Why can't I get a floating point value here?...

Possibly the stupidest question I've asked here yet, but, I seem only able to get the integer part back from what I'm pretty sure is a float calculation!. I'm having flashbacks to FORTRAN and implicitly typed variable names...;^) I've tried a bunch of crazy stuff to get a float as you can see in the included code segment but the Debug.Log definitely only shows integer values, (which really messes up mesh alignments!).

 Bathys = new GameObject[x_meshes,z_meshes];
     float fi = 0;
     float fj = 0;
     for (int i=0; i<x_meshes; i++) {
         for (int j=0; j<z_meshes; j++){

             // Generate named gameobjects and make them children of bathyBoss object.
             // It isn't strictly necessary to provide names for the GameObjects
             // generated by the script, but, they show up in the hierarcy at run
             // time so they look cleaner, and being able to find by name helps in 
             // clean up for regenerations and such.

             string goname = System.String.Format("Bathy_{0}{1}",i,j);
             Bathys[i,j] = new GameObject(goname);                     
             Bathys[i,j].transform.parent = bathyBoss.transform;    
 
             Bathys[i,j].AddComponent<MeshRenderer>();
             Bathys[i,j].AddComponent<MeshFilter>();
             Bathys[i,j].AddComponent<ShowMeshVertices>();

             Mesh bathy = new Mesh();                            
             bathy.vertices = GenVertices ();
             Bathys[i,j].GetComponent<MeshFilter>().sharedMesh = bathy;  

             // add a mesh collider for flythrough terrain avoidance
             MeshCollider mshcol = Bathys[i,j].AddComponent(typeof(MeshCollider)) as MeshCollider;
             mshcol.sharedMesh = bathy;

             // position mesh's gameobject for correct overlap

             /*
                     ij
     
                         10 | 11
                                   ---+---  
                                 00 | 01

                            */


         //    float x_off = ((float)i)*x_cells;  
         //    float z_off = ((float)j)*z_cells;
             float x_off = fi*(float)x_cells;  // need some work for other than 1.0 sizes 
             float z_off = fj*(float)z_cells;

             // WHAT IN THE...?!! CAN'T MAKE A FLOAT HERE...

             Debug.Log("x_off " + i  + " = " + x_off);
             Debug.Log("z_off " + j  + " = " + z_off);

             Bathys[i,j].transform.position = new Vector3((float)x_off,0f,(float)z_off);
             fj++;
         }
         fi++;
         fj=0;
     }
 }