They had emerged on a shoulder of the mountain just above a long, narrow valley which separated it from Rose Hill, which was somewhat lower and more rounded than Sugarloaf. They sat down to catch their breaths, and to bask for a while in the warmth of the sun after their hours in the cool, dank darkness.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Radioactive Danny
Danny said, “I’m just wondering—can’t we go back later and try to dig out the skeleton of the dinosaur?”
Dr. Tresselt chuckled. “I’m afraid that job’s a little beyond our skill, Dan. Dinosaur fossils are easily broken, and in the case of a good one, such as this seems to be, it will take a whole gang of men to get it out properly. I’ll have to notify my friend Dr. Purdy, at the Natural History Museum.”
“What will he do?”
“Well, he’ll bring down a crew and first they’ll cut away all the rock above the skeleton so that they can get down to it. Then, they’ll start chiseling out the rock around it, painting the bones as they expose them with shellac to preserve them. With a specimen of this size they will probably then cut it up into blocks so that they can handle it easily. Each block will be coated with burlap covered with plaster, and marked for identification. When the plaster is hard, the blocks will be shipped off to the museum, where the staff will go to work on them. They’ll spend weeks cleaning, preparing, and studying the fossil.”
He looked about him. “Are you sure you can find this place again, Dan?”
“Oh, yes. But to be on the safe side, I’ll mark it.” Danny took up the long, pointed stick which he had used for digging, and thrust it into the ground a little way above the hole.
“Good. I should think that the museum would be very grateful to you youngsters,” said Dr. Tresselt. “It isn’t every day a fine specimen like this comes along, and you all helped find it. You’ll be able to feel rather proud of yourselves, when you see your names on the card the museum displays with this dinosaur.”
“The thing I don’t understand,” said Danny, “is how the dinosaur got down there and was buried inside the rock. Do you think there was an earthquake, and the tri—tricycle—whatever it was—was caught in it?”
“Triceratops,” said Dr. Tresselt. “The name means ‘three-horned face.’ It had three horns, one above each eye and the third on the beak, something like the horn of a rhinoceros. Triceratops was a plant-eating dinosaur. It lived at about the same time as Tyrannosaurus, the ‘tyrant lizard,’ a huge meat-eater which ran on two legs, had a mouth full of teeth as long as your arm, weighed six or seven tons, and could look over the roof of your house. In spite of all this, it had a hard time making its dinner off Triceratops because the plant-eater’s neck was protected by a large fan, or collar, of bone, and the three horns and sharp beak made it a hard nut to crack.
“Your question about how it was buried is a good one. I don’t know the answer, of course, but I can make a guess which may be something like what really happened.”
He stood up, shading his eyes, and waved his arm. “Perhaps Professor Bullfinch has told you that we believe this whole region was once covered by a sea,” he said. “These limestone hills are made of sediment—minerals, shells—that settled slowly to the bottom of that sea in the course of millions of years. Then the sea dried up, or drew away, and the earth changed. Where the sea had been, there were rivers which washed dirt and mud and clay down into the valleys.
“This valley, between these hills, may once have held such a river. For many reasons, it, too, began to dry up and grow shallow. Perhaps there were marshes here, with a muddy bottom.
“One day, Triceratops may have been browsing in the reeds or grasses. Perhaps the big tyrant lizard chased him; perhaps he stumbled into quicksand and couldn’t escape. He sank down into the mud—he was very heavy, after all—and was buried.
“And more centuries passed, thousands of years, millions—more than a hundred million years. Imagine it! In all that time, the ground sank and rose many times, very slowly, and the mud turned to stone, and the skeleton of Triceratops, snugly encased in it, turned to a kind of stone as well. That petrified mud was the wall of the cave down below, not limestone at all, but the ancient marsh. There the fossil lay, waiting for us to find it, an animal that lived and died long before even the first tiny ancestor of man appeared on the earth.”
He fell silent, and the young people sat with their chins on their knees, trying to imagine that distant past.
Professor Bullfinch nodded, and said, “Help me up, Alvin. I think it’s time we went home. Mrs. Dunn will be wondering what has become of us.”
They put on their packs and Danny found another stick to serve as a cane for the Professor.
Irene, looking back at the hole through which they had crawled, said, “There’s one thing… When they get through cutting away the rock around that Triceratops, we’ll have a new, big entrance to the caves. People will be able to explore them, to go right through the mountain.”
Joe covered his eyes with his hands. “I can see it in my mind,” he said. “Guided tours—electric lights—souvenirs—me with a beautiful guide’s uniform leading the people around— No! Wait a minute, change that. I’ll be sitting out here taking tickets, and you kids can be leading the people around.”
“Leading people—!” Danny snapped his fingers. “Nothing doing. We’ve got to keep everybody away for a while.”
“What do you mean, Dan? Why?” asked Irene. “It isn’t that dangerous. Anyway, we can put a bridge over that gap, and mark the passageways, and—”
“I wasn’t thinking of danger,” Danny replied. “I was thinking of our making a fortune from our mine.”
They all gaped at him with their mouths open. “Our mine? What mine?” said the Professor, at last.
“Our uranium mine! My gosh, have you all forgotten how we were stuck in the glittering cavern? How the Geiger counter blipped wherever I turned it? The place must be loaded with radioactive ore. I’ll bet this whole hillside is radioactive.”
