joke, all right, but it had been aimed at Elvin.The kids had rigged it up before he came home from the show. During thenight they had come back and taken the stage setting away.
* * * * *
Elvin spent the rest of the weekend planning his revenge. He didn'tthink of it as that, but rather disciplinary action. Yet he knew theclass would get the point and possibly even heed the implied warning. Infive years Elvin had reduced the complex process of teaching to oneworkable rule: break the class, or the kids will break you.
Now he chose the classical cat-whip of a surprise test to crack themback into line. He spent Sunday planning it and duplicating the pages.He was scrupulously careful to be fair--at least as he defined the term.The examination covered nothing that had not been discussed in class.But Elvin taught grammar, and no field of the abstract allows suchdevious application of the flimsy nonsense passing for rules.
On Monday morning, with a thin smile, Elvin was ready for them. He hadtenth grade English first period. As he passed out the mimeographedpages, he waited for waves of groaning to sweep the room. Nothinghappened. He felt an annoying pang of anger. A hand shot up.
"Yes, Charles?" he snapped.
"If we finish before the end of the period, can we have free reading?"
"I doubt you'll finish, Charles. This test is ten pages long."
"But if we do--"
"By all means, yes."
Gary Elvin leaned back in his chair and surveyed, with satisfaction, thethirty heads bent studiously over their desks. For perhaps five minutesthe idyll lasted, until Donald Schermerhorn brought his test up to thedesk and asked permission to go to the library. Elvin was both amazedand disappointed; but at once he reassured himself. The test had beensimply too hard for Donald.
Nonetheless, as soon as Donald was out of the room, Elvin checked hisexamination against the key. As he turned through the pages, his fingersbegan to tremble. Donald had answered everything--and answered itcorrectly. Before Elvin had finished checking Donald's test, ten morestudents had left theirs on the desk and headed for the school library.
Within ten minutes Elvin was fighting a disorganizing bewilderment farworse than the rocket-hallucination. Every examination was completed,and none that he checked had as much as one mistake. Elvin wished hecould believe that whole-sale cheating had taken place, but he knew thatwas impossible because of the precautions he always took.
* * * * *
All of the tenth graders were back from the library by that time. Theyhad each brought two or more books. Elvin's body went rigid with angerwhen he saw what was currently passing among them for the skill ofreading. They were methodically turning pages almost as quickly as theycould move their hands from one side of the books to the other, all withthe appearance of engrossed attention.
Elvin banged a ruler on his desk. One or two faces looked up. "This hasgone far enough!" he cried. "You asked for the privilege of freereading, but I do not intend you to make a farce of it." A hand went up."Yes, Marilyn?"
"But we are reading, Mr. Elvin. Honestly."
"Oh, I see." His voice was thickly sarcastic. "And what's the title ofyour book?"
"Toynbee's _Study of History_."
"You've given up Grace Livingston Hill? Could you summarize Toynbee forus, Marilyn?"
"In another ten minutes, Mr. Elvin. I still have sixty pages to read."
Elvin turned savagely to another girl. "Mabel Travis! What are youreading?"
The buxom girl looked up languidly. For a split second her big eyesseemed focused on a distant prospective. "Why--why this, Mr. Elvin." Sheheld up her book so he could see the title.
"_Hypnotism in Theory and Practice_," he snorted. And Mabel's I/Q was71! "You've outgrown the comics, Mabel?"
"In a sense, yes, Mr. Elvin."
Elvin was saved from further disorientation by the interruption of anoffice messenger with a special bulletin announcing a second periodassembly. By the time he had read it, his anger was under control. Helet the reading go on and spent the rest of the period plodding throughthe examinations. There was not an error in any of the papers. From theprospective of the day's events, Elvin later realized that, howeverpersonally unnerving, his own particular crisis had been a minor one.
* * * * *
The first full scale public disaster came during the assembly, when theentire student body--nearly one hundred and fifty youngsters--wasgathered in the auditorium. The principal, as always, rose to lead themin the Alma Mater. He was a huge, hatchet-faced, white-haired man, theterror of evil-doer and faculty members alike. He had a tendency to givea solemn importance to trivial things and to overlook the great ones;and there was no mistaking the awed, almost religious fervor with whichhe sang the school song--which was, perhaps, only natural, since he hadwritten it himself.
On that disastrous morning he suddenly burst into a dance as the studentbody barrelled into the first chorus. He snatched up the startled girls'counselor and improvised a little rumba. Slowly the students' voicesfell silent as they watched. Under the sweating leadership of the musicteacher, the school orchestra held the pace for another bar or two,until one of the players stood up and rendered a discordant hot lick onhis trumpet.
A trio of caretakers carried the struggling principal off the platformand shouting teachers herded the students on to their next classes.Thirty minutes later the word-of-mouth information was carefully spreadthrough the school that the principal had been taken to the hospital forobservation and he was doing nicely. But by that time his fate seemedunimportant, for the girls' tenth grade gym teacher was having hystericson the front lawn, convinced that all her students had turned into fish;and the boys' glee club teacher had abruptly announced that the nationwas being invaded by Martians. He, too, had been carried off to thehospital in haste.
The rest of the faculty was badly shaken. When they met at lunch, theyunanimously wanted the school closed for the rest of the day. But theprincipal had been too small a man to delegate any of his authority; aslong as he was hospitalized, the teachers could do nothing.
After the ominous activity of the morning, however, most of theafternoon passed in relative order. True, the counselor gave pick-uptests to three tenth graders whose earlier I.Q. scores had been so lowthe validity had been questioned; and this time the same three outdid anEinstein. And the tenth grade math teacher was almost driven todistraction by a classroom discussion of the algebraic symbologyequating matter and time--all of which was entirely over his head.
Nothing really happened until five minutes before the end of the schoolday, when Miss Gerkin knocked weakly on Gary Elvin's door. As soon as hesaw her face, he gave his class free reading and joined her in the hall.Fearfully she showed him a yellow Bunsen burner, which glowed softly inthe afternoon sunlight.
"Do you know what it is, Gary?"
"It's one of those gas burners you have on the lab tables in--"
"The metal, I mean."
"Looks like gold. Aren't these rather expensive for a high schoolclassroom?"
She sagged against the wall, running her trembling fingers over her thinlips. "It's that tenth grade, Gary. I have them last period for generalscience. Bill Blake and the Schermerhorn twins got to fooling aroundwith the electro-magnet. They rewired it somehow and added a few--well,frankly, I don't understand at all! But now when anything--metal, glass,granite--when anything is put in the magnetic field, it's changed togold."
"Transmutation of atomic structure? You know it can't be done!"
"Yes, I know it. But I saw it happen." She began to laugh, but checkedherself quickly.
"It's a trick. I know that bunch better than you do. It's time one of ushad it out with them."
* * * * *
He strode along the hall toward the science room, Miss Gerkin followingmeekly behind him. "I'm sure you're right, Gary, because the rest of theclass hardly showed any interest in what the boys were doing. I
actuallyasked Marilyn if she didn't want her necklace turned to gold, and shesaid she was too busy to bother. Imagine that, from a high school kid!"
"Busy doing what?"
"Working out the application of the Law of Degravitation, she said."
"The Law of Degravitation? I never heard of it."
Miss Gerkin sniffed righteously. "Neither have I, and I've taughtscience all my life."
Gary Elvin flung open the door of the science room. It was one minutebefore the end of the period. For a moment he looked in on a peacefullyideal classroom. Every student was at his bench working industriously.Then, row by row, they began to float upward toward the ceiling, each ofthem holding a tiny coil of thin wires twisted intricately around twopieces