But it all began to go places fast with that cold research we were dabbling in, last semester. In fact, it was my fault that General Atomics tossed that little problem into our Cold Lab here at Webster Tech--my own past service in the AEC, my rather unusual background combining nuclear physics and biochemistry, and the post-grad crew I've managed to accumulate under my professorial wing. The whole deal was shoveled obligingly into my Christmas stocking and the rest of the faculty obligingly left me to play with it--providing I continued to conduct my regular classes, of course. Perhaps it's just as well I kept my hand in, though, because that line of research got rapidly nowhere. We found that materials which have their temperatures reduced to near-absolute zero are just plain cold. Bring them into room temperature and strange things happen sometimes that isn't just them trying to warm up. It isn't friction-loss and it isn't radiation damage and it isn't entropy. It shows. There's a band of radiant energy somewhere between ultrasonics and radiant heat that hits fast and goes deep, and comes out just as fast, and it gets triggered off by whatever this is that happens with near-absolute zero objects subjected to room temperature. But the whole thing is so negligible that for most practical purposes it can be ignored. Finding _that_ out cost General Atomics thirty thousand dollars, but our kids in the Cold Lab had a ball rigging the Mad Scientist's super-disintegrator gizmo that reproduced the phenomenon. Then, that night--it's nearly four months ago now--I was alone in the lab, just switched off the lights, about to close up and go home. And I stumbled over the corner of the thing. Scrambling up, somehow I put my foot into it. And reaching out to grasp its frame, to steady myself, my hand hit the switch. It went on and I went out. It was still on--I thought--when I regained consciousness, spraddled out on the concrete floor. I pulled the switch open and jerked the cord out of the wall socket. * * * * * When I got home, there wasn't a bruise or a bump on my noggin. Nor the faintest sign of a burn anywhere on my foot or leg or even on the sole of my shoe. That was a Tuesday night. The next day, the lab remained closed. But that night, I went in, switched the lights on and studied the machine. It showed absolutely no sign of damage, no burned insulation, nothing. I stuck my hand into it and closed the switch. It came on with its usual quiet hum. Nothing happened. It was almost a week before I heard that the janitor was still wondering who'd blown all the campus fuses on Tuesday night. Then I remembered that I hadn't switched the lights back on when I regained consciousness.