Rick Brant 8 The Caves of Fear Read online

  “Or why he’s missing,” Barby added.

  The cable had created a mystery that demanded a solution, but not amount of discussion answered the questions it raised. Finally, Mrs. Brant broke up the debate by pointedly remarking on the lateness of the hour. Reluctantly, the family started for bed.

  As Rick undressed, he continued the discussion through the door connecting his room and Scotty’s. “Chahda’s pretty sure we’ll hurry to Hong Kong.”

  “Is he wrong?” Scotty demanded.

  “I don’t know,” Rick said. “It depends on a lot of things. We can’t go unless we get jobs, and Steve evidently didn’t say anything to Dad about the rest of the staff, including us.”

  “Dad hasn’t even said hell go,” Scotty reminded.

  “Doesn’t saying he has reconsidered mean that hell go?”

  “Could be. Or maybe it just means he’s willing to talk some more about it. We should have pinned him down.”

  “We will,” Rick said. “In the morning.”

  He lay awake for long hours, staring into the darkness and trying to piece together Chahda’s references to a golden mouse, a Chinese with a glass eye, and a long shadow. It was no use. But there was no mistaking the urgency of his friend’s plea.

  Where was Chahda now? At a guess, somewhere between Singapore and Hong Kong. But whether by land or sea or air, Rick couldn’t imagine. Nor could he even venture a wild guess at what kind of danger Chahda faced.

  After a long time he fell asleep, but it was fitful sleep broken by frequent awakenings.

  In the morning, the discussion resumed over breakfast, bringing forth wild speculations from Barby. Rick had to grin at her flights of fancy.

  “One thing seems sure,” Scotty offered. “Chahda was in a big hurry.”

  “What makes you think so?” Mrs. Brant asked. “Barby! Please stop feeding Dismal at the table.”

  Dismal turned beseeching eyes to Rick in a plea for moral support, but his young master was listening to Scotty.

  “The words he used. Like putting together an atomic symbol and Russian money to make ‘troubles,’ and using ‘umbra’ instead of shadow. I’m sure in a big book like The World Almanac troubles and shadows are mentioned somewhere. But he didn’t have time to search. He took the first possibilities that came along.”

  Rick nodded approval. “That figures. But why didn’t he have time?”

  Scotty shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine. Maybe better.”

  Julius Weiss, who had tired of the discussion and started to the lab, ran back into the house. “There’s a plane heading this way,” he announced. “I’m sure it’s coming here, because it’s down pretty low.”

  The conversation ended abruptly. Rick and Scotty were first out on the lawn. The engine noise of the plane was loud.

  Rick saw it first, a sleek, four-place cabin job, circling wide out over the water, losing altitude. In a few moments it banked sharply behind the lab building, straightened out, and cut the gun. Rick was running toward the end of the grass strip even before the plane settled smoothly to the ground.

  “Steve Ames,” he said to himself. “I’ll bet it is.” The JANIG officer had wasted no time!

  Sure enough, Steve was the first out of the plane. Rick saw that he was the only passenger. The pilot got out then, and Rick recognized him as one of the JANIG operatives who had chased the Whispering Box gang across Washington.

  Steve and Rick shook hands, grinning at each other, then Rick greeted Mike, the pilot.

  “Didn’t think we’d be needing Spindrift again so soon,” Steve said. He walked to meet the others and shook hands all around. “Let’s get busy,” he said to Hartson Brant.

  Rick, Scotty, and Barby followed the two into the library. Mrs. Brant took the pilot into the dining room for coffee while Professor Weiss excused himself and went on to the laboratory. His apparent lack of interest would have amazed anyone who didn’t know him, but Rick knew that when Julius Weiss was wrapped up in one of his theoretical math problems, nothing else on earth could find room in his mind.

  Steve looked at the scientist. “What caused you to reconsider?”

  “This.” Hartson Brant handed him the translation of Chahda’s cable, then the original. “We broke the code last night. It was a book code, using The World Almanac. Chahda knew we’d be able to puzzle it out.”

  Steve scanned the number groups briefly. “Clever,” he commented. He read through the clear copy twice, and his jaw tightened. “This explains something that has puzzled me.”

