Finally, the man in the dark green smoking jacket, who had not bothered to give him more than a couple glances while he worked at mathematical calculations, broke the silence once again. "Cat nipped his wings," the man said without looking up from work on his latest Mersenne prime. "I'll never take my niece and her favorite Manx together in the balloon again. For the sake of the bird, Icarus my honorable colleague, I had to parachute both niece and her feline down, sorry to say. I like cats awfully, however, as you may have noticed when you broke in. It wasn't easy, but some things just have to be done in this world if genuine research is to go on."

Pieter swallowed. He could see he might be wrong. The Jack Dutch man with the toy collection had an unmistakable serious edge to him. But the scientist said no more and made no move to introduce himself or at least say Pieter might come back the following day for an interview. Moments ticked by on the elaborate pink and gold Bavarian cuckoo clock on the wall and Pieter was left to just stand there and feel like the fool he must have looked.

Realizing his coming was hopeless, Pieter straightened his wooden limbs. This was no place for a plain Dutch fellow anyway! He started for the door, then turned slowly around, though he could not have explained why. It was the picture on the wall behind the professor's desk. He had seen it too. There was a good reason why this item should have stopped Pieter from walking away. Amidst the Jack Dutch clutter and ruin and soiled splendor, a gilt-framed oil portrait Pieter did not recognize bore a gold name plate identifying a man with a true Dutch name. "Jacobus Hendricus van't Hoff, Nobel Prize for Chemistry, December 10, ANNO 1901," the whole inscription read.

Pieter, with his little education, could just make it out. But what was unusual to Pieter was not the distinguished, old man or his award, which signified nothing to him, but the thing under van't Hoff. A wicker wheelchair! For Pieter, that was what he needed, for one last try. He felt yet another surge within. He quickly figured that if the man in the picture could be crippled and win a place of honor above the professor's desk, then perhaps he could get the ear of the strange man at the strange desk.

The man's head bobbed. As if surprised by the sudden little declamation, the scientist looked up sharply. He darted a look at Pieter above very dusty, water-spotted, round-rimmed spectacles. Then he looked even harder at Pieter. He took some time doing it too, and Pieter began to feel uncomfortable in a way the strange items all about had not made him feel. But there were some other things maybe not so visible but still present at that moment that made him feel even more uneasy. The canal. The mill. The fog--which poured like a huge, coiling serpent around his ankles.

As the professor gave him the probe with analytical eyes, the staunch Dutch courage and faith in human goodness that had got poor Pieter all the way from the gristmill to the Royal Wilhelmina began to sputter.

"What have I gotten myself into here?" he had to wonder once again. Then he did something rash and foolish. He blurted out what was on his heart. "I'll...I swear I'll throw myself in the river or a canal before I have to go back to the mill or beg on the streets with the grauw!" His own words shocked Pieter, even more now than when he had confronted the doorman. He couldn't help it and stumbled on. "All I've got, I got the hard way since I lost my legs. But I can still do any job fit for a good Dutch man!"

There was no more sound in the room. No scratching of a pen, not even the pecking of the fat, pampered swallow at its overflowing seed tray. It was a horrible moment for Pieter. He thought he must have turned green, he felt so odd and out of place.

The disheveled man with the cool, gray eyes looked Pieter over again and didn't miss the makeshift legs and crutches and carpet bag. He stroked his chin, his manner saying nothing to reassure Pieter. The playboy-professor, the scientist-gamester, glanced to the portrait on the wall that had caught Pieter's attention. He then faced Pieter. His eyes became full of interest. He pushed a paper toward Pieter he had already signed and dated January 8.

Pieter stared at it dumbly and the professor smiled. "To get in to see me was a real feat, for I left strict instructions at the door. I admire your faith in pressing toward the goal, my boy, but I think I do no disrespect when I say sheer determination is beside the point here. It's no game, like those who see in the next room.

This position I'm offering involves extremely hazardous duty. Do you think I, or God Almighty, should be made responsible where you should be? Well, do you? Read this contract carefully. I've lost five or six assistants already from accidents that are unavoidable in my line of work. The contract's good for a year. Afterwards, it can be renewed, if you survive and I like your work. Be forewarned, lad. My last assistant is, you may as well know, alive still, but he is presently tramping the streets with the grauw, for two good reasons. First, he paid too much attention to my niece's excellent lunches.

