“Maybe it’ll go high enough first so that it’ll burn. Like a meteor.”

“No chance,” I said. “Built-in cooling system, remember?”

Farnsworth formed his mouth into an “Oh” and exactly at that moment there was a resounding thump and I saw the ball hit in a field, maybe twenty yards from the edge of the road, and take off again. This time it didn’t seem to double its velocity, and I figured the ground was soft enough to hold it back—but it wasn’t slowing down either, not with a bounce factor of better than two to one.

***

Without watching for it to go up, I drove as quickly as I could off the road and over—carrying part of a wire fence with me—to where it had hit. There was no mistaking it; there was a depression about three feet deep, like a small crater.

I jumped out of the car and stared up. It took me a few seconds to spot it, over my head. One side caught by the pale and slanting morning sunlight, it was only a bright diminishing speck.

The car motor was running and I waited until the ball disappeared for a moment and then reappeared. I watched for another couple of seconds until I felt I could make a decent guess on its direction, shouted at Farnsworth to get out of the car—it had just occurred to me that there was no use risking his life, too—dove in and drove a hundred yards or so to the spot I had anticipated.

I stuck my head out the window and up. The ball was the size of an egg now. I adjusted the car’s position, jumped out and ran for my life.

It hit instantly after—about sixty feet from the car. And at the same time, it occurred to me that what I was trying to do was completely impossible. Better to hope that the ball hit a pond, or bounced out to sea, or landed in a sand dune. All we could do would be to follow, and if it ever was damped down enough, grab it.

It had hit soft ground and didn’t double its height that time, but it had still gone higher. It was out of sight for almost a lifelong minute.

And then—incredibly rotten luck—it came down, with an ear-shattering thwack, on the concrete highway again. I had seen it hit, and instantly afterward I saw a crack as wide as a finger open along the entire width of the road. And the ball had flown back up like a rocket.

My God, I was thinking, now it means business. And on the next bounce…