Bildungsromans; Love stories; Scientists -- Fiction; United States -- Fiction
The last thing that young Moseley did before enlisting was to puzzle his
wits over the missing seventy-second element. Not until January of 1923
did chemists following his method decide that the new element is like
zirconium and name it for the harbor of Copenhagen.
Meantime two men were trying in vain to sleep beside the less famous
harbor of Jean’s Duckling.
“Move over, Asher! How am I to keep my legs under the blanket when you
take up more than your share?”
“Chase, you got your full share of my money this evening, and now you
want the whole blanket.”
“Suppose I do. It’s no more than your competitors will want after you
are gone. Young Hogg won’t be able to keep your pace. They’ll get most
of it away from him. You’d better salt some of it down in that little
college to the west of you where Dr. Rich used to teach.”
“Chase, I told them long ago that I’d never do anything for Warrenville
or any other college.”
“Asher, what an old fossil you are. You’re worse than Charlie Yerkes,
who wouldn’t do a thing for education till Harper had appealed to his
childish sense of bigness. Charlie was willing to build the biggest
telescope in the world just because it was the biggest.”
“He showed good sense, Chase. When we were canoeing up here, your boy
made it clear to me that the stars are the perfection of power. The sun
is a star, and coal and oil are starlight. You can call me a fossil if
you want to, but I’ve got mind enough to see that much.”
“Asher, you have a very remarkable mind, and it is vision that has made
you great. But whether vision entitles you to money I don’t know.
Lincoln and Pasteur didn’t make much money out of their visions.”
“Well, Chase, you’ve said some hard things about me, but I don’t mind
what you are saying now.”
Asher turned once or twice, somewhat in the manner of a dog seeking a
better form in the grass, and then sat up for good.
“I don’t seem able to sleep in this queer place. I think I’ll get up and
take a look at Charlie Yerkes’ stars.”
So up he got, and dressed, and went out into the night. Ten minutes
passed. Through the door of the tent Chase could see him standing
immobile. Then Chase wrapped a blanket around himself and emerged from
the tent.
“Asher, do I intrude?”
“No, I hoped you’d come. You know their names, and I don’t.”
Chase glanced up. “The names don’t amount to much. That one up there
that they call Arcturus is eleven hundred billion miles away. You can’t
buy it, and it doesn’t care how rich you are. But almost all the stars
in Orion are helium stars, and Marvin has the notion that some day we
shall loose the bands of Orion within the stuff called lead. That will
be a bigger achievement, a million times over, than anything Charlie
Yerkes ever imagined.”
“I wonder whose name will be associated with that supreme triumph?”
Asher was silent.
“My friend, you stand here under the stars and have no notion of how
fast the starlight in your gas-engines is failing.”
Asher remained inarticulate.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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