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"Like flushing quail in Venus jungles," he said, moving away from the door and down into the hold where the lead boxes filled with uranium pitchblende were stored. Tom could scarcely suppress a loud sigh of relief at his narrow escape. After a moment he peered cautiously around the edge of the door, and seeing the way clear to the control deck, ran back to the ladder.
If I am right it is something far more significant from the scientific point of view than those incidental constituents of various rare metals, pitchblende, rutile, and the like, upon which the revolutionary discoveries of the last decade are based.
Curie, is just as active as radium when first extracted from the pitchblende but its energy soon lessens and finally it becomes inert, hence there has been little experimenting or investigation. The same may be said of actinium. The process of obtaining radium from pitchblende is most tedious and laborious and requires much patience.
It is a property of some thirty substances of course, the number may be increased a few of which are found widely distributed in rocks and waters, but none of which is found anywhere except in extraordinarily minute quantity. Radium is the most abundant of these substances; but only a very few grains of radium chloride can be obtained from a couple of tons of pitchblende.
The residue of the pitchblende from which uranium has been extracted by fusion with sodium carbonate and solution in dilute sulphuric acid, contains the radium along with other metals, and is boiled with concentrated sodium carbonate solution, and the solution of the residue in hydrochloric acid precipitated with sulphuric acid.
When he told of the pipe that was sucking off the oxygen from the main pumps, Walters dispatched an emergency crew to the mine immediately to plug the leak. Then, when Astro revealed the secret of the mine, the presence of the uranium pitchblende, Walters shook his head slowly. "Amazing!" he exclaimed. "Greed can ruin a man.
"Just one thing, and that's electronics. I may be a jerk about a lot of things, but I know electronics." "O.K.," said Astro. "You know electronics. But what has that got to do with the instruments going out of whack?" "The only natural element that would cause such disturbance is uranium." "Uranium!" breathed Tom. "You mean uranium pitchblende?" "I mean uranium!" snapped Roger.
"Fifteen years ago a freighter was forced down in the jungles right near Venusport," said Shinny. "I was prospecting near by for pitchblende, back when everybody thought Venus was loaded with it. I saw the crew leave in jet boats. Soon as they was out of sight I went over to take a look. I wanted to see if there was any grub I could swipe and save myself a trip back to Venusport for more supplies.
The relative power of radium to the X-ray is as six to one. The rays of radium have one hundred thousand times the energy of those of uranium and over one hundred times the energy of barium radiation. The scarcity of the metal will be understood when it is stated that there is far less radium in pitchblende than gold in ordinary sea water.
He handed the exposed film to Vidac. "This film was protected by lead sheeting. It would take a deposit of pitchblende richer than anything I've ever heard of to penetrate the lead. But look at it! The film is completely exposed. The only thing that could do that is a deposit of uranium at least seventy-five per cent pure!" Vidac studied the films closely.
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