The Blue Ghost Mystery: A Rick Brant Science-Adventure Story Read online

  CHAPTER IX

  The Splitting Atoms

  The storm had given way to a fine drizzle of rain by morning. Rickstared out the window at the drenched land and considered the angles hehad been turning over in his mind.

  The dry-ice theory wasn't conclusive, he knew, but it was a strongindication. It didn't explain the Blue Ghost himself, but it couldexplain the mist.

  Dry ice is simply solid carbon dioxide, which is a gas at normaltemperatures. It becomes a solid at low temperatures, and because it isharmless, inexpensive, and clean, it is widely used to keep things cold,as in the case of ice-cream route men who have no means ofrefrigeration.

  When the temperature is raised, dry ice passes directly from the solidto the gaseous state. When dropped into water it seems to boil, as thecomparative warmth of the water turns it to gas, and it creates a finewhite mist.

  Rick was reasonably sure the Blue Ghost appeared in a carbon-dioxidecloud, and he was beginning to have an inkling of how this wasaccomplished--in principle, if not in specific terms. There were, afterall, he reasoned, only a few ways of creating a visible image. He wasgoing through the list of possibilities, eliminating them one by one.

  If the Frostola man was connected with the ghostly appearances, it wasonly necessary to keep track of that tall individual. This was Rick'splan, necessarily postponed because of the storm.

  "Wish we had a radio," he said. "I'd like to get a weather report."

  Scotty grinned sympathetically. He knew that Rick was impatient whenthere was detecting to be done.

  "We really should have a battery radio," Dr. Miller said. "Power here isnot very dependable in stormy weather. I think I'll get one, althoughthat won't help now."

  "What we need is a radio that doesn't depend on power," Jan Miller said."Then it would always be ready."

  Rick stared at the girl, not really seeing her. A radio without power.He remembered a long talk with Dr. John Gordon of the Spindrift staffabout the principles of radio. Dr. Gordon had sketched a circuit thatneeded no power, and then had told Rick of how American ingenuity hadproduced what soldiers called a "foxhole radio."

  "I saw an old transformer in the woodshed," he said suddenly. "May Ihave it, Dr. Miller?" At the scientist's nod, he addressed Jan. "I'llbet you can find me a cardboard tube. Then, if I can have an old razorblade and permission to take the receiver off the telephone for a while,I can make a radio!"

  The scientist, the girls, and Scotty looked at him with disbelief. "He'sgone off his rocker at last," Scotty muttered. "How can anyone make aradio out of junk?"

  "I'll need a pencil stub, a few screws, and a piece of board," Rickadded. "A safety pin would help, too."

  "Rick Brant, you're being silly," Barby said firmly. "This is no timefor practical jokes!"

  Dr. Miller held up his hand. "Peace, Barbara. Rick isn't joking. Ibelieve I see what he has in mind. Rick, I've never heard of this, but Iassume the oxide on the razor blade is to act as a rectifier?"

  "That's right, sir. John Gordon told me about it."

  The scientist rose. "Then it will work. Come on, gang. Let's build aradio out of junk."

  With many hands to help, the work went quickly. Under Dr. Miller'sdirection, Scotty took the transformer out of its case and the girlswent to work unwinding the quantities of wire from its coils.

  Rick found a razor blade and anchored it to a rectangular piece ofplywood he found in the woodshed. It was a double-edged blade, and onesmall screw from Dr. Miller's junk box served to hold it. He wrapped ashort piece of insulated wire, one of the transformer's connectingleads, under the screw before he tightened it. He sharpened the leadpencil with his jackknife, uncoiled the safety pin, and pushed the sharpend into the exposed lead at the upper end of the pencil, which was astub only two inches long.

  The safety pin also was screwed to the board, the screw going throughthe space in the pin's head. It was placed in such a position that thesharp end of the lead pencil rested on the razor blade. Another shortpiece of insulated wire was wrapped around the screw before it wastightened. Rick bared the copper end of the wire in order to make a goodcontact.

  Jan found a cardboard roll that had once held paper towels. Rick cut offabout six inches of it and proceeded to wind it with wire from thetransformer. He wound evenly and tightly, until the roll was full ofwire. Then he stabbed a small hole in each end of the roll and pulledthe wires through to hold the coil in position. The roll--now acoil--was tacked to the board with thumbtacks.

