Project X
"Heavy water!" Hartson Brant exclaimed softly.
Rick and Scotty looked at each other blankly.
And at that moment, Barby completed the connection and called to Steve.
He strode to the phone and picked it up. "Who's this? All right. Steve
Ames here. Take down these names. Hobart Zircon. Richard Brant. Donald
Scott. You'll find full data on them in the files. Prepare travel orders
and get tickets for all three to Hong Kong via the first plane leaving
New York after 7:00 p.m. tomorrow night. Arrange for a letter of credit
in the usual amount on the National City Bank of Washington, and have
the bank make arrangements with all their Far East branches. Put all
three on the pay roll at the same grades they held before. Get passports
for them with visitor's visas for the Philippines, Hong Kong,
Indo-China, Indonesia, Siam, and China. We don't know where they'll end
up. Then put all that stuff in an envelope and get it to me here at
Spindrift by special messenger ... wait, never mind that. I'll send Mike
back right away, and he can bring it to me. Now read those instructions
back."
Steve listened for a moment. "Right. Get going. What? Oh, charge the
whole thing to a new case file. Mark it Project X."
He disconnected and turned to the group. "Now," he said grimly, "let's
talk turkey."
He nodded at Rick and Scotty. "Zircon said he could leave in the
morning, if necessary. That's rushing you a little too much. So I've
given you until tomorrow night."
Rick grinned. Once things started to move with Steve Ames, they moved
strictly jet-propelled.
"What are we supposed to do?" Scotty asked.
"Find Bradley. If you can. But don't spend too much time searching.
Getting all the dope--and I mean _all_--on that heavy water is the
reason for your going out there. If you find Bradley, he can help. Maybe
Chahda can help, too. But never forget for a minute that tracking down
that heavy water is your mission."
"If we don't find Bradley, we won't know how to get started," Rick
pointed out.
Steve grunted. "No? If I believed that, I'd have gone somewhere else for
help. I came here because I knew Spindrift could give me ingenuity as
well as scientific knowledge. And you hadn't better let me down!"
"We won't let you down," Scotty assured him.
Barby chimed in indignantly, "Of course they won't."
Steve smiled. "Don't worry. I'm not afraid of their falling down on the
job. But it's a big one. I'll tell Zircon this when he comes, but you
can be thinking it over in the meantime. You're to find out who is
bringing heavy water to the Asia coast and what they're doing with it.
You're to find out where it comes from, and why it is being made. You're
to get samples and send them back here. And most important of all,
you're to locate and pinpoint for us any industrial plants you find."
Scotty scratched his head. "Fine. Only let's get back to the beginning.
What is heavy water? And why are you so excited about it?"
"I don't know, either," Barby added.
Hartson Brant looked at his son. "You do, don't you, Rick?"
"I know what it is, but I don't know why it's so important to Steve,"
Rick said. He had read a great deal about heavy water in studying
elementary physics. It had many uses in physics experiments.
"Let's see how much you know," Steve directed. "Sound off."
Rick searched his memory, trying to marshal all the facts he knew.
"Well," he began, "ordinary water is composed of oxygen and hydrogen. In
every water molecule there are two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen.
The important part, for what we're talking about, are the hydrogen
atoms. Hydrogen is the lightest element, and it has the simplest atom.
There's just one proton and one electron."
He looked at his father, waiting for a nod to tell him he was on the
right track. When the scientist nodded approval, he went on.
"That kind of hydrogen atom has a mass of one, as the scientists say.
But there are other kinds of hydrogen atoms, and they are pretty rare,
called isotopes. An isotope is just a different variety of the ordinary
kind of atom in each element. The thing that makes it different is a
change in the nucleus. Well, hydrogen has two isotopes. One kind, which
has a mass of two, is found in nature. It is called deuterium. Its
nucleus is called a deuteron. Another kind, which can be made in a
nuclear reactor, is called tritium. A little of it is found naturally
but not enough to count for much."
He took a deep breath. "I hope I know what I'm talking about."
"You're doing fine," Hartson Brant said. "Go on."
"All right. Well, heavy water is made of one atom of oxygen plus two
atoms of deuterium, which is the first isotope of hydrogen. In
chemistry, there's no difference in the way heavy water acts. You can
even drink it. In fact, people do drink it every day, because in
ordinary water there is some heavy water. I forget the exact figures,
but I think that, by weight, there are five thousand parts of ordinary
hydrogen in water and only one part of deuterium."
"That's right." Steve Ames nodded. "Five thousand to one. Now tell us
what is peculiar about all isotopes?"
Rick thought furiously and came up with what he hoped was the answer. "I
think it's that isotopes aren't as stable as the basic elements. Some
are pretty stable, but some are pretty shaky. That's why some of the
isotopes of uranium can be split wide open in a chain reaction to make
an atomic bomb, and ..."
