started the reaction going again. It puzzled him a lot, why the hydrogen nuclei didn't combine properly. There must have been some unusual influence somewhere. In the two days he had had it, he hadn't been able to complete the carbon cycle once.

Bennie, next door, had a set, and when Bennie tried it, it always worked fine. Bennie never had lost a nucleus by explosion. Maybe there was something wrong with Tommie's set. He'd get Bennie to try it—and maybe Bennie would let Tommie try his set.

Tommie sat there in the white sand, watching the interlaced orange-glowing orbits of the electrons and the broad green paths of the hydrogen nuclei. The sun was warm on Tommie's back and the Baltimore orioles were singing in the elm tree almost over his head. Across the high electronic fence he could hear the bigger boys playing ball in Bennie's yard.

Suddenly the four hydrogen nuclei, flashing at half light-speed in their four orbits, went together and disappeared in the usual green flash and with the customary loud report. Tommie was thankful the explosion didn't sound as loud out in the yard as it had in the front room under dad's chair, although secretly Tommie liked it better in the house because of that very fact.

The only thing was that dad wasn't in a very good mood today.

Tommie watched the orioles sweeping around the tree-top, and the papa oriole's orange plumage, flashing in the sunlight, reminded him of the orbit of an electron. Then he remembered that he had dropped an electron just outside the kitchen door.

He got up laboriously—he was so solid his legs had a hard time holding him up, sometimes. He went to the door and leaned over to pick up the electron. He heard the swish of the door as it opened and then the high cooing of Mrs. Jones' voice as she bore down on him.

"Oh, that dear little boy, I simply must squeeze him."

Tommie stood up suddenly, so suddenly he lost his balance and sat down on the grass. Mrs. Jones reached for him, and that strange feeling of repugnance he had for her grew so powerful that it almost smothered him. He squirmed to get away from her, but he was trapped. She touched him, and his body quit squirming because mother wouldn't like it, but in his mind he writhed. It almost seemed that he could tear himself away from his body.

Then he did! Just how he didn't know, but suddenly he was standing a couple of feet to one side, watching Mrs. 

 Prev. P 3/10 next