Transcriber's Note: This e-text was produced from Astounding ScienceFiction, April, 1960. Extensive research did not uncover any evidencethat the U. S. Copyright on this publication was renewed. 

MAKE MINE HOMOGENIZED

By RICK RAPHAEL

Illustrated by Freas

Anyone looking for guaranteed sound science will have to lookelsewhere. But if it's fun you want . .. Try the world's most potenteggnog!

"Shoo, " Hetty Thompson cried, waving her battered old felt hat at theclucking cluster of hens eddying around her legs as she plowed throughthe flock towards the chicken house. "Scat. You, Solomon, " she calledout, directing her words at the bobbing comb of the big roosterstrutting at the edge of the mob. "Don't just stand there like asatisfied cowhand after a night in Reno. Get these noisy females outtamy way. " She batted at the hens and they scattered with angry squawksof protest. 

Hetty paused in the doorway of the chicken house to allow her eyes tobecome accustomed to the cool gloom after the bright glare of the ranchyard. She could feel the first trickles of sweat forming under theman's shirt she was wearing as the hot, early morning Nevada sun beatdown on her back in the doorway. 

Moving carefully but quickly through the nests, she reached and gropedfor the eggs she knew would be found in the scattered straw. As sheplaced each find carefully in the bucket she carried, her lips moved ina soundless count. When she had finished, she straightened up and leftthe chicken house, her face reflecting minor irritation. 

Again the hens swirled about her, hoping for the handfuls of crackedcorn she usually tossed to them. On the other side of the yard Solomonstepped majestically along the edge of the vegetable garden, nevercrossing the hoed line separating garden from yard. 

"You'd better stay over there, you no-account Lothario, " Hetty growled. "Five eggs short this morning and all you do is act like you were justthe business agent for this bunch of fugitives from a dumpling pot. "Solomon cocked his head and stared Hetty down. She paused at the footof the backporch steps and threw the rooster a final remark. "You don'tdo any better than this you're liable to wind up in that pot yourself. "Solomon gave a scornful cluck. "Better still, I'll get me a youngrooster in here and take over your job. " Solomon let out a squawk andtook out at a dead run, herding three hens before him towards thechicken house. 

With a satisfied smile of triumph, Hetty climbed the steps and crossedto the kitchen door. She turned and looked back across the yard towardsthe barn and corrals. 

"Barneeeeey, " Hetty yelled. "Ain't you finished with that milking yet?"

"Comin' now, Miz Thompson, " came the reply from the barn. Hetty let thescreen door slam behind her as she walked into the kitchen and placedthe bucket of eggs on the big work table. She had her arm up to wipeher moist forehead on the sleeve of her shirt when she spotted thegolden egg lying in the middle of the others in the galvanized bucket. 

She froze in the arm-lifted position for several seconds, staring atthe dully glowing egg. Then she slowly reached out and picked it up. Itwas slightly heavier than a regular egg, but for the dull, gold-bronzemetallic appearance of the shell, looked just like any of the othertwenty-odd eggs in the bucket. She was still holding it in the palm ofher hand when the kitchen door again slammed and the handy man limpedinto the room. He carried two pails of milk across the kitchen and setthem down near the sink. 

"Whatcha lookin' at, Miz Thompson?" Barney Hatfield asked. 

Hetty frowned at the egg in her hand without answering. Barney limpedaround the side of the table for a closer look. Sunlight streamingthrough the kitchen windows glinted on the shell of the odd egg. Barney's eyes grew round. "Now ain't that something, " he whispered inawe. 

Hetty started as though someone had snapped their fingers in front ofher staring eyes. Her normal look of practical dubiousness returned. 

"Huh, " she snorted. "Even had me fooled for a second. Something wrongwith this egg but it sure is shootin' ain't gold. One of them fool hensmust of been pecking in the fertilizer storeroom and got herself anoverdose of some of them minerals in that stuff. 

"What are you staring at, you old fool, " she glared at Barney. "Itain't gold. " Hetty laid the egg at one side of the table. She walked tothe sink and took a clean, two-gallon milk can from the drainboard andset it in the sink to fill it from the pails of rich, frothy milkBarney had brought in the pails. 

"Sally come fresh this morning, Miz Thompson, " he said. "Got herself areal fine little bull calf. "

Hetty looked at the two pails of milk. "Well, where's the rest of themilk, then?"

"That's Queenie's milk, " Barney said. "Sally's is still out on theporch. "

"Well bring it in before the sun clabbers it. "

"Can't, " Barney said. 

Hetty swung around and glared at him. "What do you mean, you can't? Yousuddenly come down with the glanders?"

"No'm, it's just that Sally's milk ain't no good, " he replied. 

 * * * * *

A frown spread over Hetty's face as she hoisted one of the milk pailsand began pouring into the can in the sink. "What's wrong with it, Barney? Sally seem sick or something?" she asked. 

Barney scratched his head. "I don't rightly know, Miz Thompson. Thatmilk looks all right, or at least, almost all right. It's kinda thinand don't have no foam like you'd expect milk to have. But mostly, itsure don't smell right and it danged well don't taste right. 

"_Phooey. _" He made a face at the memory of the taste. "I stuck myfinger in it when it looked kinda queer, and took a taste. It shoretasted lousy. "

"You probably been currying that mangey old horse of yours before youwent to milking, " Hetty snorted, "and tasted his cancerous old hide onyour fingers. I've told you for the last time to wash your hands beforeyou go to milking them cows. I didn't pay no eighteen hundred dollarsfor that prize, registered Guernsey just to have you give her bag feverwith your dirty hands. "

"That ain't so, Miz Thompson, " Barney cried indignantly. "I did too, wash my hands. Good, too. I wuzn't near my horse this morning. Thatmilk just weren't no good. "

Hetty finished pouring the milk into the cans and after putting thecans in the refrigerator, wiped her hands on her jeans and went outonto the porch, Barney trailing behind her. She bent over and sniffedat the two milk pails setting beside the door. "_Whew_, " sheexclaimed, "it sure does smell funny. Hand me that dipper, Barney. "

Barney reached for a dipper hanging on a nail beside the kitchen door. Hetty dipped out a small quantity of the milk, sipped, straightened upwith a jerk and spewed the milk out into the yard. "Yaawwwk, " shespluttered, "that tastes worse 'n Diesel oil. "

She stirred distastefully at the swirling, flat-looking liquid in thepails and then turned back to the kitchen. "I never saw the like ofit, " she exclaimed. "Chickens come out with some kind of sorry-lookingegg and now, in the same morning, an eighteen hundred dollarregistered, fresh Guernsey gives out hogwash instead of milk. " Shestared thoughtfully across the yard at the distant mountains, nowshimmering in the hot, midmorning sun. "Guess we could swill the hogswith that milk, rather'n throw it out, Barney. I never seen anythingthem Durocs wouldn't eat. When you get ready to put the other swill inthe cooker, toss that milk in with it and cook it up for the hogs. "

Hetty went back into her kitchen and Barney turned and limped acrossthe yard to the tractor shed. He pulled the brim of his sweat-stainedStetson over his eyes and squinted south over the heat-dancing sage andsparse grasslands of Circle T range. Dust devils were pirouetting inthe hazy distance towards the mountains forming a corridor leading tothe ranch. A dirt road led out of the yard and crossed an oiled countyroad about five miles south of the ranch. The county road was now theonly link the Circle T had to the cattle shipping pens at Carson City. The dirt road arrowed south across the range but fifteen miles from theranch, a six-strand, new, barbed-wire fence cut the road. A white metalsign with raised letters proclaimed "Road Closed. U. S. GovernmentMilitary Reservation. Restricted Area. Danger--Peligre. Keep Out. "

The taut bands of wire stretched east and west of the road for morethan twenty miles in each direction, with duplicates of the metal signhung on the fence every five hundred yards. Then the wires turned southfor nearly a hundred miles, etching in skin-blistering, sun-heatedstrands, the outlines of the Nevada atomic testing grounds atFrenchman's Flat. 

When the wire first went up, Hetty and her ranching neighbors hadscreamed to high heaven and high congressmen about the loss of the roadand range. The fence stayed up. Now they had gotten used to the ideaand had even grown blasé about the frequent nuclear blasts that rattledthe desert floor sixty miles from ground zero. 

 * * * * *

Barney built a fire under the big, smoke-blackened cauldron Hetty usedfor cooking the hog swill. Dale Hamilton, the county agent, had givenHetty a long talk on the dangers of feeding the pigs, raw, uncooked andpossibly contaminated, garbage. When Hamilton got graphic about whathappened to people who ate pork from such hogs, Hetty turned politelygreen and had Barney set up the cooking cauldron. 

After dumping the kitchen slops into the pot, Barney hiked back acrossthe yard to get the two pails of bad milk. 

Hetty was sitting at the kitchen table, putting the eggs into plasticrefrigerator dishes when the hog slop exploded in a whooshing roar, followed a split second later by an even louder blast that rocked theranch buildings. The eggs flew across the room as the lid of the slopcauldron came whistling through the kitchen window in a blizzard offlying glass and buried itself, edgewise, in the wall over the stove. Hetty slammed backwards headfirst into a heap of shattered eggs. Atorrent of broken plaster, and crockery fragments rained on her stunnedfigure. Through dazed eyes, she saw a column of purple-reddish firerising from the yard. 

A woman who has been thrown twenty-three times from a pitching broncoand kicked five times in the process, doesn't stay dazed long. Pawingdripping egg yokes and plaster from her face, Hetty Thompson struggledto her feet and staggered to the kitchen door. 

"Barneeey, " she bawled, "you all right?"

The column of weird-colored flame had quickly died and only a fewflickering pieces of wood from the cauldron fire burned in scatteredspots about the yard. Of the cauldron, there wasn't a sign. 

"Barney, " she cried anxiously, "where are you?"

"Here I am, Miz Thompson. " Barney's blackened face peered around thecorner of the tractor shed. "You O. K. , Miz Thompson?"

"What in thunderation happened?" Hetty called out. "You try to build afire with dynamite for kindling?"

Shaken but otherwise unharmed, Barney painfully limped over to theranch house porch. 

"Don't ask me what happened, m'am, " he said. "I just poured that milkinto the slop pot and then put the lid back on and walked off. I heeredthis big '_whoosh_' and turned around in time to see the lid fly offand the kettle begin to tip into the fire and then there was onehelluva blast. It knocked me clean under the tractor shed. " He fumbledin his pocket for a cigarette and shakily lighted it. 

Hetty peered out over the yard and then looking up, gasped. Perchedlike a rakish derby hat on the arm of the towering pump windmill wasthe slop cauldron. "Well I'll be. .. . " Hetty Thompson said. 

"You sure you didn't pour gas on that fire to make it burn faster, Barney Hatfield?" she barked at the handy man. 

