The Early Asimov Volume 3
Chapter Fifteen
Table II
Solvent (Salt solutions in Plateau Height Plateau Volume
0- 001 M concentration) (PH) seconds (PV) milliliters
Water -1.13 1.25
Sodium Chloride solution -1.13 1.37
Sodium Bromide Solution -1.10 1.37
Potassium Chloride solution -1.08 1.37
Sodium Sulphate solution -0.72 1.59
Calcium Chloride solution -0.96 1.59
Magnesium Chloride solution -0.85 1.59
Calcium Sulphate solution -0.61 1.72
Sodium Phosphate solution -0.32 1.97
Ferric Chloride solution -0.29 1.99
Time of Solution and Mixtures of Ions - Experiments currently in progress in these laboratories are concerned with the extremely important question of the variation of these endo-chronic properties of thiotimoline in the presence of mixtures of ions. The state of our data at present does not warrant very general conclusions, but even our preliminary work gives hope of the further development of the endochronic methods of analysis. Thus, in Figure 4, we have the endochronic curve where a mixture of 0.001M Sodium Chloride and 0.001M Ferric Chloride solutions is the solvent. Here, two sharp changes in slope can be seen: the first at a solution time of -0.29, and the second at -1.13, these being the PH's characteristic of Fer ric Chloride and Sodium Chloride respectively - see Table II. The PH for a given salt would thus appear not to be affected by the presence of other salts.
The Early Asimov. Volume 3
Figure 4
This is definitely not the case, however, for the PV, and it is to a quantitative elucidation of the variation of PV with impurities in the solvent that our major efforts are now directed.
Summary - Investigations of the endochronic qualities of thiotimoline have shown that:
a - Careful purification of the material is necessary for obtaining quantitative results.
b - Increasing the volume of solvent results in increasing the negative time of solution to a constant value known as the Plateau Height (PH), at a volume of solvent known as the Plateau Volume (PV).
c - The value of the PH is characteristic of the nature of the ions present in the solvent, varying with the ionic strength of the solution and not varying with the addition of other ions.
d - The value of the PV is characteristic of the concentration of the ions present in the solvent, being constant for different ions in solution of equal ionic strength, but varying markedly with the admixtures of second varieties of ions.
As a result of all this, it is suggested that endochronic methods offer a means of rapid - 2 minutes or less - and accurate - within 0.1 % at least - analysis of inorganic, water-soluble materials.
Bibliography:
P. Krum and L. Eshkin. Journal of Chemical Solubilities, 27, 109-114 (1944), 'Concerning the Anomalous Solubility of Thiotimoline.'
E. J. Feinshreiber and Y. Hravlek. Journal of Chemical Solubilities, 22, 57-68 (1939), 'Solubility Speeds and Hydro-philic Groupings.'
P. Krum, I. Eshkin, and O. Nile. Annals of Synthetic Chemistry, 115, 1122-1145; 1208-1215 (1945), 'Structure of Thiotimoline, Parts I amp; II.'
G. H. Freudler, Journal of Psychochemistry, 2, 476-488 (1945), 'Initiative and Determination: Are They Influenced by Diet? - As tested by Thiotimoline solubility Experiments.'
E. Harley-Short, Philosophical Proceedings amp; Reviews, 15, 125-197 (1946), 'Determinism and Free-Will. The Application of Thiotimoline Solubility to Marxian Dialectic.'
P. Krum, 'Journal of Chemical Solubilities, 29, 818-819 (1946), 'A Device for the Quantitative Measurement of Thiotimoline Solubility Speed.'
A. Roundin, B. Lev, and Y. J. Prutt, Proceedings of the Society of Plant Chemistry, 80, 11-18 (1930), 'Natural Products isolated from shrubs of the genus Rosacea.'
Tiotimolin kak Ispitatel Marksciiskoy dilektiki B. Kreschia-tika, Journal Naouki i Sovetskoy Ticorii Vol. 11, No. 3.
Philossophia Neopredelennosti i Tiotimolin, Molvinski Pog-ost i Z. Brikalo. Mir i Kultura Vol. 2, No. 31.
