“We walked right into their hands,” Professor Crowell explained. “Parker knew we were coming up to the Kennecott mine and tipped them off. They flew up ahead of us, hid their plane in the trees and covered up the ski tracks. When we arrived they were waiting for us.”
“A whole gang of them,” Lou Mayer put in. “Seven of them, armed to the teeth. Four of them took our plane back to Cordova so the people at the airport wouldn’t report us missing.”
“I know,” Sandy said grimly. “They took care of the hotel too. By the time the authorities get suspicious it will be too late. The one called Kruger says we’ll be in Russia by then.”
Dr. Steele and Professor Crowell looked at each other hopelessly. “Unless we tell them what they want to know,” Dr. Steele said.
Sandy’s eyes were puzzled. “Just what are they after? I guess you can tell us now.”
Dr. Steele smiled wanly. “I guess we can.” He paused before he went on. “Although he’s better known as a geologist, Professor Crowell is one of Canada’s leading physicists. During World War Two he was assigned to rocket research work for the Canadian Army and continued to specialize in this field after the war.
“About six months ago an old Yukon prospector submitted an ore sample to a government assay office at Whitehorse. He said he had been prospecting on the Alaskan border and struck what he believed was a vein of gold. An analysis of the sample revealed traces of copper, but no gold. But much more important, it revealed strains of a rare element that the Canadian government was testing as a catalytic agent in top-secret experiments with a new solid rocket fuel.
“For years now rocket experts have acknowledged that solid fuels are more practical than liquid propellants—even more so for the big manned rocket ships of the future. The trouble is, up until now the solid fuels haven’t been too dependable. Professor Crowell believes this new element will solve the most serious drawbacks, but unhappily it’s about as rare as uranium. During the past few months there have been teams out searching for it all over the Dominion, without much success.
“Then, unexpectedly, this old prospector shows up with an ore sample laced liberally with it. The assay office at Whitehorse dispatched it to Ottawa immediately and Professor Crowell was consulted. It was his opinion that they were on to something big. A special agent flew up to Whitehorse to interview the prospector, but tragically—any way you look at it—the poor old man had passed away from pneumonia only a few days before the agent arrived.
“Now the big problem was to find out where the dead man had picked up the ore. All kinds of soil and rock analyses were made on it without any specific results. It was the professor’s guess that it came from somewhere in the vicinity of the Kennecott copper mine. There was copper in the sample, of course, and the old miner had mentioned vaguely at the assay office that he had discovered it somewhere ‘on the border.’ A layman couldn’t be expected to know exactly where the border lies; actually, he may have wandered well into Alaska.