The Blue Ghost Mystery: A Rick Brant Science-Adventure Story

CHAPTER IX
The Splitting Atoms

The storm had given way to a fine drizzle of rain by morning. Rick stared out the window at the drenched land and considered the angles he had been turning over in his mind.

The dry-ice theory wasn't conclusive, he knew, but it was a strong indication. It didn't explain the Blue Ghost himself, but it could explain the mist.

Dry ice is simply solid carbon dioxide, which is a gas at normal temperatures. It becomes a solid at low temperatures, and because it is harmless, inexpensive, and clean, it is widely used to keep things cold, as in the case of ice-cream route men who have no means of refrigeration.

When the temperature is raised, dry ice passes directly from the solid to the gaseous state. When dropped into water it seems to boil, as the comparative warmth of the water turns it to gas, and it creates a fine white mist.

Rick was reasonably sure the Blue Ghost appeared in a carbon-dioxide cloud, and he was beginning to have an inkling of how this was accomplished – in principle, if not in specific terms. There were, after all, he reasoned, only a few ways of creating a visible image. He was going through the list of possibilities, eliminating them one by one.

If the Frostola man was connected with the ghostly appearances, it was only necessary to keep track of that tall individual. This was Rick's plan, necessarily postponed because of the storm.

"Wish we had a radio," he said. "I'd like to get a weather report."

Scotty grinned sympathetically. He knew that Rick was impatient when there was detecting to be done.

"We really should have a battery radio," Dr. Miller said. "Power here is not very dependable in stormy weather. I think I'll get one, although that won't help now."

"What we need is a radio that doesn't depend on power," Jan Miller said. "Then it would always be ready."

Rick stared at the girl, not really seeing her. A radio without power. He remembered a long talk with Dr. John Gordon of the Spindrift staff about the principles of radio. Dr. Gordon had sketched a circuit that needed no power, and then had told Rick of how American ingenuity had produced what soldiers called a "foxhole radio."

"I saw an old transformer in the woodshed," he said suddenly. "May I have it, Dr. Miller?" At the scientist's nod, he addressed Jan. "I'll bet you can find me a cardboard tube. Then, if I can have an old razor blade and permission to take the receiver off the telephone for a while, I can make a radio!"

The scientist, the girls, and Scotty looked at him with disbelief. "He's gone off his rocker at last," Scotty muttered. "How can anyone make a radio out of junk?"

"I'll need a pencil stub, a few screws, and a piece of board," Rick added. "A safety pin would help, too."

"Rick Brant, you're being silly," Barby said firmly. "This is no time for practical jokes!"

Dr. Miller held up his hand. "Peace, Barbara. Rick isn't joking. I believe I see what he has in mind. Rick, I've never heard of this, but I assume the oxide on the razor blade is to act as a rectifier?"

"That's right, sir. John Gordon told me about it."

The scientist rose. "Then it will work. Come on, gang. Let's build a radio out of junk."

With many hands to help, the work went quickly. Under Dr. Miller's direction, Scotty took the transformer out of its case and the girls went to work unwinding the quantities of wire from its coils.

Rick found a razor blade and anchored it to a rectangular piece of plywood he found in the woodshed. It was a double-edged blade, and one small screw from Dr. Miller's junk box served to hold it. He wrapped a short piece of insulated wire, one of the transformer's connecting leads, under the screw before he tightened it. He sharpened the lead pencil with his jackknife, uncoiled the safety pin, and pushed the sharp end into the exposed lead at the upper end of the pencil, which was a stub only two inches long.

The safety pin also was screwed to the board, the screw going through the space in the pin's head. It was placed in such a position that the sharp end of the lead pencil rested on the razor blade. Another short piece of insulated wire was wrapped around the screw before it was tightened. Rick bared the copper end of the wire in order to make a good contact.

Jan found a cardboard roll that had once held paper towels. Rick cut off about six inches of it and proceeded to wind it with wire from the transformer. He wound evenly and tightly, until the roll was full of wire. Then he stabbed a small hole in each end of the roll and pulled the wires through to hold the coil in position. The roll – now a coil – was tacked to the board with thumbtacks.

Dr. Miller, meanwhile, had taken the receiver from the telephone. Scotty strung yards of wire around the room and handed the loose end to Rick. That was the antenna. Then Scotty scraped a bright place on a water pipe with his knife and twisted a length of wire tightly around it. That was the ground.

Rick and Dr. Miller made connections. Rick gestured to the haywire apparatus with some pride. "Behold. Where there was junk is now a radio."

Jan Miller said, "I don't believe it!"