***
When Campbell took the piece, I made one cautious stipulation. I knew it would appear in the spring and I knew that in the spring I would come up for my 'oral examinations' - the last hurdle on the path to my Ph.D. I didn't want any austere member of the examining board to decide I was making fun of chemical research and to be sufficiently offended to vote against me on the grounds that I wasn't temperamentally suited to the high honor of the doctorate. - So I asked Campbell to run it under a pseudonym.
When the magazine with the article finally reached the newsstands, in mid-February 1948, I was appalled to discover that Campbell had utterly forgotten the matter of the pseudonym. The article appeared under my own name and I was scheduled to have my orals within three months. My nervousness was increased when, almost at once, copies of the magazine began circulating in the chemistry department.
On May 20, 1948,1 had my orals. The examining board had seen the article. After I had been on the grill for an hour and twenty minutes, the last question (asked by Professor Ralph S. Halford) was, 'Mr. Asimov, tell us something about the thermo-dynamic properties of the compound thiotimoline.'
I broke into hysterical laughter put of sheer relief, for it struck me instantly that they wouldn't play good-natured jokes with me (Professor Halford sounded jovial and everyone else was smiling) if they were going to flunk me. I was led out, still laughing, and after a twenty-minute wait, the examiners emerged, shook my hand, and said, 'Congratulations, Dr. Asimov.'
My fellow students insisted on forcing five Manhattans down my throat that afternoon and, since I am a teetotaler under normal conditions and have no tolerance for alcohol, I was royally drunk at once. It took them three hours to sober me up.
After the official ceremonies, on June 1, 1948, I was Isaac Asimov, Ph.D.
As it turned out, Campbell 's non-use of a pseudonym (and I bet he did it deliberately, because he was smarter than I was) was a lucky break indeed. Not only did the examining board not take it amiss, but the article became, in a minor way, famous, and I with it.
Although 'Thiotimoline' appeared in Astounding, as did all my stories of the time, it received circulation far outside the ordinary science fiction world. It passed from chemist to chemist, by way of the magazine itself, or by reprints in small trade journals, or by copies pirated and mimeographed, even by word of mouth. People who had never heard of me at all as a science fiction writer, heard of thiotimoline. It was the very first time my fame transcended the field.
What's more, although 'Thiotimoline' was essentially a work of fantasy, the form was that of non-fiction. Viewed from that standpoint, 'Thiotimoline was the first piece of non-fiction I had ever published professionally - the harbinger of a vast amount to come.
But what amused me most was that a surprising number of readers actually took the article seriously. I was told that in the weeks after its appearance the librarians at the New York Public Library were driven out of their minds by hordes of eager youngsters who demanded to see copies of the fake journals I had used as pseudo references.
But back to the summer of 1947 -
Over a period of five years I had sold fourteen stories, every one of them to Campbell. This didn't mean that he was the only editor in the field, at all. Almost all the magazines that had been published before the war still existed (although only Astounding was really doing well) and would have welcomed submissions from me. Had Campbell rejected any of the stories I had submitted to him, I would certainly have tried one of those other magazines. - But he didn't, so I didn't.
The magazine Startling Stories, in which I had published 'Christmas on Ganymede' five and a half years before, published a forty-thousand word 'short novel' in each issue. It wasn't easy to get a publishable story of that length every month though, especially since Startling's rate was only half that of Astounding.
Sometimes it was necessary, therefore, for the editor of the magazine, who at that time was Sam Merwin, Jr., to canvass those authors known to be capable of turning out such a story. About the time I was doing 'Thiotimoline,' Merwin approached me with a suggestion that I write a lead short novel.
Startling, he explained, had always published stories with the accent on adventure, but, in imitation of Astounding's success, he had persuaded the publisher to try the experiment of publisting stories with a heavier accent on science. Would I consider, then, doing a lead for Startling?
I was terribly flattered. Also, as I said earlier, I was nervous about having become a one-editor author and would have welcomed a chance to prove to myself that I could write beyond Campbell 's protective shadow. I agreed, therefore, and a good part of the summer of 1947 (when I wasn't engaged in preparing my experimental data for the upcoming Ph.D. dissertation) was spent in preparing a story I called 'Grow Old with Me.'
By August 3 I had completed first draft. On August 26, I had the first part of it in final copy and submitted that to Merwin. He approved. On September 23 the entire story was submitted and I had no doubt, whatever, of its acceptance. On October 15, 1947, however, Merwin told me that, alas, Startling had decided not to go for heavy science, after all, but for adventure, and that 'Grow Old with Me' would have to be completely rewritten with no guarantee of acceptance after that.