He grew so large my excellent balloons refused to carry him. Then he developed into an Enrico Casanova and paid unwanted attention to my excellent niece. That, for me, was the last straw. She complained to me after he proposed marriage several times in the balloon shed. But, then, I don't suppose there is any danger of a repeat of his follies in your condition? And, by the way, I think my carpenters in the balloon shed can fix you up with a decent wood leg-brace or two that should enable you to dispense with at least one crutch."

The long speech gave Pieter time to recover a bit. It dawned on him what the paper signified. Amazement and relief must have shown in his features. "I can't believe he's giving me work!" Pieter thought in the rush of comprehension, though he had a secret feeling that he deserved it.

Now that the job was in the bag, his good fortune seemed impossible to a plain Dutch youth.

"Let Sir Spectacles look me over all he wants! Landing a job in this big of a city is too good to be true!" thought the desperate refugee from little Alkmaar's gristmill. “I must have done something good for this to happen,” he reflected, without realizing any contradiction.

With a jolt, he remembered the professor had already ordered him to look at the contract. Pieter made a dive at the paper . His heart soared within him, an eagle against the wind. He took the pen offered and scribbled without looking at the paper's print.

The scientist slowly shook his odd, Coney-hatted head. "Boy Friday, you are signing over your foolish, young life a little too precipitately."

But he broke into a laugh and added "--and you don't want to read WHAT FOR?"

Overjoyed as he was, Pieter's cheeks reddened. He darted another look of Dutch determination at his new employer. But there was an added element--which had seen the doorman fleeing. He felt called to give a speech of sorts. "I don't have much schoolin' maybe, but I can write my own name. I worked in a mill since I was twelve. And I can make decisions on my own, now that both my parents be passed on. I want work you promised in the paper--that be all I need to know, Meinheer."

It was a good defense too, evidently serving the purpose. For the scientist, toy merchant, rich eccentric--whatever he was, his laughter gone, played a bit with the ends of his mustache. He was somewhat annoyed by the prospective employee’s hardness of eye. Then he smiled with approval, and the smile was so infectious and reassuring to Pieter he forgot he was dealing with an absolute stranger and had just signed his life over to him to boot.

"Enough English twaddle from you and me! There's work waiting to be done! I think you'll do just fine, young fellow. Oh, one more thing, what religion are you? In my line of work, we go out in all weathers and on every day left in the week--including the Sabbath."

"Reformed, Meinheer."

"Yes, I gathered that much from the looks of you, but which Dutch Reformed church body--there are three, so they tell me--a lapsed member though not entirely unbelieving and unwashed. Now is it the D.R.C., or the R.D.C., or the C.OR.D.? The government requires a strict accounting of these things, you know."

Pieter had never heard of three church bodies. Why should he have? New Alkmaar had one church, and he had always supposed it to be Dutch Reformed, pure and simple. Having attended so very little, he had no idea there were two other Dutch Churches in the country. It came as something of a revelation, but one which he needed to think long upon, lest he fall in heresy by choosing the wrong division.

"Oh, never mind!" laughed the professor. "We don't have time to waste on it. The third sacred body is the more liberal and allows for hauling out mules from wells on the Sabbath, which gets us around the laws against any business and scientific activity on that day. I took the precaution of legally registering my ballooning and other endeavors as a non-profit engineering business set up for Mule Search and Rescue. Of course, I've never found occasion to actually rescue a mule at 16,000 feet either above or below sea level, but I'm legally empowered and authorized to do it."

The registered mule-rescue engineer then took a final glance at the portrait on the wall before punching a button on his desk. This gave Pieter a chance to swallow hard, now that he was getting his feet back on the ground. He realized the job was still for real--despite the professor's odd remarks about religion and mules.

"Now where was I before you came in? Oh, yes, do sit down and eat lunch!" his employer ordered.

He motioned to covered dishes on a nearby stand. "I'm busy with some important work--a jolly good prime-- and don't have time to waste on food just now, and my niece will be very, very angry if it gets cold and goes uneaten again. So please eat it all while it's still hot!"

