"There you are!" Judson Taylor, the eccentric physics prof, pulled a metallic object out of his pocket and laid it on the table between us. The object was a solid chunk of some kind of metal, judging from its bright silver color, about the size and shape of a pocket knife.

I looked at it stupidly and said, "Where are we?"

I am Bill Halley. Some of the adolescent undergraduate brats at this one-horse college have nicknamed me "Comet" and it burns me up every time some pimply-faced baby waves his arm at me and says, "Hiya, Comet." But I smile and don't let them know I don't like it, because if they knew there would be no living with them. Jud is head of the physics department and I am one of the three profs under him. When I first came here last fall he looked at my papers, said "BILL HALLEY?" and since then has treated me with the respect he reserves only for the gods of Physics. Probably assumed I was a direct descendant of the Halley who got his name plastered all over Halley's Comet.