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Updated: June 16, 2025
But the figures were not in his head. They were on reference sheets. He collected the data on the fly, slowing down now and then to read something, until a yell from Santos or Koa warned that the sun line was creeping close. When he had all data noted on the board, he started his mathematics. He was right in the middle of a laborious equation when he stumbled over a thorium crystal.
When the circle was completed, Kemp adjusted his torch again, and the flame lengthened. He moved inside the circle and cut at an angle toward the perimeter. His control was quick and certain. In a moment he stood aside, and Koa lifted out a perfect ring of thorium. It varied from a knife edge on the inner side to eighteen inches on the outer side.
So he took his disappointment out on the nearest Planeteer, who happened to be Rip. "The gases go through tubes," O’Brine went on. "A little nuclear material also leaks into the tubes. The tubes get coated with carbon, Foster. They also get coated with nuclear fuel. We use thorium. Thorium is radioactive. I won’t give you a lecture on radioactivity, Foster.
He sat down, too, because deceleration was starting. As his men looked at each other in surprise at the quickness of it, he continued, "The old bucket found something we need an asteroid of pure thorium." The enlisted Planeteers knew as well as he what that meant. There were whistles of astonishment. Koa slapped his thigh. "By Gemini! What do we do about it, sir?" "We capture it," Rip said.
"This twelfth series is interesting. So far only radium, thorium, and uranium are generally known. We know that the radioactive elements are constantly breaking down, and one often hears uranium, for instance, called the 'parent' of radium. Radium also gives off an emanation, and among its products is helium, quite another element.
It is a typical organic compound, one of the metal radical type, and contains one atom of thorium. This is a bit radioactive, as you know, and Dick thinks that this may account in part for its ability to suspend animation.
Every few moments he pushed another circle or spindle of thorium out of the hole. Rip directed some of the men to carry them away, to the other side of the asteroid. He didn't want chunks of thorium flying around from the blast. The sergeant major had a sudden thought. He cut off his communicator, motioned to Rip to do the same, then put his helmet against Rip's for direct communication.
At his direction, the torchman sliced a thin slot up the face of the crystal. Rip fitted the wires into it and held them in place with a small wedge of thorium. Kemp cut a plug, fitted it into the hole, and welded the seams closed. The tube was sealed. When electric current fired the rocket head, the thorium carrying the plutonium wedge would be driven forward to meet the wedge in the back.
Thorium, a very rare metal, is the second of the seventy-five or eighty elements known when radio-activity was discovered, which has been found to undergo spontaneous disintegration with the emission of rays. The rate of change of thorium is considerably slower than that of uranium. None of the other substances placed in the class of elements is radio-active.
Captain Go Sian-tek, a Chinese Planeteer officer, arrived in one of the cruiser’s landing boats accompanied by three enlisted Planeteers. They were all from the Special Order Squadron on Mercury. Captain Go greeted Rip and his men, then handed over a plastic stylus plate ordering Rip to deliver six cubic meters of thorium for use on Mercury.
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