"No siree, " Barney declaimed loudly, "there weren't no gas anywherenear that fire. Only thing I poured out was that there bad milk. " Hepaused and scratched his head. "Reckon that funny milk coulda donethat, Miz Thompson? There ain't no gas made what'll blow up nor burn sofunny as that did. "

Hetty snorted. "Whoever heard of milk blowing up, you old idiot?" Alook of doubt spread. "You put all that milk in there?"

"No'm, just the one bucket. " Barney pointed to the other pail besidethe kitchen door, now half-empty and standing in a pool of liquidsloshed out by the blast wave. Hetty studied the milk pail for a minuteand then resolutely picked it up and walked out into the yard. 

"Only one way to find out, " she said. "Get me a tin can, Barney. "

She poured about two tablespoons of the milk into the bottom of the canwhile Barney collected a small pile of kindling. Removing the milk pailto a safe distance, Hetty lighted the little pile of kindling, set thetin can atop the burning wood and scooted several yards away to joinBarney who had been watching from afar. In less than a minute a booming_whoosh_ sent a miniature column of purple, gaseous flame spoutingfrom the can. "Well whadda you know about that?" Hetty exclaimedwonderingly. 

The can had flown off the fire a few feet but didn't explode. Hettywent back to the milk pail and collecting less than a teaspoon full inthe water dipper, walked to the fire. Standing as far back as she couldand still reach over the flames, she carefully sprinkled a few drops ofthe liquid directly into the fire and then jumped back. Miniature ballsof purple flame erupted from the fire before she could move. Pieces offlaming kindling flew in all directions and one slammed Barney acrossthe back of the neck and sent a shower of sparks down his back. 

The handy man let out a yowl of pain and leaped for the watering troughbeside the corral, smoke trailing behind him. Hetty thoughtfullysurveyed the scene of her experiment from beneath raised eyebrows. Thenshe grunted with satisfaction, picked up the remaining milk in the pailand went back to the ranch house. Barney climbed drippingly from thehorse trough. 

The kitchen was a mess. Splattered eggs were over everything and brokenglass, crockery and plaster covered the floor, table and counters. Onlyone egg remained unbroken. That was the golden egg. Hetty picked it upand shook it. There was a faint sensation of something moving insidethe tough, metallic-looking shell. It shook almost as a normal eggmight, but not quite. Hetty set the strange object on a shelf andturned to the task of cleaning up. 

 * * * * *

Johnny Culpepper, the ranch's other full-time hand and Hetty'sassistant manager, drove the pickup into the yard just before noon. Heparked in the shade of the huge cottonwood tree beside the house andbounced out with an armload of mail and newspapers. Inside the kitchendoor, he dumped the mail on the sideboard and started to toss his haton a wall hook when he noticed the condition of the room. Hetty wasdishing out fragrant, warmed-over stew into three lunch dishes on thetable. She had cleaned up the worst of the mess and changed into afresh shirt and jeans. Her iron-gray hair was pulled back in astill-damp knot at the back after a hasty scrubbing to get out thegooey mixture of eggs and plaster. 

"Holy smoke, Hetty, " Johnny said. "What happened here? Your pressurekettle blow up?" His eyes widened when he saw the lid of the slopcauldron still embedded in the wall over the stove. His gaze trackedback and took in the shattered window. 

"Had an accident, " Hetty said matter-of-factly, putting the last disheson the table. "Tell you about it when we eat. Now you go wash up andcall Barney. I want you to put some new glass in that window thisafternoon and get that danged lid outta the wall. "

Curious and puzzled, Johnny washed at the kitchen sink and then walkedto the door to shout for Barney. On the other side of the yard, Barneyreleased the pump windmill clutch. While Johnny watched from the porch, the weight of the heavy slop cauldron slowly turned the big windmilland as the arm adorned by the kettle rotated downward, the cast-ironpot slipped off and fell to the hard-packed ground with a boomingclang. 

"Well, for the luvva Pete, " Johnny said in amazement. "Hey, Barney, time to eat. C'mon in. "

Barney trudged across the yard and limped into the kitchen to wash. They sat down to the table. "Now just what have you two been up to, "Johnny demanded as they attacked the food-laden dishes. 

Between mouthfuls, the two older people gave him a rundown on themorning's mishaps. The more Johnny heard, the wilder it sounded. Johnnyhad been a part of the Circle T since he was ten years old. That wasthe year Hetty jerked him out of the hands of a Carson City policemanwho had been in the process of hauling the ragged and dirty youngsterto the station house for swiping a box of cookies from a grocery store. Johnny's mother was dead and his father, once the town's best mechanic, had turned into the town's best drunk. 

During the times his father slept one off, either in the shack the manand boy occupied at the edge of town, or in the local lockup, Johnnyran wild. 

Hetty took the boy to the ranch for two reasons. Mainly it was theempty ache in her heart since the death of Big Jim Thompson a yearearlier following a ranch tractor accident that had crushed his chest. The other was her well-hidden disappointment that she had beenchildless. Hetty's bluff, weathered features would never admit toloneliness or heartache. Beneath the surface, all the warmth and loveshe had went out to the scared but belligerent youngster. But she neverlet much affection show through until Johnny had become part of herlife. Johnny's father died the following winter after pneumonia broughton by a night of lying drunk in the cold shack during a blizzard. Itwas accepted without legal formality around the county that Johnnyautomatically became Hetty's boy. 

She cuffed and comforted him into a gawky-happy adolescence, pushed himthrough high school and then, at eighteen, sent him off to theUniversity of California at Davis to learn what the pundits of theUnited States Department of Agriculture had to say about animalhusbandry and ranch management. 

 * * * * *

When Hetty and Barney had finished their recitation, Johnny wore a lookof frank disbelief. "If I didn't know you two better, I'd say you bothbeen belting the bourbon bottle while I was gone. But this I've got tosee. "

They finished lunch and, after Hetty stacked the dishes in the sink, trooped out to the porch where Johnny went through the same examinationof the milk. Again, a little fire was built in the open safety of theyard and a few drops of the liquid used to produce the sametechnicolored, combustive effects. 

"Well, what do you know, " Johnny exclaimed, "a four hundred octaneGuernsey cow!"

Johnny kicked out the fire and carried the milk pail to the tractorshed. He parked the milk on a workbench and gathered up an armful oftools to repair the blast-torn kitchen. He started to leave but whenthe milk bucket caught his eye, he unloaded the tools and fished aroundunder the workbench for an empty five-gallon gasoline can. He pouredthe remaining milk into the closed gasoline can and replaced the cap. Then he took his tools and a pane of glass from an overhead rack andheaded for the house. 

Hetty came into the kitchen as he was prying at the cauldron lid in thewall. 

"You're going to make a worse mess before you're through, " she said, "so I'll just let you finish and then clean up the whole messafterwards. I got other things to do anyway. "

She jammed a man's old felt hat on her head and left the house. Barneywas unloading the last of the supplies Johnny had brought from Carsonin the truck. Hetty shielded her eyes against the metallic glare of theafternoon sun. "Gettin' pretty dry, Barney. Throw some salt blocks inthe pickup and I'll run them down to the south pasture and see if thepumps need to be turned on. 

"And you might get that wind pump going in case we get a little breezelater this afternoon. But in any case, better run the yard pump for anhour or so and get some water up into the tank. I'll be back as soon asI take a ride through the pasture. I want to see how that Angusyearling is coming that I picked out for house beef. "

A few minutes later, Hetty in the pickup disappeared behind a hot swirlof yellow dust. Barney ambled to the cool pump house beneath thetowering windmill. An electric motor, powered either from the REA lineor from direct current stored in a bank of wet cell batteries, bulkedlarge in the small shed. To the left, a small, gasoline-drivengenerator supplied standby power if no wind was blowing to turn thearm-driven generator or if the lines happened to be down, as was oftenthe case in the winter. 

Barney threw the switch to start the pump motor. Nothing happened. Hereached for the light switch to test the single bulb hanging from acord to the ceiling. Same nothing. Muttering darkly to himself, hechanged the pump engine leads to DC current and closed the switch tothe battery bank. The engine squeaked and whined slowly but when Barneythrew in the clutch to drive the pump, it stopped and just hummedfaintly. Then he opened the AC fuse box. 

Johnny had freed the cauldron lid and was knocking out bits of brokenglass from the kitchen window frame before putting in the new glasswhen Barney limped into the room. 

"That pot busted the pump house 'lectric line, Johnny, when it wentsailing, " he said. "Miz Thompson wants to pump up some water and on topof that, the batteries are down. You got time to fix the line?"

Johnny paused and surveyed the kitchen. "I'm going to be working herefor another hour anyway so Hetty can clean up when she gets back. Whydon't you fire up the gasoline kicker for now and I'll fix the linewhen I get through here, " he said. 

"O. K. , " Barney nodded and turned to leave. "Oh, forgot to ask you. MizThompson tell you about the egg?"

"What egg?" Johnny asked. 

"The gold one. "

Johnny grinned. "Sure, and I saw the goose when I came in. And you'reJack and the windmill is your beanstalk. Go climb it, Barney and cutout the fairy tales. "

"Naw, Johnny, " Barney protested, "I ain't kidding. Miz Thompson got agold egg from the hens this morning. At least, it looks kinda like goldbut she says it ain't. See, here it is. " He reached into the cupboardwhere Hetty had placed the odd egg. He walked over and handed it toJohnny who was sitting on the sink drain counter to work on theshattered window. 

The younger man turned the egg over in his hand. "It sure feels funny. Wonder what the inside looks like?" He banged the egg gently againstthe edge of the drain board. When it didn't crack, he slammed itharder, but then realizing that if it did break suddenly, it wouldsquish onto the floor, he put the egg on the counter and tapped it withhis hammer. 

The shell split and a clear liquid poured out on to the drain board, thin and clear, not glutenous like a normal egg white. A small, reddishball, obviously the yolk, rolled across the board, fell into the sinkand broke into powdery fragments. A faint etherlike odor arose from themess. 

"I guess Miz Thompson was right, " Barney said. "She said that hen mustabeen pecking in the fertilizer chemicals. Never seen no egg like thatbefore. "

"Yeh, " Johnny said puzzledly. "Well, so much for that. " He tossed thegolden shell to one side and turned back to his glass work. Barney leftfor the pumphouse. 

Inside the pumphouse, Barney opened the gasoline engine tank and pokeda stick down to test the fuel level. The stick came out almost dry. With another string of mutterings, he limped across the yard to thetractor shed for a gas can. Back in the pumphouse, he poured the enginetank full, set the gas can aside and then, after priming thecarburetor, yanked on the starter pull rope. The engine caught with aspluttering roar and began racing madly. Barney lunged for the throttleand cut it back to idle, but even then, the engine was running at nearfull speed. Then Barney noticed the white fluid running down the sideof the engine tank and dripping from the spout of the gasoline can. Hegrinned broadly, cut in the pump clutch and hurriedly limped across theyard to the kitchen. 

