The Project Gutenberg EBook of Wait for Weight, by Jack McKenty

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Title: Wait for Weight

Author: Jack McKenty

Illustrator: Don Sibley

Release Date: June 6, 2010 [EBook #32717]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Wait for Weight

By JACK McKENTY

_Sometimes the best incentive is to tell a man that success
will throw him out of a job!_

Illustrated by SIBLEY

When Dr. Allport Brinton's alarm clock sounded, it brought madness. It
was very clever; it not only rang chimes of amazing penetrating power,
it turned on all the lights in the room, closed the window, and started
his bath water running. But this morning it was not appreciated. In
fact, as Dr. Brinton got out of bed, he silently called down evil on
the technician who had built it for him.

[Illustration]

The "off" switch was on the wall farthest away from his bed and was
controlled by a hairtrigger combination dial that couldn't be operated
by anyone not fully awake. Dr. Brinton fumbled for a while, then gave
up and started looking for his bedroom slippers. They had apparently
crawled away during the night.

He padded into his bathroom barefoot. He was about to see what a hot
bath would do for what he had already diagnosed as a histamine headache
when the alarm clock, having decided that anyone who could sleep
through ten minutes of chiming was unwakable, stopped chiming, turned
off the lights, opened the window, and let all the water out.

Dr. Brinton was walking back toward the light switch when he tripped on
his bedroom slippers and fell back into bed. No further invitation was
necessary; he slept till noon.

Dr. Brinton unmistakably had a hangover. Considering the party he had
attended the night before, it was not surprising. Actually, it was
remarkable that he had been able to get out of bed at all. During the
fourteen years that the Rocket Research Station had been in operation,
the parties that were held every time another test flight resulted in
failure had grown f