slightly more, then considering the astronomical number of nucleons in-voided, the excess energy produced would vaporize The Goose in a fraction of a second.'
'So?' said Finley.
'So the number of reactions possible is very limited. I have been able to find only one plausible system.
Oxygen - I8, if converted to iron-56, will produce enough energy to drive the iron-56 on to gold-197.
It's like going down one side of a roller coaster and then up the other. We'll have to test this.'
'How?'
'First, suppose we check the isotopic composition of the oxygen in The Goose.'
Oxygen is made up of three stable isotopes, almost all of it O16 O18 makes up only one oxygen atom out of 250.
Another blood sample. The water content was distilled off in vacuum and some of it put through a mass spectograph. There was O18 there but only one oxygen atom out of 1300. Fully 80 per cent of the O18 we expected wasn't there.
Billings said, That's corroborative evidence. oxygen-18 is being used up. It is being supplied constantly in the food and water fed to The Goose, but it is still being used up. gold-197 is being produced. Iron-56 is one intermediate and since the reaction that uses up iron-56 is faster than the one that produces it, it has no chance to reach significant concentration and isotopic analysis shows its absence.'
We weren't satisfied, so we tried again. We kept The Goose on water that had been enriched with O18 for a week. Gold production went up almost at once. At the end of a week it was producing 45.8 grams while the O18 content of its body water was no higher than before.
There's no doubt about it,' said Billings.
He snapped his pencil and stood up. That Goose is a living nuclear reactor.' The Goosewas obviously a mutation.
A mutation suggested radiation among other things and radiation brought up the thought of nuclear tests conducted in 1952 and 1953 several hundred miles away from the site of MacGregor's farm. (If it occurs to you that no nuclear tests have been conducted in Texas, it just shows two things; I'm not telling you everything and you don't know everything.) I doubt that at any time in the history of the atomic era was background radiation so thoroughly analyzed and the radioactive content of the soil so rigidly sifted.
Back records were studied. It didn't matter how top-secret they were. By this time, Project Goose had the highest priority that had ever existed.
Even weather records were checked in order to follow the behavior of the winds at the time of the nuclear tests.
Two things turned up.
One: The background radiation at the farm was a bit higher than normal. Nothing that could possibly do harm, I hasten to add. There were indications, however, that at the time of the birth of The Goose, the farm had been subjected to the drifting edge of at least two fallouts. Nothing really harmful, I again hasten to add.
Second: The Goose, alone of all geese on the farm, in fact, alone of all living creatures on the farm that could be tested, including the humans, showed no radioactivity at all. Look at it this way: everything shows traces of radioactivity; that's what is meant by background radiation. But The Goose showed none.
Finley sent one report on December 6, 1955, which I can paraphrase as follows:
The Goose is a most extraordinary mutation, born of a high-level radioactivity environment which at once encouraged mutations in general and which made this particular mutation a beneficial one.
The Goose has enzyme systems capable of catalyzing various nuclear reactions. Whether the enzyme system consists of one enzyme or more than one is not known. Nor is anything known of the nature of the enzymes in question. Nor can any theory be yet advanced as to how an enzyme can catalyze a nuclear reaction, since these involve particular interactions with forces five orders of magnitude higher than those involved in the ordinary chemical reactions commonly catalyzed by enzymes.
The overall nuclear change is from oxygen-18 to gold-197. The oxygen-18 is plentiful in its environment, being present in significant amount in water and all organic foodstuffs. The gold-197 is excreted via the ovaries. One known intermediate is iron-56 and the fact that auremoglobin is formed in the process leads us to suspect that the enzyme or enzymes involved may have heme as a prosthetic group.
There has been considerable thought devoted to the value this overall nuclear change might have to the Goose. The oxygen-18 does it