by Jerry
It was while he was spinning the psychrometer crank and gazing around the sky for signs of cloudiness that he saw this plane coming in.
When he first saw it, he says, it was just a dot of light sliding slowly down the sky toward the field. The first thing that struck him as queer about this ship was that he couldn’t hear the engines, even though it couldn’t have been over half a mile from the west boundary. It seemed to be gliding in, which was a very silly thing to do with nothing but the boundary lights and beacon to guide by. Another thing, it was strange that any plane at all would be landing here after dark, in good weather, since there was none based at our field, and it was only about once in a blue moon that we had a visitor. Burke wondered about that, but then he remembered that he had to get his weather in the sequence, so he ran inside and put it on the wire.
By the time he could get to the window for another look, the stranger was just landing. He could see it more plainly now in the flashes from the beacon, and if it was a plane, it was like none he’d ever seen or even heard of. It looked more like an airship—only not like an airship either. This may sound silly, but Burke says if you can imagine a flying submarine, that is just what it looked like, and he should know, being ex-navy. He says it reminded him of the old gag the recruit instructors like to pull: If you were on guard and saw a battleship steaming across the parade ground, what would you do? It even had U. S. Navy 1156 painted on its side in big black letters.
There was still no sound from the engines, but there was a faint blue exhaust from somewhere around its tail, and it was plain that the ship was under control—that is, if it really was there, and not just Burke’s sins beginning to catch up with him. When it was about thirty yards from the watch house, this exhaust stopped, and it settled gently to the ground on two broad skis that ran the length of the ship. It drifted down like a feather, but when the weight came on those skis they sank a good three inches into the unsurfaced runway. Burke began to wonder about secret navy inventions, stratosphere planes, and stuff like that. Also he wondered whether he ought to call the chief, and decided not to, since the chief is apt to be-cranky when someone wakes him up in the middle of the night and makes him drive the six miles from his home to the field. Burke compromised by making an entry in the log that Navy 1156 had landed at 0141. Then he walked out to the ship and waited for someone to get out. When he got close enough, just to satisfy his own curiosity, he gave one of the ski struts a good hearty kick. It was solid enough, all right. He almost broke his toe.
THERE WAS a glassed-in compartment in the upper part of the nose that looked like the control room, and through the glass Burke could see someone in a blue coverall and flight cap fussing with some instruments. He was so busy watching Ibis fellow that he didn’t notice the door open behind him until a voice spoke almost over his shoulder.
“Hey,” the voice said, “what’s the name of this place?”
Burke spun around and looked up at an open door in the side of the ship and another man in the same blue coverall and flight cap.
This one wore a web pistol belt, though, and a funny, bulky-looking pistol in the holster. He had a lieutenant’s stripes on his shoulder and Burke automatically highballed him.
“Parker, sir,” he answered, “Parker, North Dakota.”
The lieutenant turned and relayed this information to someone back in the ship. Then he and Burke stared at each other. Burke was on the point of mustering up courage to ask what the score was when another man came into view. This was the one who had been in the control room, and Burke saw that he was a commander. He, too, stared curiously at Burke.
“Can we get some water here?” he asked.
“Sure.” Burke indicated the pump, visible in the light from the open watch-house door. “Right over there.”
The lieutenant eyed the pump doubtfully. “We might get it out of there in about a week,” he said.
The commander jumped. “A week! My God, man, we have a mission to perform. We can’t stay around here for a week. We have to be out by morning.”
“Yes, sir, I know, but we’re going to need a lot of water. Those Jennies will suck it up like a thousand-horse centrifugal when we hit that warp, or whatever it is.”
“About how much?”
The lieutenant pulled a cigarette out of his pocket and lit it thoughtfully. “Well, we’re almost dry now, and we’ll need every drop we can carry. At least twenty-five thousand gallons.”
The commander turned back to Burke. “How about it?” he demanded. “Can we get that much water around here?”
Burke mentally pictured a five-hundred-gallon tank, multiplied by fifty. That was a lot of water. He found himself agreeing with the lieutenant that it would be hardly feasible to get it out of the watch-house well, if a person was in a hurry.
“There’s the river,” he said, “but it’d be kind of hard to find in the dark.”
“Never mind that. We’ll pick it up in the visors. Which way?”
“South,” Burke told him. “About five miles.”
“Thanks.”
For an instant longer they stared sharply at him, as if fascinated by his appearance, and he in turn began to realize that there was something obscurely alien about these people—nothing definite, just a hint of difference in the way they handled their words, a certain smooth precision in their movements. It made him vaguely uneasy, and he felt a distinct sense of relief when the commander turned and spoke to the lieutenant.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s get her up.”
The two officers disappeared into the ship. A seaman stepped into view and threw a switch and the door began silently to close. Burke suddenly remembered there were questions he wanted to ask.
“Hey,” he shouted. “Wait a minute.”
The door slid open a foot and the seaman’s head popped out. “Stand clear,” he warned. “If you’re caught in the field when we start to go up, you’ll go with us.”
