The Hibited Man

Chapter II.

Dubrowsky clicked the switch on the chest-section of the materiostat, saying: "We'll try it on low power first." He turned the knob control to the first index figure."Feel anything?"

"No, not a thing—wait, it tingles a little," said Otterburn.

They waited several minutes in silence."Anything now?" asked Dubrowsky.

"No. I got used to the tingle so I don't notice it."

"How about your brain?"

"Hasn't affected it at all as far as I can tell."

"All right, let's begin testing. Brace yourself." Dubrowsky put his hand out and touched the skin of Otterburn's face, neck, and thorax. Then he began slapping lightly, making a note on a pad after each slap.

As long as he moved his hand slowly nothing out of the ordinary happened, but as he slapped harder, some force manifested itself just before his hand reached his subject's skin, so that his slaps were slowed and cushioned before they reached their target.

"Try intermediate," suggested de Castro.

Dubrowsky turned the control a notch higher."Any feeling?"

"No, sir," said Otterburn."A little more tingle but that's going away now. Okay, go ahead, sock me one."

Dubrowsky tried more slaps. This time, when he struck hard, his hand bounced back before it reached Otterburn's skin at all. Finally Dubrowsky doubled his fist and threw a stiff punch at Otterburn's jaw.

The fist bounced off empty air. Otterburn's head rocked a bit as the energy of the fist was transferred to it through the cushioning medium of the materiostat field, but he grinned.

"Hot spit!" he said."That didn't hurt at all. Here, you, give me a whack with that stick!"

De Castro raised an eyebrow—after all he was nearly twice Otterburn's age—but wordlessly picked up the sawed-off broomstick and swung on Otterburn. The stick swooshed through the air and bounced harmlessly away.

Otterburn's grin became broader."Say, this is the thing to wear when you're attending a riot! Too bad we haven't got a bow and arrow," he said."We could put on a William Tell act. I know, how about a baseball? I don't suppose there'd be one around the lab, would there?"

"Come to think of it, one of the mechs has one they play catch with in the lunch hour," said Dubrowsky."Hey, John!"

The mechanic presently produced one very dirty hard baseball out of his tool-box."You want I should lend you the gloves too?" he said.

"No thanks," said Dubrowsky."Stand by, everybody!" He wound up and hurled the ball at Otterburn in a very creditable pitch.

The ball ricocheted off the field and went through a pane of glass separating Dubrowsky's part of the laboratory from that adjoining. The tinkle of falling glass mingled with shouts of alarm and indignation from the engineers in the next section.

"Oh-oh," said Dubrowsky."Must be getting kind of hibited myself." He recovered the baseball, pacified the occupants of the adjacent booth as best he could and returned the ball to its owner.

"Now," he said with artificial solemnity, "let's try high."

When he turned the control as far as it would go, the results were similar only more so. Even a light tap was repulsed, and the subject's clothes showed a tendency to bag out from his body as he moved.

Dubrowsky said, "With that setting you'd have to be careful about eating. If you shoved a forkful of grub at your face too fast it would fly off at a tangent."

Otterburn, moving tentatively, said, "Wouldn't be practical unless I were going to jump off a high building or something. Now let's try the stat at various settings with all my clothes on."

Two hours later de Castro asked, "You say you do not feel any effect, any mental effect that is?"

"Not a bit. I never felt better."

"It might be that you are afflicted with euphoria," said de Castro, "like that induced by alcohol or anoxemia."

Otterburn shook his head vigorously."Nonsense, Doc. I've drunk liquor and I've been anoxic in the altitude chamber and I know what euphoria feels like. I feel perfectly normal. Want me to do some simple addition to show you?"

De Castro looked at his watch."That is a good idea for another series of tests, but I fear we cannot start them tonight."

"Jeepers, nearly quitting time!" said Otterburn."Say, why don't you guys let me wear this thing overnight, just to make sure it has no mental effects?"

"Oh, couldn't do that," said Dubrowsky quickly."Secret equipment."

"And you could not return it until Monday," said de Castro.

"So what? It's under my clothes where it doesn't show/' Otterburn stood up in a marked manner and buttoned his coat.

"I've made up my mind. It'll take Ed half an hour to get this thing off me and I've got a date this evening—that is, I hope to have a date—and don't want to be late. It'll be perfectly safe, because as you said yourself nothing can happen to me. Even bullets would bounce off, and the faster they come the harder they bounce."

He grinned."Anyway I don't see how you guys can stop me. All I have to do is turn the control to high and to heck with you!"

He walked out, leaving the men staring at one another in wonderment and alarm, uncertain what to do about his highhanded action.

On his way back to his own department, Otterburn paused to take out his wallet and check the currency in it. His routine had always been to go home, calculate his expenses for the next two weeks and take the rest of his pay down to the bank during their Friday evening open hour and deposit it. He had never, at least consciously, thought of blowing all his pay in one tremendous binge. Well, why shouldn't he? He was only young once.

He strode into the space occupied by his own section. The engineers were standing around the hatrack, gassing and watching the clock. Otterburn tapped Lucy Kneipf firmly on the shoulder."This way," he said with a jerk of his head."Doing anything tonight, gorgeous?"

