Read Ebook: An Eel by the Tail by Lang Allen Kim Fuqua Robert Illustrator

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Ebook has 89 lines and 7135 words, and 2 pages

AN EEL BY THE TAIL

Mr. Tedder was quite sure that a strip tease dancer had no place in his physics classroom. But what bothered him more was how she got there!

The strip teaser materialized in the first period physics class at Terre Haute's Technical High School.

It all happened just because Mr. Tedder was fresh out of college, and anxious to make good in his first teaching job. He'd been given Physics II, a tough class for a new teacher. His pupils, a set of hardened II-A boys, were sure of themselves and so were the few girls in the class. It was with hopes of shaking that assurance that Mr. Tedder had spent a month of after-school hours studying an article on Ziegler's effect. He also hoped, but with less faith than wistfulness, that a demonstration of Ziegler's effect might shock his class into staying awake. Above all, Mr. Tedder felt that his Junior boys might be considerably edified by an electrical phenomenon that was not yet understood by the best physical theorists of three planets.

Mr. Tedder wanted to give his class a good show. So, with more feeling for dramatic effect than for scientific good sense, he'd wound the three solenoids with heavy insulated silver wire rather than with the light copper wire Ziegler had reported using. On the theory that, if he were to demonstrate the Ziegler effect it would be best to demonstrate a whole lot of it, Mr. Tedder contrived a battery of the new lithium-reaction cells. The direct current from this powerful battery was transformed by an antique, but workable, automotive spark coil.

The bell rang as usual that morning, marking the beginning of the first class. Twenty pupils filed into the physics classroom and took their seats. Eighteen of them slumped down in an attitude which suggested that, although they were prepared to accept stoically the hour's ordeal, they weren't going to allow themselves to be taught anything. After all, Tech had lost last night's game to Walbash: what physical phenomenon could hope to shake off that grim memory? There was a shuffling of papers as the boys in the back seats pulled comic books from their notebooks. Guenther and Stetzel, sitting up front, pulled sheets of paper from notepads and headed them, "The Ziegler Effect."

Mr. Tedder continued. "The alloy bar's initial movement will be frustrated, as it were, by the action of a second solenoid placed within and at right angles to the first. A third coil, within and at right angles to each of the outer two, completes the process. The winding ratios of the three solenoids are 476:9:34." Stetzel and Guenther scribbled the numbers rapidly; Ned Norcross, in the back row, stirred in his sleep, and two members of the Class of '95 who shared a volume of the Rocket Patrol's exploits agreed to turn the page.

"What happens to the bar of iron-cerium at this point is a matter of conjecture. All observers are agreed only in that it disappears. Perhaps it leaves the coils so rapidly that it neither injures the wires nor can it be seen. Perhaps the bar passes through a temporary fissure in the three-dimensional system we perceive, falling into some yet-unconceivable other dimension. Doctor Ziegler, who first observed this effect, inclines to this latter belief." Mr. Tedder placed his fingers on the telegraph key he'd rigged up to close the circuit through his apparatus. "Watch closely," he cautioned, tapping down on the key.

Ned Norcross, who was taking Junior Physics II for the third time, had his mind on neither the Ziegler Effect nor the tragic results of last night's basketball game. He was slumped at his desk, dreamily rehearsing the topography of one Honey LaRue, a strip teaser who nightly practiced her art at the Club Innuendo. Norcross pried himself up on one elbow to glance toward the clock above the demonstration bench, then slumped forward on his desk in a faint. Up on the marble top of the demonstration bench, pulling off a right silk glove in time to the lazy ripple of a snare-drum, danced Honey LaRue.

Mr. Tedder yelped, and immediately regretted it. He'd had two beers three days before; could that bring on hallucination at this late date? But Honey had gone, taking the Ziegler coils with her. One terminal of the telegraph key was still connected to the plate on the spark coil, the other wire ended in a little knot of fused silver. No, this wasn't the effect that Doctor Ziegler had reported, not at all!

To cover his confusion Mr. Tedder began to talk. "There, you've just seen the Ziegler effect in action. Explain what you've just seen and you'll be famous among men." Indeed, the cerium-iron alloy bar had disappeared; but so had 20,000 cm. of No. 40 silver wire, silk-insulated. But the boys--except, of course, Stetzel and Guenther--hadn't noticed. Mr. Tedder glanced over his shoulder to the clock, saw that it would be fifteen minutes before the class would end, and made a quick decision in the interest of his sanity. "Class dismissed!" he said.

There was a stupefied second while the news soaked into dormant nervous systems. Then the boys were shouting across the room, grabbing up books, and hurrying out into the hall to take noisy advantage of their moment of freedom. Stetzel and Guenther, as behooved the top pupils of the Class of '95, hurried up to Mr. Tedder to check their notes.

"The symbol for cerium is 'Ce,' isn't it?" Stetzel asked.

"Yes. But now...."

"How did you do that, Mr. Tedder?" Guenther interrupted.

"Do what?" Mr. Tedder glanced suspiciously at Guenther. Perhaps it hadn't been those two beers.

"You had a woman dancing, right up where those solenoids were," Guenther said.

