'd come up with the nuggets and think he was getting natural
gold."

"And in this case, powdered carnotite was used in the fields, and chunks
were put in the mine, to make victims think uranium was present," Rick
added. He could see the picture pretty clearly now. "The carnotite was
put in and then the field was planted with corn to make it look as
innocent and natural as possible, I suppose."

"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 ki