Danny Dunn and the Anti-Gravity Paint
Read Danny Dunn and the Anti-Gravity Paint Online
Authors: Jay Williams,Jay Williams
Tags: #science fiction, #sci-fi, #young adult, #middle grade, #adventure
Contents
COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
Copyright © 1956, 1984 by Jay Williams and Raymond Abrashkin.
Cover art by Ezra Jack Keats.
Used by permission of the Ezra Jack Keats Foundation.
All rights reserved.
Published by Wildside Press LLC.
www.wildsidebooks.com
THE DANNY DUNN SERIES
Danny Dunn and the Anti-Gravity Paint
Danny Dunn on a Desert Island
Danny Dunn and the Homework Machine
Danny Dunn and the Weather Machine
Danny Dunn on the Ocean Floor
Danny Dunn and the Fossil Cave
Danny Dunn and the Heat Ray
Danny Dunn, Time Traveler
Danny Dunn and the Automatic House
Danny Dunn and the Voice from Space
Danny Dunn and the Smallifying Machine
Danny Dunn and the Swamp Monster
Danny Dunn, Invisible Boy
Danny Dunn Scientific Detective
Danny Dunn and the Universal Glue
CHAPTER ONE
“I Will Not Daydream⦔
Space Captain Daniel Dunn stood on the bridge of the
Revenge
with his eyes on the viewer screens. He could see the fiery trails that were the rocket ships from Jupiter.
Adjutant Dan Dunn ran up to report. “Sir,” he cried, “they've got us surrounded!”
“We'll fight 'em all, singlehanded,” said the Captain, his handsome, lined face hardening with decision. He turned to the pilot. “Grid 4-X67!” he barked. “Get set, Dan, and blast away!”
Pilot Danny Dunn glanced at his instruments. He pressed down the firing lever.
At that instant one of the Jovian ships darted in close, her bow guns sparkling. Jets of power smashed against the side of the
Revenge
. She rocked and swung. Pilot Dunn was thrown from side to side, but his finger never left the firing lever.
“We'll ram them!” Captain Dunn cried. He seized the controls and swung the ship directly at the nearest enemy vessel.
CRASH! The impact knocked him off his feet. Everything went black.
“Daniel Dunn! What on earth do you think you're doing?”
The voice was that of his teacher, Miss Arnold.
Danny found himself sitting on the floor of his classroom. The rocket-ship control panel vanished. So did the enemy ships. Danny's eyes cleared, and he looked up at Miss Arnold's face, with its sharp brown eyes that seemed to pierce right through him.
“Uhânothing, Miss Arnold,” he mumbled.
“Nothing!” The teacher put her hands on her hips. “Do you call groaning and moaning and falling flat on the floor ânothing'? Don't you feel well? Speak up, boy!”
“No, ma'am. I mean, sure, I feel fine,” Danny stammered.
Miss Arnold raised one eyebrow. “Get back in your seat,” she said. “You certainly weren't doing arithmetic.” Her voice softened. “What
were
you doing?”
Danny got to his feet and dusted himself off. He could see Eddie Philips hiding a grin behind his hand. Fat Carver rolled his eyes at the ceiling and pretended to whistle. Most of the other boys and girls were giggling. Only his best friend, Joe Pearson, was looking at him sadly.
He sat down. Miss Arnold repeated, “Well? I'm waiting.”
“IâI was thinking,” he said at last.
“Thinking?”
“Yes'm.”
“Are you in the habit of falling down when you think?”
The class laughed. Danny felt his face redden.
Eddie Philips, nicknamed “Snitcher,” raised his hand. “I bet I can tell you where he was, Miss Arnold. He was in a rocket ship. He's always playing something like that.”
Danny shot a fierce glance at Eddie.
Miss Arnold's face twitched. She almost smiled, but bit her lip instead. “Is that true, Danny?”
He nodded sullenly.
“Hm.” She went back to her desk. “Now look here, Dan. I know how hard it is for plain, old-fashioned arithmetic to stand up to rocket ships. But let's remember that trips to Mars are far in the future. It will be a long time before anything like that happens. Meantime, I suggest you stick to the present.”
“Yes, ma'am,” said Danny. Then he added, “But Professor Bullfinch says that space travel may come in the next ten years.”
“I know all about Professor Bullfinch,” said Miss Arnold firmly, “and I have a great deal of respect for him. But if you don't make better marks in arithmetic,
you'll
never become a scientist.”
“Well, gee, Miss Arnold,” Danny objected, “what about Einstein? He flunked arithmetic.”
