cash-money ahead. I don't see no reason to worry about nothin'."

"Those space-ships that snatched the air-liner—"

"They ain't bothered me!" said Bud doggedly.

"If they come from another solar system they know we're civilized! They're going to try to find out if we're helpless! Unless they find out we can defend ourselves they may decide to take us over! If they come from somewhere on earth, they're surely trying to find out if the rest of the world can defend itself! And if we don't prove we can, they'll surely try to take over!"

"Mistuh Murfree, I don't bother nobody."

"Listen to me!" said Murfree. "You remember that gadget you gave me?"

Bud blinked and nodded. It was a device of coils and scraps of glass and an iron wire that turned white with frost when it was switched on. A sample of a given substance at one end made it draw similar material in a straight line through the length of its main coil. That device was now the basis of the Ocean Products corporation Murfree had just formed.

There was an elaborate installation on the Maryland coast, with dynamos and electrodes sunk out in the sea offshore, and with much more complicated, closely-guarded apparatus that Murfree had designed to do nothing whatever while looking very busy. But every so often he pointed Bud Gregory's device out to sea and turned it on, in strictest privacy. A morsel of gold, or platinum, or any rare element needed, fitted in place at the small end of its coil. And the device pulled molecules of gold, or platinum, or whatever the controlling sample might be, out of the sea.

It worked like a quite impossible magnetic beam, though instead of iron it attracted whatever its operator chose. It even broke down chemical compounds, as if some sort of electrolysis were at work. And there are at least traces of every known element in the sea:—gold to the extent of one-sixth of a cent in every cubic foot of seawater. A hundred pounds of gold, or thirty of platinum, could be brought to the coffers of Ocean Products, Inc., in any twenty-four hours of operation. And was brought.

"I'm using that gadget," said Murfree, "to pull gold out of seawater. I'm getting rich with it."

Bud Gregory relaxed.

"That's fine, suh! I'm mighty glad!"

"You're getting rich 

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