acidly along at the barely-above-normal
background level count.

"Hey, Jack," one of the other white-suited men on the far side of the
crater called, "this hole doesn't register a thing."

The squad chief stared incredulously at his counter and banged it
against the side of the station wagon. Still the needle held in the
normal zone. He banged it harder and suddenly the needle dropped to
zero as Hetty and her ranch hands peered over the AEC man's shoulder at
the dial.

"Now ain't that a shame," Barney said sympathetically. "You done broke
it."

The rest of the disaster squad, helmets off in the blazing sun and
lead-coated suits unfastened, drifted back to the squad leader at the
Circle T station wagon. A mile east, the rest of the AEC convoy had
arrived and halted in a huge fan of vehicles, parked a safe distance
from the crater. A line of more white-suited detection experts moved
cautiously forward.

With a stunned look, the first squad leader turned and walked slowly
down the road towards the approaching line. He stopped once and looked
back at the gaping hole, down at his useless counter, shook his head
and continued on to meet the advancing units.

By nightfall, new strands of barbed wire reflected the last rays of the
red Nevada sun. Armed military policemen and AEC security police in
powder-blue battle jackets, patrolled the fences around the county road
crater. And around the fence that now enclosed the immediate vicinity
of the Circle T ranch buildings. Floodlights bathed the wire and cast
an eerie glow over the mass of parked cars and persons jammed outside
the fence. A small helicopter sat off to the right of the impromptu
parking lot and an NBC newscaster gave the world a verbal description
of the scene while he tried to talk above the snorting of the
gas-powered generator that was supplying the Associated Press
radio-telephone link to San Francisco.

Black AEC vans and dun colored military vehicles raced to and from the
ranch headquarters, pausing to be cleared by the sentries guarding the
main gates.

The AP log recorded one hundred eighteen major daily papers using the
AP story that afternoon and the following morning:

CARSON CITY, NEV., May 12 (AP)--A kiloton eggnog rocked the scientific
world this morning.

"On a Nevada ranch, forty miles east of here, 60-year-old Mehatibel
Thompson is milking a cow that gives milk more powerful than an atomic
bomb. Her chickens are laying the triggering m