"That's what I saw," Stetzel substantiated. "What a movie! She sure looked three-dimensional to me. Wow!"

"Yes," Mr. Tedder said, canceling his decision of a moment before, to lay off beer. "That was just a little stunt I thought up to see how many of you were paying attention. New optical principle, you know. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got to get things ready for the next class. And wake up Norcross on your way out, will you?"

Stetzel jarred Norcross from unconsciousness and walked out into the hall, talking and gesturing significantly with Guenther. Norcross unfolded himself slowly, glanced with a furtive eye toward Mr. Tedder and the empty bench-top, and walked rapidly out of the room, down the stairs, and into the school physician's office.

Alone, Mr. Tedder frowned at the bereft lithium battery and telegraph key. He had pressed the key, closing the circuit, and there'd been a spurt of flame. A strange girl had appeared, dancing on the marble top of the demonstration bench. He'd never seen the woman before; a tall blonde wearing very little.... What the devil! There she was again.

Mr. Coar, principal of Tech, walked toward the door to the physics classroom, rehearsing the speech he was going to deliver upon Tedder. "Young man, Tech does not approve of the practice of letting students out into the halls before the end of the period. Their racket has shaken the walls of classrooms on three floors. What have you to say for yourself, Mr. Tedder?" Yes, that would do nicely. Mr. Coar opened the door.

Mr. Tedder was leaning against a front-row desk, nodding appreciatively as a sketchily-clad young lady danced for him. "TEDDER!" the principal bellowed. "Stop that!"

Honey LaRue faded, and the space between telegraph key and lithium battery was empty again.

"Stop what?" Mr. Tedder inquired, wide-eyed with innocence.

"Stop letting your classes out early so that you can spend your time gloating over your ... your ..." Mr. Coar groped for a stinging adjective, drew a blank, and concluded weakly, "... your movies!"

"Did you see her, too?"

"I did, indeed. You came here highly recommended by Indiana University, Tedder; and, frankly, I didn't expect this sort of thing from you."

"Mr. Coar, I believe that I've stumbled across a novel physical phenomenon."

"Anatomy was being studied in 1600 A.D., young man," Mr. Coar observed, his voice dripping sarcasm, "and is scarcely any longer a 'novel physical phenomenon'."

"Sit down, sir." Mr. Tedder offered the principal the top of a desk in the front row. "Now, what did you expect to see when you came in here?"

"The apparatus of a physics laboratory--all those gears and coils and tubes and ... things," Mr. Coar vaguely enumerated. "Certainly not a...." The principal sat heavily on the desk top, bulge-eyed. On the marble top of the demonstration bench was a Goldberg-esque network of machinery, a perfect reproduction of the principal's uncertain notions concerning scientific gadgetry.

"How the devil did you do that, Tedder?"

"People have been asking me all morning. I don't know. I don't think that I did do it."

"Has that girl ..." Honey LaRue reappeared on the bench, and the air vibrated with the drums' seductive roll "... been here before?"

"Yes, sir. Couple of boys in my class saw her, too."

"Where are they now?"

Mr. Coar went over to the loudspeaker in the corner of the room, pressed a button, and spoke to his secretary, up in the school office. "Ann, send me students Guenther and Stetzel. Rooms 103 and 309." He switched the blat-box off. He turned toward the empty demonstration bench, wrinkled his forehead in concentration, and looked up. A pot of geraniums was standing on the marble bench-top.

"Whew! It knows what I'm thinking about!"

"Looks that way, doesn't it."

"But nothing can do that. Not electricity, nor electronics, nor even cybernetics."

"Nothing that we know about could, sir. What would you suggest that I do with the screwy thing?"

Mr. Coar, caught off guard, made a suggestion which was more witty than helpful. The classroom door swung open, and Stetzel and Guenther hurried in together, vocally wondering at their release from schedule. "Good morning, Mr. Coar; Mr. Tedder. Did you want us?" Stetzel asked.

"Did you see a woman in here?" the principal demanded.

"Yes, sir," Guenther said. "The movie, you mean."

"So you saw her, too. That rules mass hypnosis out," Mr. Coar illogically decided, glancing suspiciously toward the young physics instructor.

The classroom door swung open again, admitting two teachers. Mr. Percy N. Formeller, known to two generations of biology students as Old Preserved-In-Formaldehyde, was full of indignation at the preemption of Guenther from his microbiology class. Miss MacIntire, Latin I-V, followed, equally indignant over Stetzel's defection from Marcus Porcius Cato.

"And how about calling Stetzel out of my class during the Third Punic War!" Miss MacIntire said.

Mr. Coar defended himself. "We have something here which is unique, possibly of great value to science." Miss MacIntire sniffed. Science was something that students elected to take instead of Latin. "I'm happy that you two teachers came in. You may be able to help us throw some light on our problem. You took the precaution of placing your classes in the hands of responsible monitors, I hope?"

"Of course!" Miss MacIntire snapped.

"What is the nature of this 'unique something' that our Mr. Coar mentioned, Mr. Tedder?" Old Preserved-In-Formaldehyde spoke as one who seeks to calm troubled waters.

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