Lawton and the captain reached the quartz port simultaneously. Shoulder to shoulder they stood staring down at the storm-tossed Atlantic, electrified by what they saw.

Floating on the waves far beneath them was an undulating ma.s.s of vegetation, its surface flecked with glinting foam. As it rose and fell in waning sunlight a tainted seepage spread about it, defiling the clean surface of the sea.

But it wasn't the floating ma.s.s which drew a gasp from Forrester, and caused Lawton's scalp to p.r.i.c.kle. Crawling slowly across that Sarga.s.so-like island of noxious vegetation was a huge, elongated shape which bore a nauseous resemblance to a mottled garden slug.

Forrester was trembling visibly when he turned from the quartz port.

"G.o.d, Dave, that would have been the _last straw_. Animal life. Dave, I--I can't realize we're actually out of it."

"We're out, all right," Lawton said, hoa.r.s.ely. "Just in time, too.

Skipper, you'd better issue grog all around. The men will be needing it.

I'm taking mine straight. You've accused me of being primitive. Wait till you see me an hour from now."

Dr. Stephen Halday stood in the door of his Appalachian mountain laboratory staring out into the pine-scented dusk, a worried expression on his bland, small-featured face. It had happened again. A portion of his experiment had soared skyward, in a very loose group of highly energized wavicles. He wondered if it wouldn't form a sort of sub-electronic macrocosm high in the stratosphere, altering even the air and dust particles which had spurted up with it, its uncharged atomic particles combining with hydrogen and creating new molecular arrangements.

If such were the case there would be eight of them now. _His_ bubbles, floating through the sky. They couldn't possibly harm anything--way up there in the stratosphere. But he felt a little uneasy about it all the same. He'd have to be more careful in the future, he told himself. Much more careful. He didn't want the Controllers to turn back the clock of civilization a century by stopping all atom-smas.h.i.+ng experiments.