"Why—uh—let me think. No, I—"

"Okay, then how about dinner and a show with me?"

"Well, I—I'd like to, but Don said he might come around."

"Oh, bolt Don McQueen! Why should you let him keep you dangling? Come on, what do you say?" He managed to put such an unexpected man-of-distinction air into the invitation that the girl stammered: "Wh-Why, all right."

"Good. Pick you up at eighteen-hundred." Why had he ever been afraid to ask her out? And why had he ever cringed before McQueen? When he threw put his chest and straightened his back he was fully as large as the redhead.

The bell rang, and he passed McQueen on the way out. The latter looked at him with an expression compounded of puzzlement and suspicion.

Otterburn swung his arm to give McQueen a hearty clap on the back and roared, "Good night, you old weasel! Have a crummy week-end!"

The only hitch was that his slap on the back failed to make contact. His hand bounced back without ever touching McQueen's sports jacket, though McQueen staggered a little from the transmitted force of the blow.

Otterburn showed up at Lucy Kneipf's house at six-fifteen. When she came downstairs she paused at the sight of his dinner-jacket, from which floated a faint odor of naphthalene.

"It won't do," he said sternly."Go back up and put on a dinner-dress."

"But—I'm sorry. Why didn't you tell me? After all—" Resentment made itself heard in her voice.

However, he cut her off with, "That's all right. One if these days I shall probably ask you to marry me and you will probably accept. So you might—"

"What?"

"Sure. You don't think I'd let a pretty girl like you spend the rest of your life running a slide-rule, do you? So you might as well get in practice now."

She stood with her mouth open as if one of the experimental rabbits in the Psychoelectric Laboratory had roared at her with the voice of a lion. Then she quietly went upstairs and reappeared ten minutes later in a longer dress.

He ushered her out and into a taxi with a lordly air as if he did this sort of thing all the time."We're eating at the Troc," he said."It's probably a clip-joint but just let 'em try to clip me and see what happens. It's only a block from the show."

"What show is it?"

"Crinolina. Oh, it just occurred to me—I hope you haven't seen it?"

"N-no."

"You like musicals, I trust. I phoned Bergen's and got two on the aisle, fifth row. If we don't like it we can walk out in the middle. Hey, driver, a little more speed, please! Say, have you heard about Dillworth in the Metallurgical Lab and his wife? Darndest thing—"

He rattled on about office gossip, his own opinions on everything and his plans for his—that is to say their—future. Finally she got a word in edgewise.

"You know, Tom, you've talked more in the last fifteen minutes than in all the six months I've known you?"

"Is that so? I talk rather well, don't you think? Now—oh, here we are. Just a min while I fling a purse of gold to our charioteer."

In the restaurant he told the headwaiter, "Two please. Your very best table, and not too near the music."

When the music started he said, after a slight hesitation, "Dance?"

"But there's nobody else on the floor. Let's wait—"

"All the better. We're less likely to bump people. What do we care if they look at us?"

"Oh, but please, Tom. Wait till there are at least a few—" Otterburn's eyes took on a dangerous glitter."If you won't dance with me, Lucy," he said, "I shall get out there and do a solo!" He rose."Are you corning?"

She hastily followed him to the floor. After a couple of turns she said, "Why, you're not as bad as I—I mean, you're good!"

He smiled tolerantly. He had thought, himself, that his coordination seemed exceptionally good this evening."For a man who hasn't danced in nearly a year I get along. I find I can do practically anything I want to if I put my mind to it. The only trouble is that I know only a couple of simple steps.

"You'll have to teach me some of those fancy Latin American numbers. You know, like this!" He stamped his feet and wagged his fundament to indicate his idea of a South American dance, ignoring the fact that he was still the only man on the dance floor.

However, more were now coming in from all sides. Presently the floor became crowded, and Otterburn said, "Our cocktails have arrived, I see. To heck with dancing. Let's drink!"

She said, "Tom, what on earth has come over you? It's as if some other personality had suddenly taken over your body."

"What? Why? Nothing's come over me. I'm perfectly normal and never felt better in my life. If you don't believe me I can recite my past history for the last fifteen years to show you I remember it. Ahh, good cocktail. Waiter, the menu. Hey, waiter!" His voice rose to a near-shout to emphasize his point.

When dinner was slow in coming, Otterburn made unpleasant comparisons between the Troc and the government cafeteria where they ate lunch. Then he shouted and banged on his glass until he got attention. The headwaiter and all the other waiters were by now beginning to bend black looks upon him as if he had chosen their place to start a public temperance lecture.

When the noise of the music and the general chatter made it hard for him to make himself heard he simply sat back and raised his voice to a bellow.

"Look at those four fat slobs at the table in back of you, Lucy! The ones with the red faces and the loud voices. Must be a bunch of salesmen figuring how to trim their customers. Anybody who makes that much racket ought to be hove out. For a nickel I'd heave a roll at 'em."

"Please don't," wailed Miss Kneipf."Control yourself, Tom! They're not doing any harm and they're not making a bit more noise than you are!"

"Heck," growled Otterburn, "I've controlled myself too much." He attacked the remains of his steak."Hey, waiter! Dessert, please!"