Get Smart 6 - And Loving It! by William Johnston

room.”
    “Maybe it was Brattleboro shifting his feet,” Max suggested. “It probably gets tiresome masquerading as a vacant room.”
    99 looked upward. “Max . . .”
    “Yes, 99?”
    “Max, doesn’t that ceiling look lower to you?”
    Max, too, peered upward. “You’re slumping!” he called out.
    “Who are you talking to, Max?”
    “Brattleboro.”
    “Max, this room isn’t Brattleboro. We’re in a trap. The ceiling is being lowered on us. We’re going to be smashed.”
    Max thought for a moment. Then he called out again. “Lucky Bucky? Still there?”
    “Still here, Max Baby. Still enjoying the little joke.”
    Max went to the door and tried the knob. “Locked,” he reported to 99.
    “The ceiling is getting lower and lower, Max.”
    “Lucky Bucky?” Max called again.
    “Here, Max Baby.”
    “Just as a matter of curiosity, do you play much squash in this room?”
    “Never used it before,” Lucky Bucky replied. “It was put in by the Spanish gentleman what built the joint. He used it to squash his enemies.”
    “I see.”
    “That explains a lot, I guess, Max,” 99 said gloomily.
    “Yes, a great deal,” Max nodded. “Everything, in fact, except why, with no service lines marked on the walls and floor, it’s called the Squash Room.” He shrugged. “We’ll probably never know.”

8.
    “L UCKY B UCKY Buckley!” Max called.
    Silence.
    “He’s gone, Max,” 99 said. “He’s left us to our fate.”
    Max looked up at the ceiling again. “Do you notice something strange, 99?” he said thoughtfully.
    “Strange, Max? Well . . . it isn’t every day I get crushed between a ceiling and a floor.”
    “Not that. Something . . . something not quite right .”
    “Don’t you like the color of the ceiling, Max?”
    “Off-white? How could I complain about that?”
    “Then what?”
    “I just can’t quite put my finger on it, 99.”
    “Well, you’ll be able to soon, Max. At the rate it’s descending, I’d say that the ceiling will be within finger reach in about ten minutes.”
    Frowning, Max looked about. He suddenly brightened. “That’s it, 99! Look—the door is disappearing!”
    99 glanced toward the door. Only about half of it was still visible. The lower half seemed to have sunk below the floor.
    “I don’t see why that pleases you so, Max. What good is half a door?”
    “That’s not the point, 99. The point is, the ceiling is not descending!”
    “Then how do you explain the fact that it’s getting lower?”
    “It isn’t, 99. It’s an optical illusion.”
    “You mean we’re not going to be crushed, Max?”
    “Oh no, we’re going to be crushed, all right. But not because the ceiling is descending. It’s because the floor is rising. That explains why the door is disappearing.”
    “Oh.”
    “99, that’s a very important discovery. But you don’t seem very interested.”
    “Max, if I’m going to be squashed between the ceiling and the floor, I don’t see what difference it’s going to make to me in the long run whether the ceiling is rising and the floor is descending or the floor is rising and the ceiling is descending or vice versa or anything else.”
    “That’s shortsighted of you, 99. It so happens that the difference may make the difference between life and death. You see, if the ceiling were descending, we could assume that the force of gravity was being used to lower it. But the floor could not be raised by gravity, could it?”
    “I don’t think so, Max.”
    “Do you understand what I’m getting at, 99? A mechanical power, obviously, is being used to raise the floor. What does that suggest?”
    “It’s time to duck, Max.”
    “Pardon.”
    “The ceiling is going to bump you on the head.”
    “Oh.”
    Max and 99 sat down on the floor.
    “To continue,” Max said, “it means that the mechanical apparatus that is raising the floor is probably being operated by some sort of electric motor.”
    “Is that what you were getting at, Max? I could