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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.
If they could use that to cut themselves right into the asteroid ... suddenly he knew how it could be done. On the sun side he remembered a series of high-piled, giant crystals of thorium. They could cut into the side of one of those. And with Kemp’s skill, they might be able to do it in time. He called, "Kemp! Koa, bring the torch and fuel and follow me."
There wasn’t much light, either. They were too far from the sun for that. But as they neared the sun, the darkness would be their protection. They would get so close to Sol that the metal on the sun side would get soft as butter. He bent close to the uneven surface. It was clean metal, not oxidized at all. The thorium had never been exposed to oxygen.
It happens to be a very important minor planet." Rip waited, intent on the commander's words. "It's important," O'Brine continued, "because it happens to be pure thorium." Rip gasped. Thorium! The rare, radioactive element just below uranium in the periodic table of the elements, the element used to power this very ship! "What a find!" he said in a hushed voice.
"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 rather meaningless gesture. With virtually no gravity pulling at them, they could remain standing almost indefinitely, sleeping upright. Rip closed his eyes and relaxed.
Rip watched the cruiser take the craft and thorium aboard, then drive toward Mercury, brilliant sunlight reflecting from its sleek sides. The planet was only a short distance away by spaceship. It was the largest thing in space, except for the sun, as seen from the asteroid. To Rip it looked about three times the size of the moon as seen from earth.
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.
"You’d better, because you might fall over when you hear this. Listen, men. Two days ago the freighter Altair passed through the asteroid belt on a run from Jupiter to Mars." 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."
He sliced off the inner side where it tapered to a cone, then, working only by eye estimate, cut out a hole in which the wedge of fission material would fit. He wasn't off by a thirty-second of an inch. Skillful application of the torch melted the thorium around the wedge and sealed it tightly. Koa was ready with a sheet of nuclite.
But, still, now I'm here.... And first as to quap; quap, sir, is the most radio-active stuff in the world. That's quap! It's a festering mass of earths and heavy metals, polonium, radium, ythorium, thorium, carium, and new things, too. There's a stuff called Xk provisionally. There they are, mucked up together in a sort of rotting sand. What it is, how it got made, I don't know.
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