A chill ran through him. His mouth opened. He knew! He knew why heavy
water had Steve Ames all excited. He choked:
"Hydrogen bombs!"
Scotty and Barby gasped. Steve Ames and Hartson Brant smiled.
"It's true that one of the possibilities in building a hydrogen bomb
concerns deuterium," the scientist said. "But I scarcely think that's
the case here. How about it, Steve?"
"Possible, but extremely improbable," Steve agreed. "What I'm most
interested in is a use for heavy water Rick hasn't mentioned. Know what
a nuclear reactor is, Rick?"
Rick nodded. "It's what the newspapers usually call an 'atomic pile.' We
have quite a few in this country, I think. The Atomic Energy Commission
said quite a while ago that they used a nuclear reactor with uranium as
a fuel to make plutonium, which is the artificial element that can be
used in atomic bombs. Besides uranium itself, that is."
"That's right. What I'm interested in is the fact that heavy water can
be used as a neutron moderator in a reactor."
Rick looked blank. Steve was talking way over his head. Hartson Brant
saw his son's bewilderment and explained: "You've probably heard that
the uranium in a reactor is encased in blocks of graphite, which is
simply carbon, Rick. It prevents the neutrons from the uranium from
simply running wild. Well, heavy water can be used for the same
purpose."
"Exactly," Steve said. "So you see, I'm not afraid of the possibility of
hydrogen bombs as much as I am of the possibility that somewhere in Asia
is a nuclear reactor. Until we get international agreement on atomic
weapons, we simply have to keep track of atomic developments everywhere
for our own protection. If there's a new country going in for atomic
research, and it can build a reactor, it might also be able to build an
atomic bomb. Now, don't forget I said heavy water is a legitimate
industrial product. We certainly can't object to a nation's
manufacturing it. We wouldn't want to. But when it turns up in an odd
corner of the world, I think we'd better find out why. If it's a
peaceful reason, we'll mark it down and then forget it. If not, we'll
make a report to the United Nations."
"Why not report it right now?" Barby asked.
"Good question. The answer is, we're not sure. Remember Carl Bradley was
unsure enough to ask for help. If we got up before the UN and started
hollering and it turned out to be plain water, we'd look pretty
foolish."
"I don't even know how we'd begin," Scotty muttered. "How do you start
on a job like this?"
"You'll start by being innocent tourists," Steve said. "You and Rick are
students on a holiday, with Zircon, your uncle, as guide and tutor.
You'll be interested in a number of things, including hunting. That will
give you a good excuse for barging around the country if you have to.
But you won't be able to decide what you want to hunt." Steve grinned.
"You'll decide after you find out where you have to go. And you'd better
learn about Asiatic game animals. For instance, if the trail takes you
to Indonesia, you may want to hunt the hairy Sumatran rhinoceros. In the
Philippines, you'll hunt timarau, which are a special breed of wild
water buffalo. In China, around the coast, you can hunt tigers. In
Malaya, if the trail does take you down to Singapore, you can hunt
tapir. Same for Siam. In Indo-China you can hunt tigers. Inland in
China, toward the Tibetan border, you'd better be hunting bharals."
"That's a wonderful name," Barby said quickly. "What are they?"
"Another name for them is blue sheep," Steve told her. "They're
bluish-gray, shading to white in the under parts. The horns are unusual,
because they curve outward from the sides of the head, then down and
backward."
Hartson Brant paused in the act of filling his pipe and asked curiously,
"How do you know so much about Asiatic animals, Steve?"
Steve laughed. "Because I used the same gag once myself." He started for
the door. "Talk it over, and think up any questions you can. I won't
promise to know the answers, but I'll try. I've got to get Mike started
back to Washington to pick up that stuff."
When he had gone, Barby looked enviously at the two boys. "In my next
reincarnation," she announced, "I'm going to be a boy. I don't see why I
couldn't go, too. A girl would make the group look even less suspicious,
wouldn't it?" She scanned the three faces eagerly, then sighed. "All
right. I knew it wasn't any use."
"Never mind, towhead," Rick said. He always hated to see Barby's wistful
expression when he and Scotty were going somewhere. "Maybe next time."
"Not if next time is another job like this," Hartson Brant disagreed. He
studied his pipe stem, his forehead wrinkled thoughtfully. "I'm not
quite sure why I didn't object to Rick and Scotty going."
Rick demanded swiftly, "You're not going to object, are you, Dad?"
