This is Klon Calling

Take the time he was illustrating terminal velocity. He jumped out of the open third story window, horrifying the class, until they learned he'd rigged a canvas life net on the floor below. Or the time he let a mouse loose among the female students to illustrate chain reaction. Or the afternoon he played boogie-woogie on the Huyler Memorial Carillon.

"The absorption of knowledge," he used to say, "increases in direct proportion to the sense of humor--the belly laugh, measured in decibels, being constant."

He could say a thing like that and make it sound funnier than anybody else could. It was partly the way he looked--tall and mournful and sly, with wispy hair that had once been blond, drooping like a tired willow over his forehead.

But for all his vaudeville tactics he was by no means a second-rate scientist. Which was why he had gained his position at Southwestern Tech in the first place. He refused to work directly for the government (no sense of humor, ju