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IN MY ROOM in the Department of Geology I bent over a smoked paper record from the museum's big seismograph. Dinosaur hunting, like many other things, had been put aside for the duration of the war. I hadn't touched a fossil for months. Instead, I had taken over routine duties quite like a man in the army. I had no fault to find with my new assignment except that it was confining and too much like writing. Always, I would rather do it than write it up, whatever it was. There had been a mild earthquake down in the Virgin Islands. The graph on the table showed a tremor quite similar to many others from the same region. I hadn't even felt it; the machine felt it, and I recorded it. Here it was May. Not the May I had known in other years, the May of bustle and plans and excitement, of dashing about and tying up loose ends and thinking up things we had forgotten and getting set for take-off on the next big longplanned or oft-delayed expedition. Barnum was on the Board of Economic Warfare in Washington. Others of myoId department, Erich Schlaikjer, George Simpson, had taken commissions in the army and were off to parts unknown. Around the Explorers' Club, the story was much the same: there's a war on. And I was tending a seismograph and counting squiggles on its recording tape. And most days, it didn't even squiggle. I had received a communication from Washington , stressing the need for "offIcers more or less professionally acquainted with deserts and desert conditions," but I didn't feel I was good army material . Any army I had to depend on was better off with me on the outside somewhere. As I sat there one day, feeling a touch of the blues, a knock came at my door. I looked up from an uninterpreted P-wave on the tape to see Harold Vokes's welcome face. It had a fIne grin on it, which made it even more welcome. 201 "R. T., how would you like to go away out West this summer, and prospect for vanadium?" How would I like to go away out West? What did I know about vanadium? Sounded exciting. But it takes more than excitement to make a good prospector. Even when the alternative was reading teensy squiggles from a stupid seismograph. "Have a chair, Harold," I told him. "Have two or three chairs. Take them with you, if you like. What do I answer first? And what the heck are you talking about?" Harold nested himself comfortably in a chair, fully aware ofthe effect his words had on me. Then he went on. "There's a mining corporation downtown, right here in the city, in urgent need of field geologists. They want anyone who can qualify to go out on this vanadium project. They called me up this morning and made a proposition. I had an idea you might be interested too." I was still wondering what I knew about vanadium. I had seen samples ofit, ofcourse. I was aware it sometimes occurred in the Morrison Formation , along with dinosaur bones and petrified wood. Its occurrence was not common; beyond that, my knowledge was limited or nonexistent. "Well, Harold, I hardly know what to say ..." Harold laughed, and gave me the old Vokes wink. "Anyway, why not go down and say whatever to the head geologist? He would like to meet you, anyway. I told him you might be down." He mentioned a telephone number in the business district and urged me to make an appointment before the week was out. I put the number down in my memorandum book, with certain reservations. I knew nothing of formal mining engineering, for all my digging holes in the ground after bones. But I did know the rocks in which vanadium was found. I knew weapons manufacturers were clamoring for steel. I knew that in certain steels vanadium was an absolute essential as a hardening agent. I knew it was a very rare natural resource, vital to the war effort. Assisting in the project as outlined by Harold, using my years of experience in geology, would be offar greater benefit than anything I could possibly accomplish in the army in company with eleven million other people. But could I meet a mining corporation's standards? I was so reluctant to hear a negative answer that I waited...

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