[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Thrilling Wonder Stories February 1948.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
CHAPTER I
Unexpected Discovery
It was Andersen's queer talk that marked the beginning of it forus. Of course, that wasn't the real beginning. I suppose you mightsay it really started when Becquerel first puzzled over his foggedphotographic plates. But to us, Andersen's premonitions were the start.
We called him the "Melancholy Dane." But that was just a joke, thoughhis tall, cadaverous appearance fitted it. He wasn't really a gloomysort, and was a first-class nuclear chemist. That was why he surprisedus with what he said at dinner that night.
The talk had been shop talk, of course it nearly always was that, atTransuranic Station. Zarias had been triumphant about the way thatElement Number 144 was going through the "canyons."
"Fifty new transuranic elements, not counting the gaps!" he exulted."And I'm sure One-forty-four will be at least semi-stable."
Andersen spoke, then.
"I have a feeling that what we are doing here is against the cosmicscheme," he said in his slow English.
Zarias goggled. He was a fat, bald and irreverent Greek, a brilliantphysicist with about as much mysticism as a doorknob.
"Cosmic scheme?" he repeated. "What are you talking about?"
Andersen's sallow face flushed a little as he saw that we were alllooking at him curiously.
"I mean," he said hesitantly, "that all these transuranic elementswe're creating here are purely man-made. Nothing like them ever existedin the natural cosmos. They're an artificial intrusion, a brand-neworder of matter that doesn't rightly belong in our universe at all."
Zarias snorted. "My dear Dane, I'd advise you to consult our friendVarez on the state of your psyche."
I saw that Andersen was a little hurt. "He's only joking, Nils," I putin.
Zarias swore. "I am not joking, Drummond. When a serious scientiststarts going mystic, it's time he had his complexes checked."
"Come, come, gentlemen," said Burris, in his mocking way. "We mustremember not to get on one another's nerves!"
We all laughed at that, for it was spoken in the Director's pompousmanner, and recalled the best joke we had at Transuranic Station. Itwas a worn-out joke, but still welcome in our isolation and monotony.
Now please don't misunderstand me. I'm not going to strike that "Ah,the loneliness of it all!" pose. The first atomic scientists who servedat Transuranic Station pretty well overdid that pose for the benefit ofan admiring world. Personally, it always made me sick.
But it was a lonely environment; there's no getting away fromthat. Thirty scientists and technicians, twenty-one of them men andnine of them women, doing a six-month stretch in this complex tomb ofconcrete and metal sunk in the face of the Moon.
When we had first arrived to take over Transuranic Station, we had beensolemnly admonished by Cubbison, our Director.
"The most important thing of all," he told us, "is not to get on oneanother's nerves."
The joke of that was that Cubbison himself was the only man who got oneverybody's nerves. Doctor Walter Cubbison—he always insisted on the"Doctor"—was as fine a specimen of scientific bureaucrat as you'd wantto see. He had done good research back in the 1950's but that wasn'twhat had wangled the Commission on Atomic Energy into making him headof Transuranic Station. It was his poli