His workmen did not understand what he was doing, but they labored zestfully because it was mysterious and for a purpose. But downhill, in the hydraulic-dredged-out lake, water came seeping in, in the form of mud. And then another pipe came up from the seashore and the mud settled solidly on the bottom, not dispersing. It was a rather small pipe, and the personnel who laid it were bewildered. Because there was a water-freshening plant down there on the shore, and all the fresh water was poured back overboard, while the brine—saturated with salts from the ocean: unable to dissolve a single grain of anything else—was being used to fill the small artificial lake.
The second day Sandringham called Hardwick again, and again Hardwick peered wearily into the phone-screen.
"Yes," said Hardwick, "the leaked fuel is turning up. In solution, I'm trying to measure the concentration by matching specific gravities of lake water and brine, and then sticking electrodes in each. The fuel's corrosive as the devil. It gives a different EMF. Higher than brine of the same density. I think I've got it in hand."
"Do you want to start shipping it?" demanded Sandringham.
"You can begin pouring it down holes," said Hardwick. "How's the barometer?"
"Down three-tenths this morning. Steady now."
"Damn!" said Hardwick. "I'll set up molds. Freeze it in plastic bags the size of the bore-holes so it will go down. While it's frozen they can even push it down deep."
Sandringham said very grimly:
"There's been more damned technical work done with ship-fuel than any other substance since time began. But remember that the stuff can still be set off, even dissolved in water! Its sensitivity goes down, but it's not gone!"
"If it were," said Hardwick drearily, "you could invite in the civilian population to sit on its rump. I've got something like forty tons of ship-fuel in brine solution in this lake I pumped out! But it's in five thousand tons of brine. We don't speak above a whisper when we're around it. We walk in carpet slippers and you never saw people so polite! We will start freezing it."