The Practice Effect Read Free

to the stars! Dennis’s personal resentment had disappeared. He was genuinely thrilled by Flaster’s accomplishment.
    The Director rose and returned to the coffee urn for a refill. “There’s only one problem,” he said nonchalantly, his back to the younger man.
    Dennis looked up, his thoughts still spinning. “Sir? A problem?”
    “Well, yes.” Flaster turned around, stirring his coffee. “Actually, it has to do with the zievatron itself.”
    Dennis frowned.
    “What about the zievatron?”
    Flaster raised his demitasse with two fingers. “Well,” he sighed between sips. “It seems we can’t get the darned thing to work anymore.”
3
    Flaster wasn’t kidding. The zievatron was busted.
    After most of a day spent poking through the guts of the machine, Dennis was still getting used to the changes that had been made in Laboratory One since his banishment.
    The main generators were the same, as were the old reality probes he and Dr. Guinasso had laboriously handtuned back in the early days. Flaster and Brady hadn’t dared tamper with those.
    But they had brought in so much new equipment that even the cavernous main lab was almost filled to bursting. There were enough electrophoresis columns, for instance, to analyze a Bordeaux bouillabaisse.
    The zievatron itself took up most of the chamber. White-coated technicians moved across catwalks along its broad face, making adjustments.
    Most of the techs had come down to greet Dennis when he came in. They were obviously relieved to have him back. The backslapping reunion had kept him away from his beloved machine for almost an hour and had irritated the hell out of Bernald Brady.
    When, finally, Dennis had been able to get to work, he concentrated on the two huge reality probes. Where they met, deep within the machine, there was a spot in space that was neither exactly here nor quite elsewhere. The anomalous point could be flipped between Earth and Somewhere Else, depending on which probe dominated.
    Six months ago there had been a small port through which samples could be taken of the purple mists and strange dust clouds he and Dr. Guinasso had found. But since then it had been replaced by a large, armored airlock.
    Working near the heavy hatch, Dennis realized that all a person had to do was walk through that door to be on another world! It was a strange feeling.
    “Stumped yet, Nuel?”
    Dennis looked up. Bernald Brady’s small mouth always seemed to be slightly pursed in disapproval. The fellow was under instructions to cooperate, but that apparently didn’t extend to being civil.
    Dennis shrugged. “I’ve narrowed the problem down. Something’s cockeyed about the part of the zievatron that’s been pushed into the anomaly world!—the return mechanism. It may be that the only way to fix it is from the other end.”
    He had come to realize that Marcel Flaster would exact a price for putting him in charge of the lab. If Dennis wasn’t able to figure out a way to repair it from this end, he might have to go through and fix the return mechanism in person.
    He hadn’t yet decided whether to be thrilled by the idea, or petrified.
    “Flasteria,” Brady said.
    “I beg your pardon?” Dennis said, blinking.
    “We’ve named the planet Flasteria, Nuel.”
    Dennis tried to work his mouth around the word, then gave up.
The hell you say
.
    “Anyway,” Brady went on, “that’s no great discovery. I’d already figured out it was the return mechanism that had broken down.”
    Dennis was starting to get irritated with the fellow’s attitude. He shrugged. “Sure you knew it already. But how long did it take you?”
    He knew he had struck home when Brady’s face reddened.
    “Never mind,” Dennis said as he stood up, brushing off his hands. “Come on, Brady. Take me on a tour of your zoo. If I’m expected to go through and visit this place, I want to know more about it.”
    Mammals! The captive animals were air-breathing, four-legged, hairy mammals!
    He looked