In a daze over how quickly his life had altered, Pieter sank down on a chair beside the wonderful aromas. He lifted a napkin over a basket and found the largest loaf of white bread he had ever seen. But that was only the beginning, as he lifted a series of smaller silver lids. It was his first decent hot meal since his father was crushed by the boiler on the barge. Never had he eaten this much and well in New Alkmaar. While he was thanking his lucky stars for the job and making up for lost time on pure white bread, hot chowders, chicken dumplings, oysters, coffee and fresh fruit, his employer gave a deep snort of disgust and stopped writing. Someone was knocking at the inner door.

Motioning to Pieter to keep on eating, Dr. Pikkard went and gave a message to the red and gold jacketed hotel courier.

Pieter thought the scientist moved rather awkwardly, favoring the right leg. He looked closer when his employer returned, and he saw how his leg terminated in a special, tall patent leather shoe strapped to his calf.

The professor had a sharp eye. He caught Pieter's glance. But still he didn't wince with annoyance or embarrassment, only shrugged. "A South American jaguar--a blessed female," he explained. "She took the foot off after I gave her a good kick in the rump for raiding my jungle aviary of rare birds." Pieter was still stuffing himself as only someone his age and with his background could, but he noted something. The gentleman had commented most matter-of-factly about an accident most people would have taken as a terrible tragedy, as the end of their usefulness and value as human beings.

"I don't want that monstrous chocolate-strawberry torte either, young fellow. When you think you've had enough, go in the room off the bedroom to my right and take a look at the pretty rug on the floor."

As soon as his ferocious, long suppressed appetite let go, Pieter went as directed to a room beyond a massive, oak-bedded chamber stuffed, floor to ceiling, with chemicals and chemistry laboratory gear--proof the professor did real scientific work when he wasn’t playing games.

Treading a perilous path between bottles and vials of strangely colored mixtures, he got to the next room. He found it very large and fitted with a luxurious Roman bath, not big enough to float a barge perhaps, but large enough to drown an ox, or Horst Van Syckle--if either were first knocked hard enough in the head. Pieter also found the water running in a big marble wash basin. A fantastically ornate, gold dolphin spigot was pouring out hot water full blast. Some careless person, obviously, had left it on.

Job or no job, Pieter was again scandalized almost as much as by the sparrow in the gilded cage.

"How could someone do such a thing? I would never leave good clean water running like this!" he thought, shaking his blond head. He, after all, had grown up in a household without hot running water. They had to heat bath water on the stove, and then carry it to the tub--naturally, there was only a couple inches at best to bathe in, and that amount quickly cooled.

Pieter's eye fell on something else. On the tiled floor was a rug. No, it was a pelt of some animal. Eyes widening, he looked long at it. Silently snarling at him, its eyes glaring with fury--it actually gave him a cold sweat.

"My sweet little niece dispatched it," said his employer when Pieter found his way back through the jungle like tangle of scientific gear. He seemed to be amused by his new assistant’s look of disbelief. "Otherwise, my boy, I should not be around to tell about it."

Dr. August Pikkard and Pieter van de Wordt. Except for handicaps, they had little or nothing in common as scientific researchers. One couldn't be more Jack Dutch, by appearances. The other less plain Dutch. One constantly left the hot water taps running. One would never dream of it. Yet it was the beginning.

"Allow me to explain one thing about myself," Dr. Pikkard began with his employee, when he had been settled in a chair.

Pieter looked toward him expectantly, as if eager to learn some new thing.

"Since we’re going to work together, you might well take note of a few oddities about me. I don't do things like other people do them--purposely. I don't think like them either. And you'll soon find that I firmly believe, contrary to public opinion, that this whole society is going to Meinheer Bosch’s hell on a bubble-domed toboggan sled! Is that understood?"

Naturally, Pieter just stared and had no idea whatsoever what the good man meant. His remarks were one piece with the rest of the strange and incomprehensible office scenery.

"My niece will be coming in a minute," said the professor the following noon. "She's in deep, deep mourning for her departed mother, so don't expect much out of her. She's all glum looks and tears these days. It’ll spoil her looks if she keeps on--but you know these Dutch women. They’re mad about showing proper respect for the departed."

The door swung open as if it had been kicked. It nearly crashed against a Ming vase, and a less than demure girl pranced in, a lyric from the latest musical comedy hit on her lips.