I suppose it is an indication of how things had advanced when I tell you it was the first time that I did not accept a request for revision philosophically. Quite otherwise! It had been five years and more since even Campbell had rejected one of my stories; how, then, dare a comparative nonentity like Merwin do so? Particularly since he had approached me for the story?
I made no effort to hide my annoyance. In fact, I seized the manuscript and stalked out of the office, and in an obvious rage I submitted the story to Campbell, giving him a full account of events. - I have always made it a practice to tell any editor to whom I submit a story of any rejection it has previously received. There is no necessity to do this; it is not, as far as I know, an ethical requirement for a writer. I just do it, and it has not, again as far as I know, ever cost me an acceptance.
As it happened, Campbell rejected the story, but not, I'm sure, because it had been somewhere else first. He told me enough things wrong with the story to make me feel that perhaps Merwin had not been so arbitrary in rejecting it. I thrust the story in the drawer in disgust and thought no more about it for nearly two years.
The rejection came at a bad time. More and more, I was wrapped up in trying to complete my research, in writing my dissertation, and, most of all, in anxiously looking for a job. There wasn't much time to write, and the rejection had sufficiently disheartened and humiliated me so that I withdrew from writing for nearly a year. This was the third long withdrawal of my writing career, and, to this date, the last.
I did not find a job; my expected Ph.D. degree was no passport to affluence, after all. That was humiliating, too.
I accepted an offer from Professor Robert C. Elderfield to do a year's postdoctoral research for him for $4,500, working on anti-malarial drugs, I accepted, though not with great enthusiasm, and started work for him on June 2, 1948, the day after I had officially gained my Ph.D. - At least it would give me another year to find a job.
By the next month, I had settled down sufficiently to consider writing a science fiction story, 'The Red Queen's Race.' On July 12 it was finished and I submitted it to Campbell. It was accepted on the sixteenth and once again I was back in business.
The Red Queen's Race
Here's a puzzle for you, if you like. Is it a crime to translate a chemistry textbook into Greek?
Or let's put it another way. If one of the country's largest atomic power plants is completely ruined in an unauthorized experiment, is an admitted accessory to that act a criminal?
These problems only developed with time, of course. We started with the atomic power plant - drained. I really mean drained. I don't know exactly how large the fissionable power source was - but in two flashing microseconds, it had all fissioned.
No explosion. No undue gamma ray density. It was merely that every moving part in the entire structure was fused. The entire main building was mildly hot. Just a dead, useless building which later on took a hundred million dollars to replace.
It happened about three in the morning, and they found Elmer Tywood alone in the central source chamber. The findings of twenty-four close-packed hours can be summarized quickly.
1. Elmer Tywood - Ph.D., Sc.D., Fellow of This and Hon orary That, one-time youthful participant of the original Man hattan Project, and now full Professor of Nuclear Physics - was no interloper. He had a Class-A Pass - Unlimited. But no record could be found as to his purpose in being there just then. A table on casters contained equipment which had not been made on any recorded requisition. It, too, was a single fused mass - not quite too hot to touch.
2. Elmer Tywood was dead. He lay next to the table; his face congested, nearly black. No radiation effect. No external force of any sort. The doctor said apoplexy.
3. In Elmer Tywood's office safe were found two puzzling Items: i.e. twenty foolscap sheets of apparent mathematics, and a bound folio in a foreign language which turned out to be Greek, the subject matter, on translation, turning out to be chemistry.
The secrecy which poured over the whole mess was something so terrific as to make everything that touched it, dead. It's the only word that can describe it. Twenty-seven men and women, all told, including the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of Science and two or three others so top-notch that they were completely unknown to the public, entered the power plant during the period of investigation. All who had been in the plant that night, the physicist who had identified Tywood, the doctor who had examined him, were retired into virtual home arrest.
No newspaper ever got the story. No inside dopester got it. A few members of Congress got part of it.
And naturally so! Anyone or any group or any country that could suck all the available energy out of the equivalent of perhaps fifty to a hundred pounds of plutonium without exploding it, had America's industry and America's defense so snugly in the palm of the hand that the light and life of one hundred sixty million people could be turned off between yawns.
Was it Tywood? Or Tywood and others? Or just others, through Tywood?
