"Sir!" he burst out. "This is it! We've hit the Thakura Ripples!"
"Impossible, Wyman! It's too soon. What's happened?"
"You told me to report as soon as we ran across anything suspicious, sir. Well, look what our screen has been picking up."
He handed over a plastic record tape, perforated by minute notches which outlined an unsystematic, jagged line of peaks and hollows.
"We've been getting this stuff all evening."
"Doesn't seem to mean anything. It doesn't show any sort of pattern."
"No, sir, and it may not mean anything, but it's different from what we've been getting up till now. And then another thing. It's probably not serious, but the number ten Pile has started to heat."
"Begun to heat? What's wrong with Pile Ten? One of your men been getting careless?"
"I'm positive not, sir. I have complete confidence in all of them."
Captain Evans studied the record tape, a worried frown on his forehead.