The professor seemed to give no heed as he sat working at his desk, scribbling on paper. "Why, I even have to see that the old fool's head and mustache are trimmed!" she said. "For a genius you’ll soon find he's quite a magnificent dope in ordinary matters!"

As Pieter saw it, the professor was intellectually engrossed in other, larger issues and didn't notice what was being said about him. Just the same he burned with terrible embarrassment for the professor, until he learned to take her remarks as casually as she produced them.

Until then, it was Dr. Pikkard and Pieter van de Wordt and Anne Kilpaison, whether Pieter liked it or not.

Dr. Pikkard looked up from his primes one day and noticed Pieter’s glance. He rose and pulled out another specimen. With two set side by side, he pointed out the large rings on one and the very narrow rings on the opposite. “I have over 900 specimens, sawn and drilled, taken from all over the country and stored somewhere, but these will do nicely for our little inquiry. Now what has caused them to grow so divergently?” he asked Pieter, two penetrating gleams darting at him over his spectacles.

Pieter thought he could tell, having lived in a rural town and so near the forests, but he was hesitant to tread the solemn, ivied halls of science, so the professor prodded him.

“The one on the left dates from the year 2170. The other dates before 2170. You see the tremendous contrast in the sizes of their rings. Why, the “from ones” look almost tropical, they’re nearly ringless they grow so fast. What could have done it?”

“Good rains made the rings on the tree grow faster,” Pieter finally ventured. “The one on the left didn’t get enough water.

Dr. Pikkard smiled gently. “Good try. I too thought that might be the cause when I first started looking at such specimens. But I soon found I was wrong, after examining dozens of other specimens, the channels of creek and river beds in the area, and other tell-tale signs of changing rainfall patterns. Eventually, I put my findings all together in a strip-calendar by which I use to date specimens. Well, the cause could have been drought before 2170, only I found the rainfall was ample and there was no significant drop in precipitation. It could have been insect blight--except the rings did not show anything unusual in that respect. That left heavy cone production. But the question follows: why did all the trees go into excessive cone production just before 2170. 2170 and on the trees exploded in numbers, it appears.”

Dr. Pikkard paced the floor, stirred up by the question. The same had once repeatedly pulled him away from the comfortable life of the Wilhelmina to forests stretching over thousands of miles of land, land he had found was formerly highly populated and filled with huge cities and productive farms producing wheat and a beautiful, golden-kerneled corn.

He stopped abruptly, giving the tree rings a whack with a pointing stick before turning back to Pieter with sharp glance . “I will tell you what I concluded! The two tree ring segments are evidence of a complete reversal in climate and nature, which might have begun even before the fatal year of 2170! But what caused the forests to explode back across vast territories in so short a time? My boy, we’ve got to find out! The explosion is still going on--we simply can’t cut and burn trees fast enough and our cities and towns, ever declining in population, will be covered in less than another generation. Strangely enough, no one believes me, though super-abundant evidence stands and grows right in front of us, in the cold light of day! But come with me, we needn’t rely wholly on sense data which human stupidity and tight-minded prejudice can contradict. Dendrochronology, a wonderful new science created by an astronomer-monk named Douglass around ANNO 1900, has given us a most valuable and accurate history of Earth’s weather going back centuries. We can use his same techniques to study the centuries after him as well! That’s exactly what I’ve done. Now let me show you the incredible results of my research!”

Grabbing a box of bright yellow chalk and taking Pieter out into the hall, Dr. Pikkard started writing on the red brocaded wall a number from memory. The professor did not seem to mind several aristocratic, fat, English ladies passing by, staring at him through lorgnettes as if he were a prize specimen of madness.

“This is the number of trees before 2170 in North America,” he eagerly began as he examined his figures. “This is the number after that catastrophic year. Please note this is the rate of increase in the number of trees from 2170 and afterward. Compare that rate with our birth rate, which is...”

He turned around to see how Pieter was taking the information. Noticing that Pieter's eyes were glazed over, he sighed, dropped the chalk and went back to his primes. He had albums of collected daguerreotypes from a copper-plate process showing New Amsterdam over a hundred year period.

He wanted Pieter to see how the city had once been much larger and populous and the forests miles away from the city limits.

Obvious to him, Pieter first needed to be “primed” if he was to appreciate science and what it had to say about the world’s condition.

