* * * * *
I had no warning. I had just put a half-inch expanded grain on the
minima plate, when Lee White walked onto the maxima and Burns pressed
the red button.
There was a flicker and White appeared, half an inch tall, in the
middle of the expanded quartz crystal on the minima plate. He was able
to move his arms. He seemed to be saying something that amused him. I
knocked Burns away from the controls, pressed the blue button, whisked
the empty crystal off the maxima plate as it came through and only just
got it out of the way before Lee White reappeared on the maxima plate,
his normal size again.
"Well, it works," he said.
"You crazy?" I yelled at him.
"Just think," Burns said, sitting up and holding his jaw. "The number
of times we've watched this fella pressing his red and blue buttons,
and dismissed it as elementary stuff for beginners."
They calmed me down and apologized for doing a thing like that. Hell, I
would have been expelled too if I had gone back to the Institute with
one of them missing. David Adam Smith had a very elaborate hearing aid,
but it never enabled him to hear excuses. Students only on Institute
property, no readmittance for expelled students--and certainly no
expelled students locked up in a lab specimen.
I suppose they would have thought it funny to sit in a crystal and make
faces at David Adam Smith. They were wild, all three of them, and had
been since they were admitted. I had no desire to be expelled with them.
"You're not going to be expelled, Morry. Not if you do as we ask."
"And if you don't," Burns said, still rubbing his jaw, "we'll tell the
dear Director that you explained how his specimen collector works."
"Then you'll be expelled with us, Morry."
"He's going to get tired of having you around to laugh at one day,
Morry. Then you'll be out anyway."
"No use appealing to him with the broad theme, I suppose?"