Before that week was up, the Wall Street Journal estimated there were already more i-Guns in the hands of the juvenile public than all the yo-yos ever produced. They retailed at eighty-five cents, made of plastic with a hole in the back where you could change the pen-light battery. They sold, all right. They sold in drugstores and toy stores and dime stores and department stores. Toddler's, tykes and teen-agers went for them. And adults. Maybe 30 million of them were in the hands of the public before I saw Leo Baxter next. Which was almost two weeks instead of the one week he had promised. I finally got an appointment. "Sorry," he said. "I've been tied up with government people all week. The A. E. C. tried to get me in trouble." I said, "Skip it. You promised for tonight. Now let's go." "I can't possibly make it tonight." He pointed at his desk. It was littered with correspondence, orders and contracts. "Give me one more week, Lieutenant." It was an order, not a request. There was nothing to do but wait the third week. It was not, however, uneventful. It was the week the accidents began to happen. At 4:14 of a Tuesday afternoon, a man was admitted to a local hospital with a perforated belly. Straight through, hide, guts and liver. A newsman got hold of it and wrote a scare story about an attack with a pellet gun that must shoot needles. Before the edition was sold out the hospitals were loaded with emergency cases. People with holes in them. Tiny little holes, mostly, but holes that went right through them. Then dogs. Then automobiles, trucks and busses. Holes in their radiators. Holes in windshields that always went straight back, through seats and sometimes passengers--right out through the rear end. * * * * * The city panicked. Then the county, state and nation. In two days, yes, the whole nation! At first everyone thought we were being attacked by some secret weapon. By some miracle of statesmanship, the President of the United States prevented a "massive retaliation" attack by the army upon our most likely enemy--long enough for Intelligence to affirm that no enemy on Earth was that mad at us. Then all thoughts turned to extra-terrestrial space. A bombardment from the sky? It was ridiculous to even consider, because none of the holes that appeared in people and things came from above. The holes were almost entirely in the horizontal plane. Strangely enough during those first two days, nobody thought of the Mystery i-Gun. No one but me. Leo Baxter had disappeared into thin air, as completely as if he'd turned to metal and crawled into the muzzle of one of his own "toys". I had every known place he frequented staked out with a pair of plain-clothesmen, but it was the morning of the second day of accidents before I got a radio call from the squad car stationed near the old Baxter home.