If he wasn't going to be given any real work, and he could just spend his time looking at books, what was he to do with all the hours? But at least he could spend the time eating and going through the books on mathematics the professor handed him. Putting on needed weight, he ate the wonderful lunches Anne brought up every day from the kitchen and studied beside the gigantic volume of discovered primes the mathematical and game-loving Dr. Pikkard was compiling. It must have stood six or seven feet high on the floor beside his desk--obviously the world’s biggest book.

Work on the gargantuan “prime-a-copia” went on and on. Pieter came to "work" everyday as usual and, when not eating and studying, made himself "useful" by cleaning the bird's cage and tidying up the rooms as best he could in the incredible clutter of expensive collectibles. Surprising both himself and the professor, he also made good progress in mathematics, so that he opened a copy of Van Euclid's Geometry and with coaching by the professor started working through it with a skill that had to please his mathematics-obsessed employer.

Adding variety to the mathematical “work” schedule, at least once a week Anne varied her routine and dove at the professor with a pair of scissors and forced his flying locks and mustaches back to a semblance of a civilized Dutch gentleman's.

Still wondering if he would ever do any real work, Pieter asked Anne one time when the professor left the suite for a few minutes. He had gone to see some newly purchased museum works of art--mostly oil paintings and game sets--dropped off in the lobby by mistake. Anne smiled and let her eyes rove over him for a moment before she answered. "I think he's just letting you get used to him first, before he plunges you over your head in deep water! He’s learned to do it that way ever since drowning quite a few assistants before you."

The professor and Pieter hurried to the docks for the balloon and bathyscaph shipment. Starting a new career is not always a sure thing as Pieter soon found out--particularly when it had to do with balloons. Pieter discovered a strange feeling in his stomach as soon as the balloon lifted off from the launch site at New Amsterdam on an usually fine though brisk day in early spring.

A big and sweet pink pill or two or a drop of Van Kuiper’s All-Purpose Snake Oil for Gustatory Complaints might have solved Pieter's indisposition on the ground. In the air it was soon uncomfortable enough to threaten to end his ballooning and ground him indefinitely, even before it had really begun.

It was an easy thing to fly equipped with fuel, first-aid kit, navigation charts, protective clothing, and food enough to last the outing, but keeping that air-borne meal down presented the greatest challenge Pieter had yet faced on his new job.

The first time up a little breeze rocked the gondola and from then on Pieter was clutching his midriff. Dr. Pikkard, of course, had an iron-cast constitution. He could, he said, eat a full-course dinner upside down hanging in a stalled Ferris Wheel. He claimed he had not once experienced having trouble that way and said so a number of times.

His previous assistant, on the contrary, had made a poor balloonist because of his touchy digestive tract, or tendency toward developing "mal de mer." Dr. Pikkard had been forced to go to the trouble to make room for a weighty book that was the authority in Dutch home remedies--Doctor Winkelhorst's Pharmacopoeia, or 1,001 Science Tips for Perfect Dutch Health and Hygiene.

The professor then looked around in the gondola's gear bags and, with a shout of 'Eureka!' fished out a book along with some sure-fire cures. "This will fix you up!" he said, handing the green Pieter a jar of pickled onions. Pieter took one, somehow slipped it down, and was suddenly much worse for following the first of Winkelhorst's "scientifically-demonstrated cures."

He groaned and hung dangerously to the side of the gondola until he was thoroughly relieved of the pickled onion.

"Okay, my boy, Winkelhorst and I evidently miscalculated on that. So take a little of this. I never got to try it on your unfortunate predecessor, what's his name?"

Gagging down a packet of dry, powdered charcoal, Pieter chased it with a sip of ordinary water in order to stop a violent coughing seizure. A moment later, he disappointed the nurse again by upchucking the chunks of charcoal.

"You ARE a hard case," acknowledged the professor, his hand rubbing his chin. He rummaged in the first-aid kit once again. A big grin on his face, he grabbed Pieter's swimming head and gave him a liberal dose of raw egg and brandy from a Delft container. Perhaps it had been there too long. Winkelhorst had assured Dr. Pikkard it would last indefinitely because of the pickling agent of excellent high proof brandy.

The basket pitched with the least movement and again Pieter threw himself against the side. He gave a most violent heave before he was rid of the latest cure. After that, it was a chew of ginger, which left Pieter none the worse, but certainly not improved.