Miss Arnold's lips tightened. “Danny,” she said, “I don't want to hear any more about it. I must think of some way of keeping you on earth.” She thought for a moment, and then she said, “It's not as if this were the first time. Since nothing else seems to work, perhaps we'd better try an old-fashioned punishment. I want you to write a hundred times, âI will not daydream about space flight in class.' Let me see it tomorrow morning.”
She stood up and went to the blackboard. Danny, with a sigh, pulled his mind away from the exciting mysteries of outer space and went back to fractions.
When school was over, he walked home with Joe Pearson. Joe was his own age, but where Danny was stocky and red-haired, Joe was thin and dark, with a face that was always mournful, no matter how happy he was.
“Gosh, that's tough, Danny,” Joe said. “Having to do all those sentences, I mean.”
“I don't care,” said Danny. “But she was wrong. Professor Bullfinch told me that space flight is just around the corner.”
Joe shook his head. “Yeah. But maybe you ought to keep away from science for a while. It never brings you anything but trouble. Remember when you were trying to build your own dynamo? You dammed up the culvert on Breakneck Hill for water power and flooded all the cellars of the houses up there.”
Danny grunted. “That was an accident.”
“And the time in Mr. Winkle's science class when you poured all his chemicals into one jar to see what would happen? That was no accident. Ooh, golly, that smell, when I think of it, it just makes me seasick.”
“Well, that was last year. I was only a kid then,” Danny said. “But that's got nothing to do with space flight.”
“You'll just blow us all up,” Joe said, his voice getting gloomier than ever.
“Oh, come on, Joe,” Danny said to his friend. “You're always looking on the dark side.” He jammed his hands into his pockets. “You'll see. One of these days I'll be on that first rocket ship heading for the Moon. A long time in the future! Ha! Did you read about the satellite they sent up yesterday?”
“That thing that's supposed to circle the earth?”
“Yes. It'll soar from two to fourteen hundred miles above the earth, and it travels about eighteen thousand miles an hour!”
“If it keeps going round and round the earth, what good is it?” Joe asked. “It never goes anywhere.”
“It's not supposed to go anywhere.”
“Then what's the good of it? I mean, if you're going as fast as eighteen thousand miles an hour, you should get somewhere else instead of justâ”
“It doesn't have to get anywhere,” Danny explained. “It's supposed to circle the earth and send back information about cosmic rays and meteors and things like that. It's the first step, Joe! Next they can build a space station, and then, after that, rocket flights into space.” His eyes shone.
But Joe just shook his head. “Trouble,” he said. “That's all there'll be.”
They came to Dan's house. Danny said good-bye to his friend. In spite of his jaunty manner with Joe, he felt anything but cheerful once he had closed the front door behind him. For all he could think of was a hundred sentences stretching out over the next few hoursâlong sentences, too.
CHAPTER TWO
The Satellite
Danny's mother was housekeeper for Professor Euclid Bullfinch. When Danny was no more than a baby, her husband had died and she had been forced to find work and a home for her infant son. Professor Bullfinch taught at Midston University. But his reputation was nationwide. He had invented a number of scientific devices that brought him enough money so that he could keep up his own laboratory and do independent research. He lived alone and needed someone to cook and keep house for him.
Danny had grown up under the Professor's roof and was full of affection for the quiet, thoughtful scientist. He was determined to become as much like him as he could. The Professor not only took the place of the father Danny had never known, but had become his friend as well.
Each day after school Danny spent some time with the Professor. Today, as usual, he put down his schoolbooks and started for the back of the house, where the laboratory was. But his mother's voice stopped him before he could get very far.
“Is that you, Danny?”
“Yes, Mom.”
Mrs. Dunn came into the hall, wiping her hands on her apron. Her hair was as red as Danny's, and there were spots of flour on her cheeks.
“I've been making something special for tonight,” she explained, giving her son a hug. “How'd things go today in school?”
“All right. What are you cooking, Mom?”
“Never mind.” She held him off at arm's length. “Look at me,” she commanded.
Danny did so, trying to grin.
“Daniel Dunn,” said his mother. “Whenever I get that sickly smile from you, I know you've been up to something. More experiments?”
“No, Mom, honest.”
“Nothing at all? Honest and truly?”
“We-e-ell.” He blushed.
“Go on. What happened?” Mrs. Dunn demanded severely.
“Well, I wasâI have to write a hundred sentences.”
“Hmph! I can guess. âI will not fight with people in the hallways.' Is that it?”