  Dr. Miller, meanwhile, had taken the receiver from the telephone. Scottystrung yards of wire around the room and handed the loose end to Rick.That was the antenna. Then Scotty scraped a bright place on a water pipewith his knife and twisted a length of wire tightly around it. That wasthe ground.

  Rick and Dr. Miller made connections. Rick gestured to the haywireapparatus with some pride. "Behold. Where there was junk is now aradio."

  Jan Miller said, "I don't believe it!"

  Rick had to laugh. "I'm not sure I do, either. But let's try." He satdown at the table and held the receiver to his ear. With the other handhe began the laborious job of locating a sensitive spot on the razorblade.

  Dr. Gordon had told him that only an occasional spot on a blade willwork. Some blades have no such spots. Others have many.

  Rick was beginning to think that he had one of the no-spot kind, or thatthe whole idea was wrong, when he heard what he thought was a voice. Hehastily concentrated on the spot, and in a few seconds music floodedinto the earphone. He had caught a disk jockey in the process ofintroducing a record. For a long moment he listened, then held out theearphone with a broad grin. "Anyone care to listen?"

  Everyone did. They took turns, with each application of the phone to anear accompanied by expressions of astonishment.

  Barby looked at her brother with new respect. "It's just fantastic! Howon earth does it work?"

  Dr. Miller chuckled. "I'm sure you don't want a full course inelectronics, Barby. Actually, it's simple enough. The signal from theradio station is an alternating current that sets up a correspondingcurrent in the antenna wire. This current goes through the coil and isrectified--that is, it's turned into pulsating direct current--by therazor blade. The receiver then converts it into audible sound."

  Barby sighed. "I'll just have to take your word for it. But it's amiracle!"

  "It may seem like one, but it's really the same kind of circuit you findin a crystal set," Rick explained. "The razor blade acts like thecrystal. That's all."

  The young people took turns listening to the station, located in a townnearby. Within the hour there was a weather report promising clearingskies before the end of the day. Later, in a roundup of localannouncements, they heard that the annual Sons of the Old Dominionfeast, postponed because of the storm, would be held the next night.

  "That means we start keeping an eye on the ice-cream man tomorrowafternoon," Rick said.

  Scotty nodded. "First, we'd better make a survey of the terrain. He hasto approach by the road, but there are a million places he could go oncehe got into the mine area."

  Rick looked out the window. "The rain has stopped. Maybe we canreconnoiter this afternoon."

  Fortunately, the Miller farm was well equipped with boots and overshoes.The boys borrowed footgear suitable for any mud left by the rain andstarted out after lunch.

  The picnic area was washed clean of footprints and it was clear no onehad visited the area since the rain. They made their way to the top ofthe hill above the mine and surveyed the cornfield that had been plantedon the hilltop field. The corn was not high. The plants came only totheir knees. Either it was a second planting or a poor crop. Rickguessed that the second reason was probably the correct one, because thefield hadn't been cultivated recently.

  "This isn't Miller land," he mused. "Wonder who is farming it?"

  "It must be Hilleboe's property," Scotty returned. "Maybe he rents it tosome local farmer."

  They walked to the downstream edge of the cornfi
eld to where the woodsresumed. Rick had a feeling that they were wasting time. The ghostcouldn't be produced from such a distance by any means he had ever heardof. The apparition had to be created right in the vicinity of the mine.

  He spoke his thoughts aloud, and added, "Let's go back."

  "Just a minute." Scotty pointed to a pile of brush. "Aren't those morebags?"

  They were, and of the same brand as those the boys had located on thestream bank. Scotty picked one up and tested it between his fingers."Mighty curious. Water cures Portland cement. Turns it hard. These bagsaren't hard, even though some powder is still in them."

  Rick examined the bags, his brows creased with bewilderment. "They musthave held something besides cement. But what? Fertilizer for thecornfield, maybe? And why two caches?"

  "If it were fertilizer, the bags near the mine could have been for thefield across the creek where the plane is," Scotty suggested. "Thesecould have been for this field. But I don't think it was fertilizer.Isn't fertilizer soluble in water?"

  Rick wasn't sure. "We can take the bag along," he said. "Maybe themicroscope will tell us something, or maybe Dr. Miller will know."

