! I hate bluffing!"

"Then you miss a great deal of fun in life," said Larrabee calmly. "I
find it dull just to analyze data and then bet on a sure thing. I like a
little excitement."

Slowly the financier sank back into his chair. He gulped in a large
breath of air and tried to steady himself, a sickly smile around his
mouth.

"Excuse me, Professor. But you took me by surprise." Hands trembling, he
began to shuffle the deck.

There was a knock at the door, and a crewman entered.

"What is it, Stacey?" said Captain Evans.

"Chief Wyman is waiting to see you in your quarters, sir."

With a sigh of relief, the Captain turned in his few chips. "Time for
me to quit, anyway."

His face still red, Jasperson looked up hopefully. "Shall I come with
you? Any way I can be of use?"

"No thank you, Burl. I'll leave you to your little game."

* * * * *

In the Captain's quarters, Chief Wyman was pacing the floor.

"Sir!" he burst out. "This is it! We've hit the Thakura Ripples!"

"Impossible, Wyman! It's too soon. What's happened?"

"You told me to report as soon as we ran across anything suspicious,
sir. Well, look what our screen has been picking up."

He handed over a plastic record tape, perforated by minute notches which
outlined an unsystematic, jagged line of peaks and hollows.

"We've been getting this stuff all evening."

"Doesn't seem to mean anything. It doesn't show any sort of pattern."

"No, sir, and it may not mean anything, but it's different from what
we've been getting up till now. And then another thing. It's probably
not serious, but the number ten Pile has started to heat."

"Begun to heat? What's wrong with Pile Ten? One of your men been getting
careless?"

"I'm positive not, sir. I have complete confidence in all of them."

Captain Evans studied the record tape, a worried frown on his forehead.

"It's just possible, I suppose, that the Ripples--Is Pile Ten heating
fast?"

"No, sir. It's still below the critical level, and of course we're
putting in dampers."

"I wish we _knew_ something definite about the Thakura Ripples," the
Captain burst out, "what they are, what they do, what they look like,
and _how_ they affect our atomic Piles! If only Thakura were still a
sane man, and could finish up his calculations!"

"Maybe Thakura was crazy to start with," said Chief Wyman, "or maybe the
Ripples drove him crazy. I don't know. But I do know Pile Ten is