Fiction: Detour

Article by R. K. Wigal

Trampolining over the moon's surface had been great fun for Chance Munro, but it was time to move on. Brack wanted to show him many other wonders "out there" and Chance was eager to see them. But first, he wanted to return to Earth briefly for some "Stocking up." Brack, of course, knew what he had in mind.

They landed where they had taken off from, in what is now Calico, California's Mule Canyon. Chance picked up a small hand pick and started to alight the craft. "You don't need that," Brock chided. "Why take a week to do a day's work and Why stock a huge load of rocks when it is merely the silver you desire?"

"Ah! So you have a better way then," Chance responded.

"I'll show you," Brack said. He showed Chance a compartment. In that compartment was a laboratory filled with all manner of apparatus and devices, the likes of which Chance could never even have imagined. Responding to the look of awe on Chance's face, Brack quipped, "I have a little something for just about everything." He picked up a metallic object that looked like a small log with parallel support dowels attached. "This is a lumen drill. It can bore a hole the size of a needle or one large enough to walk through, and it can pulverize rock. I will teach you how to drill into the mountain face and render the ore into as fine a powder as you would like. Here is a convertible oven capable of melting even the hardest substances. I have chemicals that can separate the purest silver from the coarsest of ores. You, my friend, will learn how to extract your silver from that mountain side, and you will have more silver than you will know what to do with."

Brack then explained the process of extracting the silver from the ores. "First, place the ore in a 30 to 35 percent solution of nitric acid. An ounce and a half of nitric acid dissolves an ounce of silver. The solution produces a white powder, silver chloride. Next, mix sodium carbonate with the silver chloride, place the mixture in the furnace and heat to 1200 degrees centigrade. The heat causes a chemical reaction yielding table salt and pure silver. The engines of my ship provide more than enough heat for the process and we can process a great deal of ore in a very short time. So put away your puny pick, take this lumen drill, and get yourself some silver!" Brack was grinning from ear to ear.

Under Brack's tutilage, Chance went to work. He worked non-stop for 19 hours. When he was done, he had nearly a ton and a half of pure silver pressed into small, thin ingots for ease of cooling. Chance's final task was to speed up the cooling process with a compressed air gun. After stowing the finished product, the two men turned in.

Chance awoke first; he shook Brack awake. "Before we go star chasing," he said, "I want to get some supplies. We could both use new hats, and there's one more item I want to get. Barstow's a little south of here. So, let's you and I ride Rebel there and do some shopping."

"Very well," Brack said. "Let's ride!"