"Hey, Johnny, " he called, "did you put that milk o' Sally's into a gascan?"

Johnny leaned through the open kitchen window. "Yeh, why?"

"Well, I just filled the kicker with it by accident, and man, you orterhear that engine run, " Barney exclaimed. "Come see. "

Johnny swung his legs through the window and dropped lightly to theyard. The two men were halfway across the yard from the pumphouse whena loud explosion ripped the building. Parts of the pump engine flewthrough the thin walls like shrapnel. A billowing cloud of purple smokewelled out of the ruptured building as Johnny and Barney flattenedthemselves against the hot, packed earth. Flames licked up from thepump shed. The men ran for the horse trough and grabbing pails ofwater, raced for the pumphouse. The fire had just started into thewooden walls of the building and a few splashes of water doused theflames. 

They eyed the ruins of the gasoline engine. "Holy cow, " Johnnyexclaimed, "that stuff blew the engine right apart. " He gazed up at theholes in the pumphouse roof. "Blew the cylinders and head right out theroof. Holy cow!"

Barney was pawing at the pump and electric motor. "Didn't seem to hurtthe pump none. Guess we better get that 'lectric line fixed though, nowthat we ain't got no more gas engine. "

The two men went to work on the pump motor. The broken line outside thebuilding was spliced and twenty minutes later, Johnny threw the ACswitch. The big, electric motor spun into action and settled into aworkmanlike hum. The overhead light dimmed briefly when the pump loadwas thrown on and then the slip-slap sound of the pump filled the shed. They watched and listened for a couple of minutes. Assured that thepump was working satisfactorily, they left the wrecked pumphouse. 

Johnny was carrying the gasoline can of milk. "Good thing you set thisoff to one side where it didn't get hit and go off, " he said. "The waythis stuff reacts, we'd be without a pump, engine, or windmill if ithad. 

"Barney, be a good guy and finish putting in that glass for me willyou? I've got the frame all ready to putty. I've got me some fiddlin'and figurin' to do. "

Johnny angled off to the tractor and tool shed and disappeared inside. Barney limped into the kitchen and went to work on the window glass. From the tractor shed came the sounds of an engine spluttering, racing, backfiring and then, just idling. 

When Hetty drove back into the ranch yard an hour or so later, Johnnywas rodeoing the farm tractor around the yard like a teen-ager, hisface split in a wide grin. She parked the truck under the tree asJohnny drove the tractor alongside and gunned the engine, stillgrinning. 

"What in tarnation is this all about?" Hetty asked as she climbed downfrom the pickup. 

"Know what this tractor's running on?" Johnny shouted over the noise ofthe engine. 

"Of course I do, you young idiot, " she exclaimed. "It's gasoline. "

"Wrong, " Johnny yelled triumphantly. "It's running on Sally's milk!"

 * * * * *

The next morning, Johnny had mixed up two hundred gallons of Sally'sFuel and had the pickup, tractor, cattle truck and his 1958 Ford andHetty's '59 Chevrolet station wagon all purring on the mixture. 

Mixing it was a simple process after he experimented and found theright proportions. One quart of pure Sally's milk to one hundredgallons of water. He had used the two remaining quarts in the gasolinecan to make the mixture but by morning, Sally had graced the ranch withfive more gallons of the pure concentrate. Johnny carefully stored theconcentrated milk in a scoured fifty-five gallon gasoline drum in thetool shed. 

"We've hit a gold mine, " he told Hetty exultantly. "We're never goingto have to buy gasoline again. On top of that, at the rate Sally'sturning this stuff out, we can start selling it in a couple of weeksand make a fortune. "

That same morning, Hetty collected three more of the golden eggs. 

"Set 'em on the shelf, " Johnny said, "and when we go into town nexttime I'll have Dale look at them and maybe tell us what those hens havebeen into. I'll probably go into town again Saturday for the mail. "

But when Saturday came, Johnny was hobbling around the ranch on awrenched ankle, suffered when his horse stumbled in a gopher hole andtossed him. 

"You stay off that leg, " Hetty ordered. "I'll go into town for themail. Them girls can just struggle along without your romancing thisweek. " Johnny made a wry face but obeyed orders. 

"Barneeey, " Hetty bawled, "bring me a quarter of beef outta thecooler. " Barney stuck his head out of the barn and nodded. "I beenpromising some good beef to Judge Hatcher for a month of Sundays now, "Hetty said to Johnny. 

"If you're going to stop by the courthouse, how about taking thosecrazy eggs of yours into the county agent's office and leave them therefor analysis, " Johnny suggested. He hobbled into the kitchen to get thegolden eggs. 

Barney arrived with the chilled quarter of beef wrapped in burlap. Hetossed it in the bed of the pickup and threw more sacks over it to keepit cool under the broiling, midmorning sun. Johnny came out with theeggs in a light cardboard box stuffed with crumpled newspapers. Hewedged the box against the side of beef in the forward corner of thetruck bed. "One more thing, Hetty, " he said. "I've got a half drum ofdrain oil in the tractor shed that I've been meaning to trade in forsome gearbox lube that Willy Simons said he'd let me have. Can you dropit off at his station and pick up the grease?"

"Throw it on, " Hetty said, "while I go change into some town clothes. "

Johnny started to hobble down the porch steps when Barney stopped him. "I'll get it boy, you stay off that ankle. " Barney climbed into thepickup and drove it around to the tractor shed. He spotted two oildrums in the gloomy shed. He tilted the nearest one and felt liquidslosh near the halfway mark, then rolled it out the door. Barney heavedit into the truck bed, stood it on end against the cab and drove thepickup back to the ranch house door as Hetty came out wearing cleanjeans and a bright, flowered blouse. Her gray hair was tucked in a neatbun beneath a blocked Stetson hat. 

She climbed into the truck, waved to the two men and drove out theyard. As she bumped over the cattle guard at the gate, the wooden plugthat Johnny had jury-rigged to cork the gasoline drum with itstwenty-gallon load of pure Sally's milk, bounced out. 

A small geyser of white fluid shot out of the drum as she hit anotherbump and then the pickup went jolting down the ranch road, littlesplashes of Sally's milk sloshing out with each bump and forming a poolon the bottom of the truck. When Hetty cowboyed onto the county road, the drum tipped dangerously and then bounced back onto its base. Thistime a fountain of milk geysered out and splashed heavily into the boxof golden eggs. Hetty drove on. 

But not for long. 

With a ranch woman's disregard for watching the road, Hetty constantlyscanned the nearby range lands where small bands of her cherished blackAngus grazed. She prided herself on the fact that despite her sixtyyears, her eyes were still sharp enough to spot a worm-ridden cow at athousand yards. 

Two miles after she turned onto the county road, which ran throughCircle T range land, her roving gaze took in a cow and calf on ahillside a few hundred yards south of the road. Hetty slowed the pickupto fifty miles an hour and squinted into the sun. She grunted withsatisfaction and slammed on the brakes. The truck swerved and skiddedto a halt at the left side of the deserted road. Hetty leaped from thetruck and began a fast walk up the hillside for a closer look at thecow and calf. 

She never heard the dull thump of the milk drum tipping onto the edgeof the truck bed. Hetty topped the hill and walked slowly towards thecow and calf that were now edging away from her. As she eased down thefar side of the hill out of sight of the pickup, a steady stream ofSally's milk was engulfing the box of golden eggs. A minute later, thereduced contents caused the drum to shift and slip. It fell onto theeggs, cracking a half dozen. 

 * * * * *

The earth split open and the world around Hetty erupted in a roaringinferno of purple-red fire and ear-shattering sound. The rollingconcussion swept Hetty from her feet and tumbled her into a drywashgully at the base of the hill. The gully saved her life as thesky-splitting shock wave rolled over her. Stunned and deafened, sheflattened herself under a slight overhang. 

The rolling blast rocked ranches and towns for more than one hundredmiles and the ground wave triggered the seismographs at the Universityof California nearly two hundred miles away and at UCLA, four hundredmiles distant. Tracking and testing instruments went wild along theentire length of the AEC atomic test grounds, a mere sixty miles southof the smoking, gaping hole that marked the end of the Circle T pickuptruck. 

In a direct line, the ranch house was about eight miles from theexplosion. 

Johnny was lounging in Hetty's favorite rocking chair on the wide backverandah, lighting a cigarette and Barney was perched on the porchrailing when the sky was blotted out by the dazzling violet light ofthe blast. They were blinking in frozen amazement when the shock wavesmashed into the ranch, flattening the flimsier buildings and bucklingthe side and roof of the steel-braced barn. Every window on the placeblew out in a storm of deadly glass shards. The rolling ground wave inthe wake of the shock blast, rocked and bounced the solid, timber andadobe main house. 

The concussion hit Johnny like a fist, pinwheeling him backwards in therocker against the wall of the house. It caught Barney like a sack ofsodden rags and flung him atop the dazed and semiconscious younger man. 

The first frightened screams of the horses in the barns and corralswere mingling with the bawling of the heifers in the calf pens when thesound of the explosion caught up with the devastation of the shock andground waves. 

Like the reverberation of a thousand massed cannon firing at once, thesoul-searing sound rumbled out of the desert and boiled with almosttangible density into the shattered ranch yard. It flattened thefeebly-stirring men on the porch and then thundered on in a tidal waveof noise. 

Barney moaned and rolled off the tangle of porch rocker and stunnedyouth beneath him. Johnny lay dazed another second or two and thenbegan struggling to his feet. 

"Hetty, " he croaked, pointing wildly to the south where a massive, dirty column of purple smoke and fire rose skyward like the stem of amonstrous and malignant toadstool. "Hetty's out there. "

He stumbled from the porch and broke into a staggering run to the pileof broken planks that seconds ago had been the tractor shed. As hecrossed the yard, a great gust of wind whipped back from the north, pumping clouds of dry, dusty earth before it. The force of the windalmost knocked the bruised and shaken Johnny from his feet once againas it swept back over the ranch, in the direction of the great pillarof purple smoke. 

"Implosion, " Johnny's mind registered. 

He tore at the stack of loose boards leaning against the station wagon, flinging them fiercely aside in his frantic efforts to free thevehicle. Barney limped up to join him and a minute later they hadcleared a way into the wagon. Johnny squeezed into the front seat anddrove it back from under more leaning boards. Three of the side windowswere smashed but the windshield was intact except for a small, starredcrack in the safety glass. Clear of the debris, Barney opened theopposite door and slid in beside Johnny. Dirt spun from beneath thewheels of the car as he slammed his foot to the floor and raced towardsthe smoke column that now towered more than a mile and a half into theair. 

Beneath her protective overhang, Hetty stirred and moaned feebly. Twinrivulets of dark blood trickled from her nostrils. Thick dust wassettling on the area and she coughed and gasped for breath. 

On the opposite side of the hill, a vast, torn crater, nearly a hundredfeet across and six to ten feet deep, smoked like a stirring volcanoand gave off a strange, pungent odor of ether. 