Groaning, wondering if his ballooning days were over, Pieter had almost despaired of Winkelhorst when the professor, at the end of his stock of remedies and nostrums, fished out some stewed tomatoes and a can of sardines. "There are two ways to take them. First, if I remember rightly, you're supposed to mix the two together and coat your mouth and tongue with the thick paste, not swallowing and keeping it there for an hour--"

Pieter's greenish eyes rolled violently upwards in their sockets. He made to lunge back to the gunwales to retch like he had never retch before, but the professor caught him.

The professor held his fingers for luck as Pieter ate one stewed tomato. Dr. Pikkard held out the sardines. "According to the good Doctor Winkelhorst, you chase it with these, or it will never work.

Pieter took one, but he immediately came to grief with it. The sardine flew earthward, rewarding some hungry, cruising gull.

Pieter went back to unchased tomatoes, and minutes passed. The gull circled once, twice, then left them in peace. Dr. Pikkard slapped the youth on his back, who managed a queasy smile. Already color was returning to his cheeks.

"We've done it!" the professor cheered. "By the white horse of St. George, we've hit the prime on the head! From now on we carry plenty of stewed tomatoes. They're Anne's specialty, some recipe of her grandmother's, by the way. You'll have to tell her they worked. I never could abide tomatoes, stewed or raw or put in pie, so she'll be pleased they saved the day for you."

The balloon, with the recovering Pieter stuffed with Anne's tomatoes, continued more merrily on its way. Now the two could continue researching together. The ugly, toothy snout of the gristmill sank momentarily back out of sight.

"Where, after all, is the proof that we have declined and not progressed?" the professor queried Pieter one day on the matter. "Well, getting and assembling that proof is exactly our business, my boy! We'll certainly not find it in any books! All the authorities oppose me and take your position. They seem to think we’re living in a second Eden just because it’s Dutch!"

Pieter, naturally, did not know what the professor was talking about. Decline? No! Things had always been hard for the Dutch in America! That was just life. Things weren't really going backward. After all, the infamous Treaty of Westminister, imposed on the Dutch by the English seven centuries before, had been reversed, and America redeemed by the people best fitted for the job--Netherlanders! Every Dutch boy had been taught that by the first or second grade.

But the professor knew better than his pupil. Recent Dutch-English wars of the 23rd and into the 24th Century had not helped, no matter what Wooden-Head thought. Newly built lending libraries, re-commissioned as munitions storage and temporary forts, suffered accordingly, and Dark Ages apparently no one but he, Dr. Pikkard, would acknowledge or recognize drew near. But there was something equally disturbing that may or may not have been caused by the same thing that crumpled, mutilated, and otherwise ruined man-made things.

Only Dr. Pikkard knew from his researches that the planet's rotation had speeded up in the last two hundred years. Earth had lost one whole day! And the days were shorter--something, again, only he knew and was not afraid to face. The day had lost seven hours, and though the process had seemingly stabilized after four hundred years, he worried how long it would last.

What was causing such tremendous havoc? Why so many earthquakes in the past couple hundred years? And where would it end? He had committed his life and every penny of his fortune to finding out. If only he could pass on his findings! Poor Pieter! He was proving a difficult heir.

By this time Denver, despite the enormous, world-class dome, was only a tired and very dusty village of less than five hundred people. Hired nags took them and their gear to a launching site on a peak ominously called Merryweather's Downfall. They arrived at the "launch field", a wide but rock-studded plat of mountain meadow, in the early morning.

Pieter soon found there was nothing particular merry about the local climate. As if distracted by more important things on his mind, the professor, despite some warning blasts, did not seem to notice the wind. They continued preparations while Pieter kept looking about, a crease of concern deepening in his forehead. Working hard with big draught horses, at last the balloon was laid out. They began the long process of heating the air for inflation as Pieter hauled on the crown line attached to the top of the 80-foot envelope. Staked to the ground, the balloon, after several hours, plumped out and showed its bright colors against a gusty, light blue sky that was getting lighter blue all the time. It was now late afternoon of that day in late spring. Pieter was not exactly happy when the professor, normally quite cautious about such things, decided to go for it.

