“It would count in your favor if you drove such a menace from the air or brought them to justice,” Curlie said thoughtfully.
“If! Pretty big IF, boy. And if you fail, you may be in the sticks somewhere with busted landing gear, out of the running. See?” Curlie did see. And for the time being this seemed good counsel. Long and sober thinking had left the matter unsettled in his mind.
One item that weighed heavily on the safety side was the fact that he carried in his plane that which was to prove of great value to his friend Johnny Thompson and all the world as well—pitchblende.
The venerable giant of a prospector, Sandy MacDonald, with whom Johnny Thompson worked, had prepared his samples sooner than Johnny had thought he might. He had sent those bits of rocks, that gave promise of producing mineral worth a million dollars an ounce, over to Resolution. They were now in the fuselage of Curlie’s plane.
“Guard them well,” had been the prospector’s last word of admonition. “Those samples are pitchblende. From pitchblende comes radium. And radium has been a boon to mankind. Through its mysterious rays of light it has cured thousands of that most dreaded of diseases, cancer. If we can but discover a cheaper supply, we will be benefactors of the whole race. Take them to Edmonton. There’s a laboratory there. If they are not equipped to analyze them, they’ll send them on. In time you’ll bring us the result. And may God speed your flight!”
“May God speed your flight.” Curlie seemed to hear those words now and to feel the gentle touch of a powerful hand on his shoulder.
“This is important,” he told himself. “I must not fail him. The pay is small. The reward may be very great. We—”
His hands gripped the wheel tightly. A great white cloud lay directly before him. Out of that cloud had come a plane. The air was clear, the plane not far distant. His eyes could not deceive him.
“Jerry!” he shouted to the mechanic at his side. (He had taken Jerry on at Resolution.) “Jerry, that’s the ‘Gray Streak’!”
“Absolutely!” Jerry straightened up in his place.