 * * * * *

Johnny Culpepper's dramatic charge to the rescue was no more dramaticthan the reaction in a dozen other places in Nevada and California. Particularly sixty miles south where a small army of military andscientific men were preparing for an atomic underground shot when theCircle T pickup vanished. 

The shock wave rippled across the desert floor, flowed around themountains and tunneled into Frenchman's Flat, setting off everyshock-measuring instrument. Then came the ground wave, rolling throughthe earth like a gopher through a garden. Ditto for ground-wavemeasuring devices. Lastly, the sound boomed onto the startledscientists and soldiers like the pounding of great timpani under thevaulted dome of the burning sky. 

On mountain top observation posts, technicians turned unbelieving eyesnorth to the burgeoning pillar of smoke and dust, then yelped and swungoptical and electronic instruments to bear on the fantastic column. 

In less than fifteen minutes, the test under preparation had beencanceled, all equipment secured and the first assault waves ofscientists, soldiers, intelligence and security men were racing northbehind white-suited and sealed radiation detection teams cradlingGeiger counters in their arms like submachine guns. Telephone lineswere jammed with calls from Atomic Energy Commission field officialsreporting the phenomena to Washington and calling for aid from WestCoast and New Mexico AEC bases. Jet fighters at Nellis Air Force basenear Las Vegas, were scrambled and roared north over the groundvehicles to report visual conditions near the purple pillar of power. 

The Associated Press office in San Francisco had just received word ofthe quake recorded by the seismograph at Berkeley when a staffer on theother side of the desk answered a call from the AP stringer in CarsonCity, reporting the blast and mighty cloud in the desert sky. One fastlook at the map showed that the explosion was well north of the AECtesting ground limits. The Carson City stringer was ordered to get outto the scene on the double and hold the fort while reinforcements ofstaffers and photographers were flown from 'Frisco. 

Before any of the official or civil agencies had swung into action, theCircle T station wagon had rocketed off the ranch road and turned ontothe oiled, county highway leading both to Carson City--and thenow-expanding but less dense column of smoke. 

Johnny hunched over the wheel and peered through the thickening pall ofsmoke and dust, reluctant to ease off his breakneck speed but knowingthat they had to find Hetty--if she were alive. Neither man had said aword since the wagon raced from the ranch yard. 

 * * * * *

There was no valid reason to associate the explosion with Hetty, yetinstinctively and naggingly, Johnny knew that somehow Hetty wasinvolved. Barney, still ignorant of his error of the oil drums, justclung to his seat and prayed for the best. 

The dust was almost too thick to see, forcing Johnny to slow thestation wagon as they penetrated deeper into the base of the smokecolumn. Hiding under his frantic concern for Hetty was the half-formedthought that the whole thing was an atomic explosion and that he andBarney were heading into sure radiation deaths. His logic nudged at thethought and said, "If it were atomic, you started dying back on theporch, so might as well play the hand out. "

A puff of wind swirled the dust up away from the road as the stationwagon came up to the smoking crater. Johnny slammed on the brakes andhe and Barney jumped from the car to stand, awe-struck, at the edge ofthe hole. 

The dust-deadened air muffled Johnny's sobbing exclamation:

"Dear God!"

They walked slowly around the ragged edges of the crater. Barney bentdown and picked a tiny metallic fragment from the pavement. He staredat it and then tapped Johnny on the arm and handed it to him, wordlessly. It was a twisted piece of body steel, bright at its tornedges and coated with the scarlet enamel that had been the color of theCircle T pickup. 

Johnny's eyes filled with tears and he shoved the little scrap of metalin his pocket. "Let's see what else we can find, Barney. " The two menbegan working a slow search of the area in ever-widening circles fromthe crater that led them finally up and over the top of the little hillto the south of the road. 

Fifteen minutes later they found Hetty and ten minutes after that, thewiry, resilient ranchwoman was sitting between them on the seat of thestation wagon, explaining how she happened to be clear of the pickupwhen the blast occurred. 

The suspicion that had been growing in Johnny's mind, now brought intothe open by his relief at finding Hetty alive and virtually unhurt, bloomed into full flower. 

"Barney, " Johnny asked softly, "which oil drum did you put in the backof the pickup?"

The facts were falling into place like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzlewhen the Carson City reporter, leading a caravan of cars and emergencyvehicles from town by a good ten minutes and beating the AEC andmilitary teams by twenty minutes, found the Circle T trio sitting inthe station wagon at the lip of the now faintly smoldering crater. 

A half hour later, the AP man in San Francisco picked up the phone. 

"I've just come back from that explosion, " the Carson City stringersaid. The AP man put his hand over the phone and called across thedesk. "Get ready for a '95' first lead blast. "

"O. K. , " the San Francisco desk man said, "let's have it. " He tucked thephone between chin and shoulder and poised over his typewriter. 

"Well, there's a crater more than one hundred feet across and ten feetdeep, " the Carson City stringer dutifully recounted. "The scene is onCounty Road 38, about forty miles east of here and the blast rockedCarson City and caused extensive breakage for miles around. "

"What caused it, " the AP desk man asked as he pounded out a lead. 

"A lady at the scene said her milk and eggs blew up, " the Carson Citystringer said. 

 * * * * *

Ten miles south, the leading AEC disaster truck stopped behind thesix-strand fence blocking the range road. Two men with wire cutters, jumped from the truck and snipped the twanging wires. The metal "KeepOut" sign banged to the ground and was kicked aside. The truck rolledthrough the gap and the men swung aboard. Behind them was a curtain ofdust rising sluggishly in the hot sky, marking the long convoy of otherofficial vehicles pressing hard on the trail of the emergency truck. 

When the range road cut across the county highway, the driver pausedlong enough to see that the heaviest smoke concentrations from theunknown blast lay to the west. He swung left onto the oiled road andbarreled westward. In less than a mile, he spied the flashing red lightof a State trooper's car parked in the center of the road. The scenelooked like a combination of the San Francisco quake and the LosAngeles county fair. 

Dozens of cars, trucks, two fire engines and a Good Humor man werescattered around the open range land on both sides of the vast craterstill smoldering in the road. A film of purple dust covered theimmediate area and still hung in the air, coating cars and people. Scores of men, women and children lined the rim of the crater, gawkinginto the smoky pit, while other scores roamed aimlessly around thenearby hill and desert. 

A young sheriff's deputy standing beside the State trooper's car raisedhis hand to halt the AEC disaster van. The truck stopped and thewhite-suited radiation team leaped from the vehicle, counters in hand, racing for the crater. 

"Back, " the chief of the squad yelled at the top of his lungs. "Everybody get back. This area is radiation contaminated. Hurry!"

There was a second of stunned comprehension and then a mad, pan-demonicscrambling of persons and cars, bumping and jockeying to flee. Theradiation team fanned out around the crater, fumbling at the levelscales on their counters when the instruments failed to indicateanything more than normal background count. 

All of the vehicles had pulled back to safety--all except a slightlybattered station wagon still parked a yard or two from the eastern edgeof the crater. 

The radiation squad leader ran over to the wagon. Three people, two menand a dirty, disheveled and bloody-nosed older woman, sat in the frontseat munching Good Humor bars. 

"Didn't you hear me?" the AEC man yelled. "Get outta here. This area'shot. Radioactive. Dangerous. GET MOVING!"

The woman leaned out the window and patted the radiation expertsoothingly on the shoulder. 

"Shucks, sonny, no need to get this excited over a little spilt milk. "

"Milk, " the AEC man yelped, purpling. "Milk! I said this is a hot area;it's loaded with radiation. Look at this--" He pointed to the meter onhis counter, then stopped, gawked at the instrument and shook it. Andstared again. The meter flicked placidly along at the barely-above-normalbackground level count. 

"Hey, Jack, " one of the other white-suited men on the far side of thecrater called, "this hole doesn't register a thing. "

The squad chief stared incredulously at his counter and banged itagainst the side of the station wagon. Still the needle held in thenormal zone. He banged it harder and suddenly the needle dropped tozero as Hetty and her ranch hands peered over the AEC man's shoulder atthe dial. 

"Now ain't that a shame, " Barney said sympathetically. "You done brokeit. "

The rest of the disaster squad, helmets off in the blazing sun andlead-coated suits unfastened, drifted back to the squad leader at theCircle T station wagon. A mile east, the rest of the AEC convoy hadarrived and halted in a huge fan of vehicles, parked a safe distancefrom the crater. A line of more white-suited detection experts movedcautiously forward. 

With a stunned look, the first squad leader turned and walked slowlydown the road towards the approaching line. He stopped once and lookedback at the gaping hole, down at his useless counter, shook his headand continued on to meet the advancing units. 

By nightfall, new strands of barbed wire reflected the last rays of thered Nevada sun. Armed military policemen and AEC security police inpowder-blue battle jackets, patrolled the fences around the county roadcrater. And around the fence that now enclosed the immediate vicinityof the Circle T ranch buildings. Floodlights bathed the wire and castan eerie glow over the mass of parked cars and persons jammed outsidethe fence. A small helicopter sat off to the right of the impromptuparking lot and an NBC newscaster gave the world a verbal descriptionof the scene while he tried to talk above the snorting of thegas-powered generator that was supplying the Associated Pressradio-telephone link to San Francisco. 

Black AEC vans and dun colored military vehicles raced to and from theranch headquarters, pausing to be cleared by the sentries guarding themain gates. 

The AP log recorded one hundred eighteen major daily papers using theAP story that afternoon and the following morning:

CARSON CITY, NEV. , May 12 (AP)--A kiloton eggnog rocked the scientificworld this morning. 

"On a Nevada ranch, forty miles east of here, 60-year-old MehatibelThompson is milking a cow that gives milk more powerful than an atomicbomb. Her chickens are laying the triggering mechanisms. 

"This the world learned today when an earth-shaking explosionrocked. .. . "

 * * * * *

Inside the Circle T ranch house, Hetty, bathed and cleaned and onlyslightly the worse for her experiences, was hustling about the kitchenthrowing together a hasty meal. Johnny and Barney had swept up a hugepile of broken glass, crockery and dirt and Hetty had salvaged whatdishes remained unshattered by the blast. 

She weaved through a dozen men grouped around the kitchen table, somein military or security police garb, three of them wearing the uniformof the atomic scientist in the field--bright Hawaiian sports shirts, dark glasses, blue denims and sneakers. Johnny and Barney huddledagainst the kitchen drainboard out of the main stream of traffic. Thefinal editions of the San Francisco _Call-Bulletin_, Oakland _Tribune_, Los Angeles _Herald-Express_ and the Carson City _Appeal_ were spreadout on the table. Hetty pushed them aside to put down dishes. 

