, firemen, doctors and ambulances.
He set his course by sight following the silver road of the river,
losing it for ten or fifteen miles at a time where it passed through
subterranean tunnels, picking it up again at the surface, always
shooting south as fast as the atmosphere permitted.

At seven thirty, when the sun had finally set, he sighted the lights of
Red Mountain, and he cut his speed and swung in to land. There was no
trouble picking out the power plant; it was a big dome-shaped building
surrounded by a high wall. It was so brilliantly lit up, that it stood
out like a beacon, and there were several hundred men milling about
before it.

He settled down on the lawn inside the walls, and the sheriff came
bustling up, a little more red in the face than usual.

"I've been trying to figure for the last hour what the devil I would do
to stop him if he decided to come here," Berkhammer said.

"He's not here then?"

The sheriff shook his head. "Not a sign of him. We've gone over the
place three times."

Jordan settled back in relief, sitting down in the open doorway of his
ship. "Good," he said wearily.

"Good!" the sheriff exploded. "I don't know whether I'd rather have him
show up or not. If this whole business is nothing more than the crazy
imagination of some kid who ought to get tanned and a star-cop with milk
behind his ears, I'm really in the soup. I've sent out an alarm and I've
got the whole state jumping. There's a full mechanized battalion of
state troops waiting in there." He pointed toward the power plant.
"They've got artillery and tanks all around the place."

Jordan jumped down out of the ship. "Let's see what you've got set up
here. In the meantime, stop fretting. I'd rather see you fired than
vaporized along with fifty million other people."

"I guess you're right there," Berkhammer conceded, "but I don't like to
have anyone make a fool out of me."

* * * * *

At Ballarat, an old man, Eddie Yudovich, was the watchman and general
caretaker of the electrical generation plant. Actually, his job was a
completely unnecessary one, since the plant ran itself. In its very
center, buried in a mine of graphite were the tubes of hafnium, from
whose nuclear explosions flowed a river of electricity without the need
of human thought or direction.

He had worked for the company for a long time and when he became
crippled with arthritis, the directors gave him the job so t