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Updated: June 16, 2025
Apparently he was supposed to do a lot of cutting on the asteroid, probably of the thorium itself. The hot flame of the torch could melt any known substance. The torch itself could melt in unskilled hands. The next case yielded a set of astrogation instruments carefully cradled in a soft, rubbery plastic. Rip left them in the case and put them to one side.
Bradshaw, the English Planeteer, said mildly, "Don't worry, Lieutenant. If it isn't the solar frying pan, it's Connie fire." A chorus of agreement came from the other Planeteers. "What a crew!" Rip thought. "What a great gang of space pirates!" He finished his calculations and found the exact place where Kemp would cut. A few feet away from the spot was a thick pyramid of thorium.
Back at ground level, he turned up his communicator. "Koa, is everything ready at the boat?" "Ready, sir." The Planeteers had already carried away the torch and its fuel and oxygen supplies. The area was clear of pieces of thorium. Rip announced, "We're setting the explosion for ten minutes."
There isn’t much about a chunk of thorium to get sentimental over, but after fighting for it the way we did, it doesn’t seem right to cut it into blocks." "I know how you feel," Rip admitted, "but after all, that’s what we brought it back for." He studied Koa’s brown face. The big Hawaiian had something on his mind. "Got vack worms chewing at you?" he asked.
"I ought to be busted to recruit," he told them. "I knew this asteroid was thorium and that thorium is radioactive. If I had used my head, I would have added nuclite shielding to the list of supplies the Scorpius provided. We could have had enough of it to protect us while around our base, even if we couldn't be protected while working on the charges.
The first blast had worked about as predicted, although he wouldn’t be able to tell how much correction was needed until he had taken star sights over a period of five or six days. "Let’s go home," he ordered. Back on the asteroid, a pit that glowed with radioactivity marked the site of the first blast. Rip ordered it covered as much as possible with the thorium that had been taken from the hole.
In his haste he took a misstep and flew headlong a few feet above the metal surface. Koa, gliding along behind him, turned him upright again. He saw that the giant Hawaiian was grinning. Rip grinned back. It was the second time he had lost his footing. They reached the peaks of thorium and Rip looked them over. The tallest was perhaps 40 feet high.
Now, no compound containing any other active metal than uranium or thorium ought to show itself more active than those metals themselves, since the property belongs to their atoms. It seemed, therefore, probable that there existed in pitchblendes some substance yet unknown, in small quantities and more radioactive than uranium.
"Stand easy," Rip told his men. "Nothing to do now but wait. The Scorpius will be back." He set an example by leaning against the thorium crystal in which the cave was located. It was a natural but meaningless gesture. With no gravity pulling at them they could remain standing indefinitely, sleeping upright. Rip closed his eyes and relaxed.
"After all," said the Great Scientist, "helium shares in the most intimate degree the properties of radium. So, too, for the matter of that," he added in afterthought, "do thorium, and borium!" "Even borium!" we exclaimed, delighted, and writing rapidly in our notebook. Already we saw ourselves writing up as our headline Borium Shares Properties of Thorium.
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