Rick had to laugh. "I'm not sure I do, either. But let's try." He sat down at the table and held the receiver to his ear. With the other hand he began the laborious job of locating a sensitive spot on the razor blade.

Dr. Gordon had told him that only an occasional spot on a blade will work. Some blades have no such spots. Others have many.

Rick was beginning to think that he had one of the no-spot kind, or that the whole idea was wrong, when he heard what he thought was a voice. He hastily concentrated on the spot, and in a few seconds music flooded into the earphone. He had caught a disk jockey in the process of introducing a record. For a long moment he listened, then held out the earphone with a broad grin. "Anyone care to listen?"

Everyone did. They took turns, with each application of the phone to an ear accompanied by expressions of astonishment.

Barby looked at her brother with new respect. "It's just fantastic! How on earth does it work?"

Dr. Miller chuckled. "I'm sure you don't want a full course in electronics, Barby. Actually, it's simple enough. The signal from the radio station is an alternating current that sets up a corresponding current in the antenna wire. This current goes through the coil and is rectified – that is, it's turned into pulsating direct current – by the razor blade. The receiver then converts it into audible sound."

Barby sighed. "I'll just have to take your word for it. But it's a miracle!"

"It may seem like one, but it's really the same kind of circuit you find in a crystal set," Rick explained. "The razor blade acts like the crystal. That's all."

The young people took turns listening to the station, located in a town nearby. Within the hour there was a weather report promising clearing skies before the end of the day. Later, in a roundup of local announcements, they heard that the annual Sons of the Old Dominion feast, postponed because of the storm, would be held the next night.

"That means we start keeping an eye on the ice-cream man tomorrow afternoon," Rick said.

Scotty nodded. "First, we'd better make a survey of the terrain. He has to approach by the road, but there are a million places he could go once he got into the mine area."

Rick looked out the window. "The rain has stopped. Maybe we can reconnoiter this afternoon."

Fortunately, the Miller farm was well equipped with boots and overshoes. The boys borrowed footgear suitable for any mud left by the rain and started out after lunch.

The picnic area was washed clean of footprints and it was clear no one had visited the area since the rain. They made their way to the top of the hill above the mine and surveyed the cornfield that had been planted on the hilltop field. The corn was not high. The plants came only to their knees. Either it was a second planting or a poor crop. Rick guessed that the second reason was probably the correct one, because the field hadn't been cultivated recently.

"This isn't Miller land," he mused. "Wonder who is farming it?"

"It must be Hilleboe's property," Scotty returned. "Maybe he rents it to some local farmer."

They walked to the downstream edge of the cornfield to where the woods resumed. Rick had a feeling that they were wasting time. The ghost couldn't be produced from such a distance by any means he had ever heard of. The apparition had to be created right in the vicinity of the mine.

He spoke his thoughts aloud, and added, "Let's go back."

"Just a minute." Scotty pointed to a pile of brush. "Aren't those more bags?"

They were, and of the same brand as those the boys had located on the stream bank. Scotty picked one up and tested it between his fingers. "Mighty curious. Water cures Portland cement. Turns it hard. These bags aren't hard, even though some powder is still in them."

Rick examined the bags, his brows creased with bewilderment. "They must have held something besides cement. But what? Fertilizer for the cornfield, maybe? And why two caches?"

"If it were fertilizer, the bags near the mine could have been for the field across the creek where the plane is," Scotty suggested. "These could have been for this field. But I don't think it was fertilizer. Isn't fertilizer soluble in water?"

Rick wasn't sure. "We can take the bag along," he said. "Maybe the microscope will tell us something, or maybe Dr. Miller will know."

He had a feeling that the bags meant something. They had been hidden, and only the erosion of rain had uncovered them, first at the creek embankment and now here. The Frostola man had almost certainly taken the others. Why? Unless they had something to do with the mystery? The bags were worthless, of themselves.

They finished the survey of the area. It was clear that whoever produced the ghost would have to enter by the road from town, because there was no other road on the side of the hill in which the mine was located. To be sure, the area could be reached by walking a considerable distance, but Rick couldn't see a man with equipment doing much walking through cornfields or woods filled with underbrush. He was certain the ghost had to be produced by equipment of some kind, probably electric powered – which meant batteries.

The problem was, where did the ghost producer operate? If dry ice was used to produce the mist, how did it get into the pool? He had no answers to these vital questions, nor did Scotty.

The dark-haired boy looked at him quizzically as they trudged back to the farmhouse. "Did it ever occur to you that it's impossible for anyone to produce the ghost? There is no place within sight of the pool where anyone could hide, except in a tree, and a man with equipment wouldn't go undetected by a gang at the picnic grounds."

