"There wasn't anything left by the time we got there," he said. "Even the grass was uprooting itself out of the ground and drifting up into space. There was no sign of the Blemish brothers, of course. Definitely criminally insane!"
Marc gazed out the window at the city stretching up around them, and was taken with a tremor of horror.
"There's just one thing puzzling me, Mr. Pillsworth," the government man said. "How is it that you returned to earth? Will all the debris finally return to earth in a few days?"
Marc gazed at them blankly. He had been wondering the same thing himself. He passed a trembling hand over his eyes and shook his head.
"I know," Toffee said mildly. All eyes turned curiously in her direction. She smiled blandly. "You see," she said, charmed with the idea of having so much male attention all at once, "you see, being rather a creature of nature ... but I don't suppose you gentlemen would understand that ... just let it go that I have a special understanding of natural causes and effects that do not occur in the ordinary human being." She nodded toward Marc. "It was the double dosage that brought him back. The original treatment made him give off the impulses which caused him to be buoyant, but the second one, instead of increasing his buoyancy, merely counteracted it. It was a matter of a war between impulses of equal strength and pull. The ones moving outward were met by the ones forcing their way inward. It was what might be called a condition of impasse. Eventually, the two exhausted each other, and so he returned to earth." She smiled beguilingly. "Is that all perfectly clear?"
The government man whistled shrilly and glanced at the ceiling. "If you say so," he muttered.
"Of course," Toffee went on, "the thing that really saved his life was the fact that, in being buoyant, he drifted far enough away from the explosion so that the impulses that reached him were in exact proportion to those he was giving off. It wouldn't happen again in a million years."
The government man gazed at her from the corner of his eyes. "No," he said. "I'm sure it wouldn't." He turned to the secretary. "I hope you got all that on paper."
The young man shook his head. "I was too fascinated," he said. Even as he spoke, his eyes did not leave Toffee's well crossed leg.