w, Mrs. Thompson, let's get down to facts," he rapped the headlines
with a knuckle. "You have played hell with our schedule and I've got to
have the answers soon before I have the full atomic commission and a
congressional investigation breathing down my neck.

"What did you use to make that junior grade earthquake?"

"Why, I've already told you more'n a dozen times, sonny," Hetty
replied. "It must of been the combination of them queer eggs and
Sally's milk."

The brush-mustached major sipping his coffee, spluttered and choked.
Beside him, the head of the AEC security force at Frenchman's Flat
leaned forward.

"Mrs. Thompson, I don't know what your motives are but until I find
out, I'm deeply thankful that you gave those news hounds this ... this,
butter and egg business," he said.

"Milk and eggs," Hetty corrected him mildly.

"Well, milk and eggs, then. But the time has ended for playing games.
We must know what caused that explosion and you and Mr. Culpepper and
Mr. Hatfield," he nodded to Johnny and Barney sitting beside Hetty,
"are the only ones who can tell us."

"Already told you," Hetty repeated. Johnny hid a grin.

"Look, Mrs. Thompson," Dr. Peterson said loudly and with ill-concealed
exasperation, "you created and set off an explosive force that dwarfed
every test we've made at Frenchman's Flat in four years. The force of
your explosive was apparently greater than that of a fair-sized atomic
device and only our Pacific tests--and those of the Russians--have been
any greater. Yet within a half hour or forty-five minutes after the
blast there wasn't a trace of radiation at ground level, no aerial
radiation and not one report of upper atmosphere contamination or
fallout within a thousand miles.

"Mrs. Thompson, I appeal to your patriotism. Your friends, your
country, the free people of the world, need this invention of yours."

Hetty's eyes grew wide and then her features set in a mold of firm
determination. Shoving back her chair and raising to stand stiffly
erect and with chin thrust forward, she was every inch the True Pioneer
Woman of the West.

"I never thought of that," she said solemnly. "By golly, if my country
needs this like that, then by golly, my country's going to have it."

The officials leaned forward in anticipation.

"You can have Sally's Cloverdale Marathon III and I don't want one cent
for her, either. And you can take the hens, too."

There was a stunned silence and then the A