"It means that each new materialization occurs at a steadily increasing height, but one which—" I calculated briefly on the pad "—is never greater than two-thirds the height of the machine itself."
Artie looked blank. "Thank you very kindly for the math lesson," he said finally, "but I still don't see what you are driving at, Burt. How does this present a problem?"
I pointed toward the un-repaired hole in the lab ceiling, where the machine, after dutifully disgorging the number-seven load, was slowly heading. "It means that unless we grab that thing before it gets too much higher, the whole damn planet'll be up to its ears in cornflakes. And the one-third machine-height gap between artifacts and machine means that we can't even use the mounding products to climb on and get it. We'd always be too low, and an increasing too-low at that!"
"Are you trying to say, in your roundabout mathematical way, let's grab that thing, fast?"
"Right," I said, glad I had gotten through to him. "I would've said as much sooner, only you never listen until somebody supplies you with all the pertinent data on a crisis first."
Load number nine banged and splintered down into the lab, bringing the cumulative total of bowl-cereal-spoon-napkin-toothpick debris up to forty-five.
"Come on, Burt," said Artie. "We'll have to get to the roof of the lab. There's a ladder up at the—"
He'd been going to say "house", but realized that there wasn't a house anymore. "Quick!" he rasped, anxiously. "We can still get there by—" He stopped before saying "helicopter", for similar reasons.
"Burt—" he said, after a pause that allowed the total to rise to fifty-five with a crash. "What'll we do?"