And my job? I was decoy; or front man, if you like. Someone has to hang around the university and ask questions about Tywood. After all, he was missing. It could be amnesia, a holdup, a kidnapping, a killing, a runaway, insanity, accident - I could busy myself with that for five years and collect black looks, and maybe divert attention. To be sure, it didn't work out that way.
But don't think I was in on the whole case at the start. I wasn't one of the twenty-seven men I mentioned a while back, though my boss was. But I knew a little - enough to get started.
Professor John Keyser was also in Physics. I didn't get to him right away. There was a good deal of routine to cover first in as conscientious a way as I could. Quite meaningless. Quite necessary. But I was in Keyser's office now.
Professors' offices are distinctive. Nobody dusts them except some tired cleaning woman who hobbles in and out at eight in the morning, and the professor never notices the dust anyway. Lots of books without much arrangement. The ones close to the desk are used a lot - lectures are copied out of them. The ones out of reach are wherever a student put them back after borrowing them. Then there are professional journals that look cheap and are darned expensive, which are waiting about and which may some day be read. And plenty of paper on the desk; some of it scribbled on.
Keyser was an elderly man - one of Tywood's generation. His nose was big and rather red, and he smoked a pipe. He had that easy-going and nonpredatory look in his eyes that goes with an academic job - either because that kind of job attracts that kind of man or because that kind of job makes that kind of man.
I said: 'What kind of work is Professor Tywood doing?'
'Research physics.'
Answers like that bounce off me. Some years ago they used to get me mad. Now I just said: 'We know that, professor. It's the details I'm after.'
And he twinkled at me tolerantly: 'Surely the details can't help much unless you're a research physicist yourself. Does it matter - under the circumstances?'
'Maybe not. But he's gone. If anything's happened to him in the way of - I gestured, and deliberately clinched - 'foul play, his work may have something to do with it - unless he's rich and the motive is money.'
Keyser chuckled dryly: 'College professors are never rich. The commodity we peddle is but lightly considered, seeing how large the supply is.'
I ignored that, too, because I know my looks are against me. Actually, I finished college with a 'very good' translated into Latin so that the college president could understand it, and never played in a football game in my life. But I look rather the reverse.
I said: 'Then we're left with his work to consider.'
'You mean spies? International intrigue?'
'Why not? It's happened before! After all, he's a nuclear physicist, isn't he?'
'He is. But so are others. So am I.'
'Ah, but perhaps he knows something you don't.'
There was a stiffening to the jaw. When caught off-guard, professors can act just like people. He said, stiffly: 'As I recall offhand, Tywood has published papers on the effect of liquid viscosity on the wings of the Rayleigh line, on higher-orbit field equations, and on spin-orbit coupling of two nucleons, but his main work is on quadrupole moments. I am quite competent in these matters.'
'Is he working on quadrupole moments now?' I tried not to bat an eye, and I think I succeeded.
'Yes - in a way.' He almost sneered, 'He may be getting to the experimental stage finally. He's spent most of his life, 'it seems, working out the mathematical consequences of a special theory of his own.'
'Like this,' and I tossed a sheet of foolscap at him.
The sheet was one of those in the safe in Tywood's office. The chances, of course, were that the bundle meant nothing, if only because it was a professor's safe. That is, things are sometimes put in at the spur of the moment because the logical drawer was filled with unmarked exam papers. And of course, nothing is ever taken out. We had found in that safe dusty little vials of yellowish crystals with scarcely legible labels, some mimeographed booklets dating back to World War II and marked 'Restricted,' a copy of an old college yearbook, and some correspondence concerning a possible position as Director of Research for American Electric, dated ten years back, and, of course, chemistry in Greek.
The foolscap was there, too. It was rolled up like a college diploma with a rubber band about it and had no label or descriptive title. Some twenty sheets were covered with ink marks, meticulous and small -
I had one sheet of that foolscap. I don't think any one man in the world had more than one sheet. And I'm sure that no man in the world but one knew that the loss of his particular sheet and of his particular life would be as nearly simultaneous as the government could make it.
So I tossed the sheet at Keyser, as if it were something I'd found blowing about the campus.
He stared at it and then looked at the back side, which was blank. His eyes moved down from the top to the bottom, then jumped back to the top.
'I don't know what this is about,' he said, and the words seemed sour to his own taste.
