Warren Murphy: Oil Slick

"I'd like to call the Johnson family."

"At this hour, Dr. Ravelstein? Perhaps they have just gotten Mrs. Johnson under sedation. You don't know, do you?"

"Are you sure he was ... he was killed?"

"Yes. He made a tragic mistake. His work in hydrocarbons came too close to providing a substitute for gasoline," said Mobley.

"Oh, he had that for years," said Ravelstein. He lit a cigarette and offered the two men the pack. They refused but Mobley lighted the cigarette for Ravelstein, who sucked hungrily on the smoke. At this hour, he didn't even enjoy cigarettes any more. Then again, he thought, how many cigarettes a day did he ever enjoy? One? Possibly none.

"What do you mean, he had that for years?" asked Agent Mobley.

"Erik had the gasoline substitute for years. Don't you gentlemen understand what the oil crisis is all about? The whole energy crisis has got nothing to do with the amount of energy or whether we can find more. There is more energy available than man can ever use. He'll be trampling himself to death for lack of space before he runs out of energy."

Dr. Ravelstein watched the shock on the faces of the two agents. It was always like that. As if one of the major problems of industrialized society was as mysterious as an eclipse to a savage.

"You mean the Johnson gas substitute was not a solution?" asked Agent Mobley, his beefy face squinted in disbelief. "He died for nothing?"

"Died for nothing. Died for something. Dead is dead. I don't know why people consider some sorts of death noble."

"You were saying, Doctor, about Johnson's substitute being no solution."

Ravelstein smiled. He lifted up the heavy folded computer printout forms and handed them to Mobley.

"Here. This is the solution."

"It's a chemical formula?" asked Mobley.

Ravelstein laughed. "It is not. It is a collection of freight charges, building needs, labor costs, the rising prices of cement, brick and stressed concrete. Estimates, of course, but America now has an estimated twenty-year solution to its energy crisis. It's a reprieve."

"I don't understand. Where did you find a substitute for oil?"

"I didn't. I found a substitute for brick, cement, and aluminum. I found a substitute for asphalt. I found a substitute for wood."

Philbin looked at Mobley as if they had stumbled into a sleep-crazed loony. Mobley ignored the silent communication. He felt his palms become sweaty holding the printout. He knew he was hearing the truth.

Dr. Ravelstein lifted a small blackboard from his desk.

"Don't hold that printout as though it's diamonds. It's only a map. A way out of the energy crisis. Are you following my train of thought?"

Mobley glanced suspiciously at the printout. "I think so," he said hesitantly.

"No, you aren't," said Ravelstein. "All right. It wasn't until 1970 that the United States began depending on oil imports. Not because we didn't have oil. but because it was cheaper to import oil from the Arabian gulf than to pump it at home. It becomes more expensive with any well as you get near the bottom. I don't know if you knew that."

"I didn't know that," said Mobley.

"We could be sitting on a pool of oil right now and be out of oil-economically out of oil, that is-just because it is too expensive to pump out of the ground. We have literally oceans of oil in shale. Oceans of it."

"But it's too expensive, right?" said Mobley.

"Was too expensive," said Ravelstein.

"Well, even I know you have to process tons and tons of shale to get oil. Tons and tons," said Mobley.

Dr. Ravelstein grinned mischievously. "That's right," he said. "Tons and tons of worthless shale to get out the oil. The oil would be priced skyhigh. Too high to be of any use to the driver, to the corporation, to the utilities. No one could afford it. That was what was wrong with Dr. Johnson's gasoline substitute. It cost three dollars a gallon to produce. The country can't run on three-dollar-a-gallon gas."

"So what's your solution?" asked Mobley.

"Come. I'll show you."

"C'mon, Philbin," said Mobley. Philbin nodded dully and hitched up his shoulder strap. Dr. Ravelstein saw the handle of a .45 caliber automatic and thought it was strange because he had been under the impression FBI men used only revolvers because revolvers were said to be less prone to jamming. Or was it that they used only automatics? No matter, it was not his field.

He led the two men to a small door; it opened without a key.

"If whatever you've discovered is in there, shouldn't you have it under lock and key?"

"I guess working with criminals so much you've developed a criminal mind." said Ravelstein. "What's in there is free, anyhow. As free as commonsense." He opened the door and turned on the lights.

"I guess I shouldn't have bothered turning off the lights. We're all going to have as much cheap energy as we can use for the next twenty years. Gentlemen, here it is."

"Here what is?" asked Mobley as he heard Philbin chuckle. All he saw was a pile of bricks, some thin wall-board, and a bin of dust.

"Gentlemen, here is brick, here is wallboard, and here is cement. They're all economically competitive, and they're all made from shale."

"I think I get the idea now," said Mobley. "That printout back there had nothing to do with oil needs, did it?"

"You'd make an excellent student, Mr. Mobley. What do you think those figures were about?"

"They were about bullshit," said Philbin. He tapped Mobley on the back. "C'mon, let's do what we gotta do instead of hanging around here pulling on our ears."

Mobley gave the thin man an icy look.

"I think," he told Ravelstein, "those printouts were about America's building needs for the next decade."

"Not only America's," said Ravelstein. "South America and Asia, too."

"You mean there are transportation figures in there, too?"

"Right," said Ravelstein. "Now for an A plus, tell me the cost of producing oil by my method?"

Philbin looked bored. Mobley looked astonished. "Not a penny," he said. "Brilliant. You produce salable building material and what's left over is the oil. The key is not taking the oil out of the shale, but making use of the shale with the oil left over. Fantastic. Where do you keep the formula?"

"In my head," said Dr. Ravelstein. "But it's no great discovery. A simple process which most chemical engineers could duplicate if asked to do so."

"Thank you," said Philbin and unsnapped his shoulder holster. Dr. Ravelstein watched in fascination beyond horror. He saw the smaller man take out a large gun that somehow fit very well into the small hand. He saw the flash around the barrel and nothing else. His last thought was, "I do not believe this is happening to me."

He experienced no terror nor even a wish that what he saw transpiring should not transpire. He made a very accurate and dispassionate assessment of the situation. He was going to be killed. And then he was.

Paul Mobley watched the elderly head snap back with a big fat red hole in the center of the skull. Ravelstein hit the laboratory floor like a sack of his own shale cement.

"You damned idiot. What the hell did you do that for?" Mobley yelled at Philbin.

"That's what we're supposed to do instead of standing around here jerking around."

"We were supposed to close down Ravelstein's research. Burn his formulas. Steal his samples or whatever we found. We were supposed to stop his project, not necessarily kill him."

"A little blood bother you, Paulie?" laughed Philbin, putting his gun back in its holster. "C'mon, let's get out of here."

"Out of here, you idiot?" Mobley's beefy face flushed red. "What good will it do to get out of here?"

"Take that printout and let's go."

"Weren't you listening? The printout isn't the key. It's these building materials. Somebody takes a good look at these and Ravelstein might as well be alive."