ssing hard on the trail of the emergency truck.

When the range road cut across the county highway, the driver paused
long enough to see that the heaviest smoke concentrations from the
unknown blast lay to the west. He swung left onto the oiled road and
barreled westward. In less than a mile, he spied the flashing red light
of a State trooper's car parked in the center of the road. The scene
looked like a combination of the San Francisco quake and the Los
Angeles county fair.

Dozens of cars, trucks, two fire engines and a Good Humor man were
scattered around the open range land on both sides of the vast crater
still smoldering in the road. A film of purple dust covered the
immediate area and still hung in the air, coating cars and people.
Scores of men, women and children lined the rim of the crater, gawking
into the smoky pit, while other scores roamed aimlessly around the
nearby hill and desert.

A young sheriff's deputy standing beside the State trooper's car raised
his hand to halt the AEC disaster van. The truck stopped and the
white-suited radiation team leaped from the vehicle, counters in hand,
racing for the crater.

"Back," the chief of the squad yelled at the top of his lungs.
"Everybody get back. This area is radiation contaminated. Hurry!"

There was a second of stunned comprehension and then a mad, pan-demonic
scrambling of persons and cars, bumping and jockeying to flee. The
radiation team fanned out around the crater, fumbling at the level
scales on their counters when the instruments failed to indicate
anything more than normal background count.

All of the vehicles had pulled back to safety--all except a slightly
battered station wagon still parked a yard or two from the eastern edge
of the crater.

The radiation squad leader ran over to the wagon. Three people, two men
and a dirty, disheveled and bloody-nosed older woman, sat in the front
seat munching Good Humor bars.

"Didn't you hear me?" the AEC man yelled. "Get outta here. This area's
hot. Radioactive. Dangerous. GET MOVING!"

The woman leaned out the window and patted the radiation expert
soothingly on the shoulder.

"Shucks, sonny, no need to get this excited over a little spilt milk."

"Milk," the AEC man yelped, purpling. "Milk! I said this is a hot area;
it's loaded with radiation. Look at this--" He pointed to the meter on
his counter, then stopped, gawked at the instrument and shook it. And
stared again. The meter flicked pl