"It did occur to me," Rick admitted. "But doesn't that put us back where we started? Either the ghost is a genuine spook, or it's man-made. We're not making many miles an hour in proving it's man-made, I admit. But if it isn't, where does that leave us?"

Rick remembered the chase through the woods, ending with a bath in the quarry. If they had been chasing a real ghost, and the ghost had led them into danger deliberately, that meant … He wasn't sure what it meant except that it gave him goose pimples to think about it.

The electricity and telephone service had been restored by the time the boys got back. Dr. Miller told them that he had phoned the tenant farmer and arranged for the man to do a little inquiring in the town.

Rick displayed the bag. "Got a specimen," he told the group. He explained their interest in the bag and asked Dr. Miller if he could identify the contents.

The scientist examined the grayish powder from the bag. "It could be any one of a hundred things," he said. "Let's see what we can find out about it."

The farmhouse wasn't equipped for any kind of chemical analysis, but the scientist did what was possible. He tried to dissolve the powder in water, and failed. He tried vinegar, as the only acid available, and failed. He tried ammonia, and failed.

Finally he said, "Well, it isn't cement, and it isn't fertilizer. It's an inorganic substance. I suggest the microscope, Rick. It will at least give us a clue to its structure, if not its identity."

Rick spread a small amount on a slide, switched on the substage light, and put the slide on the stage. He focused, using his highest-power lens combination which gave a magnification of three hundred times.

The powder was clearly crystalline, a mineral of some kind. Rick couldn't identify it. He turned the eyepiece over to Dr. Miller. The scientist had no better luck.

Barby asked, "Could it be an explosive?"

"No, Barby. This is powdered rock of some kind," Dr. Miller answered, his eye at the instrument. "But why anyone should use powdered rock and then hide the bags certainly escapes me. I can't imagine what the powder is for. It isn't a powdered limestone, which might be used on the fields. The crystal structure is wrong for that."

"Wish we had a geologist with us," Rick said. "This calls for an expert." He stared helplessly at the microscope. There was only one more test that could be made, and he saw no use in making it.

Included in the microscopy set Barby had given him was a gadget called a spinthariscope, like a cone of black plastic with the sharp end of the cone sliced off. In the wide end of the cone, inset so it wouldn't touch the eye, was a lens. The small end was composed of a disk of special chemical that fluoresced when struck by an atomic particle.

The little instrument used a principle dating back to the early history of atomic energy, when scientists were exploring the nature of the strange force the Curies had discovered in radium and polonium.

It was only his training in thoroughness of investigation that led Rick to use the instrument. Since it was necessary for the eye to become adapted to the darkness before using the instrument, he took it into a closet and shut the door. As the pupils of his eyes dilated he worked by touch, spreading a bit of powder on the end containing the special sulfide screen.

He applied his eye to the lens, more as a matter of form than in the expectation of seeing anything. For an instant he saw nothing, then, as his eye adjusted, he let out a wild yell. There were hundreds of scintillations, each caused by a nuclear particle or photon striking the screen.

The sample was radioactive!

CHAPTER X
An Assist from JANIG

"We're onto something," Rick said grimly, "and we need help."

"I should say so," Barby commented. She eyed the cement bag a little apprehensively. "After all, radioactivity is dangerous!"

Dr. Miller smiled. "It is, in sufficient quantity. But the sample we have here is scarcely above normal background, so I don't think we need be concerned." The scientist turned to Rick. "I wish your instrument could give us further data, but unfortunately it's pretty primitive. It tells us the sample is slightly radioactive and that's all. I agree we need help."

The nearest source of help Rick could think of was JANIG, the secret security agency in Washington for which the Spindrift scientists had often worked on special projects. This wasn't a matter for the agency officially, but Rick was sure Steve Ames, their contact in JANIG, would help if he could. Since Spindrift had first worked with the agency on The Whispering Box Mystery, Steve and the boys had become good friends.

Rick suggested to the others that Steve should be called. All of them knew the young agent. He had been responsible to a large extent for the Millers joining the Spindrift staff, since he had smuggled them out of Washington to Spindrift to escape the deadly electronic mind reader that had imperiled the scientist for weeks.

There was no disagreement. On the contrary, Jan Miller asked excitedly, "What's the matter with right now?"

"Nothing," Rick said with a grin. He went to the telephone book and found the long-range dialing code for Washington, then dialed Steve's special number directly. In less than half a minute he had the agent on the phone.

"Steve? What a break to find you in! This is Rick." He swiftly outlined the events of the past few days, ending with the discovery that the bag contents were radioactive. He concluded, "I know this isn't a case for you, but we hoped you might help us to identify the stuff from the bag and get a better measure of how active it is."

