The wreck happened just fifty yards from the shack in which Bud Gregory's family had settled down. The car slid off the road at the last curve, ploughed through fifty yards of underbrush and spindling saplings, came at last to an immovable stump—and had reached the end of its journeying.
The boy was completely unhurt. But his toes were frostbitten on the twenty-ninth of August, on a bright sunshiny day with all the woods rioting in lush green growth.
The motor-cop got no adequate explanation. Bud Gregory was shaken but firm in his resolution to play dumb. He couldn't explain anything but the boy's toes were frostbitten. In the end the cop took the boy back to the hospital to have his toes treated, resolving to return to examine the wreck.
But of course, when he got back, there was no gadget to discover and absolutely nothing to explain the car's speed, the boy's frostbitten toes or a patch of frost-killed vegetation—in August—where the wreck still lay crumpled.
It was this obstinately inexplicable situation that had been reported to Murfree by his friend of the F. B. I. So he reached that small town as fast as planes would take him, and found Bud Gregory sitting miserably on the steps of the small town's hospital.
The most important man in the United States was acutely unhappy. His son was going to have to pay a fine for reckless driving, the hospital would charge something, his car was wrecked beyond even his ability to repair it—the motor-block had burst, of course, when the water in the circulating-system froze—and he might have to go to work.
Murfree walked up to Bud Gregory and nodded.
"Hello," said Murfree. "I hear you're in trouble."
Bud Gregory looked up.
"Migosh!" he said helplessly. "It's Mr. Murfree, the Gov'ment man!"
"Not a government man any more," said Murfree. "I've got some money for you."
"Uh—you don't owe me no money, Mr. Murfree," said Bud Gregory unhappily. He peered around Murfree with gloomy suspicion and asked, "You got some detectives with you?"
"Not a soul," said Murfree. "But I have got some money for you. You sold me a gadget once. You'd used it to fix my car." Bud Gregory spread out his hands.
"You paid me for that, Mr. Murfree. You paid me six hundred dollars. I lived on that for a long time. I et hawg-meat an' drunk beer an' me an' my family came clear across the United States on that money, Mr. Murfree. But you don't owe me no more."
"We'll go and get some beer," said Murfree. "It may take explaining."
Bud Gregory cheered. He looked uneasily about but Murfree had always played fair with him. Their meeting had been in a tiny village in the Smokies when Murfree's car overheated and froze and Bud Gregory produced a gadget which was made of stray radio parts. He plugged it in a light-socket and attached it to Murfree's car.
Immediately the car wasn't stuck fast. It ran. When fresh oil was spread about it was as good as new. Bud Gregory explained casually that the gadget made some sort of stuff — perhaps electronic — which made pieces of metal slide easily on each other.
Later, in an emergency, he sold the gadget to Murfree for six hundred dollars, and Murfree could make it work, but he had never been able to understand it. Neither had the most eminent scientists of the United States. Nor could any of them duplicate it so the duplicate would work. It demonstrably eliminated all friction—all—from any device to which it was attached, but it remained an enigma.
WITH beer before them, Murfree passed five ten-dollar bills across the table. He did not dare offer more, knowing Gregory.
"You sold me that dinkus which stops all friction," said Murfree casually. "I can't understand it nor can anybody else. But it still works. So, since it belonged to me, when I got out of Government service, I took it to a big power-generating station. I explained what it would do.
"We hooked it on the big turbine. And it not only stopped all friction in the bearings but it ended steam-friction against the rotor-blades and baffles. The efficiency of the whole set-up rose by something over eight per cent."
Bud Gregory looked longingly at the fifty dollars.
"But you don't owe me no money," he said unhappily.
"You've got ten dollars a day coming to you as long as that dinkus keeps on working," said Murfree casually. "If you ever want more money just make another one or show me how to do it and I'll take care of the situation."
Bud Gregory blinked. Then he grew expansive as realization came.
"Mr. Murfree, you' a gentleman!" he said expansively. "Soon's my boy's toes get well an' I got me a new car I won't have to worry about nothin'! You come on out to the house with me! My old woman, when she hears this news, is goin' to cook you a dinner that'll sure say thank-you! An' get some beer an' some ten-cent seegars!"
Murfree nodded. He had a telegram in his pocket. The background-count of Geiger-Miller tubes was up to sixty on the Coast here. The soil of the United States was just thirty times as radioactive as it should be. When it reached a certain point, now not so far away. . . .
Back and forth, back and forth, day after day, the little tuna-boats worked busily. They were equipped with bait-tanks and refrigeration units for such tuna as they might catch but they made no attempt to catch them.
Their only purposeful activity seemed to be towing torpedo-shaped containers of lead to points some hundreds of miles from their base island arid then allowing the volatile liquid in the containers to flow out on the surface of the ocean and be carried away eastward as vapor.
They took great pains not to be sighted by any other vessel as they went out, tow loaded with its enigmatic liquid, or returned with it empty. They had been fortunate. Only one such tow had had to be scuttled when a transpacific clipper soared overhead, early in their traffic.
Whatever they were trying to do, they seemed to meet with no obstacles as they carried out their purpose.
Murfree still hadn't the faintest idea what could be the cause of the excess radioactivity of American soil alone. The newspapers hadn't found out about it. They probably wouldn't realize the potential danger if they did.
But the lives of a hundred and forty million people were at the mercy of a completely unexplained phenomenon—unless Bud Gregory somehow solved the problem.
Murfree's problem was to get him to work on it.
"I want you," said Murfree," to work out a gadget to save some lives."
CHAPTER III
Dusty Answer
BUD GREGORY puffed expansively. They were seated before that unspeakable shanty Bud Gregory had pre-empted and which was now his home. They had dined on bracken-greens and grouse—out of season—and sea-trout with cornbread and bacon-drippings and wild fennel and a monstrous brew which Bud Gregory fondly considered to be coffee.
Now they looked out over an inlet of Puget Sound, with sunset colorings making the sky to westward a glory of rose and gold.
"Shucks, Mr. Murfree," said Bud Gregory happily. "I ain't no doctor. I just fix cars. An' now I got me ten dollars a day comin' in rain or shine an' I don't have to bother doin' that!"
Murfree smoked.
"It'll pay you a lot more than ten dollars a day."
"What do I want with more'n that?" asked Bud Gregory. He beamed. "My ol' woman don't need more'n five-six dollars a week for corn-meal an' hawgmeat an' I got a shotgun.
"I'll git the boys some twenty-twos so's they can knock over squirrels an' take out for some beer now an' then an' the rest' buy me a new car in no time. I don't need no fancy car. I c'n make most anything run if it's got four wheels."
Murfree blew a smoke-ring. "I'm asking you to save some human lives," he repeated.
"If they got money to pay me," said Bud Gregory comfortably, "they got money to pay doctors that know all about that kinda stuff. You tell 'em to go to a fella that makes a business o' doctorin'."