ladies" — that's the way DIs talk — "what- 

 ever you do, be sure you keep your thumb 

 on that httle slot right in front of the set 

 screw, because if you don't. . ." and at that 

 point a spring leaped from beneath the 

 thumb of the poor unfortunate sitting next 

 to Mick. 



Mick used the very same word Kerry, 

 Gary, and I had used — "ping" — and with 

 his hand he described the lightning arc. 

 Except in this case, since there were no 

 weeds, grass, or water for it to land in, the 

 spring found its way to the ceiling, direcdy 

 to a twelve-foot-long fluorescent light 

 bulb immediately over the drill instruc- 

 tor's head. Mick says that even before 

 some of the little pieces of glass had 

 stopped rocking on the concrete floor, the 

 DI hoisted the miserable miscreant by his 

 collar and dragged him from the building, 

 never to be seen again. "He's probably still 

 carrying buckets of sand from one end of 

 the camp to the other, even these twenty 

 years later," Mick said. 



I think it is pretty clear: springs are not 

 simply coils of metal capable of storing 

 small amounts of energy for later release. 

 There is substantial reason to believe, in 

 my opinion, that springs can think. They 

 do think. And their thoughts are consistent 

 and malevolent. 



Scientists continue to turn their giant 

 telescopes, antennas, and radiotelescope 

 dishes toward space, waiting for a sign, a 

 message, a clue that intelligent life exists 

 "out there." I predict that sooner or later 

 one of them will be adjusting the digital 

 calibration retainer or, for that matter, try- 

 ing to fix a cheap ball-point pen, and will 

 see the sign, hear the message, or sense the 

 clue he or she had looked for in the inky 

 blackness of outer space: "Ping!" 



In fact, didn't I read somewhere that the 

 last message from the Mars Observer was 

 "Ping"? 



Folklorist Roger L. Welsch lives on a tree 

 farm in Dannebrog, Nebraska. 



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