Steve considered. "Know where Falls Church airport is?"

Rick had used it for a landmark on the way to the farm. It was a small private airport west of Washington near the city of Falls Church. "I know where it is."

"All right. You're only a few minutes flying time from there. It's now two thirty. Be there at four. I'll have a man meet you. Bring the sample."

Rick thanked the agent and hung up. He reported that Steve would send a man to the airport at four o'clock.

Scotty asked, "Is the field dry enough for take-off and landing?"

"Sure. I hope Steve has a real expert he can send. If we can identify this stuff, it may give us a clue to what's going on here."

At Barby's request, Rick and Scotty took the girls along for the short ride. Steve's man walked to the plane as they rolled to a stop on the Falls Church strip. He introduced himself as Don Baxter, then opened the suitcase he carried. "Let's see what you have."

He produced a field-survey instrument and held it over the bag Rick carried. The instrument's meter showed a reading at once.

"Gamma," Baxter stated. "Now let's try for alpha and beta." He opened a shield on the bottom of his instrument and checked the sample again. The meter failed to respond. "No beta. That's interesting." An inner shield was slid out of the way and the instrument held to the bag. The meter responded.

Baxter nodded satisfaction. "Alpha and gamma. No beta. That means this stuff is not a fission product."

He studied the powder and rubbed a bit between his thumb and forefinger. He asked, "May I have the bag?"

"Sure," Rick agreed readily. "What is the stuff?"

Baxter took the cement bag and folded it neatly, then he took a plastic bag from his case and put the cement bag inside. "I can't be sure," he said. "About its precise identity, I mean. But it seems to be pulverized ore, and my guess would be carnotite. Don't worry about the radioactivity. You could live in a house made of this stuff and it wouldn't be dangerous. The level of activity is very low. I suppose you have no idea where the sample came from?"

Rick shook his head. "Where does carnotite come from, usually?"

"The Colorado Plateau, for the most part. There are other deposits, but none around here. This stuff was almost certainly imported. Have you any idea why?"

"Not the slightest. It's a complete mystery."

Baxter nodded. "Well, that's all I can do for now. I'll analyze the sample and let Steve Ames know exactly what it is, but I'm betting on carnotite. If you find a few hundred tons of it, you can sell it to the Atomic Energy Commission. So long."

The expert tipped his hat to the girls and walked to his car.

"What was that all about?" Barby demanded. "You and Scotty seemed to know what he was talking about, but it was all Greek to Jan and me."

Rick explained on the way back to the farm. "There are four main kinds of radioactivity. They're called alpha, beta, gamma, and neutrons. Our sample has alpha and gamma. That means it doesn't come from either bomb debris or from a reactor, because fission takes place in both, and there is almost always beta activity as well as gamma in the products of fission. But some isotopes of uranium and thorium have little beta, with some alpha and gamma, so Baxter concluded we had powdered uranium ore. There are many kinds of ore. Pitchblende is the best, but carnotite, which is a gray rock with yellowish streaks, is also good ore. Got it now?"

Jan Miller asked, "How do you know all this, Rick?"

The boy chuckled. "From associating with your father and mine, not to mention Weiss, Zircon, and the other scientists. They talk and Scotty and I listen. Also, Dad has a lot of books on atomic energy, and some of them are simple enough for me to read."

The Sky Wagon was over the Miller farm in a very short time, but before landing Rick made a swing of the area. The young people readily identified the mine and picnic grounds, and Rick pointed out the quarry into which he had tumbled.

Scotty said, "Something's been bothering me. If the Frostola man is new in this area, how could he have known the terrain well enough to lead us on that wild-goose chase?"

"He's new, but not that new," Rick pointed out. "He's had weeks in which to study the lay of the land. Besides, he does his haunting at night – if he's the one – and he roams the fields near the mine. He must know his way around."

"You're right," Scotty assented. "Now tell me this: why did he take the cement bags?"

"To keep us from finding out that they didn't contain cement," Rick said. "It has to be the reason. That means he knew about the bags, and maybe he even buried them. He didn't bury them deep, because who would think anything of a bunch of cement bags, except a pair like us? Then, when he saw they had turned up, he collected them and took them somewhere else. The bags we found this morning may even be the same ones, although I think they're a second set. He'd hide the first set better than he did at first."

"Your language is confused, but I get your meaning." Scotty grinned. "Okay, detective. Set us down. It's suppertime."

Rick swung into his landing pattern. "Anyway, we've made progress," he commented with satisfaction. "We started with just a ghost. Now look what we've got!"