Part 23 (1/2)

”Henry?”

”You're a little oblivious, aren't you?”

”I guess so. Henry and Grace?”

”He's crus.h.i.+ng, big-time.”

”I guess,” John said. It was his turn to be sly. ”What does Grace know about 'us'?”

”We're dating, didn't I tell you?”

”I couldn't even get ahold of you all week.”

”I do go to school,” she said. ”But the weekends are all yours. Until you screw it up.”

”Won't be long.”

Casey grinned, and their conversation turned to other things. At the end of the evening, he found her in his arms on his grungy couch, her lips on his.

The lab was huge: a football fieldsized enclosure off the engineering building, with additional bays. The main area housed a dozen experiments: the subcritical nuclear pile that was roped off, a miniature tokamak, a medium energy collider, a supercool lab, a metallurgy lab, and a machine shop. One of the bays was the freshman lab, broken into six benches, all of them labeled and cluttered with junk. One said: ”Pinball.”

”You already got us a lab area?” John said.

”If I didn't, someone else would have taken it,” Grace said. The table was empty, except for a pile of empty boxes some other team had thrown on it. ”There have already been inquiries on our s.p.a.ce. Use it or lose it, you know.”

John shook his head. ”Do you just not have any other ideas for projects?” he asked.

Grace grinned. ”We have lots of ideas. They all stink,” she said. ”So, what do you think?”

John looked around the labs. There was a Geiger counter on one table. An X-ray machine was roped off across the bay. Light microscopes sat atop workbenches. A scanning electron microscope was hidden somewhere. He realized that his poking at the device with a jeweler's tool kit was a waste of time. Here were tools that he could use to probe the inside of the device, without opening it up.

And he could have access to it all.

”Fine,” John said. ”We'll do it.”

He sat at the table in his apartment and stared at the blank page of the notebook. The device was on the table. It grinned at him, its teeth an LED green. The jeweler's kit lay open but unused. It was his habit to sit every night and think about the device, what it did, and what he had done with it. All of that was written in the notebook. But tonight his mind was elsewhere.

He found himself drawing freehand, not the device but rather a pinball machine. He'd played it so much in high school. There'd been one at the Lawson's where he bought comic books. He'd ride into town on his bike, spend his meager allowance on books and pinball, milking high-score extra games from a single quarter. He'd played a lot of games, and he remembered once when the machine was broken the repairman had had the front open like the hood of a car. Inside had been a hundred lights, a mile of wire, and a lot of dust. Mesmerizing, but that didn't mean he knew how a pinball machine actually worked. But when it came right down to it, it was freshman physics.

It was a ball on a slanted plain. Gravity was the enemy. When he thought of it that way, it became an experiment in cla.s.sical physics. He had been reminded of pinball during physics lab, because the ball followed Newtonian laws of motion. The ball was easy: It was ball-bearing. The plane was easy: It was a slab of wood with obstacles. Add lights, flippers, b.u.mpers, and scoring and you're there.

John started making a parts list under the drawing.

He jumped when the doorbell rang.

”John, it's me!”

”s.h.i.+t!” It was Casey. He stared at the device sitting on the table. She couldn't see it. He couldn't explain it if she did. He grabbed it and ran to the bedroom. He shoved it into the lockbox and turned the key.

”John!”

”Coming!” He threw the lockbox onto the floor of the closet.

As he ran past the kitchen table, he realized the tools were still out. He folded them up in their leather satchel.

”John, I see you through the peephole! Open up!”

”I'm... I'm cleaning up.”

”Don't bother. We're going out.”

John tossed the tool kit on top of the refrigerator, then unlocked the door.

Casey was dressed in a miniskirt and leather jacket with dangling leather bangles. John couldn't say he liked the local styles, but Casey looked good enough in anything.

”You're not dressed,” she said flatly.

”I-Uh, I was... working?”

”Yeah, I figured.” She waved her hands. ”Go, go on; get dressed. We have to be there in an hour.”

”Right.”

John jumped in the shower, sprinkling more than showering. When he came out of the bathroom, Casey was paging through his notebook. He'd left it on the table.

”What's this?” she said.

”Just a notebook.” He reached out to take it from her.

”These are pretty elaborate drawings,” she said. ”Very crisp, very clear.”

”It's nothing!” John cried. He s.n.a.t.c.hed the notebook from her hands, slapping it shut. He threw it through the door of his bedroom, where it sailed with a ripple of pages.

Casey looked at him calmly. ”Fine, it's nothing. You ready?” There was a tone to her words that chilled him, that ebbed his anger and made him feel cautious.

All night Casey was aloof, hardly dancing at all. Instead of going back to his apartment, she asked to be dropped off at the dorm. John watched her enter Benchley Hall and realized he'd made a superb mistake in letting her see the notebook. No one could know about the device.

”Here's the parts list I came up with,” John said. It'd been relatively easy to come up with. Flippers were a chunk of wood attached to a solenoid. b.u.mpers were plastic wrapped in rubber with a solenoid inside. The coin box could be bought from whoever made them for vending machines. The b.a.l.l.s were steel ball bearings. The launcher was a spring and rod. He'd need a sheet of gla.s.s, power, a stand, wood. The first design would be simple.

Grace looked at the list, then reached for his drawing.

”Your perspective's off,” she said.

”I barely got a B on my first drafting a.s.signment,” John said.