The Magnificent Possession
By Isaac Asimov
Walter Sills labored for years as an unknown laboratory
worker--but at fifty he makes his great discovery! Fame,
riches are to be his fate--until interference looms up
in the form of a few unreliable characters--and Nature
herself!
Walter Sills reflected now, as he had reflected often before, that life
was hard and joyless. He surveyed his dingy chemical laboratory and
grinned cynically--working in a dirty hole of a place, living on
occasional ore analyses that barely paid for absolutely indispensable
equipment, while others, not half his worth perhaps, were working for
big industrial concerns and taking life easy.
He looked out the window at the Hudson River, ruddied in the flame of
the dying sun, and wondered moodily whether these last experiments
would finally bring him the fame and success he was after, or if they
were merely some more false alarms.
The unlocked door creaked open a crack and the cheerful face of Eugene
Taylor burst into view. Sills waved and Taylor’s body followed his head
and entered the laboratory.
“Hello, old soak,” came the loud and carefree hail. “How go things?”
Sills shook his head at the other’s exuberance. “I wish I had your
foolish outlook on life, Gene. For your information, things are bad. I
need money, and the more I need it, the less I have.”
“Well, I haven’t any money either, have I?” demanded Taylor. “But why
worry about it? You’re fifty, and worry hasn’t got you anything except
a bald head. I’m thirty, and I want to keep my beautiful brown hair.”
The chemist grinned. “I’ll get my money, yet, Gene. Just leave it to
me.”
“Your new ideas shaping out well?”
“Are they? I haven’t told you much about it, have I? Well, come here
and I’ll show you what progress I’ve made.”
Taylor followed Sills to a small table, on which stood a rack of
test-tubes, in one of which was about half an inch of a shiny metallic
substance.
“Sodium-mercury mixture, or sodium amalgam, as it is called,” explained
Sills, pointing to it.
He took a bottle labeled “Ammonium Chloride Sol.” from the shelf and
poured a little into the tube. Immediately the sodium amalgam began
changing into a loosely-packed, spongy substance.
“That,” observed Sills, “is ammonium amalgam. The ammonium radical
(NH₄) acts as a metal here and combines with mercury.” He waited for
the action to go to completion and then poured off the supernatant
liquid.
“Ammonium amalgam isn’t very stable,” he informed Taylor, “so I’ll have
to work fast.” He grasped a flask of straw-colored, pleasant-smelling
liquid and filled the test-tube with it. Upon shaking, the
loosely-packed ammonium amalgam vanished and in its stead a small drop
of metallic liquid rolled about the bottom.
Taylor gazed at the test-tube, open-mouthed. “What happened?”
“This liquid is a complex derivative of Hydrazine which I’ve discovered
and named Ammonaline. I haven’t worked out its formula yet, but that
doesn’t matter. The point about it is that it has the property of
dissolving the ammonium out of the amalgam. Those few drops at the
bottom are pure mercury; the ammonium is in solution.”
Taylor remained unresponsive and Sills waxed enthusiastic. “Don’t you
see the implications? I’ve gone half way towards isolating pure
ammonium, a thing which has never been done before! Once accomplished
it means fame, success, the Nobel Prize, and who knows what else.”
“Wow!” Taylor’s gaze became more respectful. “That yellow stuff doesn’t
look so important to me.” He snatched for it, but Sills withheld it.
“I haven’t finished by any means, Gene. I’ve got to get it in its free
metallic state, and I can’t do that so far. Every time I try to
evaporate the Ammonaline, the ammonium breaks down to everlasting
ammonia and hydrogen.... But I’ll get it--I’ll get it!”
* * * * *
Two weeks later, the epilogue to the previous scene was enacted. Taylor
received a hurried and emphatic call from his chemist friend and
appeared at the laboratory in a flurry of anticipation.
“You’ve got it?”
“I’ve got it--and it’s bigger than I thought! There’s millions in it,
really,” Sills’ eyes shone with rapture.
“I’ve been working from the wrong angle up to now,” he explained.
“Heating the solvent always broke down the dissolved ammonium, so I
separated it out by freezing. It works the same way as brine, which,
when frozen slowly, freezes into fresh ice, the salt crystallizing out.
Luckily, the Ammonaline freezes at 18 degrees Centigrade and doesn’t
require much cooling.”
He pointed dramatically to a small beaker, inside a glass-walled case.
The beaker contained pale, straw-colored, needle-like crystals and
covering the top of this, a thin layer of a dullish, yellow substance.
“Why the case?” asked Taylor.
“I’ve got it filled with argon to keep the ammonium (which is the
yellow substance on top of the Ammonaline) pure. It is so active that
it will react with anything else but a helium-type gas.”
Taylor marveled and pounded his complacently-smiling friend on the
back.
“Wait, Gene, the best is yet to come.”
Taylor was led to the other end of the room and Sills’ trembling finger
pointed out another airtight case containing a lump of metal of a
gleaming yellow that sparkled and glistened.
“That, my friend, is ammonium oxide (NH4₂O), formed by passing
_absolutely dry_ air over free ammonium metal. It is perfectly inert
(the sealed case contains quite a bit of chlorine, for instance, and
yet there is no reaction). It can be made as cheaply as aluminum, if
not more so, and yet it looks more like gold than gold does itself. Do
you see the possibilities?”