The glaring black headlines stared up at her. "Dairy DetonationDevastates Desert, " the alliterative _Chronicle_ banner read; "Bossy'sBlast Rocks Bay Area, " said the _Trib_; "Atomic Butter-And-Egg BlastJars LA, " the somewhat inaccurate _Herald-Ex_ proclaimed; "ThompsonRanch Scene of Explosion, " the _Appeal_ stated, hewing to solid facts. 

"Mrs. Thompson, " the oldest of the scientists said, "won't you pleaseput down those dishes for a few minutes and give us the straight story. All afternoon long its been one thing or another with you and all we'vebeen able to get out of you is this crazy milk-egg routine. "

"Time enough to talk after we've all had a bite to eat, " Hetty said, juggling a platter of steaks and a huge bowl of mashed potatoes to thetable. "Now we've all had a hard day and we can all stand to get on theoutside of some solid food. I ain't had a bite to eat since thismorning and I guess you boys haven't had much either. And since you'veseemed to have made yourselves to home here, then by golly, you'regoing to sit down and eat with us. 

"Besides, " she added over her shoulder as she went back to the stovefor vegetables and bread, "me 'n Johnny have already told you whatstory there is to tell. That's all there is to it. "

She put more platters on the now-heaping table and then went around thetable pouring coffee from the big ranch pot. "All right, you men sitdown now and dig in, " she ordered. 

"Mrs. Thompson, " an Army major with a heavy brush mustache said, "wedidn't come here to eat. We came for information. "

Hetty shoved back a stray wisp of hair and glared at the man. 

"Now you listen to me, you young whippersnapper. I didn't invite you, but since you're here, you'll do me the goodness of being a mite morepolite, " she snapped. 

The major winced and glanced at the senior scientist. The older manraised his eyes expressively and shrugged. He moved to the table andsat down. There was a general scuffling of chairs and the rest of thegroup took places around the big table. Johnny and Barney took theirusual flanking positions beside Hetty at the head of the board. 

Hetty took her seat and looked around the table with a pleased smile. "Now that's more like it. "

She bowed her head and, after a startled glance, the strangers followedsuit. 

"We thank Thee, dear Lord, " Hetty said quietly, "for this food which weare about to eat and for all Your help to us this day. It's been alittle rough in spots but I reckon You've got Your reasons for all ofit. Seein' as how tomorrow is Your day anyway, we ask that it be just amite quieter. Amen. "

The satisfying clatter of chinaware and silver and polite mutteredrequests for more potatoes and gravy filled the kitchen for the nextquarter of an hour as the hungry men went to work on the prime Circle Tyearling beef. 

 * * * * *

After his second steak, third helping of potatoes and gravy and fourthcup of coffee, the senior scientist contentedly shoved back from thetable. Hetty was polishing the last dabs of gravy from her plate with ascrap of bread. The scientist pulled a pipe and tobacco pouch from hispocket. 

"With your permission, m'am, " he asked his hostess. Hetty grinned. "Forheaven's sake, fire it up, sonny. Big Jim--that was my husband--used tosay that no meal could be said properly finished unless it had beensmoked into position for digestion. "

Several of the other men at the table followed suit with pipes, cigarsand cigarettes. Hetty smiled benignly around the table and turned tothe senior scientist. 

"What did you say your name was, sonny?" she asked. 

"Dr. Floyd Peterson, Mrs. Thompson, " he replied, "and at forty-sixyears of age, I deeply thank you for that 'sonny'. "

He reached for the stack of newspapers on the floor beside his chairand pushing back his plate, laid them on the table. 

"Now, Mrs. Thompson, let's get down to facts, " he rapped the headlineswith a knuckle. "You have played hell with our schedule and I've got tohave the answers soon before I have the full atomic commission and acongressional 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, " Hettyreplied. "It must of been the combination of them queer eggs andSally's milk. "

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

"Mrs. Thompson, I don't know what your motives are but until I findout, 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 andMr. 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-concealedexasperation, "you created and set off an explosive force that dwarfedevery test we've made at Frenchman's Flat in four years. The force ofyour explosive was apparently greater than that of a fair-sized atomicdevice and only our Pacific tests--and those of the Russians--have beenany greater. Yet within a half hour or forty-five minutes after theblast there wasn't a trace of radiation at ground level, no aerialradiation and not one report of upper atmosphere contamination orfallout within a thousand miles. 

"Mrs. Thompson, I appeal to your patriotism. Your friends, yourcountry, 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 firmdetermination. Shoving back her chair and raising to stand stifflyerect and with chin thrust forward, she was every inch the True PioneerWoman of the West. 

"I never thought of that, " she said solemnly. "By golly, if my countryneeds 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 centfor her, either. And you can take the hens, too. "

There was a stunned silence and then the Army major strangled on amouthful of coffee; the security man turned beet red in the face andDr. Peterson's jaw bounced off his breastbone. Johnny, unable to holdback an explosion of laughter, dashed for the back porch and collapsed. 

 * * * * *

The kitchen door slammed and Dr. Peterson stamped out on to the porch, pipe clamped between clenched teeth, his face black with anger andfrustration. He ignored Johnny who was standing beside the rail wipingtears from his eyes. Culpepper recovered himself and walked over to theirate physicist. 

"Dr. Peterson you're a man of science, " Johnny said, "and a scientistis supposed to be willing to accept a fact and then, possibly determinethe causes behind the fact after he recognizes what he sees. Isn't thatso?"

"Now, look here, " Peterson angrily swung around to face Johnny. "I'vetaken all I intend to take from you people with your idiotic story. Idon't intend to. .. . "

Johnny took the older man by the elbow and gently but firmly propelledhim from the porch towards the barn. "I don't intend to either insultyour intelligence, Dr. Peterson, or attempt to explain what hashappened here. But I do intend to show you what we know. "

Bright floodlights illuminated the yard and a crew of soldiers werestringing telephone wires from the guarded front gate across the openspace to the ranch house. Beyond the new barbed wire fence, there wasan excited stir and rush for the wire as a sharp-eyed newsman spottedJohnny and the scientist crossing the yard. The two men ignored theshouted requests for more up-to-the-minute information as they walkedinto the barn. Johnny switched on the lights. 

The lowing of the two prize Guernseys in the stalls at the right of thedoor changed to loud, plaintive bawling as the lights came on. Bothcows were obviously in pain from their swollen and unmilked udders. 

"Seeing is believing. Doc?" Johnny asked, pointing to the cows. 

"Seeing what?" Peterson snapped. 

"I knew we were going to have some tall explaining to do when youfellows took over here, " Johnny said, "and, of course, I don't blameyou one bit. That was some blast Hetty set off out there. "

"You don't know, " Dr. Peterson murmured fearfully, "you just don'tknow. "

"So, " Johnny continued, "I deliberately didn't milk these cows, so thatyou could see for yourself that we aren't lying. Now, mind you, I don'thave the foggiest idea WHY this is happening, but I'm going to show youat least, WHAT happened. "

He picked up a pair of milk buckets from a rack beside the door andwalked towards the cow stalls, Peterson trailing. "This. " Johnny said, pointing to the larger of the two animals, "is Queenie. Her milk isjust about as fine as you can get from a champion milk producing line. And this, " he reached over and patted the flank of the other cow, "isSally's Cloverdale Marathon III. She's young and up to now has givengood but not spectacular quantities or qualities of milk. She's fromthe same blood line as Queenie. Sally had dried up from her first calfand we bred her again and on Wednesday she came fresh. Only it isn'tmilk that she's been giving. Watch!"

Kicking a milking stool into position, he placed a bucket underQueenie's distended bag and began squirting the rich, foaming milk intothe pail with a steady, fast and even rhythm. When he had finished, heset the two full buckets with their thick heads of milk foam, outsidethe stall and brought two more clean, empty buckets. He moved to theside of the impatient Sally. As Peterson watched, Johnny filled thebuckets with the same, flat, oily-looking white fluid that Sally hadbeen producing since Wednesday. The scientist began to show mildinterest. 

Johnny finished, stripped the cow, and then carried the pails out andset them down beside the first two. 

"O. K. , now look them over yourself, " he told Peterson. 

The scientist peered into the buckets. Johnny handed him a ladle. 

"Look, Culpepper, " Peterson said, "I'm a physicist, not a farmer or anagricultural expert. How do you expect me to know what milk is supposedto do? Until I was fifteen years old, I thought the milk came out ofone of those spigots and the cream out of another. "

"Stir it, " Johnny ordered. The scientist took the ladle angrily andpoked at the milk in Queenie's buckets. 

"Taste it, " Johnny said. Peterson glared at the younger man and thentook a careful sip of the milk. Some of the froth clung to his lips andhe licked it off. "Taste like milk to me, " he said. 

"Smell it, " Johnny ordered. Peterson sniffed. 

"O. K. , now do the same things to the other buckets. "

Peterson swished the ladle through the buckets containing Sally's milk. The white liquid swirled sluggishly and oillike. He bent over andsmelled and made a grimace. 

"Go on, " Johnny demanded, "taste it. "

Peterson took a tiny sip, tasted and then spat. 

"All right, " he said, "I'm now convinced that there's somethingdifferent about this milk. I'm not saying anything is wrong with itbecause I wouldn't know. All I'm admitting is that it is different. Sowhat?"

 * * * * *

"Come on, " Johnny took the ladle from him. He carried the buckets ofQueenie's milk into the cooler room and dumped them in a smallpasturizer. 

Then carrying the two pails of Sally's milk, Johnny and the physicistleft the barn and went to the shattered remains of the tractor shed. 

Fumbling under wrecked and overturned tables and workbenches, Johnnyfound an old and rusted pie tin. 

Placing the tin in the middle of the open spaces of the yard, he turnedto Peterson. "Now you take that pail of milk and pour a little into thepan. Not much, now, just about enough to cover the bottom or a littlemore. " He again handed the ladle to Peterson. 

The scientist dipped out a small quantity of the white fluid andcarefully poured it into the pie plate. 

"That's enough, " Johnny cautioned. "Now let's set these buckets a goodlong ways from here. " He picked up the buckets and carried them to theback porch. He vanished into the kitchen. 

By this time, the strange antics of the two men had attracted theattention of the clamoring newsmen outside the fence and they jammedagainst the wire, shouting pleas for an interview or information. Thenetwork television camera crews trained their own high-powered lightsinto the yard to add to the brilliance of the military lights and beganrecording the scene. Dr. Peterson glared angrily at the mob and turnedas Johnny rejoined him. "Culpepper, are you trying to make a fool ofme?" he hissed. 

"Got a match?" Johnny queried, ignoring the question. The pipe-smokingscientist pulled out a handful of kitchen matches. Johnny produced aglass fish casting rod with a small wad of cloth tied to the weightedhook. Leading Peterson back across the yard about fifty feet, Johnnyhanded the rag to Peterson. 

"Smell it, " he said. "I put a little kerosene on it so it would burnwhen it goes through the air. " Peterson nodded. 

"You much of a fisherman?" Johnny asked. 