  He had a feeling that the bags meant something. They had been hidden,and only the erosion of rain had uncovered them, first at the creekembankment and now here. The Frostola man had almost certainly taken theothers. Why? Unless they had something to do with the mystery? The bagswere worthless, of themselves.

  They finished the survey of the area. It was clear that whoever producedthe ghost would have to enter by the road from town, because there wasno other road on the side of the hill in which the mine was located. Tobe sure, the area could be reached by walking a considerable distance,but Rick couldn't see a man with equipment doing much walking throughcornfields or woods filled with underbrush. He was certain the ghost hadto be produced by equipment of some kind, probably electricpowered--which meant batteries.

  The problem was, where did the ghost producer operate? If dry ice wasused to produce the mist, how did it get into the pool? He had noanswers to these vital questions, nor did Scotty.

  The dark-haired boy looked at him quizzically as they trudged back tothe farmhouse. "Did it ever occur to you that it's impossible for anyoneto produce the ghost? There is no place within sight of the pool whereanyone could hide, except in a tree, and a man with equipment wouldn'tgo undetected by a gang at the picnic grounds."

  "It did occur to me," Rick admitted. "But doesn't that put us back wherewe started? Either the ghost is a genuine spook, or it's man-made. We'renot making many miles an hour in proving it's man-made, I admit. But ifit isn't, where does that leave us?"

  Rick remembered the chase through the woods, ending with a bath in thequarry. If they had been chasing a real ghost, and the ghost had ledthem into danger deliberately, that meant ... He wasn't sure what itmeant except that it gave him goose pimples to think about it.

  The electricity and telephone service had been restored by the time theboys got back. Dr. Miller told them that he had phoned the tenant farmerand arranged for the man to do a little inquiring in the town.

  Rick displayed the bag. "Got a specimen," he told the group. Heexplained their interest in the bag and asked Dr. Miller if he couldidentify the contents.

  The scientist examined the grayish powder from the bag. "It could be anyone of a hundred things," he said. "Let's see what we can find out aboutit."

  The farmhouse wasn't equipped for any kind of chemical analysis, but thescientist did what was possible. He tried to dissolve the powder inwater, and failed. He tried vinegar, as the only acid available, andfailed. He tried ammonia, and failed.

  Finally he said, "Well, it isn't cement, and it isn't fertilizer. It'san inorganic substance. I suggest the microscope, Rick. It will at leastgive us a clue to its structure, if not its identity."

  Rick spread a small amount on a slide, switched on the substage light,and put the slide on the stage. He focused, using his highest-power lenscombination which gave a magnification of three hundred times.

  The powder was clearly crystalline, a mineral of some kind. Rickcouldn't identify it. He turned the eyepiece over to Dr. Miller. Thescientist had no better luck.

  Barby asked, "Could it be an explosive?"

  "No, Barby. This is powdered rock of some kind," Dr. Miller answered,his eye at the instrument. "But why anyone should use powdered rock andthen hide the bags certainly escapes me. I can't imagine what the powderis for. It isn't a powdered limestone, which might be used on thefields. The crystal structure is wrong for that."

  "Wish we had a geologist with us," Rick said. "This calls for anexpert." He stared helplessly at the microscope. There was only one moretest that could be made, and he saw no use in making it.

  _"This calls for an expert," Rick said discouragingly_]

  Included in the microscopy set Barby had given him was a gadget called aspinthariscope, like a cone of black plastic with the sharp end of thecone sliced off. In the wide end of the cone, inset so it wouldn't touchthe eye, was a lens. The small end was composed of a disk of specialchemical that fluoresced when struck by an atomic particle.

  The little instrument used a principle dating back to the early historyof atomic energy, when scientists were exploring the nature of thestrange force the Curies had discovered in radium and polonium.

  It was only his training in thoroughness of investigation that led Rickto use the instrument. Since it was necessary for the eye to becomeadapted to the darkness before using the instrument, he took it into acloset and shut the door. As the pupils of his eyes dilated he worked bytouch, spreading a bit of powder on the end containing the specialsulfide screen.

  He applied his eye to the lens, more as a matter of form than in theexpectation of seeing anything. For an instant he saw nothing, then, ashis eye adjusted, he let out a wild yell. There were hundreds ofscintillations, each caused by a nuclear particle or photon striking thescreen.

  The sample was radioactive!