Unexpected Discovery
Unexpected DiscoveryIt was Andersen’s queer talk that marked the beginning of it for us. Of course, that wasn’t the real beginning. I suppose you might say it really started when Becquerel first puzzled over his fogged photographic plates. But to us, Andersen’s premonitions were the start.
We called him the “Melancholy Dane.” But that was just a joke, though his tall, cadaverous appearance fitted it. He wasn’t really a gloomy sort, and was a first-class nuclear chemist. That was why he surprised us with what he said at dinner that night.
The talk had been shop talk, of course it nearly always was that, at Transuranic Station. Zarias had been triumphant about the way that Element Number 144 was going through the “canyons.”
“Fifty new transuranic elements, not counti
