I took off up the basement steps like a streak. Just beyond the backyard, I had caught a glimpse of something that frightened me. A few yards from where I had seen the ball was the edge of the big six-lane highway, a broad ribbon of smooth, hard concrete.

I got through the house to the back porch, rushed out and was in the backyard just in time to see the ball take its first bounce onto the concrete. I watched it, fascinated, when it hit—after the soft, energy-absorbing turf, the concrete was like a springboard. Immediately the ball flew high in the air. I was running across the yard toward it, praying under my breath, Fall on that grass next time.

It hit before I got to it, and right on the concrete again, and this time I saw it go straight up at least fifty feet.

***

My mind was suddenly full of thoughts of dragging mattresses from the house, or making a net or something to stop that hurtling thirty-five pounds; but I stood where I was, unable to move, and saw it come down again on the highway. It went up a hundred feet. And down again on the concrete, about fifteen feet further down the road. In the direction of the city.

That time it was two hundred feet, and when it hit again, it made a thud that you could have heard for a quarter of a mile. I could practically see it flatten out on the road before it took off upward again, at twice the speed it had hit at.

Suddenly generating an idea, I whirled and ran back to Farnsworth’s house. He was standing in the yard now, shivering from the morning air, looking at me like a little lost and badly scared child.

“Where are your car keys?” I shouted at him.

“In my pocket.”

“Come on!”

I took him by the arm and half dragged him to the carport. I got the keys from him, started the car, and by mangling about seven traffic laws and three rosebushes, managed to get on the highway, facing in the direction that the ball was heading.

“Look,” I said, trying to drive down the road and search for the ball at the same time. “It’s risky, but if I can get the car under it and we can hop out in time, it should crash through the roof. That ought to slow it down enough for us to nab it.”

“But—what about my car?” Farnsworth bleated.

“What about that first building—or first person—it hits in San Francisco?”

“Oh,” he said. “Hadn’t thought of that.”

I slowed the car and stuck my head out the window. It was lighter now, but no sign of the ball. “If it happens to get to town—any town, for that matter—it’ll be falling from about ten or twenty miles. Or forty.”