: An Eel by the Tail by Lang Allen Kim Fuqua Robert Illustrator - Science fiction; Short stories; Experiments Fiction; High school teachers Fiction

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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.

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