"I can drop a fly on a floating chip at fifty yards, " the physicistsaid proudly. Johnny handed him the rod and reel. "O. K. , Doc, light upyour rag and then let's see you drop it in that pie plate. "

While TV cameras hummed and dozens of still photographers pointedtelescopic lenses and prayed for enough light, Dr. Peterson ignited thelittle wad of cloth. He peered behind to check for obstructions andthen, with the wrist-flicking motion of the devoted and expertfisherman, made his cast. The tiny torch made a blurred, whippingstreak of light and dropped unerringly into the pie plate in the middleof the yard. 

The photographers had all the light they needed!

The night turned violet as a violent ball of purple fire reared andboiled into the darkened sky. The flash bathed the entire ranchheadquarters and the packed cars and throngs outside the fence in thestrange brilliance. The heat struck the dumfounded scientist and youngrancher like the suddenly-opened door of a blast furnace. 

It was over in a second as the fire surged and then winked out. Thesudden darkness blinded them despite the unchanged power of thetelevision and military floodlights still focused on the yard. Pandemonium erupted from the ranks of newsmen and photographers who hadwitnessed the dazzling demonstration. 

Peterson stared in awe at the slightly smoking and warped pie tin. "Well, cut out my tongue and call me Oppenheimer, " he exclaimed. 

"That was just the milk, " Johnny said. "You know of a good safe placewe could try it out with one of those eggs? I'd be afraid to test 'emanywhere around here after what happened to Hetty this morning. "

 * * * * *

An hour later, a military helicopter chewed its way into the night, carrying three gallons of Sally's milk from the ranch to Nellis AFBwhere a jet stood ready to relay the sealed cannister to the AEClaboratories at Albuquerque. 

In the ranch house living room Peterson had set up headquarters and anArmy field telephone switchboard was in operation across the room. 

An AEC security man was running the board. Hetty had decided that oneearthquake a day was enough and had gone to bed. Barney bewildered buthappily pleased at so much company, sat on the edge of a chair andavidly watched and listened, not understanding a thing he saw or heard. At the back of the room, Johnny hunched over Big Jim Thompson'sroll-top desk, working up a list of supplies he would need to repairthe damages from the week's growing list of explosions. 

Peterson and three of his staff members were in lengthy consultation ata big table in the middle of the room. The Army field phone atPeterson's elbow jangled. 

Across the room, the switchboard operator swung around and called:"It's the commissioner, Dr. Peterson. I just got through to him. "Peterson picked up the phone. 

"John, " he shouted into the instrument, "Peterson here. Where have youbeen?" Tinny, audible squawks came from the phone and Peterson held itaway from his ear. 

"Yes, I know all about it, " he said. "Yes . .. Yes . .. Yes. I knowyou've had a time with the papers. Yes, I heard the radio. Yes, John, Iknow it sounds pretty ridiculous. What? Get up to the ranch and findout. Where do you think I'm calling from?"

The squawking rattled the receiver and Peterson winced. 

"Look, commissioner, " he broke in, "I can't put a stop to thosestories. What? I said I can't put a stop to the stories for one reason. They're true. "

The only sound that came from the phone was the steady hum of the line. 

"Are you there, John?" Peterson asked. There was an indistinct mumblefrom Washington. "Now listen carefully, John. What I need out here justas quickly as you can round them up and get them aboard a plane is thebest team of biogeneticists in the country. 

"What? No, I don't need a team of psychiatrists, commissioner. I amperfectly normal. " Peterson paused. "I think!"

He talked with his chief for another fifteen minutes. At two othertelephones around the big table, his chief deputy and the seniorsecurity officer of the task force handled a half dozen calls duringPeterson's lengthy conversation. When Peterson hung up, the machinerywas in motion gathering the nation's top biochemists, animalgeneticists, agricultural and animal husbandry experts and a baker'sdozen of other assorted -ists, ready to package and ship them by planeand train to the main AEC facility at Frenchman's Flat and to theCircle T. 

Peterson sighed gustily as he laid down the phone and reached for hispipe. Across the table, his assistant put a hand over the mouthpiece ofhis telephone and leaned towards Peterson. 

"It's the Associated Press in New York, " he whispered. "They're hotterthan a pistol about the blackout and threatening to call the Presidentand every congressman in Washington if we don't crack loose withsomething. "

"Why couldn't I have flunked Algebra Two, " Peterson moaned. "No, I hadto be a genius. Now look at me. A milkmaid. " He looked at his watch. "Tell 'em we'll hold a press conference at 8:00 a. M. Outside the ranchgate. "

The assistant spoke briefly into the phone and again turned toPeterson. "They say they want to know now whether the milk and eggstory is true. They say they haven't had anything but an officialrunaround and a lot of rumor. "

"Tell them we neither deny nor confirm the story. Say we areinvestigating. We'll give them a formal statement in the morning, "Peterson ordered. 

He left the table and walked to the desk where Johnny was finishing hislist of building supplies. 

"What time do you usually get those eggs?" he asked. 

"Well, as a rule, Hetty gets out and gathers them up about nine eachmorning. But they've probably been laid a couple of hours earlier. 

"That's going to make us awfully late to produce anything for thosebabbling reporters, " the scientist said. 

"Come to think of it, " Johnny said thoughtfully, "we could rig up alight in the chicken house and make the hens lay earlier. That way youcould have some eggs about four or five o'clock in the morning. "

Barney had been listening. 

"And them eggs make a mighty fine breakfast of a morning, " hevolunteered cheerfully. Peterson glared at him and Johnny grinned. 

"I think the doctor wants the golden kind, " he said with a smile. 

"Oh, them, " Barney said with a snort of disgust. "They wouldn't make anomelet fit for a hog. You don't want to fuss with them, doc. "

 * * * * *

Under Johnny's direction, a crew of technicians ran a power line intothe slightly-wrecked chicken house. There were loud squawks ofindignation from the sleeping hens as the men threaded their waythrough the nests. The line was installed and the power applied. Aone-hundred-fifty-watt bulb illuminated the interior of the chickenhouse to the discordant clucking and cackling of the puzzled birds. 

Solomon, the big rooster, was perched on a crossbeam, head tucked underhis wing. When the light flooded the shed he jerked awake and fasteneda startled and unblinking stare at the strange sun. He scrambledhastily and guiltily to his feet and throwing out his great chest, crowed a shrieking hymn to Thomas A. Edison. Johnny chuckled as thetechnicians jumped at the sound. He left the hen house, went back tothe house and to bed. 

He set his alarm clock for 4:00 a. M. And dropped immediately into adeep and exhausted sleep. 

When he and the sleepy-eyed Peterson went into the chicken house at4:30, there were eleven of the golden eggs resting on the straw nests. 

They turned the remainder of the normal eggs over to Hetty who whippedup a fast and enormous breakfast. While Peterson and Johnny wereeating, a writing team of AEC public information men who had arrivedduring the night, were polishing a formal press release to be given tothe waiting reporters at eight. The phones had been manned throughoutthe night. Peterson's bleary-eyed aide came into the kitchen andslumped into a chair at the table. 

"Get yourself a cup of coffee, boy, " Hetty ordered, "while I fix yousomething to eat. How you like your eggs?"

"Over easy, Mrs. Thompson and thanks, " he said wearily. "I think I'vegot everything lined up, doctor. The eggs are all packed, ready to goin your car and the car will be ready in about ten minutes. They'restill setting up down range but they should be all in order by the timeyou get there. 

"The bio men and the others should be assembled in the main briefingroom at range headquarters. I've ordered a double guard around thebarn, to be maintained until the animal boys have finished theiron-the-ground tests. And they're padding a device van to take Sally tothe labs when they're ready. 

"And . .. Oh yeah, I almost forgot . .. The commissioner called about tenminutes ago and said to tell you that the Russians are going to make aformal protest to the U. N. This morning. They say we're trying to wipeout the People's Republic by contaminating their milk. "

The sound of scuffling in the yard and loud yells of protest camethrough the back porch window. The door swung open and a splutteringand irate Barney was thrust into the room, still in the clutches of apair of armed security policemen. 

"Get your hands offn me, " Barney roared as he struggled and squirmedimpotently in their grip. "Doc, tell these pistol-packing bellhops toturn me loose. "

"We caught him trying to get into the barn, sir, " one of the officerstold Peterson. 

"Of course I was going into the barn, " the indignant ranch handscreamed. "Where'd you think I would go to milk a cow?"

Peterson smiled. "It's all right, Fred. It's my fault. I should havetold you Mr. Hatfield has free access. "

The security men released Barney. He shook himself and glared at them. 

"I'm terribly, sorry, Barney, " Dr. Peterson said. "I forgot that youwould be going down to milk the cows and I'm glad you reminded me. Dome a favor and milk Sally first, will you? I want to take that milk, orwhatever it is, with us when we leave in a few minutes. "

 * * * * *

The sun was crawling up the side of the mountains when Johnny and Dr. Peterson swung out of the ranch yard between two armored scout cars forthe sixty-mile trip down the range road. Dew glistened in the earlyrays of light and the clear, cool morning air held little hint of theheat sure to come by midmorning. There was a rush of photographerstowards the gate as the little convoy left the ranch. A battery ofcameras grabbed shots of the vehicles heading south. 

It was the beginning of a day that changed the entire foreign policy ofthe United States. It was also the day that started a host of thenation's finest nuclear physicists tottering towards psychiatrists'couches. 

In rapid order in the next few days, Peterson's crew reinforced byhundreds of fellow scientists, technicians and military men, learnedwhat Johnny Culpepper already knew. 

They learned that (1) Sally's milk, diluted by as much as four hundredparts of pure water, made a better fuel than gasoline when ignited. 

They also learned that (2) in reduced degrees of concentration, itbecame a substitute for any explosive of known chemical composition;(3) brought in contact with the compound inside one of the golden eggs, it produced an explosive starting at the kiloton level of one egg totwo cups of milk and went up the scale but leveled off at a peak as therecipe was increased; (4) could be controlled by mixing jets to produceany desired stream of explosive power; and (5) they didn't have thewildest idea what was causing the reaction. 

In that same order it brought (1) Standard Oil stock down to the valueof wallpaper; (2) ditto for DuPont; (3) a new purge in the top level ofthe Supreme Soviet; (4) delight to rocketeers at Holloman Air ForceResearch Center, Cape Canaveral and Vandenburg Air Force Base; and (5)agonizing fits of hair-tearing to every chemist, biologist andphysicist who had a part in the futile attempts to analyze the twoingredients of what the press had labeled "Thompson's Eggnog. "

While white-coated veterinarians, agricultural experts and chemistsprodded and poked Sally's Cloverdale Marathon III, others were giving asimilar going-over to Hetty's chicken flock. Solomon's outraged screamsof anger echoed across the desert as they subjected him to fowlindignities never before endured by a rooster. 