Before Burke could open his mouth to speak the face disappeared and the door closed again. Burke prudently retired to the watch-house porch.
Presently the ship lifted into the air, the exhaust flared out softly, and she spun on her tail and headed southward. Burke watched until the blue glow had faded out into the starry sky, then went inside and looked thoughtfully at the log. There are no regulations covering the landing of submarines at intermediate fields, and the CAA does not approve of unorthodox use of its facilities.
Finally he came to a decision and sat down to the typewriter.
“0152,” he wrote. “Navy 1156 took off.”
GRAVITY OFF!
Leslie F. Stone
Jerry Moore delved just a little too deeply into science—so that he found his gravity reversed—making a living in a circus side-show as the “Upside-Down Man!” But he considers ending his misery by simply walking over the ceiling to an open door—and falling into the sky!
“HERE you are, folks, here you are! Come and see the MAN WHO FALLS UP IN THE AIR! The Wonder Man. The Phenomenon of the Centuries! The Man Who Walks on Ceilings! Ten cents, folks, one slim dime to see the Scientific Marvel of the Ages. In India they do it with a rope. He does it with his Mind! Come one, come all, see the Great White Yogi defy the Laws of Gravity without mechanical aid!
“It’s Astounding! It’s Educational! Bring the children to see this modern wonder. Show starts in two minutes. Don’t miss it, folks. See this Marvelous Demonstration of Mental Powers. He’s not a freak, ladies and gentlemen, it’s all done with the mind! One dime, one slim dime. Don’t miss it, don’t miss it, don’t miss it!”
The midway barker’s mechanical drone went on and on, and men, women and children crowded around the ticket seller’s booth under a crude lithograph dangling in the sunlight in front of an unusually proportioned tent. Its base was a hundred feet square, but it rose high into the air, a hundred and fifty feet above the Midway, long guy ropes holding it in place. The crowd thickened, shoving and pushing its way inside the tent.
They, too, watched people pause and stare at the brilliant lithograph before the rival tent. It depicted a man calmly eating at a table that, apparently, along with the chair in which he sat, hung from the ceiling of the painted room. At least, that was the impression it conveyed, that the man was sitting up-side down! To make certain one understood what was intended, another man stood at the bottom of the picture, right side up.
The houri nearest the freak-tent barker spoke from the corner of her red-smeared mouth. “What a take that guy’s got. It’s a natural if ever I saw one. They say he’s cleaning up every midway. I think I’ll go see him next show . . .”
Her answer was a growl; the speiler still eyed the pushing crowd. Suddenly, he straightened. At the entrance of the rival tent had been hung a sign. “TENT FULL. NEXT SHOW—TWENTY MINUTES!”
Disappointed persons looked at the sign and glanced at the freak-tent barker as he began. “Here you are, folks, the greatest collection of freaks ever brought together under one tent. See Jim-Jim, the eat-em-alive-man. Eats snakes in front of your eyes! It’s no fake, it’s the real thing! Come . . .”
Within the tent of the Upside-Down Man people elbowed for room. Before them stood a six foot high wooden platform holding a large curtained box, twenty feet high. Beside it, on a small table was a phonograph, a bottled drink, and some wrapped sandwiches. Tacked on front of the platform was a small bulletin board with several notices pinned on it. One of these was signed by the town’s mayor, the other by the chief of police.
Both notices were statements to the effect that the mayor and chief of police had been present at the erection of the tent, that they had seen no buried machines, no contrivances of any kind installed, and that the platform was built of ordinary lumber with no place for concealed wires.
LOOKING above, the people found the upper part of the tent shrouded in darkness. On one canvas wall hung a rope ladder, and beside it an inch-thick rope that rose into the overhead obscurity.
The tent was full to capacity; people were packed in like sardines. Children whimpered in the close quarters when from between the curtains a brisk, close-shaven man with graying hair stepped forward. He looked the crowd over and spoke.
“Ladies and Gentlemen,” he began pleasantly, “the young man with the megaphone outside explained this isn’t a ‘freak show.’ That’s correct. The White Yogi, friends, isn’t a freak. He was not born this way! The feats you will see performed in a few moments are feats of scientific achievement. As you all know, in India there are men known as Yogi, men who devote all their lives to a contemplation of the life-forces, and it was among them that the White Yogi studied and learned the secret of his accomplishment, the defiance of the Laws of Gravity!
“The Great Einstein, folks, teaches us that gravitation is the result of a warp in Space, a force responding to no other force, and is unchanging, unchangeable, and so powerful a force that it bends light! Yet, here, Ladies and Gentlemen is a man who controls the uncontrollable force with his mind! LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, I GIVE YOU THE WHITE YOGI!”
With that, the speaker waved his hand, the curtain behind him flipped aside to reveal a queer-looking chamber. It was twenty feet, high with three solid walls and was furnished exactly like a bedroom, with bed, table and chair. In the side wall was an ordinary door with an ordinary door-knob. What made the room unique, however, was the fact that it was upside-down; the furniture was nailed to the ceiling; the bedclothing was tied to the bed! The door, likewise, was upside-down, its sill being even with the room’s ceiling—or rather the floor.
