The skipper of the destroyer went cold. He brought his ship closer. It was not big, this tramp. Maybe two thousand tons. It was low in the water. It swayed and surged and wallowed and rolled. Men from the destroyer managed to board it. It was completely unharmed. They found one small sign of the explosions overhead. One fragment of an exploded shell had fallen on board, doing no damage. Even the crew was unharmed. But every man was asleep. Each one slumbered heavily. Each breathed stertorously. They could not be awakened. They would need oxygen to bring them to. * * * * * A party from the destroyer went on board to bring the ship into harbor. The officer in charge tried to find out the ship's name. There was not a document to be found to show what the ship's name was or where it had come from or what it carried as cargo. That was strange. The officer looked in the pockets of the two men in the wheel house. There was not a single identifying object on either of them. He grew disturbed. He made a really thorough search. Every sleeping man was absolutely anonymous. Then--still on the way to harbor--a really fine-tooth-comb examination of the ship began. Somebody's radium-dial watch began to glow brightly. The searchers looked at each other and went pale. They hunted frantically, fear making them clumsy. They found it. Rather--they found them. The stubby tramp had an adequate if rather clumsy atomic bomb in each of its two holds. The lading of the ship was of materials which--according to theory--should be detonated in atomic explosion if an atomic bomb went off nearby. Otherwise they could not be detonated. The anonymous tramp-steamer had been headed for the harbor of Naples, whose newspapers--at least those of a certain political party--had been screaming of the danger of an atomic explosion while American warships were anchored there. It was not likely that two atom bombs and a shipload of valuable secondary atomic explosive had been put on a carefully nameless ship just to be taken for a ride. If this ship had anchored among the American fleet and if it had exploded in the Bay of Naples ... The prophecies of a certain political party would seem to have been fulfilled. The American ships would be destroyed. Naples itself would be destroyed. And it would have appeared that Europeans who loved the great United States had made a mistake. It was, odd, though, that this ship was the only one that the Invaders' flying craft had struck with its peculiar weapon. VI