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Updated: June 16, 2025
"We have to make the whole asteroid disappear, or else we have to conjure up a space cruiser out of the thorium. Otherwise, we have barely an hour till we're either prisoners or dead!" Peril! Sergeant major Koa asked thoughtfully, "Sir, would it do the Connie much good to launch boats this close to the sun? They'd have to use too much fuel just keeping position."
He had sent the snapper-boats to try and draw fire in an attempt to find out more surely whether Planeteers or Connies had the thorium rock. "The Scorpius doesn’t know what’s going on," Rip told his Planeteers. "O’Brine didn’t know the cruiser was waiting to ambush him, so the rocket we fired made him think the Connies had taken us over." He put himself in O’Brine’s place.
Thorium also behaves in the same manner, transmuting into atoms called Thorium X, which again change into atoms of another sort to which the name of Thorium Emanations has been given and these in turn transmute into atoms of yet another kind, known as Thorium Emanations X. The same is the case also with Uranium which, however, so far as is yet known, undergoes only one transmutation into what is known as Uranium X.
But thorium mostly gives off the kind of radiation known as alpha particles. Alpha is not dangerous unless breathed or eaten. It won’t go through clothes or skin. But when mixed with fine carbon, thorium alpha contamination makes a mess. It’s a dirty mess, Foster. So dirty that I don’t want my spacemen to fool with it. "I want you to take care of it instead," O’Brine said. "You and your men.
There would be plenty to do in a short while, but meanwhile he enjoyed the sensation of being on a tiny world in space with only a handful of Planeteers for company. He smiled. "King Foster," he said to himself. "Monarch of a thorium space speck." It was a rather nice feeling, even though he laughed at himself for thinking it.
In a few seconds, as Santos had predicted, belt light beams cut sharp paths through the darkness. Rip sized up the possibilities. There were two teams of two men each, and they were getting farther apart with each step. One team was coming almost directly toward them. The other two men slanted away from them and would soon be out of sight behind the thorium crystals in which the cave was located.
We can tell how the elements of high atomic weight, such as uranium and thorium, are constantly giving off particles and are thus by loss or decomposition being changed over into other elements, such as radium, niton, polonium and lead.
Radium gives off three distinct types of rays named after the first three letters of the Greek alphabet Alpha, Beta, Gamma besides a gas emanation as does thorium which is a powerfully radio-active substance. The Alpha rays constitute ninety-nine per cent, of all the rays and consist of positively electrified particles. Under the influence of magnetism they can be deflected.
Here and there, pyramids of metal thrust up from the asteroid, sometimes singly, sometimes in clusters. They were metal crystal formations. He guessed that once, long ages ago, the asteroid had been a part of something much bigger, perhaps a planet. One theory said the asteroids were formed when a planet exploded. This asteroid might have been a pocket of pure thorium in the planet.
It may be asked, how can this statement be reconciled with the fact that thorium and radium keep up their activity without any appreciable falling off with time.
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