of man-produced underground blasts. It just doesn't jibe with those
other remote tremors. They'd be too much of a coincidence, happening at
the same time!"

"Then the quakes at Harkness and Medfield were real earthquakes!" Sandy
put in.

"Looks that way," Tom admitted. "Those other tremors Wes mentioned
follow a natural circum-Pacific belt which is well known to
seismologists. I'm no expert, but perhaps they could have set off chain
reactions below the earth's crust which triggered the two quakes in this
part of the country."

In that case, the young inventor reflected, it was only a freak of
nature that the Faber and nose-cone factories had been wrecked by the
shock. But in spite of the seismographic clues, Tom was not entirely
convinced. A nagging doubt still buzzed in the back of his mind.

The next morning Tom hurried off to his private glass-walled laboratory
at Enterprises, eager to continue work on his container, or robot body,
for the brain from space.

Tom frowned as he studied the rough sketch he had drawn in his office
the afternoon before. "This setup's full of bugs!" he muttered.

Nevertheless, Tom decided, the basic idea was sound. Grabbing pencil and
slide rule, he began to dash off page after page of diagrams and
equations.

"Chow down!" boomed a foghorn voice. Chow Winkler, wearing a white