Thorpe's Candle

Harry Penn sat at his workbench and picked up a colorful trout fly. The inside of his shop was dark except for the soft glow of a lamp over his work area. Skyler heard the gentle lapping of the waves against the old Boston Whaler.

“After we talked this afternoon,” Penn said, “I made some calls to a couple of my old friends in Washington. You have quite a reputation as a man of integrity and resources.”

Skyler leaned against the bench, shrugging. “I do my job.”

“And quite well I might add. You lifted a Soviet nuclear sub off the floor of the Atlantic that defused a potential political disaster. You also discovered six new species of deep-sea marine life under the Arctic, mapped a large chunk of the Amazon River, and discovered a Spanish treasure galleon off the Yucatan Peninsula. I understand it turned out to be the biggest cache of silver in history. I'd say you do your job well.”

“I need your help in solving this mystery.”

“I don't know if I can solve anything, but I may be able to shed some light on it.” Harry Penn took a deep breath. “You know we found it by accident.”

“Found what?”

“Candle Power.”

“So there was a Project Candle Power?” Skyler asked with a bit of relief.

“At the time, we were working on trying to produce cold fusion. There was a brilliant young physicist on the team who was close to perfecting the right conditions to make it work. We had narrowed our primary element down to palladium. One day he substituted a rare mineral called korium in place of the palladium. What he got was a nuclear reaction — small but impressive. Believe me, it put the fear of God in everyone. He created a whole new category of energy expansion that came close to vaporizing the containment section of the lab. It was only because we had anticipated some violent possibilities and protected ourselves that no one was hurt. We knew we had a potentially lethal weapon that could be mass-produced with a few simple ingredients — mainly heavy water which contains a heavy isotope of hydrogen, and a supply of korium. We argued for days about whether to reveal our findings to the Army. I believed at the time that we should hide what we had found, destroy the records and never tell anyone. Some of the others didn't agree and wanted to tell our Army supervisors. They believed themselves heroes or some such. In the end, I was outvoted.”

Penn paused to wipe his forehead. “Once we reported our findings, the Army clamped an airtight lid on the project. We weren't allowed to speak to anyone about anything. Remember this was at the height of the Cold War. The results of the project were so secret, outside of our group, I'll bet there were no more than two-dozen people who knew exactly what we had done. Even the President was never told the whole story.”

“What happened to the lab?”

“It was heavily contaminated. The only thing that kept the Army from continuing the experiments was that we only had a small supply of korium to start with, just what was left over from our initial experiments at Niagara Technologies. Dr. Thorpe used that up in the cold fusion test. And because there was no other source of the ore, the Army decided to shut the whole operation down to keep word from getting out to the Russians or Chinese. They dismantled the lab into tiny pieces and dumped it down a twelve-mile-deep well in the Mojave Desert. Army engineers poured what seemed like a million yards of concrete down that hellhole to seal it. But I'll bet you anything that if you go out there right now and dig it up, old Thorpe's Candle, that's what we called it, would still be glowing in the dark.”

“Thorpe's Candle?”

“Why, yes, it was named after Dr. William Thorpe. Bill was the scientist I spoke of — a brilliant man.”

“Have you kept in touch with him?”

“No. He went off to teach at Chapel Hill in North Carolina. Never saw him again. I held my own, Mr. Skyler, but I was never in Bill Thorpe's league.” Penn wiped his forehead again with his handkerchief. “So why all the questions?”

Skyler took a deep breath. “I have reason to believe someone is building a weapon using the volatile nature of korium — what’s called a korium device. And for whatever reason, I believe they are going to do whatever it takes to find your missing shipment of ore so they can complete the project.”

Penn's mouth formed a silent circle. He leaned back, sighed, and cupped his hands over his face. Then he whispered, “Somehow I always knew this would come back to haunt us. Candle Power could not be hidden forever.” He looked at Skyler. “What are you going to do now?”

“I have to find that cargo plane before they do. If whoever is doing this get their hands on it first, we could have a situation that would make the Cuban Missile Crisis look like a friendly game of badminton.”

“I wish I could help. I feel somewhat responsible for this mess.”

“You have helped. And don't worry, we'll find it. The question is, will we find it first? I've been unable to track down any information through the Internet on the lost cargo flight. I'm starting a search of the old aviation records in London tomorrow. Once I get a general idea of where that plane crashed, OceanQuest has some fascinating technology for locating lost objects. Not only can we find the needle in the haystack, we can tell you what color of thread was used last and probably who's wearing the socks it mended.” Skyler turned to leave but stopped. “One more thing.”

“Certainly.”

“Was your Dr. Thorpe for or against revealing Candle Power?”

“Why for, of course. He was the one that wanted to be a hero.”

“He may still get the chance.”