belt," he explained. "Ready?"

I nodded.

"A toast first!" he cried. Soberly, he gazed at his glass. "To Man," he pronounced momentously, "and the Stars." He took a sizable swallow, then fixed me with a feverish glare.

"Go!"

I confess that never, before or since, have I felt such a strange sensation as when I pushed the button on the belt. Suddenly, I felt like a leaf, or a feather, floating on a soft warm curl of cloud. It was as if all the troubles, all the cares of the world had been miraculously lifted from my shoulders. A glow of well-being seemed to pulse through my whole body.

The sound of Professor Burdinghaugh's voice brought an abrupt end to this strange lightness of mind. The Professor was pointing at me with an intensity I rarely before have seen, muttering, "It works—it works!" He seemed rather amazed.

I looked down and, with a feeling I can only describe as giddiness, saw that indeed it was working. I was rising slowly from the ground and was then about a foot in the air.

At this historical juncture, we looked at each other for a moment, then began to laugh as success rushed to our heads. The Professor even did a mad little jig while, for my part, I gyrated in the air unrestrained.

It was not until I was about ten feet off the ground that I began to feel uneasy. I was never one to stomach high altitudes, you might recall, and the sight of ten feet of emptiness beneath me was disquieting.

"Professor," I asked hesitantly, "how do I turn off the belt?"

Burdinghaugh's glass stopped an inch from his lips. "Turn it off?" he countered thickly.

"Yes!" I shouted, now fifteen feet in the air. "How do I turn it off? How do I get down?"

The Professor gazed up at me thoughtfully. "My boy," he said at last, "I never thought about getting down—been much too concerned with getting jolly well up."

"Burdinghaugh!" I screamed. "Get me down!" I was now twenty feet above the ground.

"I'm sorry, old boy, dreadfully sorry," he called to me. "I can't. But don't think your life will have been spent in vain. Indeed not! I'll see to it that you get proper credit as my assistant when the anti-gravity belt is 

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