The Big Bounce Read online

ocean liners, even automobiles, beingoperated by balls bouncing back and forth in cylinders.

  I even worked out a spaceship in my mind, a bullet-shaped affair witha huge rubber ball on its end, gyroscopes to keep it orientedproperly, the ball serving as solution to that biggest ofmissile-engineering problems, excess heat. You'd build a huge concretelaunching field, supported all the way down to bedrock, hop in theship and start bouncing. Of course it would be kind of a roughride....

  In the morning, I called my superintendent and told him to get asubstitute for the rest of the week; I was going to be busy.

  Then I started working in the machine shop in Farnsworth's basement,trying to turn out a working model of a device that, by means of acrankshaft, oleo dampers and a reciprocating cylinder, would pick upsome of that random kinetic energy from the bouncing ball and dosomething useful with it, like turning a drive shaft. I was justworking out a convection-and-air pump system for circulating hot airaround the ball when Farnsworth came in.

  He had tucked carefully under his arm a sphere of about the size of abasketball and, if he had made it to my specifications, weighingthirty-five pounds. He had a worried frown on his forehead.

  "It looks good," I said. "What's the trouble?"

  "There seems to be a slight hitch," he said. "I've been testing forconductivity. It seems to be quite low."

  "That's what I'm working on now. It's just a mechanical problem ofpumping enough warm air back to the ball. We can do it with no morethan a twenty per cent efficiency loss. In an engine, that's nothing."

  "Maybe you're right. But this material conducts heat even less thanrubber does."

  "The little ball yesterday didn't seem to have any trouble," I said.

  "Naturally not. It had had plenty of time to warm up before I startedit. And its mass-surface area relationship was pretty low--the largeryou make a sphere, of course, the more mass inside in proportion tothe outside area."

  "You're right, but I think we can whip it. We may have to honeycombthe ball and have part of the work the machine does operate a big hotair pump; but we can work it out."

  * * * * *

  All that day, I worked with lathe, milling machine and hacksaw. Afterclamping the new big ball securely to a workbench, Farnsworth pitchedin to help me. But we weren't able to finish by nightfall andFarnsworth turned his spare bedroom over to me for the night. I wastoo tired to go home.

  And too tired to sleep soundly, too. Farnsworth lived on the edge ofSan Francisco, by a big truck by-pass, and almost all night I wrestledwith the pillow and sheets, listening half-consciously to those heavytrucks rumbling by, and in my mind, always, that little gray ball,bouncing and bouncing and bouncing....

  At daybreak, I came abruptly fully awake with the sound of crashingechoing in my ears, a battering sound that seemed to come from thebasement. I grabbed my coat and pants, rushed out of the room, almostknocked over Farnsworth, who was struggling to get his shoes on out inthe hall, and we scrambled down the two flights of stairs together.

  The place was a chaos, battered and bashed equipment everywhere, andon the floor, overturned against the far wall, the table that the ballhad been clamped to. The ball itself was gone.

  I had not been fully asleep all night, and the sight of that mess, andwhat it meant, jolted me immediately awake. Something, probably aheavy truck, had started a tiny oscillation in that ball. And the ballhad been heavy enough to start the table bouncing with it until, bydancing that table around the room, it had literally torn the clampoff and shaken itself free. What had happened afterward was obvious,with the ball building up velocity with every successive bounce.

  But where was the ball now?

  Suddenly Farnsworth cried out hoarsely, "Look!" and I followed hisoutstretched, pudgy finger to where, at one side of the basement, awindow had been broken open--a small window, but plenty big enough forsomething the size of a basketball to crash through it.

  There was a little weak light coming from outdoors. And then I saw theball. It was in Farnsworth's back yard, bouncing a little sluggishlyon the grass. The grass would damp it, hold it back, until we couldget to it. Unless....

  I took off up the basement steps like a streak. Just beyond the backyard, I had caught a glimpse of something that frightened me. A fewyards from where I had seen the ball was the edge of the big six-lanehighway, a broad ribbon of smooth, hard concrete.

