceiling and said, with an effort to be calm, “Won’t you try to come down, please, Professor?”

  Professor Bullfinch raised his arms above his head and pushed against the ceiling. He pushed himself down to arm’s length. The instant he stopped pushing, however, and dropped his arms, he bounced back up against the ceiling.

  “Ow!” he yelled. “Drat it!”

  Mrs. Dunn, who had been standing frozen in the corner, burst into hysterical laughter. She sank into a chair and threw her apron over her head. Mr. Willoughby wrung his hands, but Dr. Grimes, with a sour look, stepped to her side. He shook her by the shoulder.

  “Madam, control yourself!” he barked.

  Mrs. Dunn took the apron down from her face and gasped, “I’m sorry. After all these years I ought to be used to anything. But he looks so—so helpless up there.”

  “Well,” Dr. Grimes said grimly, “I’ll soon get him down. He can’t fool me with his gymnastics.”

  He reached up and caught hold of the Professor’s ankles. Red-faced and puffing from the effort, he pulled him down a few feet.

  “There!” he said.

  He let go of the Professor’s legs.

  Mr. Willoughby shouted, “There he goes again!”

  Professor Bullfinch soared upwards. This time he was able to protect his head with his arms.

  “For heaven’s sake!” he cried. “That’s enough!”

  “Ropes,” said Dr. Grimes, looking furiously up at him. “Ropes and counterweights. That’s how he does it.”

  “What do you think the ropes are attached to?” said the Professor.

  Grimes began to splutter. “They don’t have to be attached to anything. It’s mass hypnosis, like the Indian rope trick. I refuse to be hypnotized. I refuse, do you hear?”

  The Professor could not help smiling. “I’m still here, Dr. Grimes,” he said.

  Danny had been too startled and fascinated to talk. Now he burst out, “But Professor! You can’t just hang there!”

  “I’m not too uncomfortable,” the Professor rep
lied. “Do you suppose you could get me my pipe? It’s over in the laboratory, on the bench.”

  Danny ran to get it.

  Dr. Grimes, who had been listening with a scowl, said, “Aha! The pipe must be part of the trick.”

  Mrs. Dunn had regained control of herself. She looked up at the Professor, clasping her hands together, and said, “Oh, dear, can’t we do something?”

  The Professor said, “Don’t be upset, Mrs. Dunn. While I’m up here, I’ll change the bulbs in the chandelier. I promised you I’d do it yesterday, but I forgot.”

  “How can you joke, Professor Bullfinch?” she cried.

  “Why not?” said the Professor. “It isn’t really that serious.”

  Nevertheless, he began to look a little worried.

  Danny came panting back with the pipe. He climbed on a chair and handed it to the Professor. He did not get down again, however. Instead, he said, “Professor Bullfinch. You know what?”

  “Yes,” said the Professor. “I’m beginning to get a stiff neck from trying to look down.”

  “But listen, Professor—”

  “Please, Danny. Remember your promise.”

  “But—”

  “I must think. This is absurd. Why am I up here? Let me try to think out exactly what happened.”

  “But—”

  The Professor stuck his unlighted pipe in his mouth. He pressed his hands to his temples. “I entered the room,” he muttered to himself. “Walked over to Willoughby. Shook hands. There was a spark of static electricity, probably caused by the rubbing of my shoes on the carpet.”

  “Listen—” said Danny.

  The Professor was deep in thought and did not hear him. “Rubbing feet on carpet—electric shock—is it possible that that small shock could have caused me to rise? Why? Or could it have had something to do with my shoes?”

  At this point Danny shouted, “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you! The soles of your shoes—”

  “What?”

  “They’re glowing and quivering! Just like the stuff in that flask! You must have stepped in it when we were cleaning it up!”

  “What are you talking about?” said Dr. Grimes.

  Mr. Willoughby said, “What do you mean?”

  “I mean,” Danny said, in a businesslike way, “that now we can get the Professor down.”

  Still on the chair, he reached up and unlaced the Professor’s shoes.

  “Wait a minute!” cried Professor Bullfinch, as Danny slipped both his shoes off. “Remember what I said! I think—”

  The shoes flew out of Danny’s hands and stuck to the ceiling.

  “—we have conquered gravity!” the Professor shouted, and crashed to the floor.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Top Secret

  Groaning a little, Professor Bullfinch got to his feet. He rubbed his back and cautiously bent his arms and legs.

  “Danny,” he said in a dry voice.

  Danny’s face was red. “I—I was excited,” he stuttered. “Gosh, who wouldn’t be?”

  Mr. Willoughby was shaking his head in a bewildered manner. “I still don’t understand it,” he said.

  Mrs. Dunn had jumped to her feet when the Professor fell to the floor. She came over to him now and asked anxiously, “Are you all right?”

  “Certainly, just a bit shaken up—or down, as the case may be.”

  He smiled, and began looking for his pipe.

  Mr. Willoughby said, “Professor Bullfinch, for goodness sake, please tell me what this is all about. I can hardly believe, even now, what I saw.”

  He looked up. The Professor’s shoes were still clinging to the ceiling. The strange, glowing liquid could be plainly seen on their soles.

  Dr. Grimes snapped his fingers. “I’ve got it!” he cried. “Static electricity! You gave it away yourself.”

  “Yes,” said the Professor seriously, “I believe you’re right. When I rubbed my feet on the carpet, I built up a charge of static electricity in my body. In some way this was enough to charge that liquid on my shoes.”

  Dr. Grimes sneered, “Rubbish! Have you got a deck of cards?”

