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way he lived. Long before he invented edenite he had been playing a dangerous game with the sea, matching his brain and his money—and often his life—against all its hazards. Sometimes he had won. Why, all the sub-sea domes were evidence of that! But, just as often, the unconquerable sea had beaten him.
    But this—making money out of disaster! I could hardly believe it.
    If nothing else, it took my mind off Bob Eskow. “Come on, Jim,” Danthorpe was insisting. “Where is he? Is he in Krakatoa Dome?”
    I could only tell him what I knew of the truth. “The last I heard of him, he was in Marinia. Thetis Dome, I think. I don’t know where he is now.”
    “Sure, sure.” But Harley Danthorpe seemed disappointed. “Too bad,” he said. “My dad is anxious to meet him.”
    Bob grinned tightly. “I bet he is,” he said in a voice that rasped. “I bet he’d like to be able to make a few millions out of quakes himself.”
    It was not a pleasant remark, but Danthorpe nodded shrewdly. “Of course. They’re both working the inside drift. They ought to be working together.”
    I doubted that my uncle would want to work any kind of drift with old Barnacle Ben Danthorpe. But I didn’t say anything—didn’t have much of a chance, for that matter, for just then Yeoman Harris came into our quarters.
    “Eden?” he demanded, peering around. “Where’s—Oh, there you are. Eden, you’re to report to Lieutenant Tsuya down at Station K—at oh eight hundred hours.”
    I glanced at my watch. It was almost that already.
    “On the double!” he said.
    I hesitated. What did the lieutenant want with me? I looked hard at the old yeoman’s sea-battered face. His watery, bulging eyes didn’t tell me a thing. “Can’t you give me a tow?” I asked. “I’m adrift.”
    He snapped: “Give you a tow? You cadets are more trouble than you’re worth already!” And he glared at Eskow. “You,” he muttered, “I’d give a lot to know what you were up to last night, when your pass was missing?”
    Bob’s expression was innocent. “I thought you found the pass.”
    “I did! But where was it when I couldn’t find it? You wouldn’t have, for instance, taken it, used it, and then put it back?”
    Bob merely looked polite; but that was answer enough for me. But I didn’t have time to think about it. “On the double, Eden!” Yeoman Harris barked. “The tides don’t wait!”
    And I hurried off to Station K.
    Lieutenant Tsuya glanced up abstractedly as I came into the station, mumbled something, and looked back at his map.
    He had been there around the clock. When he found time to sleep I had no idea; his pumpkin face was sagging with weariness, but his eyes were still bright.
    He was working over a cross-sectional chart, with the crumpled layers of the earth’s crust carefully lined in under the Dome, stretching out and under the great downfold of the Java Trough. He painstakingly inked in a red fault line, and then looked up.
    “Eden,” he said, “I hear you were hurt in the quake last night.”
    The lieutenant didn’t miss much. “Not badly, sir. Just a scratch.”
    “Yes.” He nodded and leaned back, staring at the ceiling. “Krakatoa Dome was lucky,” he said. “If it had been a major quake, like the one at Nansei Shoto—”
    He shook his head and closed his eyes for a second. “You didn’t forecast it, Eden,” he said, reaching back to knead the weary muscles at the back of his neck. “That’s no shame to you. I didn’t forecast it either. But Bob Eskow did.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    Lieutenant Tsuya said suddenly: “How well do you know Cadet Eskow?”
    “Why—why—” He had caught me off balance. “We’ve been close friends ever since we were lubbers at the Academy, sir.”
    “I see. And how do you think he was able to make that forecast last night?”
    It was a good question. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a good answer.
    I should have known that the Lieutenant would ask that question; as I say, he