Solvent (Salt solutions in Plateau Height Plateau Volume
0- 001 M concentration) (PH) seconds (PV) milliliters
Water -1.13 1.25
Sodium Chloride solution -1.13 1.37
Sodium Bromide Solution -1.10 1.37
Potassium Chloride solution -1.08 1.37
Sodium Sulphate solution -0.72 1.59
Calcium Chloride solution -0.96 1.59
Magnesium Chloride solution -0.85 1.59
Calcium Sulphate solution -0.61 1.72
Sodium Phosphate solution -0.32 1.97
Ferric Chloride solution -0.29 1.99
Time of Solution and Mixtures of Ions - Experiments currently in progress in these laboratories are concerned with the extremely important question of the variation of these endo-chronic properties of thiotimoline in the presence of mixtures of ions. The state of our data at present does not warrant very general conclusions, but even our preliminary work gives hope of the further development of the endochronic methods of analysis. Thus, in Figure 4, we have the endochronic curve where a mixture of 0.001M Sodium Chloride and 0.001M Ferric Chloride solutions is the solvent. Here, two sharp changes in slope can be seen: the first at a solution time of -0.29, and the second at -1.13, these being the PH's characteristic of Fer ric Chloride and Sodium Chloride respectively - see Table II. The PH for a given salt would thus appear not to be affected by the presence of other salts.
The Early Asimov. Volume 3
Figure 4
This is definitely not the case, however, for the PV, and it is to a quantitative elucidation of the variation of PV with impurities in the solvent that our major efforts are now directed.
Summary - Investigations of the endochronic qualities of thiotimoline have shown that:
a - Careful purification of the material is necessary for obtaining quantitative results.
b - Increasing the volume of solvent results in increasing the negative time of solution to a constant value known as the Plateau Height (PH), at a volume of solvent known as the Plateau Volume (PV).
c - The value of the PH is characteristic of the nature of the ions present in the solvent, varying with the ionic strength of the solution and not varying with the addition of other ions.
d - The value of the PV is characteristic of the concentration of the ions present in the solvent, being constant for different ions in solution of equal ionic strength, but varying markedly with the admixtures of second varieties of ions.
As a result of all this, it is suggested that endochronic methods offer a means of rapid - 2 minutes or less - and accurate - within 0.1 % at least - analysis of inorganic, water-soluble materials.
Bibliography:
P. Krum and L. Eshkin. Journal of Chemical Solubilities, 27, 109-114 (1944), 'Concerning the Anomalous Solubility of Thiotimoline.'
E. J. Feinshreiber and Y. Hravlek. Journal of Chemical Solubilities, 22, 57-68 (1939), 'Solubility Speeds and Hydro-philic Groupings.'
P. Krum, I. Eshkin, and O. Nile. Annals of Synthetic Chemistry, 115, 1122-1145; 1208-1215 (1945), 'Structure of Thiotimoline, Parts I amp; II.'
G. H. Freudler, Journal of Psychochemistry, 2, 476-488 (1945), 'Initiative and Determination: Are They Influenced by Diet? - As tested by Thiotimoline solubility Experiments.'
E. Harley-Short, Philosophical Proceedings amp; Reviews, 15, 125-197 (1946), 'Determinism and Free-Will. The Application of Thiotimoline Solubility to Marxian Dialectic.'
P. Krum, 'Journal of Chemical Solubilities, 29, 818-819 (1946), 'A Device for the Quantitative Measurement of Thiotimoline Solubility Speed.'
A. Roundin, B. Lev, and Y. J. Prutt, Proceedings of the Society of Plant Chemistry, 80, 11-18 (1930), 'Natural Products isolated from shrubs of the genus Rosacea.'
Tiotimolin kak Ispitatel Marksciiskoy dilektiki B. Kreschia-tika, Journal Naouki i Sovetskoy Ticorii Vol. 11, No. 3.
Philossophia Neopredelennosti i Tiotimolin, Molvinski Pog-ost i Z. Brikalo. Mir i Kultura Vol. 2, No. 31.
***
When Campbell took the piece, I made one cautious stipulation. I knew it would appear in the spring and I knew that in the spring I would come up for my 'oral examinations' - the last hurdle on the path to my Ph.D. I didn't want any austere member of the examining board to decide I was making fun of chemical research and to be sufficiently offended to vote against me on the grounds that I wasn't temperamentally suited to the high honor of the doctorate. - So I asked Campbell to run it under a pseudonym.
