“Oh? Well, go ahead and watch. Do you know what I’m doing?”
Mark shook his head.
“This is a nucleometer,” said Vernadsky. “You jab it into the ground like this. It’s got a force-held generator at the top so it will penetrate any rock.” He leaned on the nucleometer as he spoke, and it went two feet into the stony outcropping. “See?”
Mark’s eyes shone, and Vernadsky felt pleased. The chemist said, “Along the sides of the uniped are microscopic atomic furnaces, each of which vaporizes about a million molecules or so in the surrounding rock and decomposes them into atoms. The atoms are then differentiated in terms of nuclear mass and charge and the results may be read off directly on the dials above. Do you follow all that?”
“I’m not sure. But it’s a good thing to know.”
Vernadsky smiled, and said, “We end up with figures on the different elements in the crust. It’s pretty much the same on all oxygen/water planets.”
Mark said, seriously, “The planet with the most silicon I know of is Lepta with 32.765 per cent. Earth is only 24.862. That’s by weight.”
Vernadsky’s smile faded. He said, dryly, “You have the figures on all the planets, pal?”
“Oh, no. I couldn’t. I don’t think they’ve all been surveyed. Bischoon and Spenglow’s ‘Handbook of Planetary Crusts’ only lists figures for twenty-one thousand eight hundred and fifty-four planets. I know all those, of course.”
Vernadsky, with a definite feeling of deflation, said, “Now Junior has a more even distribution of elements than is usually met up with. Oxygen is low. So far my average is a lousy 42.113. So is silicon, with 22.722. The heavy metals are ten to a hundred times as concentrated as on Earth. That’s not just a local phenomenon, either, since Junior’s over-all density is five per cent higher than Earth’s.” Vernadsky wasn’t sure why he was telling the kid all this. Partly, he felt, because it was good to find someone who would listen. A man gets lonely and frustrated when there is no one of his own field to talk to.