ood rasp
rubbing over a piece of broken pine. The cat was purring!

Barby had stamped her foot angrily at the sight of Dismal being
forced to retreat to the house, but the cat was too much for her. "You
beautiful thing!" she exclaimed, and picked the creature up. It
responded by purring louder.

Rick grinned. On the pet level, at least, the Morrison invasion was
off to a fast start. He hoped the incident wasn't symbolic.

CHAPTER III

A System Within a System

When Rick came down to breakfast the next morning, the day was already
hours old for his father, Steve Ames, Julius Weiss, Parnell Winston,
and Dr. Walter Miller alias Morrison. The scientists had been closeted
in the library with Steve since dawn, their talks interrupted only by
Mrs. Brant serving coffee to the group. Steve, too, had remained
overnight.

Barby and Scotty were around the island somewhere with Janice. Mrs.
Brant and Mrs. Morrison were in the kitchen, getting acquainted and
finding that they had friends in common.

It wasn't that Rick had slept late; he was on time. Everyone else had
gotten up early. Rick told himself that he was the only calm member of
the family, but underneath he was a little chagrined. If he had arisen
earlier, he might have been able to take part in the talks now going
on in the library.

The Morrisons had been so tired from the strain of getting out of
Washington undetected, and from the trip in the confined quarters of
the Coast Guard cutter that they had gone to bed almost immediately.

Dr. Morrison turned out to be a tall man with a kind, tired face,
steel-rimmed glasses, and a shock of curly white hair. Mrs. Morrison
was a pleasant, stylish woman whose reaction was a mixture of pure
pleasure at finding herself in the comfortable Brant home and
embarrassment at the circumstances that had forced her to impose
herself on strangers. Rick had liked both the Morrisons immediately.

His reaction to Janice was favorable, too. He admitted that she was a
remarkably pretty girl, as dark as Barby was fair, and of about the
same height and slimness. She hadn't said a great deal, and he decided
at once that she was shy. Barby had taken to her immediately, and she
to Barby. The last thing Rick had heard before falling asleep was the
two of them talking and giggling in the room down the hall.

He walked into the dining room, hoping he wasn't too late for
breakfast, and stopped short, stifling a laugh at the sight tha