When the magazine with the article finally reached the newsstands, in mid-February 1948, I was appalled to discover that Campbell had utterly forgotten the matter of the pseudonym. The article appeared under my own name and I was scheduled to have my orals within three months. My nervousness was increased when, almost at once, copies of the magazine began circulating in the chemistry department.
On May 20, 1948,1 had my orals. The examining board had seen the article. After I had been on the grill for an hour and twenty minutes, the last question (asked by Professor Ralph S. Halford) was, 'Mr. Asimov, tell us something about the thermo-dynamic properties of the compound thiotimoline.'
I broke into hysterical laughter put of sheer relief, for it struck me instantly that they wouldn't play good-natured jokes with me (Professor Halford sounded jovial and everyone else was smiling) if they were going to flunk me. I was led out, still laughing, and after a twenty-minute wait, the examiners emerged, shook my hand, and said, 'Congratulations, Dr. Asimov.'
My fellow students insisted on forcing five Manhattans down my throat that afternoon and, since I am a teetotaler under normal conditions and have no tolerance for alcohol, I was royally drunk at once. It took them three hours to sober me up.
After the official ceremonies, on June 1, 1948, I was Isaac Asimov, Ph.D.
As it turned out, Campbell 's non-use of a pseudonym (and I bet he did it deliberately, because he was smarter than I was) was a lucky break indeed. Not only did the examining board not take it amiss, but the article became, in a minor way, famous, and I with it.
Although 'Thiotimoline' appeared in Astounding, as did all my stories of the time, it received circulation far outside the ordinary science fiction world. It passed from chemist to chemist, by way of the magazine itself, or by reprints in small trade journals, or by copies pirated and mimeographed, even by word of mouth. People who had never heard of me at all as a science fiction writer, heard of thiotimoline. It was the very first time my fame transcended the field.
What's more, although 'Thiotimoline' was essentially a work of fantasy, the form was that of non-fiction. Viewed from that standpoint, 'Thiotimoline was the first piece of non-fiction I had ever published professionally - the harbinger of a vast amount to come.
But what amused me most was that a surprising number of readers actually took the article seriously. I was told that in the weeks after its appearance the librarians at the New York Public Library were driven out of their minds by hordes of eager youngsters who demanded to see copies of the fake journals I had used as pseudo references.
But back to the summer of 1947 -
Over a period of five years I had sold fourteen stories, every one of them to Campbell. This didn't mean that he was the only editor in the field, at all. Almost all the magazines that had been published before the war still existed (although only Astounding was really doing well) and would have welcomed submissions from me. Had Campbell rejected any of the stories I had submitted to him, I would certainly have tried one of those other magazines. - But he didn't, so I didn't.
The magazine Startling Stories, in which I had published 'Christmas on Ganymede' five and a half years before, published a forty-thousand word 'short novel' in each issue. It wasn't easy to get a publishable story of that length every month though, especially since Startling's rate was only half that of Astounding.
Sometimes it was necessary, therefore, for the editor of the magazine, who at that time was Sam Merwin, Jr., to canvass those authors known to be capable of turning out such a story. About the time I was doing 'Thiotimoline,' Merwin approached me with a suggestion that I write a lead short novel.
Startling, he explained, had always published stories with the accent on adventure, but, in imitation of Astounding's success, he had persuaded the publisher to try the experiment of publisting stories with a heavier accent on science. Would I consider, then, doing a lead for Startling?
I was terribly flattered. Also, as I said earlier, I was nervous about having become a one-editor author and would have welcomed a chance to prove to myself that I could write beyond Campbell 's protective shadow. I agreed, therefore, and a good part of the summer of 1947 (when I wasn't engaged in preparing my experimental data for the upcoming Ph.D. dissertation) was spent in preparing a story I called 'Grow Old with Me.'
By August 3 I had completed first draft. On August 26, I had the first part of it in final copy and submitted that to Merwin. He approved. On September 23 the entire story was submitted and I had no doubt, whatever, of its acceptance. On October 15, 1947, however, Merwin told me that, alas, Startling had decided not to go for heavy science, after all, but for adventure, and that 'Grow Old with Me' would have to be completely rewritten with no guarantee of acceptance after that.
