then he couldn't have said why he asked his question.

"Your volcanic formation was about here, wasn't it, Bjarnsson?"

The tall Norseman stared at him with cold shrewd eyes. "Yes. Why?"

"Look here." Fallon drew a rough circle with his fingertip, touching the Pacific Coast, swinging across the ocean through the Gilberts and the Marshalls, touching Wake, and curving up again to Vancouver.

"The volcanic formation is the center of that circle," Fallon said. "It was also the epicenter of the recent quake, according to Cal-Tech seismologists. That's what gave me the hunch. The monsters seem to be fanning out in a circle from some central point located about there."

"That is already explained," said Bjarnsson. "The Japanese may have their projector located there. And why not?"

"No reason at all," Fallon admitted. "You mentioned, in your interview, something about a Japanese ocean survey ship coming up just as you left. That ship might still have been near there at the time of the quake, mightn't it?"

"It is possible. Go on." There was a little sharp flame flickering in Bjarnsson's eyes.

Fallon said, "Could these super-evolutionary rays be caused by volcanic action?"

Bjarnsson's grey-blond shaggy brows met, and the flame was sharper in his eyes. "Fantastic. But so is this whole affair.... Yes! If an area of intense radioactivity were uncovered by an earth-shift, the sea and all that swims in it might be affected."

"Ah!" Fallon's lips were drawn in a tight grin. "Suppose the officers of the Japanese ship saw the beginnings of the effect. Suppose they radioed home, and someone did some quick thinking. Suppose, in short, that they're lying."

"Ja," whispered Bjarnsson. "Let us think."

"I've already thought," said Fallon. "Two weeks would give them time to arrange everything. The important thing is this—if the force is man-made, even destroying the projector won't do any good. They'll have others. But if it were a natural force, the psychological aspect of the thing alone would be tremendous. There'd be a chance of doing something."

The explorer's deep light eyes glinted. "Our people would fight better if it was something they could fight." 

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