Feeling something like lead sink in his heart, he quit biting his nails and hurried to get the balloon aloft as ordered. Towering higher than many a building in New Amsterdam, the balloon soon dispelled his misgivings. Even a plain Dutch boy was captivated by the sheer beauty of something so colorful straining to fly free of all lines and anchors.

The professor, taking a string and securing his straw hat which had blown off the moment before, hopped in the wicker gondola. Pieter was last to get in, dragging his feet as if he couldn’t leave terra firma without a decent struggle. Without waiting, the balloon lifted off, following the breeze.

As the earth grew smaller to their eyes, the professor turned his attention to his instruments. He began furiously checking results and findings in his notebook. Meanwhile, Pieter, to gain altitude, pulled the lanyard attached to the burner valve. Flames erupted from the gas line into the balloon's mouth, and they rose ever higher.

Dr. Pikkard, between "burns," explained to Pieter the use of the fuel gauges, the variometer registering rise or fall, and their rate. Since they were new and thus highly susceptible to the English disease, a box of spare parts was essential gear on board, and the parts were a very odd assortment. A temperature gauge had lost its dial, so Dr. Pikkard had fixed a tinpot whistle which could alert Pieter when it was time to turn the burner on or off.

Dr. Pikkard slapped Pieter on the back. “Well, my boy, that’s all there’s to it. See how simple it is? That’s why I favor the balloon over the aeroplane, for it takes much less manual control or constant surveillance of the instruments, freeing me to do my observations.”

Flying along in the high Rockies with nothing but an eagle or two as companions, Pieter and the professor were minding their ballooning when, after an hour, the breeze increased to a definite red flag.

Pieter glanced with meaning at the professor, who caught the glance and did not look straight back down to his computations. They both knew that if they did not want to be blown straight to China, it was time to call it a day and spend the night in the basket on the ground. Holding his hat to his head, the professor ordered Pieter to take her down. Letting the temperature drop, the balloon went with it, and soon the professor spotted a spot between peaks. It wasn't much of a landing field, Pieter saw at once. Huge rocks jutted out on which they could come to grief in an instant. It would take an expert to slip through them to the little level ground just beyond.

"Yes! I see them plainly, my boy!" shouted the professor. He gave Pieter a reassuring slap on his shoulders. "Seeing the problem is half the solution! And I've been in far worse pickles."

Pieter closed his eyes, muttering something between a curse or a prayer. "Watch your young head!" laughed the professor, it seemed a bit nervously, as they swung crazily toward the two monoliths. "Their names are most quaint. That charmer with big white teeth is, according to my ballooning map, called Jack the Ripper," he said pointing to the right. "And the other is called Mae Van West, possibly an allusion to the ship-swallowing maelstrom of ancient Dutch mythology. But to rip us to pieces, they'll first have to catch their prey!"

"And Anne could hardly hold her horses, wanting to come along with us!" Pieter swore beneath his breath as they careened straight at the first balloon-gobbling rock. “She could have my place, if I had anything to say!”

Winds swirling with a roar and high-pitched screeches changed their direction. The balloon swept rapidly away from the looming Jack, but next threatened to pound them to pieces on the equally horrid Mae. The balloon-o-nauts were holding as hard as they could to leather grips inside the gondola when they hit the Mae, or, rather, she walloped them. Tumbling along the rock face of the monolithic rock, the fabric also caught on an outcropping--and Pieter's heart froze. A badly torn balloon would dump them, just beyond the meadow's edge, into a two thousand foot deep chasm.

Somehow they slipped off Mae without major damage. They were still alive! All they sustained was a bad fright as they drifted beyond the two killers to a landing.

"Well, I guess we'll spend the night here," remarked the professor breezily as they prepared for immediate landing in the meadow. For the master balloonist, brushes with destruction were all in a day's work. He went to replace his hat, then, testing the wind, decided against it and let his hair blow free. They were very low by now. The ground came up rough and mean toward the gondola. In fact, never had innocent, sweet wildflowers looked so menacing, so lethal Pieter, at a glance, saw they were not quite out of harm's way after all, and Mae must have thrown a backhanded curse.

