silver chunk on the same side as the
two ten-gram weights, leaving the tray it had been in absolutely empty.
The balance fluctuated a little and again came to rest on the zero mark,
showing a minus twenty grams!

By that time I had stopped believing what my eyes told me.

"That's quite a trick," I said skeptically. "How do you work it?" And I
stooped to look under the table, hoping to see a setup of magnets hidden
there that would help restore my belief in my sanity.

"I don't work it," Jud exclaimed irritably. "It acts that way itself."

* * * * *

I forgot my one o'clock class entirely. Jud and I played around with
that hunk of metallic hydro-carbon most of the afternoon, arguing back
and forth about what caused it to do the things it did. I found out that
if I thought of beefsteak rare while I looked at it, it would weigh
exactly ten pounds, and if I thought of a chicken with its neck being
wrung the stuff would float up to the ceiling. I tried all sorts of
thoughts on it and got some of the craziest results. But whatever I
thought, when I thought of the same thing again I got the same results.
But my results were different than Jud's! When he thought of a chicken
with its neck being wrung the stuff didn't float up to the ceiling but
instead made the floor creak and groan. Finally we took it over to the
feed company and put it on their car scales. Then when Jud thought of a
chicken with its neck being wrung, we found that the stuff weighed
twelve thousand four hundred and eighty pounds! And it was no bigger
than a pocket knife!

As we stood there and looked at the feed scales in utter amazement I
said, "Look, Jud, we've got something here. I've got an idea. Suppose we
rig up a strong resting place for this stuff in my car. Then when I
think of the right thing it will push the car forward at any speed I
want to go. We'll have to be careful or it will wreck us, but--maybe
after we know what we are doing we can build a space ship!"

Well, to cut a long story short, two days later Mallory, the biochemist,
Jud Taylor, and I were speeding along the state highway with the needle
hovering around eighty-five, the engine out of gear and dead, and a
crazy bit of silver stuff encased in a special frame in the dashboard
with reinforcing bars down to the chassis holding it steady.

It took two of us to drive the car, though, because one of us had to
drive and the other concentrate on the stu