“No. I have to write, âI will not daydream about space flight in class,'” said Danny. Then he added quickly, “But I can do it later, Mom. Where's Professor Bullfinch?”
“Hut-tut-tut!” cried Mrs. Dunn. “Don't let me hear you talk about the Professor. Not when you've your own work to do. March right into the kitchen where I can keep you under my eye until you get those sentences done. You're in the Professor's way quite enough as it is.”
Danny marched. He sat down at the kitchen table and began slowly, with much labor, to write the first sentence.
“It smells too good in here to write all this stuff,” he complained.
“Pineapple upside-down cake,” said Mrs. Dunn. “The Professor is expecting some gentlemen to dinner. Just you go on writing.” She folded her arms and frowned at Danny. “I'm ashamed of you. How do you ever expect to become a scientist like Professor Bullfinch if you won't pay attention in class? The last time I talked to Miss Arnold she said, âMrs. Dunn, I don't know what to do about Danny. He's very bright,' she said, âbut he's getting ahead of himselfâtrying to fly before he can walk.' Now I know what she meant.
Space
flying.”
“But Mom,” Danny said earnestly, “I can't help it. I want to find out how things work. She's just mad because I'm always experimenting or thinking about new things.”
“You can't do new experiments until you know what others have done before you,” Mrs. Dunn said. “Otherwise you might find yourself inventing the electric light all over again. If you want to go to college, you must first go to grammar school and high school.”
She looked seriously at him. “Oh, Danny, Danny,” she said, “it's hard enough for us. I'll back you up, I'll get you to college somehow, but it's going to be a struggle. You'll have to do your part by getting good marks. You do see that, don't you?”
Danny swallowed hard. “Yes, Mom,” he replied. “I'll do my best from now on. I promise.”
“All right.” Mrs. Dunn briskly wiped the corners of her eyes with her apron. “Now, then. You'll never finish those sentences if you write them that way. Why don't you use the vertical method? That's what I used to do when I had to write sentences for school.”
Danny blinked, trying to imagine Miss Arnold scolding his mother and making her write something a hundred times.
“What's the vertical method?” he asked.
“Why, first you write the first word a hundred times, one underneath another. Then the second word after it. Then the third, and so on. It's a lot easier to write âI' a hundred times, and then go on to âwill,' than it is to write the whole tiring out.”
“Gee, Mom,” Danny said in admiration, “you're a genius!”
“Go on, now,” said Mrs. Dunn, grinning. “And you may as well finish up this leftover pineapple.”
Danny had just written “daydream” for the fiftieth time when Professor Bullfinch came into the kitchen. Most people think of scientists as dreamy, long-haired, bearded, or otherwise curiously different from other men. Professor Bullfinch was bald, pink-faced, and tubby, with a jolly manner. He wore a tweed jacket and black-rimmed glasses, and he looked hungry.
“Smells awfully good in here,” he said. “May I lick the bowl?”
“Sorry,” said Mrs. Dunn. “There isn't any bowl to lick. And Danny has already eaten the leftovers. Now take your fingers out of my cake, Professor Bullfinch. You're worse than Danny.”
Professor Bullfinch quickly pulled his hand out of the cake dish. “Remind me to work out a way of making my hands invisible,” he said. “By the way, speaking of Dannyâcan you spare him for a few minutes? I have something to show him.”
“I can spare him,” said Mrs. Dunn, popping the cake into the oven, “but his schoolwork can't. He's got some sentences to finish.”
“Grammar?”
“No. He has to write, âI will not daydream about space flight in class' one hundred times.”
“He daydreamed one hundred times about the same thing?” asked the Professor.
“No, no. I mean he has to write that out a hundred times.”
“I see. Ridiculous! Why doesn't the school let the pupils use a mimeograph machine? It would be so much quicker than writing it out longhand.”
“It's a punishment, Professor Bullfinch,” Mrs. Dunn said patiently.
Professor Bullfinch tapped his chin thoughtfully. “A punishment for daydreaming about space flight? Good heavens! What will they think of next? Why, that's all some of my colleagues do. It was because physicists daydreamed about space flight that we have the satellite up above us now.
“Great guns!” He clapped his hand to his head. “I completely forgot. The satellite! Of course! Come along, Danny.”
He seized Danny's hand and pulled him bodily from his chair and through the door. Mrs. Dunn called, “Wait, Professor! His sentences!” But it was too late. They had both vanished. Mrs. Dunn sighed and shook her head, and then with a smile she put the unfinished paper up on a shelf.