The chamber was not empty. On the floor of the stage in ordinary position stood a small nondescript looking thin man of about twenty-eight or nine. He stood in the center of the floor, feet firmly planted as he made a slight bow and scanned the audience.
Somehow, that man presented a pitiful object; he had the saddest blue eyes anyone had ever seen. Peculiarly he was blushing; his face was a warm red!
The announcer spoke from the side of the platform. “The White Yogi is ready to demonstrate his powers. Yogi, will you show these good people how you ascend to your bedchamber?”
The man smiled, stooped and untied his shoes! Then, without apparent effort, with hands held above his head, he surged upward with a rush! There was a thud, and the whole unusual room shook to his impact—his upraised arms bent as he caught his weight upon his hands. So would a man’s arms bend if he dropped from the same height to the ground!
The speiler went behind the room coming back with a ladder. While the White Yogi hung from the ceiling of his room, feet dangling toward the floor, the speiler called for volunteers to climb to the top of the chamber and examine it for a possible hidden machine responsible for the White Yogi’s unique position.
Four self-conscious men came forward, stating they did not belong to the show, and climbed the ladder. A few moments later they came down to testify that there wasn’t a thing on the roof at all.
As this went on, the upside-down man held his place, his face grew redder and redder and the cords of his neck strained to his effort!
The man on the platform spoke. “All right, Yogi.”
With that, the Yogi raised his feet, and the next instant stood in the center of the upside-down room grinning an upside-down grin at the audience as he flexed muscles and breathed heavily from his exertions. Still panting, he walked to a chair and sat down, head pointing toward the ground while the red in his face subsided. Taking out a cigarette, he put it to his lips and lighted it.
“How about a sandwich? You hungry?”
For the first time the upside-down man spoke. “Righto—and send up a bottle of pop, Mr. Bolton.”
Taking a sandwich and the bottle from the nearby table, Mr. Bolton spilled some of the liquid from the bottle to show that it was full, climbed a chair and handed it to the Yogi. He quickly ate the sandwich and tipped his head backward to drink the soda from the bottle. He passed back the empty bottle.
Now he went through a prescribed routine, walking around the upside-down room, sitting at a table to take out paper and pen from a drawer and write a few lines upon it. Next, he went to the bed and laid up upon its covers.
“You’ll notice, ladies and gentlemen,” said Bolton, “the Yogi lies upon his bed as much at ease as you and I lie on an ordinary bed. Yogi, will you rise and let these people see the indentation your head made upon the pillow?”
The Yogi complied and the people exclaimed aloud at what they saw. Slowly, the pillow returned to its original position, hanging down in accordance with gravity.
“Yogi, will you give us a dance?” Going to the phonograph, the speiler put on a tune and the man on the ceiling went into a short dance routine that elicited some response from his audience.
The record was turned off. “And now, good people, the Yogi will give you a demonstration of a man falling up into the air!—together with his own interpolation of the Hindu Rope-Trick! In India, folks, the Yogi project a rope into the air without support so that a child can climb the rope. The White Yogi does something else.
“Yogi, will you kindly step out of your bedroom?”
The upside-down man crossed the “floor” of his chamber to its door. He turned the knob and let the door swing outward with himself clinging to it, his feet dangling up into the air!
AGAIN the announcer spoke at length.
“As you people no doubt know, the velocity of a falling body continually increases by 32 feet per second in each second of the fall. This fall is calculated at approximately 16 feet in the
first second, 48 feet in the second second, 80 feet in the third second, and so on. From the Yogi’s present position he is about 125 feet from the top of this tent; therefore, he will reach the top in less than four and a half seconds. For those wishing to verify this, take out your watches while the Yogi performs this unusual feat of falling against the Force of Gravity!
“Are you ready, Yogi?”
“Ready!”
At the last cry, lights went on in the top of the tent which looked even higher from the inside than it had outside.
“GO!”
At the signal, the White Yogi let go his hold on the doorknob, and in one upward surge, rushed toward the top of the tent!
He struck the canvas with such force that the entire structure swayed back and forth ominously. Bolton shouted for the people to remain calm, that the tent was braced for that impact, just as the tent top was provided with springs for the benefit of the man who had fallen upon it.
Straining their necks upward, the people saw the man who had flattened against the tent-top sit himself up—upside-down, of course, and climb to his feet.
Walking to the side wall, he took hold of the rope fastened to the side of the rope-ladder, freed it, and held the end in his hand for all to see.
Again Bolton spoke. “The White Yogi wants you to know the rope he is holding isn’t fastened at either end. He will now lower his end of the rope to us to prove to you all the rope is free. When he has the other end of the rope in his hands, he will come down!”
They watched the upside-down man pay out the rope, and as one end came in reach of the platform, the announcer called for two strong volunteers to grab it and “hang on to it for dear life!”
He turned to the audience. “Remember, folks, that rope is not suspended in any way. It is the Yogi alone who holds it upright! As he comes toward us, you’ll see the other end of the rope drop downward; the Yogi alone holds it up!” He called out.