"It is?" Sid Chamberlain asked, excitedly. "Then they did know about
atomic energy. Just because we haven't found any pictures of A-bomb
mushrooms doesn't mean--"
She turned to look at the other wall. Sid's signal reactions were
getting away from him again; uranium meant nuclear power to him, and the
two words were interchangeable. As she studied the arrangement of the
numbers and words, she could hear Tranter saying:
"Nuts, Sid. We knew about uranium a long time before anybody found out
what could be done with it. Uranium was discovered on Terra in 1789, by
Klaproth."
There was something familiar about the table on the left wall. She tried
to remember what she had been taught in school about physics, and what
she had picked up by accident afterward. The second column was a
continuation of the first: there were forty-six items in each, each item
numbered consecutively--
"Probably used uranium because it's the largest of the natural atoms,"
Penrose was saying. "The fact that there's nothing beyond it there shows
that they hadn't created any of the transuranics. A student could go to
that thing and point out the outer electron of any of the ninety-two
elements."
* * * * *
Ninety-two! That was it; there were ninety-two items in the table on the
left wall! Hydrogen was Number One, she knew; One, _Sarfaldsorn_. Helium
was Two; that was _Tirfaldsorn_. She couldn't remember which element
came next, but in Martian it was _Sarfalddavas_. _Sorn_ must mean
matter, or substance, then. And _davas_; she was trying to think of what
it could be. She turned quickly to the others, catching hold of Hubert
Penrose's arm with one hand and waving her clipboard with the other.
"Look at this thing, over here," she was clamoring excitedly. "Tell me
what you think it is. Could it be a table of the elements?"
They all turned to look. Mort Tranter stared at it for a moment.
"Could be. If I only knew what those squiggles meant--"
That was right; he'd spent his time aboard the ship.
"If you could read the numbers, would that help?" she asked, beginning
to set down the Arabic digits and their Martian equivalents. "It's
decimal system, the same as we use."
"Sure. If that's a table of elements, all I'd need would be the numbers.
Thanks," he added as she tore off the sheet and gave it to him.
Penrose knew the numbers, and was ahead of him. "Ninety-two items,
numbered consecutively. The first number would be the atomic number.
Then a single word, the name of the element. Then the atomic weight--"
She began reading off the names of the elements. "I know hydrogen and
helium; what's _tirfalddavas_, the third one?"
"Lithium," Tranter said. "The atomic weights aren't run out past the
decimal point. Hydrogen's one plus, if that double-hook dingus is a plus
sign; Helium's four-plus, that's right. And lithium's given as seven,
that isn't right. It's six-point nine-four-oh. Or is that thing a
Martian minus sign?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account