  “Why—I believe so,” said Mrs. Dunn. “But—”

  Dr. Grimes rubbed his hands together. “Give them to me at once, please.”

  Mrs. Dunn glanced at Professor Bullfinch, and he nodded. She opened the drawer of the sideboard and got out a deck of playing cards.

  Dr. Grimes snatched them. He took out one and, holding it, rubbed his feet on the carpet.

  “This is hardly the time,” Mr. Willoughby protested, “for card tricks. Really, Dr. Grimes, I think—”

  The grim-faced rocket expert was not listening. After he had rubbed his feet for a while on the carpet, he placed the card against the smooth surface of the living-room wall. It clung to the wall for a moment or two before fluttering to the floor.

  “There you are!” Dr. Grimes said triumphantly. “Static electricity has made the card stick to the wall. The same thing is true for the shoes.”

  Professor Bullfinch chuckled. Then, standing on the chair, he reached up. He took hold of one of the shoes and, with an obvious effort, forced it away from the ceiling. He carried it to a window. He looked very odd indeed, for the hand in which he held the shoe stuck straight up above his head, and he himself barely touched the floor as he walked.

  “Danny,” he called. “Open this window, please.”

  Danny hurried to do as he was asked.

  “Now then, the rest of you,” said the Professor. “Quickly, for I can’t hold this shoe much longer. Mr. Willoughby, Dr. Grimes—you open the other window and watch.”

  “Watch what?” said Mr. Willoughby.

  Dr. Grimes flung the window open and thrust his head outside. Mr. Willoughby and Mrs. Dunn crowded next to him. Danny, crouching at the sill of the first window, ducked his head so that the Professor could lean out.

  Professor Bullfinch held the shoe out the window and opened his hand. It was as if he had released a balloon. The shoe rose swiftly in the evening air, catching the last rays of the sun on its surface, and then vanished from their sight.

  For once Dr. Grimes had nothing to say. But Mr. Willoughby, in excitement, slammed down the window—almost catching Dr. Grimes’s head in it—and cried, “Spectacular! Amazing! My dear Professor, this is unbelievable!”

  “It is, isn’t it?” said the Professor calmly.

  “How did you do it?”

  “I’m not quite sure. This liquid appears to have strange properties.” The Professor began pacing up and down. “I’ll have to do a number of experiments tomorrow in an attempt to find out just how it works.” He stopped and faced the others. “But it seems clear to me that, among other things, we may have the solution to the problem of space flight.”

  Danny’s eyes widened. “S-space flight!” he shouted.

  The Professor raised his hand. “I said may,” he cautioned. “I have no idea yet whether it will be practical. We don’t know how long the effect lasts. That shoe may come tumbling down on our heads by tomorrow morning. We’ll leave it on the ceiling, for the time being, for observation. I have no notion of what the force of the liquid is, or whether it must be continuously charged with electricity, or—or about anything,” he finished rather helplessly. He threw out his arms. “All I know is that it appears to cut off the power of gravity.”

  Mr. Willoughby drew a long breath. “Space flight,” he repeated. “By George, it’s—it’s big. Too big to swallow all at once. One thing I do know, though: I’ll have to notify Washington.”

  He glanced at his watch. “Too late now. I’m afraid there’ll be no one in the office. First thing tomorrow morning, then. Meanwhile, there’s one thing I must stress.”

  He looked round at them, his eyes sober behind the gold-rimmed spectacles. “I must ask
you all—especially you, young man”—nodding at Danny—“to be very circumspect about this—this effect.”

  “I promise,” Danny said promptly. “What does ‘circumspect’ mean? To look it over carefully?”

  “That’s ‘inspect’ ” said the Professor. “No, Mr. Willoughby means we mustn’t say anything to anyone about it. It will have to remain a secret for the time being. You mustn’t breathe a word of it, not even to your best friend—what’s his name?—that boy who always looks so sad.”

  “Joe Pearson. Not even to Joe?”

  “No. Will you promise? On your honor as a—as a scientist, Dan?”

  Danny nodded solemnly.

  “Well, then, that’s settled,” said Willoughby. “I’ll put through a long-distance call tomorrow. We will have to get a research grant.” He took off his glasses and wiped them carefully. “If there is a possibility of space flight, we’ll need money for the construction of a ship. A ship to the stars!” He looked up at the shoe on the ceiling. “Great heavens,” he said. “The excitement has worn me out. I feel quite exhausted.”

  “Well, no wonder,” said Mrs. Dunn in a practical tone. “It’s long past dinner time. I think we’d all be the better for a mouthful of food.”

  “Well spoken,” said the Professor. “Do I remember something about pineapple upside-down cake? Dr. Grimes, Mr. Willoughby, after you gentlemen.” He motioned to the dining room.

  Dr. Grimes snorted. “Do you propose to begin experiments on this—this so-called antigravity effect, tonight?”

  “Tomorrow morning will be time enough,” said the Professor.

  “Then I must ask you to put me up,” Dr. Grimes said bluntly. “I have no intention of leaving you to rig up any tricks behind my back.”

  The Professor frowned. Then he controlled his annoyance and said quietly, “Dr. Grimes, you have spent so much time in rocket research that I can understand your feelings about this new material. You are welcome to stay here as long as you like and to work with me on all experiments. It will be valuable, no doubt, for me to have someone to check all my work. Does that satisfy you?”

  Dr. Grimes could never apologize. But he grunted, “Thank you. Most generous.” Which was as close as he could come to admitting he might have acted rudely.