"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."