I suppose it is an indication of how things had advanced when I tell you it was the first time that I did not accept a request for revision philosophically. Quite otherwise! It had been five years and more since even Campbell had rejected one of my stories; how, then, dare a comparative nonentity like Merwin do so? Particularly since he had approached me for the story?
I made no effort to hide my annoyance. In fact, I seized the manuscript and stalked out of the office, and in an obvious rage I submitted the story to Campbell, giving him a full account of events. - I have always made it a practice to tell any editor to whom I submit a story of any rejection it has previously received. There is no necessity to do this; it is not, as far as I know, an ethical requirement for a writer. I just do it, and it has not, again as far as I know, ever cost me an acceptance.
As it happened, Campbell rejected the story, but not, I'm sure, because it had been somewhere else first. He told me enough things wrong with the story to make me feel that perhaps Merwin had not been so arbitrary in rejecting it. I thrust the story in the drawer in disgust and thought no more about it for nearly two years.
The rejection came at a bad time. More and more, I was wrapped up in trying to complete my research, in writing my dissertation, and, most of all, in anxiously looking for a job. There wasn't much time to write, and the rejection had sufficiently disheartened and humiliated me so that I withdrew from writing for nearly a year. This was the third long withdrawal of my writing career, and, to this date, the last.
I did not find a job; my expected Ph.D. degree was no passport to affluence, after all. That was humiliating, too.
I accepted an offer from Professor Robert C. Elderfield to do a year's postdoctoral research for him for $4,500, working on anti-malarial drugs, I accepted, though not with great enthusiasm, and started work for him on June 2, 1948, the day after I had officially gained my Ph.D. - At least it would give me another year to find a job.
By the next month, I had settled down sufficiently to consider writing a science fiction story, 'The Red Queen's Race.' On July 12 it was finished and I submitted it to Campbell. It was accepted on the sixteenth and once again I was back in business.
The Red Queen's Race
Here's a puzzle for you, if you like. Is it a crime to translate a chemistry textbook into Greek?
Or let's put it another way. If one of the country's largest atomic power plants is completely ruined in an unauthorized experiment, is an admitted accessory to that act a criminal?
These problems only developed with time, of course. We started with the atomic power plant - drained. I really mean drained. I don't know exactly how large the fissionable power source was - but in two flashing microseconds, it had all fissioned.
No explosion. No undue gamma ray density. It was merely that every moving part in the entire structure was fused. The entire main building was mildly hot. Just a dead, useless building which later on took a hundred million dollars to replace.
It happened about three in the morning, and they found Elmer Tywood alone in the central source chamber. The findings of twenty-four close-packed hours can be summarized quickly.
1. Elmer Tywood - Ph.D., Sc.D., Fellow of This and Hon orary That, one-time youthful participant of the original Man hattan Project, and now full Professor of Nuclear Physics - was no interloper. He had a Class-A Pass - Unlimited. But no record could be found as to his purpose in being there just then. A table on casters contained equipment which had not been made on any recorded requisition. It, too, was a single fused mass - not quite too hot to touch.
2. Elmer Tywood was dead. He lay next to the table; his face congested, nearly black. No radiation effect. No external force of any sort. The doctor said apoplexy.
3. In Elmer Tywood's office safe were found two puzzling Items: i.e. twenty foolscap sheets of apparent mathematics, and a bound folio in a foreign language which turned out to be Greek, the subject matter, on translation, turning out to be chemistry.
The secrecy which poured over the whole mess was something so terrific as to make everything that touched it, dead. It's the only word that can describe it. Twenty-seven men and women, all told, including the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of Science and two or three others so top-notch that they were completely unknown to the public, entered the power plant during the period of investigation. All who had been in the plant that night, the physicist who had identified Tywood, the doctor who had examined him, were retired into virtual home arrest.
No newspaper ever got the story. No inside dopester got it. A few members of Congress got part of it.
And naturally so! Anyone or any group or any country that could suck all the available energy out of the equivalent of perhaps fifty to a hundred pounds of plutonium without exploding it, had America's industry and America's defense so snugly in the palm of the hand that the light and life of one hundred sixty million people could be turned off between yawns.
Was it Tywood? Or Tywood and others? Or just others, through Tywood?