  “A good thing,” Rick said. “Because all we got was the puzzlement. No explanations.”

  Steve tapped the cable thoughtfully. “I hate to ask you to tackle this job, but you must have some ideas about it or you wouldn’t have sent that wire.”

  Hartson Brant nodded. “I explained my situation to you on the phone when you called a few days ago. The situation hasn’t changed, but I must admit this cable from Chahda puts a new light on the matter. That boy is a member of the family.”

  “Then you’ll go?”

  “I don’t want to, quite frankly. I will if there is no alternative. I lost a lot of sleep last night making that decision. But first, I want to propose that some member of my staff go in my stead.”

  Steve walked to the desk and perched on its edge. “Which one?”

  “You know them all. You also know then* specialties. Which of them would fit your requirements best?”

  “Zircon. He’s a nuclear physicist.”

  Rick held his breath. Steve was continuing:

  “Chahda urges Rick and Scotty to get jobs, too. I hadn’t considered that, but it’s not a bad idea.”

  Rick closed his eyes and let out his breath in a sigh of relief. Scotty nudged him.

  Hartson Brant asked, “Then you will consider Zircon as my substitute? Always on condition that he will go, of course.”

  Steve nodded. “I’d prefer you, but I’ll take Zircon, if I can make a condition of my own, and that is that you’ll fly to the Far East on a moment’s notice if he and the boys can’t handle it.”

  Rick looked at his father anxiously. Hartson Brant had not given his permission for them to make a trip, but evidently it was all right. The scientist nodded.

  “Ill agree to that.” He went to the telephone and picked up the instrument. “Operator, I want to place a long-distance call.”

  Steve winked at the boys. Then, as Hartson Brant placed the call to Zircon in New Haven, Connecticut, the JANIG man said, “Going to be a couple of tourists at government expense, huh? Pretty soft.”

  “Maybe,” Rick said, grinning. “That cable doesn’t sound like anything soft.”

  Steve got serious. “You two proved yourselves in Washington, so far as I’m concerned. You can make yourselves useful, and you’ll provide a good cover for Zircon.”

  “What kind of cover?” Barby asked.

  Steve smiled at her. “Women can’t keep secrets, I’m told.”

  “I can,” Barby retorted swiftly.

  Steve held up his hand for silence. Hartson Brant had Zircon on the line. The scientist outlined Steve’s proposal in a few words, and gave Zircon the contents of Chahda’s cable. Then he listened to Zircon while Rick fidgeted anxiously. Finally, Hartson Brant said, “All right, Hobart. Tell your people up there that I’ll take your lectures. We’ll see you later today.” He hung up and nodded at Steve.

  “Hobart had lectures scheduled for next week, but I can take them for him. He’ll be down this afternoon, and, he says, hell be ready to leave in the morning if necessary.”

  “Good!” Steve nodded at Barby. “Even if you can’t go on the trip, you can make yourself useful. Want to place a call to Washington for me?”

  “Yes,” Barby said eagerly. “Where to?”

  Steve gave her the number. Then, while she was placing the call, he said, “Now, I’ll tell you what I know.”

  Rick’s heart beat faster. Now he would learn what was behind Chahda’s cable.r />
  “The day before I phoned here,” Steve began, “my office received a message from Carl Bradley. It was a top secret message sent to us via the American consulate general’s channels from Singapore. I’d better explain first that Carl is a JANIG man. His knowledge of that part of the world has made him invaluable, and he works for us secretly while doing his routine work as an ethnologist. That is top secret information that must never be repeated outside this room.”

  “You can depend on us,” Hartson Brant assured him.

  “I know it. To go on. His job is gathering information about persons who show too much interest in operations within our embassies and consulates. However, the cable we got from him wasn’t quite in that line.”

  Steve paused to see how Barby was getting along. She was trying to listen to him and the operator at the same time.

  “This cable,” Steve continued, “said he had accidentally made a discovery of something potentially dangerous to America. He asked for a competent nuclear physicist, and he named you, Hartson, to be sent to Singapore at once to check on his finding, and to locate, if possible, the source of the stuff he had discovered. We haven’t heard from him since. From Chahda’s cable, it’s evident something has happened to him. And on the basis of the cable, I think we’ll send Zircon and you boys to Hong Kong first.”