"No, Rick. If we hadn't been on other expeditions and in some tough
spots together, I surely would. But I know you two are able to take care
of yourselves. And so is Zircon. Only keep in mind that you may be
dealing with an entirely new breed of cats, unscrupulous men who
wouldn't hesitate to put you out of the way without a moment's
hesitation. So be careful. Be very careful. Don't take risks that aren't
essential to your job. And do what Zircon tells you to without
hesitation. He's knocked around in some pretty rough corners of the
world, and I don't know a man who is better equipped for this kind of
job, unless it's Carl Bradley."
The warning sobered Rick even more. Apart from what his father had said,
he knew it was also what the information could mean to the security of
the country that had prevented the scientist from making a single
objection to their going.
"We'll take no risks we don't have to," he promised. "We'll move as if
we were walking on eggs, Dad."
And Scotty echoed the promise.
* * * * *
Nothing remained but to wait for Zircon and make definite plans. Steve,
who had risen early in order to get to Spindrift first thing, walked out
to the orchard with Dismal for company and stretched out under a tree
for a nap.
Rick and Scotty couldn't possibly have napped, so they went up to Rick's
room and began to pack. That took little time, since they would travel
by air. Scotty took his rifle out of its protective case and cleaned it,
then tried on the infrared telescope. He removed from the 'scope the
masking bits of cardboard Rick had used to convert it to a camera view
finder, thus making it a telescopic rifle sight once more. It fitted
perfectly.
"You taking the movie camera along?" he asked.
Rick thought it over. "Guess I will," he said finally. "Tourists are
supposed to have cameras. I'll take the movie instead of the speed
graphic. And I can take along infrared film as well as regular color
film. If anyone asks, I can say I want movies of the animals you and
Zircon shoot. Then all three of us won't have to take guns."
"Better finish putting the lenses into those sunglasses frames then,"
Scotty said.
"I'll do it right now. It won't take long." A thought struck Rick. "What
will Zircon do for a rifle?"
"He'll have to borrow one, and an ordinary one won't do, either. If
we're supposed to be hunting big game, he'll need one bigger than
my .303." Scotty frowned thoughtfully. "How about Captain Douglas? He
used to be quite a hunter. You've seen the African trophies in his
office at the barracks."
Captain Douglas was commanding officer of the Whiteside State Police
Barracks, and a good friend of the boys. He and his officers had
co-operated with them in rounding up the Smugglers' Reef gang.
"Give him a phone call while I finish putting these lenses in," Rick
suggested.
"Good idea." Scotty went to phone.
More and more Rick was realizing the magnitude of the job they had
undertaken. He hoped fervently that Chahda would know something useful
in case they failed to locate Bradley.
In a moment Scotty stuck his head in the door. "I've got the captain on
the phone," he said. "He's got a .45-90 we can borrow, and, bless his
heart, he didn't ask where we were going. When can we pick it up?"
Rick thought it over. "I'll have to fly to the airport and pick up
Zircon in a little while. Tell Captain Douglas I'll buzz the barracks on
the way over. Ask if he can possibly deliver it to me at the airport. I
hate to bother him, but I won't have a car to go get it." Rick's little
cub airplane was the island's fast messenger-passenger service.
"Okay." Scotty disappeared down the hall again for a few moments and
then returned. He took a seat in the leather armchair. "He finally did
get curious. Wanted to know if we needed that caliber rifle to shoot
Jersey mosquitoes. I told him we were going on a trip and that I
couldn't say anything more about it. So he said he'd lend us the gun
only on condition that we tell him the story when we got back. I said we
would, if we could."
"He's the best," Rick said. "But he knows we've done some hush-hush work
for the government, and don't forget he's an ex-Marine. He wouldn't
embarrass us by asking too many questions."
Scotty nodded. "Wait until you see this rifle. A .45-90 is a regular
cannon. It'll knock down anything smaller than an elephant, and it'll
knock down one of those, if it hits the right spot."
"That's just Zircon's size," Rick said, grinning. The scientist was a
huge man who towered over the rest of the staff.
* * * * *
Later, Zircon dominated the library as Steve issued final instructions.
The scientist's booming voice had phrased questions for an hour, until
even Steve looked weary.
"This winds up what I have to say," he told them. "Mike should be back
with your tickets, passports, and letter of credit in another hour. I'll
go back to Washington and issue instructions via the State Department to
all of our ambassadors and consuls in the area. They'll know what's
happening and why you're there, but no one else on their staffs will. Go
in to see each one whose country you enter. Make a lot of noise. Insist
on seeing the chief. Hell know your names and he'll do everything he
can. Bradley is supposed to check in with each embassy or consulate in
the same way. They'll be your points of contact in case he shows up
again. File reports when you can. Hand them to the ambassador or consul
of the country and no one else."
Steve stopped for a moment, then his warm grin flashed. "This is going
to be tougher than beating the Whispering Box gang. I know you'll come
back with the answers, but be sure you have whole skins when you do!"