I was the responsible investigator to begin with and remained in titular charge throughout., though matters quickly got beyond me.
We began with the one egg. Its average radius was 35 millimeters (major axis, 72 millimeters; minor axis, 68 millimeters). The gold shell was 2.45 millimeters in thickness. Studying other eggs later on, we found this value to be rather high. The average thickness turned out to be 2.1 millimeters.
Inside was egg. It looked like egg and it smelled like egg.
Aliquots were analyzed and the organic constituents were reasonably normal. The white was 9.7 per cent albumin. The yolk had the normal complement of vitellin, cholesterol, phospholipid, and carotenoid. We lacked enough material to test for trace constituents, but later on with more eggs at our disposal we did and nothing unusual showed up as far as contents of vitamins, coenzymes, nucleotides, sulfhydryl groups, et cetera, et cetera were concerned.
One important gross abnormality that showed was the egg's behavior on heating. A small portion of the yolk, heated, 'hard-boiled' almost at once. We fed a portion of the hard-boiled egg to a mouse. It survived.
I nibbled at another bit of it. Too small a quantity to taste, really, but it made me sick. Purely psychosomatic, I'm sure.
Boris W. Finley, of the Department of Biochemistry of Temple University-a department consultant-supervised these tests.
He said, referring to the hard-boiling, The ease with which the egg proteins are heat-denatured indicates a partial denaturation to begin with and, considering the nature of the shell, the obvious guilt would lie at the door of heavy-metal contamination.'
So a portion of the yolk was analyzed for inorganic constituents, and it was found to be high in chloraurate ion, which is a singly charged ion containing an atom of gold and four of chlorine, the symbol for which is AuCl4-. (The 'Au' symbol for gold comes from the fact that the Latin word for gold is 'aurum.') When I say the chloraurate ion content was high, I mean it was 3.2 parts per thousand, or 0.32 per cent. That's high enough to form insoluble complexes of 'gold protein' which would coagulate easily. Finley said, 'It's obvious this egg cannot hatch. Nor can any other such egg. It is heavy-metal poisoned.
Gold may be more glamorous than lead but it is just as poisonous to proteins.'
I agreed gloomily. 'At least it's safe from decay, too.'
'Quite right. No self-respecting bug would live in this chlorauriferous soup.'
The final spectrographic analysis of the gold of the shell came in. Virtually pure. The only detectable impurity was iron which amounted to 0-25 per cent of the whole. The iron content of the egg yolk had been twice normal, also. At the moment, however, the matter of the iron was neglected.
One week after Project Goose was begun, an expedition was sent into Texas. Five biochemists went-the accent was still on biochemistry, you see-along with three truckloads of equipment, and a squadron of army personnel. I went along too, of course.
As soon as we arrived, we cut MacGregor's farm off from the world.
That was a lucky thing, you know-the security measures we took right from the start. The reasoning was wrong, at first, but the results were good.
The Department wanted Project Goose kept quiet at the start simply because there was always the thought that this might still be an elaborate hoax and we couldn't risk the bad publicity if it were. And if it weren't a hoax, we couldn't risk the newspaper hounding that would definitely result over any goose-and-golden-egg story.
It was only well after the start of Project Goose, well after our arrival at MacGregor's farm, that the real implications of the matter became clear.
Naturally MacGregor didn't like the men and equipment settling down all about him. He didn't like being told The Goose was government property. He didn't like having his eggs impounded.
He didn't like it but he agreed to it-if you can call it agreeing when negotiations are being carried on while a machine gun is being assembled in a man's barnyard and ten men, with bayonets fixed, are marching past while the arguing is going on.
He was compensated, of course. What's money to the government?
The Goose didn't like a few things, either-like having blood samples taken. We didn't dare anesthetize it for fear of doing anything to alter its metabolism, and it took two men to hold it each time. Ever try to hold an angry goose?
The Goose was put under a twenty-four-hour guard with the threat of summary court-martial