  Scotty put into words the question that was in Rick’s mind. “What was it that he discovered?”

  Steve’s lips tightened, then he said: “Heavy water!”

  CHAPTER IV

  Project X

  “Heavy water!” Hartson Brant exclaimed softly Rick and Scotty looked at each other blankly. And at that moment, Barby completed the connection and called to Steve. He strode to the phone and picked it up. “Who’s this? All right. Steve Ames here. Take down these names. Hobart Zircon. Richard Brant. Donald Scott. You’ll find full data on them in the files. Prepare travel orders and get tickets for all three to Hong Kong via the first plane leaving New York after 7:00 p.m. tomorrow night. Arrange for a letter of credit in the usual amount on the National City Bank of Washington, and have the bank make arrangements with all their Far East branches. Put all three on the pay roll at the same grades they held before. Get passports for them with visitor’s visas for the Philippines, Hong Kong, Indo-China, Indonesia, Siam, and China. We don’t know where they’ll end up. Then put all that stuff in an envelope and get it to me here at Spindrift by special messenger . . . wait, never mind that. I’ll send Mike back right away, and he can bring it to me. Now read those instructions back.”

  Steve listened for a moment. “Right. Get going. What? Oh, charge the whole thing to a new case file. Mark it Project X.”

  He disconnected and turned to the group. “Now,” he said grimly, “let’s talk turkey.”

  He nodded at Rick and Scotty. “Zircon said he could leave in the morning, if necessary. That’s rushing you a little too much. So I’ve given you until tomorrow night.”

  Rick grinned. Once things started to move with Steve Ames, they moved strictly jet-propelled.

  “What are we supposed to do?” Scotty asked.

  “Find Bradley. If you can. But don’t spend too much time searching. Getting all the dope-and I mean all- on that heavy water is the reason for your going out there. If you find Bradley, he can help. Maybe Chahda can help, too. But never forget for a minute that tracking down that heavy water is your mission.”

  “If we don’t find Bradley, we won’t know how to get started,” Rick pointed out.

  Steve grunted. “No? If I believed that, I’d have gone somewhere else for help. I came here because I knew Spindrift could give me ingenuity as well as scientific knowledge. And you hadn’t better let me down”

  “We won’t let you down,” Scotty assured him.

  Barby chimed in indignantly, “Of course they won’t.”

  Steve smiled. “Don’t worry. I’m not afraid of their f ailing down on the job. But it’s a big one. I’ll tell Zircon this when he comes, but you can be thinking it over in the meantime. You’re to find out who is bringing heavy water to the Asia coast and what they’re doing with it. You’re to find out where it comes from, and why it is being made. You’re to get samples and send them back here. And most important of all, you’re to locate and pinpoint for us any industrial plants you find.”

  Scotty scratched his head. “Fine. Only let’s get back to the beginning. What is heavy water? And why are you so excited about it?”

  “I don’t know, either,” Barby added.

  Hartson Brant looked at his son. “You do, don’t you, Rick?”

  “I know what it is, but I don’t know why it’s so important to Steve,” Rick said. He had read a great deal about heavy water in studying elementary physics. It had many uses in physics experiments.

  “Let’s see how much you know,” Steve directed “Sound off.”

  Rick searched his memory, trying to marshal all the facts he knew. “Well,” he began, “ordinary water is composed of oxygen and hydrogen. In every water molecule there are two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen. The important part, for what we’re talking about, are the hydrogen atoms. Hydrogen is the lightest element, and it has the simplest atom. There’s just one proton and one electron.”

  He looked at his father, waiting for a nod to tell him he was on the right track. When the scientist nodded approval, he went on.

  “That kind of hydrogen atom has a mass of one, as the scientists say. But there are other kinds of hydrogen atoms, and they are pretty rare, called isotopes. An isotope is just a different variety of the ordinary kind of atom in each element. The thing that makes it different is a change in the nucleus. Well, hydrogen has two isotopes. One kind, which has a mass of two, is found in nature. It is called deuterium. Its nucleus is called a deuteron. Another kind, which can be made in a nuclear reactor, is called tritium. A little of it is found naturally but not enough to count for much.”

