they would
photograph. He needed a good picture for the science project on which he
was working.

To rest his eyes he turned in his chair and looked out over the broad
horizon of the Atlantic Ocean. It was a calm day, and the calmness was
reflected in the leisurely pace of life on Spindrift Island. The famous
island off the New Jersey coast, home of the Spindrift Scientific
Foundation, had not always been so peaceful, Rick thought. Many
scientific experiments of world importance had taken place, or had
begun, in the long, low, gray laboratory buildings on the southeast
corner of the island.

Most recently, Rick Brant and his pal Donald Scott, nicknamed Scotty,
had taken part in an expedition to the Sulu Sea. The quiet, scientific
survey of human and animal life in the area had begun on Spindrift
Island, but had ended in a bloody fight on another island, in a far
corner of the globe, as told in _The Pirates of Shan_.

Now, though, all was serene. The scientists were at work on reports, or
teaching summer sessions at universities. No major experiments were in
progress, and no expeditions were being planned.

Rick grinned. If he came right down to it, one reason for the peace and
quiet was the absence of his sister Barbara. Barby, a year his junior,
was visiting with the Millers, one of the island's scientific families,
at their ancestral home in Virginia. Barby and Jan Miller had a way of
making life somewhat frenzied, or at least less quiet than at present.

The sound of a fast-moving motorboat intruded on the quiet and Rick
cocked an ear. It was one of the Spindrift boats, judging by the sound.
That meant Scotty was returning from the mainland with the groceries and
the mail.

Rick stood up and stretched luxuriously. He decided to walk down to the
cove and meet Scotty. He could help carry the groceries. Besides, he
hoped that Scotty would have a package for him from a biological supply
house.

Rick's interest in microscopy had begun with Barby's present of a
complete microscope set. It was a beauty, with magnifications up to
three hundred times. It had its own light source, a substage
illuminator, and even an "atomic energy" stage, which was actually a
device for viewing the scintillations caused when radioactivity hit a
sulfide screen.

Barby's gift was far more than a toy, and Rick promptly put it to work
on a science project, in which he planned to compare the life cycles of
two common microscopic animals,