Read Big Book of Science Fiction for Free Online Page B

shin.
     
    “I guess you better use the flyin’
belt, Daddy.”
     
    Jack looked at Mewhu. The silver
man was looking as pleasant as he could with that kind of a face; on the other
hand, it might just possibly be wise to humor him a little. Being safely on the
ground to begin with, Jack felt that it might not matter if the fantastic thing
wouldn’t work for him. And if it failed him over the roof—well the house wasn’t, very tall.
     
    He shrugged his arms through the
two rings. Mewhu pointed to the roof, to Jack, made a jumping motion. Jack took
a deep breath, aimed carefully, and, hoping the gadget wouldn’t work—jumped.
     
    He shot up close to the house—too
close. The eave caught him a resounding thwack on precisely the spot where the
ladder had just hit him. The impact barely checked him. He went sailing up over
the roof, hovered for a breathless second, and then began to come down. For a
moment he thought his flailing legs would find purchase on the far edge of the
roof. He just missed it. All he managed to do was to crack the same shin, in
the same place, mightily on the other eave. Trailing clouds of profanity, he
landed standing—in Iris’ wash basket. Iris, just turning from the clothes line,
confronted him.
     
    “Jack! What on earth are you ...
get out of that! You’re standing right on my wash with your dirty . . . oh!”
     
    “Oh oh!” said Jack, and stepped
backward out of the wash basket. His foot went into Molly’s express wagon,
which Iris used to carry the heavy basket. To get his balance, he leaped —and
immediately rose high in the air. This time his luck was better. He soared
completely over the kitchen wing of the house and came to earth near Molly and
Mewhu.
     
    “Daddy, you were just like a
bird!”
     
    “I’m going to be just like a
corpse if your mother’s expression means what I think it does.” He shucked off
the “flyin’ belt” and dove into the house just as Iris rounded the corner. He
heard Molly’s delighted “He went that way” as he plowed through the
shambles of the living room and out the front door. As the kitchen door slammed
he was rounding the house. He charged up to Mewhu, snatched the gadget from
him, slipped it on and jumped. This time his judgment was faultless. He cleared
the house easily although he came very near landing astride the clothesline.
When Iris, panting and furious, stormed out of the house, he was busily hanging
sheets.
     
    “Just what,” said Iris, her voice
crackling at the seams, “do you think you’re doing?”
     
    “Just giving you a hand with the
laundry, m’love,” said Jack.
     
    “What is that . . . that object
on your back?”
     
    “Another evidence of the ubiquity
of the devices of science-fiction,” said Jack blandly. “This is a multilateral,
three-dimensional mass adjuster, or pogo-chute. With it I can fly like a gull,
evading the cares of the world and the advances of beautiful redheads, at such
times as their passions are distasteful to me.”
     
    “Sometime in the very near
future, you gangling hatrack, I am going to pull the tongue out of your juke
box of a head and tie a bowknot in it.” Then she laughed.
     
    He heaved a sigh of relief, went
and kissed her. “Darling, I am sorry. I was scared silly, dangling from this
thing. I didn’t see your clothes basket, and if I had I don’t know how I’d have
steered clear.”
     
    “What is it, Jack? How does it
work?”
     
    “I dunno. Jets on the ends. They
blast hard when there’s a lot of weight pushing them toward the earth. They
blast harder near the earth than up high. When the weight on them slacks off a
bit, they throttle down. What makes them do it, what they are using for power—I
just wouldn’t know. As far as I can see, they suck in air at the top and blow
it out through the jets. And, oh yes—they point directly downward no matter
which way the rod is turned.”
     
    “Where did you get it?”
     
    “Off a tree. It’s