The Project Gutenberg EBook of All That Goes Up, by Kirby Brooks

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

Title: All That Goes Up

Author: Kirby Brooks

Illustrator: Smith

Release Date: June 10, 2010 [EBook #32765]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ALL THAT GOES UP ***

Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Greg Weeks, and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

Transcriber's Note:

This etext was produced from Space Science Fiction May 1953. Extensive
research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this
publication was renewed.

all that goes up

BY KIRBY BROOKS

ILLUSTRATED BY SMITH

At fifty, a man should be too old to go around flying off
the handle, or wandering around on the ceiling. But what
could a man do when he had a son who insisted on being a
genius?

* * * * *

For a man my age, the middle 50's, life has a number of compensations.
There're children--we have two; there's a good wife, and I'm certainly
blessed in that respect with Mary; and there's the joy of coming home,
slipping on my slippers, having a good dinner, then relaxing with
coffee and a pipe. There's no compensation for being plastered to the
ceiling. But, more of that later.

The after dinner coffee with a dash of rum in it, tasted very good,
and so did the pipe. The meal was satisfying too. Thank goodness for
that meal, because it was the last decent one I've had for quite some
time. Oh, I've eaten all right, but you'd have to stretch your
imagination to call any of it a meal. Can you picture eating food that
keeps trying to move away from your face? That is, if you can keep the
plate from moving away too?

As I say, Mary and I had just finished dinner, when Jim, our
22-year-old gangly son, who's home on summer vacation from MIT, called
me.

"Can you come here a minute, Dad?"

"Sure," I said, heading down the hall to his combination laboratory,
dark room, aviary, and just plain bedroom. Fortunately it was a big
room so