Weeks passed and with each one new experiments disclosed new uses forthe amazing Eggnog. While Sally placidly chewed her cuds and continuedto give a steady five gallons of concentrated fury at each milking, Solomon's harem dutifully deposited from five to a dozen golden spheresof packaged power every day. At the same time, rocket researchengineers completed their tests on the use of the Eggnog. 

 * * * * *

In the early hours of June 4th, a single-stage, two-egg, thirty-fivegallon Atlas rocket poised on the launching pads at Cape Canaveral. From the loud-speaker atop the massive block-house came the countdown. 

"X minus twenty seconds. X minus ten seconds. Nine . .. Eight . .. Seven . .. Six . .. Five . .. Four . .. Three . .. Two . .. FIRE!"

The control officer stabbed the firing button and deep within the Atlasa relay clicked, activating a solenoid that pushed open a valve. A thinstream of Sally's milk shot in from one side of the firing chamber toblend with a fine spray of egg, batter coming from a jet in theopposite wall. 

Spewing a solid tail of purple fire, the Atlas leaped like a wasp-stungheifer from the launching pads and thundered into space. The fuelorifices continued to expand to maximum pre-set opening. In ten secondsthe nose cone turned from cherry-red to white heat and began sloughingits outer ceramic coating. At slightly more than forty-three thousandmiles an hour, the great missile cleaved out of atmosphere into thevoid of space, leaving a shock wave that cracked houses and shatteredglass for fifty miles from launching point. 

A week later, America's newest rocket vessel, weighing more than thirtytons and christened _The Egg Nog_, was launched from the opposite coastat Vandenburg. Hastily modified to take the new fuel, the weight andspace originally designed for the common garden variety of rocket fuelwas filled with automatic camera and television equipment. In its sternstood a six-egg, one-hundred-gallon engine, while in the nose was asmall, one-egg, fourteen-quart braking engine to slow it down for thereturn trip through the atmosphere. 

Its destination--Mars!

A week later, _The Eggnog_ braked down through the troposphere, skiddedto a piddling two-thousand miles, an hour through the stratosphere, automatically sprouted gliding wing stubs in the atmosphere and planeddown to a spraying halt in the Pacific Ocean, fifty miles west ofEnsenada in Baja, California. Aboard were man's first views of the redplanet. 

The world went mad with jubilation. From the capitals of the freenations congratulations poured into Washington. From Moscow came wordof a one-hundred-ton spaceship to be launched in a few days, powered bya mixture of vodka and orange juice discovered by a bartender inNovorosk who was studying chemistry in night school. This announcementwas followed twenty-four hours later by a story in _Pravda_ provingconclusively that Sally's Cloverdale Marathon III was a directdescendant of Nikita's Mujik Droshky V, a prize Guernsey bull producedin the barns of the Sopolov People's Collective twenty-six years ago. 

Late in August, Air Force Major Clifton Wadsworth Quartermain climbedout of the port of the two-hundred-ton, two dozen-egg, two-hundred-thirtygallon space rocket _Icarus_, the first man into space and back. He hadcircled Venus and returned. No longer limited by fuel weight factors, scientists had been able to load enough shielding into the huge_Icarus_ to protect a man from the deadly bombardment of the Van Allenradiation belts. 

On September 15th, Sally's Cloverdale Marathon III, having been milkedharder and faster than any Guernsey in history, went dry. 

Less than half of the approximately twelve-hundred gallons of fuel shehad produced during her hay days, remained on hand in the AEC storagevaults. 

Three days later, Solomon, sprinting after one of his harem who wasplaying hard to get, bee-lined into the path of a security police jeep. There was an agonized squawk, a shower of feathers and mourning. Ashort time later, the number of golden eggs dropped daily until onemorning, there were none. They never reappeared. The United States hadstockpiled twenty-six dozen in an underground cave deep in the Rockies. 

Man, who had burst like a butterfly into space, crawled back into hiscocoon and pondered upon the stars from a worm's eye point of view. 

 * * * * *

Banging around in the back end of a common cattle truck, Sally'sCloverdale Marathon III came home to the Circle T in disgrace. In acorner of the truck, the late Solomon's harem cackled and voiced loudcries of misery as they huddled in the rude, slatted shipping coop. Thetruck turned off the county road and onto the dirt road leading to themain buildings. It rattled across the cattle guard and through thenew-unprotected and open gate in the barbed wire fence. Life hadreturned almost to normal at the Circle T. 

But not for long. 

Five days after Sally's ignominious dismissal from the armed forces, astaff car came racing up to the ranch. It skidded to a halt at theback-porch steps. Dr. Peterson jumped out and dashed up to the kitchendoor. 

"Well, for heaven's sake, " Hetty cried. "Come on in, sonny. I ain'tseen you for the longest spell. "

Peterson entered and looked around. 

"Where's Johnny, Mrs. Thompson?" he asked excitedly. "I've got somewonderful news. "

"Now ain't that nice, " Hetty exclaimed. "Your wife have a new baby orsomething? Johnny's down at the barn. I'll call him for you. " She movedtowards the door. 

"Never mind, " Peterson said, darting out the door, "I'll go down to thebarn. " He jumped from the porch and ran across the yard. 

He found Johnny in the barn, rigging a new block and tackle for thehayloft. Barney was helping thread the new, manila line from a coil onthe straw-littered floor. 

"Johnny, we've found it, " Peterson shouted jubilantly as he burst intothe barn. 

"Why, Doc, good to see you again, " Johnny said. "Found what?"

"The secret of Sally's milk, " Peterson cried. He looked wildly aroundthe barn. "Where is she?"

"Who?"

"Sally, of course, " the scientist yelped. 

"Oh, she's down in the lower pasture with Queenie, " Johnny replied. 

"She's all right, isn't she?" Peterson asked anxiously. 

"Oh, sure, she's fine, Doc. Why?"

"Listen, " Peterson said hurriedly, "our people think they've stumbledon something. Now we still don't know what's in those eggs or inSally's milk that make them react as they do. All we've been able tofind is some strange isotope but we don't know how to reproduce it orsynthesize it. 

"But we do think we know what made Sally give that milk and made thosehens start laying the gold eggs. "

Johnny and Barney laid down their work and motioned the excitedscientist to join them on a bench against the horse stalls. 

"Do you remember the day Sally came fresh?" Peterson continued. 

"Not exactly, " Johnny replied, "but I could look it up in my journal. Ikeep a good record of things like new registered stock births. "

"Never mind, " Peterson said. "I've already checked. It was May 9th. "

He paused and smiled triumphantly. 

"I guess that's right if you say so, " Johnny said. "But what about it?"

"And that was the same day that the hens laid the first golden egg too, wasn't it?" Peterson asked. 

"Why it sure was, Doc, " Barney chimed in. "I remember, cause MizThompson was so mad that the milk was bad and the eggs went wrong bothin the same day. "

"That's what we know. Now listen to this, Johnny, " the scientistcontinued. "During the night of May 8th, we fired an entirely new kindof test shot on the range. I can't tell you what it was, only to saythat it was a special atomic device that even we didn't know too muchabout. That's why we fired it from a cave in the side of a hill downthere. 

"Since then, our people have been working on the pretty good assumptionthat something happened to that cow and those chickens not too longbefore they started giving the Eggnog ingredients. Someone rememberedthe experimental test shot, checked the date and then went out and hada look at the cave. We already had some earlier suspicions that thisdevice produced a new type of beam ray. We took sightings from thecave, found them to be in a direct, unbroken line with the Circle T. Weset up the device again and using a very small model, tried it out onsome chick embryos. Sure enough, we got a mutation. But not the rightkind. 

"So we're going to recreate the entire situation right here, only thistime, we're going to expose not only Sally but a dozen other Guernseysfrom as close to her blood line as we can get. 

"And we already knew that you had a young rooster sired by Solomon. "

"But, Doc, " Johnny protested. "Sally had a calf early that morning. Isn't that going to make a difference?"

"Of course it is, " Peterson exclaimed. "And she's going to have anotherone the same way. And so are all the other cows. You're the one thattold me she had her calf by artificial insemination, didn't you?"

Johnny nodded. 

"Well, then she's going to have another calf from the same bull and sowill the other cows. "

"Pore Sally, " Barney said sorrowfully. "They're sure takin' the romanceoutta motherhood for you. "

 * * * * *

The next day the guards were back on the gate. By midafternoon twelvefine young Guernseys arrived, together with a corps of veterinarians, biologists and security police. By nightfall, Sally and her companionswere all once again in a "delicate condition. "

A mile from the ranch house, a dormitory was built for theveterinarians and biologists and a barracks thrown up for the securityguards. A thirty-five thousand dollar, twelve-foot high chain linkfence, topped by barbed wire, was constructed around the pasture andarmored cars patrolled the fence by day and kept guard over thepregnant bovines by night in the barn. 

Through the fall, into the long winter and back to budding springagain, the host of experts and guards watched and cared for the newcalf-bloated herd. 

The fact that Sally had gone dry had been kept a carefully guardednational secret. To keep up the pretense and show to the world thatAmerica still controlled the only proven method of manned space travel, the Joint Chiefs of Staff voted to expend two hundred gallons of theprecious, small store of milk on hand for another interplanetaryjunket, this time to inspect the rings around Saturn. 

Piloting a smaller and more sophisticated but equally-well protectedversion of _Icarus_, Major Quartermain abandoned the fleshpots of earthand the adulation of his coast-to-coast collection of worshipingfemales to again hurtle into the unknown. 

"It was strictly a milk run, " Major Quartermain was quoted as saying ashe emerged from his ship after an uneventful but propaganda-loadedtrip. 

By the middle of May, it was the consensus of the veterinarians thatDelivery Day would be July 4th. Plans were drafted for the repeatatomic cave shot at 9:00 p. M. , July 3rd. The pregnant herd was to begiven labor-inducing shots at midnight, and, if all went well, deliveries would start within a few hours. Just to be sure that nothingwould shield the cows from the rays of the explosion, they were put ina corral on the south side of the barn until 9:30 p. M. , on the night ofthe firing. 

Solomon's successor and a new bevy of hens were already roosting in thesame old chicken house and egg production was normal. 

On the night of July 3rd, at precisely 9:00 p. M. , a sheet of lighterupted from the Nevada hillside cave and the ground shook and rumbledfor a few miles. It wasn't a powerful blast, nor had been the originalshot. Sixty miles away, thirteen Guernsey cows munched at a rick offresh hay and chewed contentedly in the moonlight. 

At 3:11 a. M. , the following morning the first calf arrived, followed inrapid order by a dozen more. 

Sally's Cloverdale Marathon III dropped her calf at 4:08 a. M. OnIndependence Day. 

At 7:00 a. M. , she was milked and produced two and a half gallons ofabsolutely clear, odorless, tasteless and non-ignitable fluid. Elevenother Guernseys gave forth gushing, foaming, creamy rich gallon aftergallon of Grade A milk. 

