So, if Terl didn't want to collide with somebody else's ore arriving or smelted metal going out to some buyers or maybe military hardware, he had to be careful to find an open period.
If one fired ore or machinery one could be quick about it. But live personnel required a longer time period or it shook them up. Terl was taking no chances with his own neck.
The figure he so disgustedly wrote, almost breaking his pen, was “Day 92”!
He had been forced to choose a time more than five months from now. It was quite evident from the amount of kerbango he then consumed that the thought of spending all that additional time on “this accursed planet,” as the sonic recorded him saying, was upsetting.
He had had to choose Earth's next scheduled semiannual. And finally, by the next day, he had reconciled himself to it.
Expecting the next discs would show the beginning calculations and circuits of a transshipment console, Jonnie was amazed not to find it.
Terl had gone to another cabinet and opened up its back. Using both paws he removed a package. It appeared to be a bit heavy.
He opened up the wrappings and then got a big pair of tongs, big enough to lift a huge boulder. He screwed the gap down to about a quarter of an inch and reached into the package.
The picture didn't show what he was lifting out at first. Then he dropped it and it hit the floor. Terl's curse was very sharp.
He got down with the tongs and lifted a gray something about the size of a pea. For an instant the spot on the floor showed. Jonnie still-framed it. The metal floor was dented, deeply.
Terl managed to pick up the small object again with the tongs, a hard job because it had sunk in the floor. He lifted it back up to lay on the side of the table. Jonnie did a very quick calculation. He knew how strong Terl was within rough limits. The amount of effort, when you subtracted those big tongs, made that little pea-sized piece of metal weigh about seventy-five pounds at a wild guess.
Jonnie got busy. He called Angus and had him set up the mineral analyzer that should transfer traces from the disc and enlarge them. He went and got the trace code books.
For the next three hours they tried to find that trace. It wasn't there! The Psychlos didn't list it or any composite trace of it in any of their code books. They were dealing with a metal the Psychlos had but didn't list.
Jonnie tried to estimate by weight and volume and periodic tables what its atomic number was.
The Earth tables were of no value at all. This thing would be way off the bottom of them.
He looked over the Psychlo periodic tables, so different from the old Earth ones. There were a lot of elements that would have atomic numbers as high as this one, maybe even higher, but if they didn't have its name...?
Jonnie suddenly realized it probably wasn't on the Psychlo table either if it wasn't in their analysis books.
“I wish I were some good at this,” said Jonnie.
“But, laddie,” said Dunneldeen, “I think you're a plain wizard. I fell in the mine shaft about two hours ago and haven't been heard of since!”
Jonnie said, “These are atomic numbers. An atom is supposedly composed of a core with energy particles in it, some of them positively charged, some of them not charged at all. The number of positively charged particles is what they call the 'atomic number,' and these particles, together with the uncharged particles, make up the 'atomic weight.' Also, around the core are negatively charged particles that circle the core in what they call 'rings' or 'shells,' but they're not; they're more like envelopes. Anyway, the core and the negatively charged particles around it gives one the different elements. That's about all there is to a periodic table, to oversimplify it.
“But ancient man here on Earth constructed his tables on oxygen and carbon, I think, because those were important to him. He is a carbon-oxygen engine. But a Psychlo has a different metabolism and burns different elements for energy so the
Psychlo table is different. Also, Psychlos had a lot more universes to work in and they had metals and gases Earth's old scientists never heard of.
“The ancients here on Earth also omitted distances of spacing between the core and the ring and between ring and ring, as a variable. So they didn't realize that one core and one ring at one spacing could be quite something else when the spacing changed. Got it?”
“Laddie,” said Dunneldeen, “that thump you just heard was me hitting the bottom of the shaft!”
“Don't be lonely down there,” said Jonnie. “I hit it every time I get tangled up in this. But the point is, what is he up to? This is not a transshipment rig component!”
They looked at other discs. Terl considered metal like a man would consider paper– easily worked with.
He had bullied Lars into getting him a sheet of a beryllium alloy and it almost hurt their ears when Lars couldn't find it anywhere in the compound and Terl told him the stuff was what they used for panel metal in vehicles and to go down to the garages and get into Zzt's repair supplies and get him a sheet of the stuff!
Lars trotted back shortly, his panting clear on the disc sonic, bringing a sheet of beryllium alloy that rumbled as it was waved about. Terl kicked him out and locked the door.
They did a quick analysis of the metal and even Dunneldeen had no trouble with the traces. It was beryllium, copper, and nickel, sort of rough for it had not been polished.
On the disc Terl took some shears and cut expertly. Then he folded some edges. He annealed the edges shut by molecular bind. Then he had a top which fit very well. He put a little knob on the top for lifting it. Then he cut a hole in the bottom of the box and made a screw-in access plate. He had begun to laugh so it was easy to divine that this was something quite nasty.
It was a pretty box when he finished. He polished it up and buffed it and it looked like jewelry, a gold color.
Pretty. It was hexagonal, each one of the six sides and corners geometrically precise. Quite a work of art. The top came off easily. The bottom hole access plate was left unscrewed. It was about a foot across and about five inches high.
The next day he went to work on the inside. He made some very precisely hinged rods, quite intricate. He fitted them into the box and tested them. There was a hinged rod in each of the six corners and it was fastened to the lid. When you raised the lid, these rods pushed sockets, empty as yet, to the center of the box. He tested it several times and laughed louder as he gazed up into it from the access hole in the bottom. The cover came off very smoothly; each of the six rods pushed an empty socket to the center.
Then he chased Lars all around finding different, common substances and eventually he had three different metals and three different nonmetals in a pile. They were just ordinary elements, the analyzer said: iron, silicon, sodium, magnesium, sulphur, and phosphorus.