I was a little disappointed with this; it sounded pretty tame. But I said, “How did it come out?”
HE screwed his pudgy face up thoughtfully. “Synthesized the material, all right, and it seems to work, but the interesting thing is that it has a certain—ah—secondary property that would make it quite awkward to use. Interesting property, though. Unique, I am inclined to believe.”
This began to sound more like it. “And what property is that?” I poured myself a shot of straight rum from the bottle sitting on the table beside me. I did not like straight rum, but I preferred it to Farnsworth’s rather imaginative cocktails.
“I’ll show you, John,” he said. He opened the box and I could see that it was packed with some kind of batting. He fished in this and withdrew a gray ball about the size of a golfball and set the box on the mantel.
“And that’s the—eraser?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said. Then he squatted down, held the ball about a half-inch from the floor, dropped it.
It bounced, naturally enough. Then it bounced again. And again. Only this was not natural, for on the second bounce the ball went higher in the air than on the first, and on the third bounce higher still. After a half minute, my eyes were bugging out and the little ball was bouncing four feet in the air and going higher each time.
I grabbed my glass. “What the hell!” I said.
Farnsworth caught the ball in a pudgy hand and held it. He was smiling a little sheepishly. “Interesting effect, isn’t it?”
“Now wait a minute,” I said, beginning to think about it. “What’s the gimmick? What kind of motor do you have in that thing?”