He read the news-account without great interest. He was the only man on earth—it had seemed—who was capable of figuring out such a thing as a space-ship or a tractor-beam such as had undoubtedly snatched the air-liner out into space. But he was totally undisturbed by the news. He handed the paper back and yawned again.

"Right interestin', suh," he observed. "You had breakfast?"

"Listen to me!" commanded Murfree. "About a month ago...."

He told Bud in detail just what had happened up to now—the discovery of the moons and the significance of their orbits. He finished harshly:

"I came out to ask you if you can make some gadgets that will handle those things! Did you have a hand in making them?"

Bud blinked. "No, suh. You been payin' me ten dollars a day to live on. Why sh'd I go to the trouble of workin'?"

Murfree said more grimly still: "I thought so. But they're bad business. This is only the beginning, I suspect. What can you do that will take care of them? What do you need to work with?"

Bud said placidly, "I don't need nothin', Mistuh Gregory. They ain't bothered me. Why sh'd I bother them? I don't figure on workin' myself to death, not when I got ten dollars a day comin' in."

"They came near bothering you!" Murfree told him. "They near got two of your children shot!"

Bud Gregory stared. "How's that, suh?"

Murfree told him curtly about his incredible experience of the night before; of being hailed from mid-air and serving as a guide to two of Bud's children in mid-air in—they said—a fishing-boat. Bud nodded with vexation.

"Oh, that!" he said. "That was our boat, sure 'nough. That boy o' mine, he likes fishin', same as me. But the engine in that boat wasn't no good so I fixed up a drive for it same as I did for my car before it got wrecked. You know, suh, the dinkus I made to make it pull hills."

This was a device that turned heat-energy into kinetic energy and made all the molecules of a block of—say—iron try to move in one direction instead of at random. Bud had made racing-cars on dirt-tracks reach unbelievable speeds, so that he could make two-dollar bets on them.

"And then," Bud added apologetically, "he drove that boat right fast, 

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