something over eight per cent."

Bud Gregory looked longingly at the fifty dollars.

"But you don't owe me no money," he said unhappily.

"You've got ten dollars a day coming to you as long as that dinkus keeps on working," said Murfree casually. "If you ever want more money just make another one or show me how to do it and I'll take care of the situation."

Bud Gregory blinked. Then he grew expansive as realization came.

"Mr. Murfree, you' a gentleman!" he said expansively. "Soon's my boy's toes get well an' I got me a new car I won't have to worry about nothin'! You come on out to the house with me! My old woman, when she hears this news, is goin' to cook you a dinner that'll sure say thank-you! An' I'll get some beer an' some ten-cent seegars!"

Murfree nodded. He had a telegram in his pocket. The background-count of Geiger-Miller tubes was up to sixty on the Coast here. The soil of the United States was just thirty times as radioactive as it should be. When it reached a certain point, now not so far away....

Back and forth, back and forth, day after day, the little tuna-boats worked busily. They were equipped with bait-tanks and refrigeration units for such tuna as they might catch but they made no attempt to catch them.

Their only purposeful activity seemed to be towing torpedo-shaped containers of lead to points some hundreds of miles from their base island and then allowing the volatile liquid in the containers to flow out on the surface of the ocean and be carried away eastward as vapor.

They took great pains not to be sighted by any other vessel as they went out, tow loaded with its enigmatic liquid, or returned with it empty. They had been fortunate. Only one such tow had had to be scuttled when a transpacific clipper soared overhead, early in their traffic.

Whatever they were trying to do, they seemed to meet with no obstacles as they carried out their purpose.

Murfree still hadn't the faintest idea what could be the cause of the excess radioactivity of American soil alone. The newspapers hadn't found out about it. They probably wouldn't realize the potential danger if they did.

But the lives of a hundred and forty million people were at 

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