“You all know, my friends, that uranium ore can be, and has been, found with a one-tube Geiger,” Red was booming. “But that’s like throwing a lucky pass in a football game. To win the game, you need power in the line—power that will let your ball carrier cross the line again, and again, and again, the way I became an All-American by scoring those three touchdowns against California back in 1930.”
“Oh, no!” Quiz whispered as he and Sandy founds seats in a far corner. “This is where we came in last time.”
“In searching for oil, or even for uranium under a heavy overburden of rock,” Cavanaugh went on, “you need at least the simplest scintillation counter because it is sixty times as sensitive as a one-tube Geiger. Better yet is the really professional counter—as much as 600 times more sensitive than the best Geiger built. Best of all is my multiple scintillator—100 times more sensitive than the best single tube. Even you won’t disagree with that, will you, Mr. Donovan?”
“Not at all,” answered the bald man after several furious puffs on his pipe. “I only say that, in addition to the best possible electronic instrument, you need an operator who thoroughly understands radiation equipment. Also, you should have a crew of geologists and geophysicists who know how to balance radiation findings against those established by other methods.”
“Nonsense,” shouted the ex-football player. “Many of my customers have located oil-containing faults and stratigraphic traps with my detector where all other instruments had failed. You’re just old-fashioned.”
“Maybe I am,” said Donovan, “and then maybe I just don’t like to have wool pulled over my eyes, or the eyes of men I consider to be my friends.”
“I’m not pulling wool. Halos or circles of radiation can be detected on the surface of the earth around the edges of every oil deposit. That’s a proven fact.” Cavanaugh pounded on the arm of his chair with a fist as big as a ham.
“Is it?” Donovan asked gently. “Jakosky, who is an authority on exploration geophysics, says, and I quote his exact words: ‘Atomic exploration is still in its infancy.’ Let me tell you a story:
“Back in the early days of the oil business, a number of people made fortunes by charging big fees to locate petroleum deposits with the help of split willow wands. They’d walk around with the split ends of the wands between their hands until, they said, some mysterious force pulled the big end downward until it pointed to oil. A man who helped Colonel Drake promote his original oil well at Titusville, Pennsylvania, back in 1859, actually located several profitable fields with the ‘help’ of a spiritualist medium.”
“He could hardly have failed,” one of the onlookers spoke up. “In those days, oil was literally bursting out of the ground along many Pennsylvania creek beds.”