  I got through the house to the back porch, rushed out and was in theback yard just in time to see the ball take its first bounce ontothe concrete. I watched it, fascinated, when it hit--after the soft,energy absorbing turf, the concrete was like a springboard.Immediately the ball flew high in the air. I was running across theyard toward it, praying under my breath, _Fall on that grass nexttime_.

  It hit before I got to it, and right on the concrete again, and thistime I saw it go straight up at least fifty feet.

  * * * * *

  My mind was suddenly full of thoughts of dragging mattresses from thehouse, or making a net or something to stop that hurtling thirty-fivepounds; but I stood where I was, unable to move, and saw it come downagain on the highway. It went up a hundred feet. And down again on theconcrete, about fifteen feet further down the road. In the directionof the city.

  That time it was two hundred feet, and when it hit again, it made athud that you could have heard for a quarter of a mile. I couldpractically see it flatten out on the road before it took off upwardagain, at twice the speed it had hit at.

  Suddenly generating an idea, I whirled and ran back to Farnsworth'shouse. He was standing in the yard now, shivering from the morningair, looking at me like a little lost and badly scared child.

  "Where are your car keys?" I almost shouted at him.

  "In my pocket."

  "Come on!"

  I took him by the arm and half dragged him to the carport. I got thekeys from him, started the car, and by mangling about seven trafficlaws and three prize rosebushes, managed to get on the highway, facingin the direction that the ball was heading.

  "Look," I said, trying to drive down the road and search for the ballat the same time. "It's risky, but if I can get the car under it andwe can hop out in time, it should crash through the roof. That oughtto slow it down enough for us to nab it."

  "But--what about my car?" Farnsworth bleated.

  "What about that first building--or first person--it hits in SanFrancisco?"

  "Oh," he said. "Hadn't thought of that."

  I slowed the car and stuck my head out the window. It was lighter now,but no sign of the ball. "If it happens to get to town--any town, forthat matter--it'll be falling from about ten or twenty miles. Orforty."

  "Maybe it'll go high enough first so that it'll burn. Like a meteor."

  "No chance," I said. "Built-in cooling system, remember?"

  Farnsworth formed his mouth into an "Oh" and exactly at that momentthere was a resounding _thump_ and I saw the ball hit in a field,maybe twenty yards from the edge of the road, and take off again. Thistime it didn't seem to double its velocity, and I figured the groundwas soft enough to hold it back--but it wasn't slowing down either,not with a bounce factor of better than two to one.

  * * * * *

  Without watching for it to go up, I drove as quickly as I could offthe road and over--carrying part of a wire fence with me--to where ithad hit. There was no mistaking it; there was a depression about threefeet deep, like a small crater.

  I jumped out of the car and stared up. It took me a few seconds tospot it, over my head. One side caught by the pale and slantingmorning sunlight, it was only a bright diminishing speck.

  The car motor was running and I waited until the ball disappeared fora moment and then reappeared. I watched for another couple of secondsuntil I felt I could make a decent guess on its direction, hollered atFarnsworth to get out of the car--it had just occurred to me thatthere was no use risking his life, too--dove in and drove a hundredyards or so to the spot I had anticipated.

  I stuck my head out the window and up. The ball was the size of an eggnow. I adjusted the car's position, jumped out and ran for my life.

  It hit instantly after--about sixty feet from the car. And at the sametime, it occurred to me that what I was trying to do was completelyimpossible. Better to hope that the ball hit a pond, or bounced out tosea, or landed in a sand dune. All we could do would be to follow, andif it ever was damped down enough, grab it.

  It had hit soft ground and didn't double its height that time, but ithad still gone higher. It was out of sight for almost a lifelongminute.

  And then--incredibly rotten luck--it came down, with an ear-shatteringthwack, on the concrete highway again. I had seen it hit, andinstantly afterward I saw a crack as wide as a finger open along