  He took a deep breath. “I hope I know what I’m talking about.”

  “You’re doing fine,” Hartson Brant said. “Go on.”

  “All right. Well, heavy water is made of one atom of oxygen plus two atoms of deuterium, which is the first isotope of hydrogen. In chemistry, there’s no difference in the way heavy water acts. You can even drink it. In fact, people do drink it every day, because in ordinary water there is some heavy water. I forget the exact figures, but I think that, by weight, there are five thousand parts of ordinary hydrogen in water and only one part of deuterium.”

  “That’s right.” Steve Ames nodded. “Five thousand to one. Now tell us what is peculiar about all isotopes?”

  Rick thought furiously and came up with what he hoped was the answer. “I think it’s that isotopes aren’t as stable as the basic elements. Some are pretty stable, but some are pretty shaky. That’s why some of the isotopes of uranium can be split wide open in a chain reaction to make an atomic bomb, and . . .”

  A chill ran through him. His mouth opened. He knew, He knew why heavy water had Steve Ames all excited. He choked:

  “Hydrogen bombs!”

  Scotty and Barby gasped. Steve Ames and Hartson Brant smiled.

  “It’s true that one of the possibilities in building a hydrogen bomb concerns deuterium,” the scientist said. “But I scarcely think that’s the case here. How about it, Steve?”

  “Possible, but extremely improbable,” Steve agreed. “What I’m most interested in is a use for heavy water Back hasn’t mentioned. Know what a nuclear reactor is, Rick?”

  Rick nodded. “It’s what the newspapers usually call an ‘atomic pile.’ We have quite a few in this country, I think. The Atomic Energy Commission said quite a while ago that they used a nuclear reactor with uranium as a fuel to make plutonium, which is the artificial element that can be used in atomic bombs. Besides uranium itself, that is.”

  “That’s right. What I’m interested in is the fact that heavy water can be used as a neutron moderator in a reactor.”

  Rick looked
blank. Steve was talking way over his head. Hartson Brant saw his son’s bewilderment and explained: “You’ve probably heard that the uranium in a reactor is encased in blocks of graphite, which is simply carbon, Rick. It prevents the neutrons from the uranium from simply running wild. Well, heavy water can be used for the same purpose.”

  “Exactly,” Steve said. “So you see, I’m not afraid of the possibility of hydrogen bombs as much as I am of the possibility that somewhere in Asia is a nuclear reactor. Until we get international agreement on atomic weapons, we simply have to keep track of atomic developments everywhere for our own protection. If there’s a new country going in for atomic research, and it can build a reactor, it might also be able to build an atomic bomb. Now, don’t forget I said heavy water is a legitimate industrial product. We certainly can’t object to a nation’s manufacturing it. We wouldn’t want to. But when it turns up in an odd corner of the world, I think We’d better find out why. If it’s a peaceful reason, we’ll mark it down and then forget it. If not, we’ll make a report to the United Nations.”

  “Why not report it right now?” Barby asked.

  “Good question. The answer is, we’re not sure. Remember Carl Bradley was unsure enough to ask for help. If we got up before the UN and started hollering and it turned out to be plain water, we’d look pretty foolish.”

  “I don’t even know how we’d begin,” Scotty muttered. “How do you start on a job like this?”

  “You’ll start by being innocent tourists,” Steve said. “You and Rick are students on a holiday, with Zircon, your uncle, as guide and tutor. You’ll be interested in a number of things, including hunting. That will give you a good excuse for barging around the country if you have to. But you won’t be able to decide what you want to hunt.” Steve grinned. “You’ll decide after you find out where you have to go. And you’d better learn about Asiatic game animals. For instance, if the trail takes you to Indonesia, you may want to hunt the hairy Sumatran rhinoceros. In the Philippines, you’ll hunt timarau, which are a special breed of wild water buffalo. In China, around the coast, you can hunt tigers. In Malaya, if the trail does take you down to Singapore, you can hunt tapir. Same for Siam. In Indo-China you can hunt tigers. Inland in China, toward the Tibetan border, you’d better be hunting bharals.”