The thirteenth cow filled two buckets with something that looked likeweak cocoa and smelled like stale tea. 

But when a white-smocked University of California poultry specialistentered the chicken house later in the morning, he found nothing butnormal, white fresh eggs in the nests. He finally arrived at theconclusion that Solomon's old harem had known for some time; whateverit was that Solomon had been gifted with, this new rooster just didn'thave it. 

A rush call went out for a dozen of the precious store of golden eggsto be sent to the testing labs down range. 

Two hours later, Dr. Peterson, surrounded by fellow scientists, stoodbefore a bank of closed circuit television monitors in the Frenchman'sFlat headquarters building. The scene on the screens was the interiorof a massive steel-and-concrete test building several miles up range. Resting on the floor of the building was an open, gallon-sized glassbeaker filled with the new version of Sally's milk. 

Poised directly above the opened beaker was a funnel-shaped vesselcontaining the contents of one golden egg. 

Dr. Peterson reached for a small lever. By remote control, the leverwould gradually open the bottom of the funnel. He squeezed gently, slowly applying pressure. An involuntary gasp arose from the spectatorsas a tiny trickle of egg fluid fell from the funnel towards the openbeaker. 

Instinctively, everyone in the room clamped their eyes shut inanticipation of a blast. A second later, Peterson peered cautiously atthe screen. The beaker of milk had turned a cloudy pale blue. Itneither fizzed nor exploded. It just sat. 

He levered another drop from the funnel. The stringy, glutenous massplopped into the beaker and the liquid swirled briefly and turned moreopaque, taking on more of a bluish tinge. 

A babble of voices broke through the room when it was apparent that noexplosion was forthcoming. 

Peterson slumped into a nearby chair and stared at the screen. 

"Now what?" he moaned. 

 * * * * *

The "what" developed twelve hectic hours later after time lostinitially in shaking, bouncing and beaming the new substance on theoutside chance it might develop a latent tendency towards demolition. 

Satisfied that whatever it was in the beaker wasn't explosive, theliquid was quickly poured off into sixteen small half-pint beakers andspeeded to as many different laboratories for possible analysis. 

"What about the other stuff?" Peterson was asked, referring to thebrownish "milk" subsequently identified as coming from a dainty youngcow known as Melody Buttercup Greenbrier IV. 

"One thing at a time, " replied Peterson. "Let's find out what we havehere before we got involved in the second problem. "

At 9:00 p. M. , that night, Peterson was called to the radiation labs. Hewas met at the door by a glazed-eyed physicist who led him back to hisoffice. 

He motioned Peterson to a seat and then handed him a sheaf ofphotographic papers and other charts. Each of the photo sheets had aclear, white outline of a test beaker surrounded by a solid field ofblack. Two of the papers were all white. 

"I don't believe it, Floyd, " the physicist said, running his handsthrough his hair. "I've seen it, I've done it, I've tested it, provenit, and I still don't believe it. "

Peterson riffled the sheaf of papers and waited expectantly. 

"You don't believe what, Fred?" he asked. 

The physicist leaned over and tapped the papers in Peterson's hands. "We've subjected that crazy stuff to every source and kind of high andlow energy radiation we can produce here and that means just abouteverything short of triggering an H-device on it. We fired alphas, gammas, betas, the works, in wide dispersion, concentrated beam andjust plain exposure. 

"Not so much as one neutron of any of them went beyond the glasssurrounding that forsaken slop. 

"They curved around it, Floyd. They curved around it. "

The physicist leaned his head on the desk. "Nothing should react likethat, " he sobbed. He struggled for composure as Peterson stared dazedlyat the test sheets. 

"That's not the whole story, " the physicist continued. He walked toPeterson's side and extracted the two all-white sheets. 

"This, " he said brokenly, "represents a sheet of photographic paperdipped in that crud and then allowed to dry before being bombarded withradiation. And this, " he waved the other sheet, "is a piece of photopaper in the center of a panel protected by another sheet of ordinarytyping paper coated with that stuff. "

Peterson looked up at him. "A radiation-proof liquid, " he said in awedtones. 

The other man nodded dumbly. 

"Eight years of university, " the physicist whispered to himself. "Sixyears in summer schools. Four fellowships. Ten years in research. 

"All shot to hell, " he screamed, "by a stinking, hayburning cow. "

Peterson patted him gently on the shoulder. "It's all right, Fred. Don't take it so hard. It could be worse. "

"How?" he asked hollowly. "Have this stuff milked from a kangaroo?"

 * * * * *

Back in his office, Peterson waved off a dozen calls while he gaveorders for fresh quantities of the blue milk to be rushed to theArgonne laboratories for further radiation tests and confirmation ofthe Nevada results. He ordered a test set up for the brown fluid forthe following morning and then took a call from the AEC commissioner. 

"Yes, John, " he said, "we've got something. "

Operation Milkmaid was in full swing!

The following morning observers again clustered about the monitoringroom as Peterson prepared to duplicate the tests, using a sample of theMelody's brownish milk. 

There was the same involuntary remote cringing as the first drop of eggfell towards the beaker, but this time, Peterson forced himself towatch. Again the gentle plop was heard through the amplifiers andnothing more. A similar clouding spread through the already murky fluidand when the entire contents of one egg had been added, the beaker tookon a solid, brown and totally opaque appearance. The scientists watchedthe glass container for several minutes, anticipating another possibledelayed blast. 

When nothing occurred, Peterson nodded to an assistant at an adjoiningconsole. The aide worked a series of levers and a remotely-controlledmechanical arm came into view on the screen. The claw of the armdescended over the beaker and clasping it gently, bounced it lightly onthe cement bunker floor. The only sound was the muffled thunk of theglass container against the concrete. 

The assistant wiggled his controls gently and the beaker jiggled backand forth, a few inches off the floor. 

Peterson, who had been watching closely, called out. "Do that again. "

The operator jostled the controls. "Look at that, " Peterson exclaimed. "That stuff's hardened. "

A quick movement confirmed this and then Peterson ordered the beakerraised five feet from the floor and slowly tipped. Over the containerwent as the claw rotated in its socket. The glass had turned almost180° towards the floor when the entire mass of solidified glob slidout. 

The watchers caught their breath as it fell to the hard floor. The globhit the floor, bounced up a couple of inches, fell back, bounced againand then quivered to a stop. What was soon to be known as Melody'sMighty Material had been born. 

The testing started. But there was a difference. By the time the brownchunk had been removed from the bunker it had solidified to the pointthat nothing would break or cut it. The surface yielded slightly to theheaviest cutting edge of a power saw and then sprang back, unmarked. Adiamond drill spun ineffectually. 

So the entire block started making the rounds of the various labs. Itwas with downright jubilation that radiation labs reported noproperties of resistance for the stuff. One after the other, the testproved nothing until the physical properties unit came up with an idea. 

"You can't cut it, break it or tear it, " the technician told Peterson, as he hefted the chunk of lightweight enigma. "You can't burn it, shootholes in it, or so much as mark the surface with any known acid. Thisstuff's tougher than steel and about fifty times lighter. "

"O. K. , " Peterson asked, "so what good is it?"

"You can mold it when you mix it, " the technician said significantly. 

"Hey, you're right, " Peterson jumped up excitedly. "Why, a spacer castout of this stuff and coated with Sally's paint would be light enoughand shielded enough to work on regular missile fuels. "

 * * * * *

Working under crash priorities, the nation's three leading plasticsplants turned out three, lightweight, molded, one-man space vehiclesfrom the government-supplied Melody's Mix. A double coating of Sally'sPaint then covered the hulls and a single stage liquid fuel rocketengine was hooked to the less-than-one-ton engineless hull. 

Twenty-eight days after the milk first appeared, on a warm Augustevening, the first vehicle stood on the pads at Cape Canaveral, illuminated by towers of lights. Fuel crews had finished loading thetanks which would be jettisoned along with the engine at burn-out. Inside the rocket, Major Quartermain lounged uncomfortably and crampedin the take-off sling for a short but telling trip through the VanAllen radiation fields and back to Earth. 

The take-off sling rested inside an escape capsule since the use ofchemical fuel brought back many of the old uncertainties of launchings. On the return trip, Quartermain would eject at sixty thousand feet andpull the capsule's huge parachute for a slow drop to the surface of theAtlantic where a recovery fleet was standing by. The light rocket hullwould pop a separate chute and also drift down for recovery andanalysis. 

Inside the ship, Quartermain sniffed the air and curled his nose. "Let's get this thing on the road, " he spoke into his throat mike. "Some of that Florida air must have seeped in here. "

"Four minutes to final countdown, " blockhouse control replied. "Turn onyour blowers for a second. "

Outside the ship, the fuel crews cleared their equipment away from thepad. The same ripe, heavy odor hung in the warm night air. 

At 8:02 p. M. , twenty-eight days after the new milks made their firstappearance, Major Quartermain blasted off in a perfect launching. 

At 8:03 p. M. , the two other Melody Mix hulls standing on nearby pads, began to melt. 

At 8:04 p. M. , the still-roaring engine fell from the back end ofQuartermain's rocket in a flaming arc back towards Earth. Fifteenseconds later, he hurtled his escape capsule out of the collapsingrocket hull. The parachute opened and the daring astronaut driftedtowards the sea. 

Simultaneously, in a dozen labs around the nation, blocks and molds ofMelody's Mix made from that first batch of milk, collapsed into pilesof putrid goo. Every day thereafter, newer blocks of the mix reachedthe twenty-eight-day limit and similarly broke down into malodrousblobs. 

 * * * * *

It was a month before the stinking, gooey mess that flowed over thelaunching pads at the Cape was cleaned up by crews wearing respiratorsand filter masks. It took considerably longer to get the nation's threetop plastics firms back in operation as the fetid flow of unfinishedrocket parts wrecked machinery and drove personnel from the area. 

The glob that had been Quartermain's vehicle fell slowly back to Earth, disintegrating every minute until it reached the consistency of thingruel. At this point, it was caught by a jet air stream and carried ina miasmic cloud halfway around the world until it finally floated downto coat the Russian city of Urmsk in a veil of vile odor. The UnitedStates disclaimed any knowledge of the cloud. 

 * * * * *

 "LAS VEGAS, NEV. , May 8 (AP)--The Atomic Energy Commission today announced it has squeezed the last drop from Operation Milkmaid. "

 "After a year of futile experimentation has failed to get anything more than good, Grade A milk from the world's two most famous cows, the AEC says it has closed down its field laboratory at the Circle T ranch. "

 "Dr. Floyd Peterson, who has been in charge of the attempt to again reproduce Sally's Milk, told newsmen that the famed Guernsey and her stablemate, Melody, no longer gave exotic and unidentifiable liquids that sent man zooming briefly to the stars. "

 "For a while, it looked like we had it in the bag, " Peterson said. "You might say now, though, that the tests have been an udder failure. "

 "Meanwhile, in Washington, AEC commissioner. .. . "

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