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Let's keep this quiet until find out exactly what's going on. And make sure the meter readers don't tip off the perpetrator."

"Yes sir," replied Jack. "I'll get right on it." He thought, Why did he call the person a perpetrator? There's no law against generating electricity, is there?

Meanwhile, the plant manager called the power company's home office.

* * *
Two men knocked on Pumpernick's door in the middle of the afternoon a week later. The inventor answered in a wrinkled sweat shirt and jeans. He was chewing on beef jerky. "Sorry, but I'm not into religion," he said when saw that the men had on darks suits and ties.

"We're not Mormons. We're from County Gas and Light."

"Oh? Am I delinquent on my bill?"

The spokesman of the two grinned. "Hardly. The fact is we may owe you money."

"I see. My invention is feeding electricity back into the system."

The men gave each other knowing glances. "You've invented some newfangled generator? May we see it? We need to ensure that anything hooked up to our system meets the proper safety standards."

Pumpernick glared at them suspiciously. "Really? That's new. In fact that's impossible. Every time someone bought a new lamp, you would have to inspect it."

"You mean your generator plugs into an ordinary socket like an appliance?"

"Yep. Come on in. I'll show you."

He led the men over to a box lying on the living room floor. It was ten inches long, six wide and four deep. A cord connected it to a wall socket.

The men stared at it. "You're kidding. Are you telling me that this little box generates electricity? What drives it?"

"Cosmic rays, which hit the earth night and day from outer space. Thus, this is better than solar energy devices, which can be used only during daylight hours and sometimes not even then. I call it a Cosmictron."

"Don't make me laugh. That's impossible."

"I can prove it. Apparently you found me because you monitor electricity coming into and going out of your generator plant. True? Okay. Call up the plant and have them watch the readings as I unplug the Cosmictron."

The man called the plant and told the technician on duty to monitor fluctuation from Sector Four. He held the line open as Pumpernick pulled the plug. He listened for a moment and said, "Okay, Mr. Pumpernick Plug it in again." He looked puzzled by what the technician was telling him. Finally, he hung up.

He scratched his head. "Apparently, what you say is true. That little gadget of yours is generating electricity and feeding it into the system."

"Yes. I intend to find backers and start manufacturing them."

The utility representative's eyes got wide. "What do you figure you'll get for each of these cosmogadgets ?"

"Oh, I don't know. At first I'll ask forty or fifty bucks a piece. Once I get a good line going, I may drop the price to twenty or thirty. There's only a couple of bucks worth of parts in the Cosmictron. They should be simple to manufacture. In fact, my biggest problem will be keeping people from stealing my idea.