And my job? I was decoy; or front man, if you like. Someone has to hang around the university and ask questions about Tywood. After all, he was missing. It could be amnesia, a holdup, a kidnapping, a killing, a runaway, insanity, accident - I could busy myself with that for five years and collect black looks, and maybe divert attention. To be sure, it didn't work out that way.
But don't think I was in on the whole case at the start. I wasn't one of the twenty-seven men I mentioned a while back, though my boss was. But I knew a little - enough to get started.
Professor John Keyser was also in Physics. I didn't get to him right away. There was a good deal of routine to cover first in as conscientious a way as I could. Quite meaningless. Quite necessary. But I was in Keyser's office now.
Professors' offices are distinctive. Nobody dusts them except some tired cleaning woman who hobbles in and out at eight in the morning, and the professor never notices the dust anyway. Lots of books without much arrangement. The ones close to the desk are used a lot - lectures are copied out of them. The ones out of reach are wherever a student put them back after borrowing them. Then there are professional journals that look cheap and are darned expensive, which are waiting about and which may some day be read. And plenty of paper on the desk; some of it scribbled on.
Keyser was an elderly man - one of Tywood's generation. His nose was big and rather red, and he smoked a pipe. He had that easy-going and nonpredatory look in his eyes that goes with an academic job - either because that kind of job attracts that kind of man or because that kind of job makes that kind of man.
I said: 'What kind of work is Professor Tywood doing?'
'Research physics.'
Answers like that bounce off me. Some years ago they used to get me mad. Now I just said: 'We know that, professor. It's the details I'm after.'
And he twinkled at me tolerantly: 'Surely the details can't help much unless you're a research physicist yourself. Does it matter - under the circumstances?'
'Maybe not. But he's gone. If anything's happened to him in the way of - I gestured, and deliberately clinched - 'foul play, his work may have something to do with it - unless he's rich and the motive is money.'
Keyser chuckled dryly: 'College professors are never rich. The commodity we peddle is but lightly considered, seeing how large the supply is.'
I ignored that, too, because I know my looks are against me. Actually, I finished college with a 'very good' translated into Latin so that the college president could understand it, and never played in a football game in my life. But I look rather the reverse.
I said: 'Then we're left with his work to consider.'
'You mean spies? International intrigue?'
'Why not? It's happened before! After all, he's a nuclear physicist, isn't he?'
'He is. But so are others. So am I.'
'Ah, but perhaps he knows something you don't.'
There was a stiffening to the jaw. When caught off-guard, professors can act just like people. He said, stiffly: 'As I recall offhand, Tywood has published papers on the effect of liquid viscosity on the wings of the Rayleigh line, on higher-orbit field equations, and on spin-orbit coupling of two nucleons, but his main work is on quadrupole moments. I am quite competent in these matters.'
'Is he working on quadrupole moments now?' I tried not to bat an eye, and I think I succeeded.
'Yes - in a way.' He almost sneered, 'He may be getting to the experimental stage finally. He's spent most of his life, 'it seems, working out the mathematical consequences of a special theory of his own.'
'Like this,' and I tossed a sheet of foolscap at him.
The sheet was one of those in the safe in Tywood's office. The chances, of course, were that the bundle meant nothing, if only because it was a professor's safe. That is, things are sometimes put in at the spur of the moment because the logical drawer was filled with unmarked exam papers. And of course, nothing is ever taken out. We had found in that safe dusty little vials of yellowish crystals with scarcely legible labels, some mimeographed booklets dating back to World War II and marked 'Restricted,' a copy of an old college yearbook, and some correspondence concerning a possible position as Director of Research for American Electric, dated ten years back, and, of course, chemistry in Greek.
The foolscap was there, too. It was rolled up like a college diploma with a rubber band about it and had no label or descriptive title. Some twenty sheets were covered with ink marks, meticulous and small -
I had one sheet of that foolscap. I don't think any one man in the world had more than one sheet. And I'm sure that no man in the world but one knew that the loss of his particular sheet and of his particular life would be as nearly simultaneous as the government could make it.
So I tossed the sheet at Keyser, as if it were something I'd found blowing about the campus.
He stared at it and then looked at the back side, which was blank. His eyes moved down from the top to the bottom, then jumped back to the top.
'I don't know what this is about,' he said, and the words seemed sour to his own taste.