The moment the gondola touched earth, plowing into rocks and alpine flowers, the jolting threw them both so violently Dr. Pikkard, his hat, pencil and notebook sailing with him, was flipped and thrown past Pieter out on the ground. Sliding and plowing along, the pitching gondola tried to throw Pieter too, but a stubborn Dutch streak wasn't about to let anything do that to him. He might break his neck or, worse, what remained of his legs, he thought. He hung on for dear life, uprooted wildflowers and dirt striking his face and getting in his mouth and eyes. The balloon and basket continued toward the edge of the meadow and the abyss. Dr. Pikkard, his teardrop glasses hanging from one ear, got up dazedly, shouted and started to run after it. A moment or two later the surprised and sputtering Pieter sailed free over the cliff. He was alone in the sky, gazing back down at the receding face of his employer.

"You're really in no danger, my boy! Just do what I taught you!" Dr. Pikkard called with all his lung power, just before Pieter passed from earshot. "Be sure and pull the vent line, not the--"

Half-blinded with a mass of dirt and flowers on his head, Pieter was in no condition at first to follow any instructions. Giving his head a furious shake, he got rid of the worst and was able to see again. The scene took his breath away. He looked out at peak after peak, thousands of them, from his eagle's aerie. At first his view was so stunning he almost forgot the real "pickle" the professor had put him in.

Without a sound, the balloon raced through the sky toward the tallest of the balloon-crunchers. The sight was so beautiful, Pieter was given the impression he could come to no harm, but as he gained on the peaks the impression died away to another, which was just the opposite--he was sure to come to harm!His hand steady on the blast valve, he waited and then shot a 12-foot flame into the balloon. She barely and agonizingly cleared the ugliest of the brutes that poked at him like a mad barber brandishing drawn razors at a non-paying customer.

Beyond lay vast meadows again, slopes of a colossus of unknown name. There he hoped to find his way safely to ground, if he could pitch into the right valley or mountain meadow. But no such luck! He was going too fast and sailed right by. The dying light threw a reddish glory against the next peaks where he hoped a landing-field could be found. The first peak came up fast, and Pieter had to think fast as he readied the balloon for "descent."

This time he pulled what he believed was the vent line when he saw what he thought fairly level ground flying toward him. Not knowing it was really the rip cord, he sent the balloon plummeting. It fell so fast that Pieter did not have time to realize his mistake. The gondola dropped like a stone, fabric whirling sickeningly like sodden laundry tangled up in clotheslines. It was the worst jam Pieter had been in since his tangle with the mill's drive shaft. Down he fell, then stopped with a jolt that made him bite his tongue. Caught on a rock that jutted out over the "landing-field"--actually a series of New Amsterdam-sized crevasses which could have swallowed him more times than he could count--the balloon held.

But for how long? The hapless balloon-o-naut swung in the breeze among the curious eagles and hawks, praying the balloon skin would hold until Dr. Pikkard could reach him with a rope.

Pieter still had no idea what had gone wrong. He went through the landing procedures in his mind. Since he had hours to think about his actions, he slowly realized he was at fault. He had pulled rip, not vent. Then he did a strange thing. The moment he faced the inescapable conclusion, he put the mistake out of mind as though he had never made it--which was odd considering how he could not forget when it was someone else's.

The balloon was soon repaired. The damage was, despite the hair-raising and tongue-biting experience Pieter received, surprisingly minimal. On their way again, they had no more trouble. At over 11,000 feet, floating above the mountains of North Brabant westward toward Reno, Pieter, swathed in blankets, had the best view of anyone on Earth. Dr. Pikkard, his straw boater tied to his head, used various instruments and then took copious notes with a pencil frosted white with his breath.

Every chance he had, he was attempting to determine if the planet's rotation had begun to speed up again--or, on the other hand, had it slowed? It was a very sensitive subject for him, since he guessed but had not been able to prove that the stabilization was only temporary and that it could go either way at any time.

"What is that bright light over there? Is it a star or comet?" Pieter asked, forgetting he should not interrupt the professor at his calculations. “And that dark streak, what is that?”

The professor looked up somewhat irritably from his frosty calculations and glanced briefly at the two spots where Pieter was pointing. "I don't know. And I don't have time right now to look it up in my star charts. Maybe later when I finish with this, if you don't mind!

Pieter continued to look at the light, which had grown somewhat in size while he was observing it. As it didn't seem to change size any more, he lost interest after a while and went to looking at other parts of the heavens for his old favorite among the constellations--the Prow of Argo.