"That's how I figure it. There's no uranium around here, except for the very small percentage that one can often find associated with some varieties of lead. We'll find that someone has been pulling a very cute confidence game, bringing clients here by night, showing them the radioactivity—by letting them hear the clicks in the earphone of a counter, probably—and then selling them either shares in a mine or pieces of property."
"And using the ghost to scare the townspeople away so there would be no interference," Rick finished. "But how can we prove all this?"
"You won't have to. I brought a man with me, and dropped him off in town. His name is Joe Taylor, and he's an FBI agent."
"The FBI?" Scotty looked puzzled. "But bunco games or con games, whatever you call them, aren't a federal offense! How does the FBI get in on it?"
"Because the carnotite was federal property. It was stolen from a loading platform at our Grand Junction facility. We know this, because there is no record of any transaction, and we can identify the source by the chemical composition of the sample."
"But how could anyone steal stuff from AEC?" Rick asked.
"Easily, in this case. There is no purpose in protecting ore with the same security we give the processed stages, like green salt, for example. No one could possibly steal enough ore to do any good, because it takes many tons to produce even a gram of uranium. Ore moves by carloads, on normal railroad or truck bills of lading, from private companies who mine it. No security is required, you see, because no one has the capability of getting out the metal even if they could steal thousands of tons of ore."
Rick understood this. He had seen the plant at Oak Ridge where uranium was extracted by the gas diffusion method. The plant covered acres. Only a government could afford such a facility.
"But couldn't the carnotite have been stolen from a privately owned mine?" he asked.
"Possibly, but we will assume it was in our hands when it was taken. This is because we want to discourage this kind of thing, and the FBI taking action is very discouraging to thieves."