He slipped off his pack and quickly took out the Geiger counter. “Just wait a sec,” he said. “It won’t take long. Let me make a check on it.” He put on the earphones and pressed the switch, turning the counter toward the ground. “It is!” he exclaimed. “It’s clicking like anything!”
He began to scout about, first up the hill slope, then down. His eyes were dancing, and his face was split by an immense grin. “It’s all radioactive, wherever I turn the thing,” he said. “We’ll be rich. We’ll have the biggest mine in America.”
The Professor had been watching him with puckered brows. He said, “Danny, I find this difficult to believe. The whole hillside—?”
“Try it for yourself,” Danny said. He took off the earphones and handed the instrument to the Professor. Professor Bullfinch slipped the phones on and pressed the switch. They watched him eagerly.
“Nothing,” he said.
“Nothing?” Danny goggled at him. “But—but I heard it—”
“You try it, Alvin.” The Professor handed the Geiger counter to the geologist.
Dr. Tresselt began moving about slowly, pointing the counter this way and that a little distance above the surface of the earth. “Not a sound,” he said. “Very curious. Unless—”
“Unless what?” asked the Professor.
“Unless Danny is radioactive.”
With that, he turned the counter toward Danny’s feet.
“Aha!” he cried. “Listen to this.” He held up the earphones, and they could all hear the faint ticks.
Danny turned pale. Then, his face grew very red. Without a word, he bent down and turned the cuff of his trouser leg inside out. Some small white crystals, well mixed with fluff and dust, fell out.
The Professor raised his eyebrows. “Thorium nitrate?”
Danny nodded sheepishly. “When I dropped it to mark the place where the pa
ssageway divided, some must have fallen into the cuff of my pants.”
He smiled ruefully at his friends. “Well, there goes a fortune,” he said.
Dr. Tresselt’s brown, seamed face wrinkled with amusement. “I think,” he said, “that we’ve already found something even better than a fortune. Everything that science can find out about this earth we live on is valuable and important. The caves, the fossil of Triceratops, will help us learn a bit more about the history of our planet, will tell us a few more of its secrets, and perhaps even help us to make some good guesses about its future.”
“I know,” said Danny, smiling up into the faces of the two scientists.
“Sure, I agree,” said Joe. “But golly, you can’t buy ice-cream sodas with just knowledge.”
“Oh, if that’s the problem, I think we can solve it easily,” said Professor Bullfinch. “Just help me limp down to the house and get settled comfortably, and then I think you can make the soda fountain with ample time to spare before dinner.”
He took up his stick and put his free hand on Dan’s shoulder, for support. Then, slowly, but joyfully, the Bullfinch-Tresselt Underground Expedition marched down the hill to Midston and its reward.
AUTHORS’ NOTE
Much of the cave material described in this book is drawn from actual exploration of caves, made over a number of years with my son, Christopher, a member of the National Speleological Society. For readers who would like to try underground adventures for themselves, a list of some caves open to the public follows. These are all safe to enter and have guided tours, but it should be remembered that caving can be extremely dangerous, and that no beginner should try exploring new or unknown caves without plenty of experienced supervision.
Crystal Caverns, Trussville, Alabama
Colossal Cave, Vail, Arizona
Diamond Caverns, Jasper, Arkansas
Boyden Cave, Sequoia National Forest, California
Cave of the Winds, Manitou Springs, Colorado
Florida Caverns, Florida Caverns State Park, near Marianna, Florida
Cave Springs Cave, Cedartown, Georgia
Craters of the Moon Caves, near Arco, Idaho
Burksville Cave, Burksville, Illinois
Donaldson Cave, Spring Mill State Park, Mitchell, Indiana
Crystal Lake Cave, near Dubuque, Iowa
Mammoth Cave, Mammoth Cave National Park, Kentucky
Anemone Cave, Acadia National Park, Bar Harbor, Maine
Crystal Grottoes, Boonsboro, Maryland
Mystery Cave, Spring Valley, Minnesota
Bridal Cave, Camdenton, Missouri
Lewis and Clark Cavern, Lewis and Clark Cavern State Park, Whitehall, Montana
Lehman Caves, Baker, Nevada
Lost River Caverns, North Woodstock, New Hampshire
Carlsbad Caverns, Carlsbad Caverns National Park, Carlsbad, New Mexico
Howe Caverns, Cobleskill, New York
Linville Caverns, Ashford, North Carolina
Seneca Caverns, Bellevue, Ohio
Alabaster Caverns, Freedom, Oklahoma
Oregon Caves National Monument, Crater Lake National Park, Oregon
Indian Caverns, Spruce Creek, Pennsylvania
Jewel Cave, Wind Cave National Park, Hot Springs, South Dakota
Bristol Caverns, Bristol, Tennessee
Cascade Caverns, Boerne, Texas
Timpanogos Cave, American Fork, Utah
Luray Caverns, Luray, Virginia
Organ Cave, Ronceverte, West Virginia
Chelan Ice Caves, Lake Chelan State Park, Chelan, Washington
Crystal Cave, Spring Valley, Wisconsin
This list was drawn from Exploring American Caves, by Franklin Folsom, Crown Publishers, Inc., New York, 1956, which not only contains a much more complete and detailed list of caves, but also much exciting information on cave exploration.
Danny Dunn and the Fossil Cave Page 8