“That clicking.”
“Clicking?”
He heard it then, almost beneath the seat. He glanced down.
“Yipes!” he exclaimed. “I—I forgot to switch off the Geiger counter before I put it in the boat. Boy, if the battery is weak, Dad’ll—”
He reached toward the switch. His hand stopped in mid-air. The needle of the radioactivity gauge was quivering far over to the right, and the clicking which had attracted Teena’s attention was much louder and faster than the normal background count.
“Teena! There—there’s radioactivity around here!”
“In the water?”
“No. Maybe underneath the water. Maybe on the sand bar. This is a sensitive Geiger counter. It could pick it up all right.”
“Hey, the clicking’s getting weak again,” Teena said.
“We must be drifting away from whatever is causing it,” Eddie said. He moved the Geiger counter up onto the seat between them. He put the earphones on. “Now let’s kind of circle around here and try to pick it up again.”