“Do I?” exploded Taylor. “It will sweep the country. You can have
ammonium jewelry, and ammonium-plated table-ware, and a million other
things. Then again, who knows how many countless industrial
applications it may have? You’re rich, Walt--you’re rich!”
“_We’re_ rich,” corrected Sills gently. He moved towards the telephone.
“The newspapers are going to hear of this. I’m going to begin to cash
in on fame right now.”
Taylor frowned, “Maybe you’d better keep it a secret, Walt.”
“Oh, I’m not breathing a hint as to the process. I’ll just give them
the general idea. Besides, we’re safe; the patent application is in
Washington right now.”
But Sills was wrong! The article in the paper ushered in a very, very
hectic two days for the two of them.
* * * * *
J. Throgmorton Bankhead is what is commonly known as a “captain of
industry.” As head of the Acme Chromium and Silver Plating
Corporation, he no doubt deserved the title; but to his patient and
long-suffering wife, he was merely a dyspeptic and grouchy husband,
especially at the breakfast table ... and he was at the breakfast
table now.
Rustling his morning paper angrily, he sputtered between bites of
buttered toast, “This man is ruining the country.” He pointed aghast at
big, black headlines. “I said before and I’ll say again that the man is
as crazy as a bedbug. He won’t be satisfied....”
“Joseph, please,” pleaded his wife, “you’re getting purple in the face.
Remember your high blood pressure. You know the doctor told you to stop
reading the news from Washington if it annoys you so. Now, listen dear,
about the cook. She’s....”
“The doctor’s a damn fool, and so are you,” shouted J. Throgmorton
Bankhead. “I’ll read all the news I please and get purple in the face
too, if I want to.”
He raised the cup of coffee to his mouth and took a critical sip. While
he did so, his eyes fell upon a more insignificant headline towards the
bottom of the page: “Savant Discovers Gold Substitute.”
* * * * *
The coffee cup remained in the air while he scanned the article
quickly. “This new metal,” it ran in part, “is claimed by its
discoverer to be far superior to chromium, nickel, or silver for
plating purposes, besides being ideal material for cheap and beautiful
jewelry. ‘The twenty-dollar-a-week clerk,’ said Professor Sills, ‘will
eat off ammonium plate more impressive in appearance than the gold
plate of the Indian Nabob.’ There is no....”
But J. Throgmorton Bankhead had stopped reading. Visions of a ruined
Acme Chromium and Silver Plating Corporation danced before his eyes;
and as they danced, the cup of coffee dropped from his hand, and
splashed hot liquid over his trousers.
His wife rose to her feet in alarm, “What is it, Joseph; what is it?”
“Nothing,” Bankhead shouted. “Nothing. For God’s sake, go away, will
you?”
He strode angrily out of the room, leaving his wife to search the paper
in vain for anything that could have disturbed him.
“Bob’s Tavern” on Fifteenth Street is usually pretty well filled at all
times, but on the morning we are speaking of, it was empty except for
four or five rather poorly-dressed men, who clustered about the portly
and dignified form of Peter Q. Hornswoggle, eminent ex-Congressman.
Peter Q. Hornswoggle was, as usual, speaking fluently. His subject,
again, as usual, concerned the life of a Congressman.
“I remember a case in point,” he was saying, “when that same argument
was brought up in the house, and which I answered as follows: ‘The
eminent gentleman from Nevada in his statements overlooks one very
important aspect of the problem. He does not realize that it is to the
interest of the entire nation that the apple-parers of this country be
attended to promptly; for, gentlemen, on the welfare of the
apple-parers depends the future of the entire fruit industry and on the
fruit-industry is based the entire economy of this great and glorious
nation, the United States of America.”
Hornswoggle paused, swallowed half a pint of beer at once, and then
smiled in triumph, “I have no hesitation in saying, gentlemen, that at
that statement, the entire House burst into wild and tumultuous
applause.”
One of the assembled listeners shook his head slowly and marveled. “It
must be great to be able to spiel like that, Senator. You musta been a
sensation.”
“Yeah,” agreed the bartender, “it’s a dirty shame you were beat last
election.”
The ex-Congressman winced and in a very dignified tone began, “I have
been reliably informed that the use of bribery in that campaign reached
unprecedented prop....” His voice died away suddenly as he caught sight
of a certain article in the newspaper of one of his listeners. He
snatched at it and read it through in silence and thereupon his eyes
gleamed with a sudden idea.
“My friends,” he said turning to them again, “I find I must leave you.
There is pressing work that must be done immediately at City Hall.” He
leant over to whisper to the barkeeper, “You haven’t got twenty-five
cents, have you? I find I left my wallet in the Mayor’s office by
mistake. I will surely repay you tomorrow.”
Clutching the quarter, reluctantly given, Peter Q. Hornswoggle left.
* * * * *
In a small and dimly lit room somewhere in the lower reaches of First
Avenue, Michael Maguire, known to the police by the far more euphonious
name of Mike the Slug, cleaned his trusty revolver and hummed a
tuneless song. The door opened a crack and Mike looked up.
“That you, Slappy?”
“Yeh,” a short, wizened person sidled in, “I brung ya de evenin’ sheet.
De cops are still tinkin’ Bragoni pulled de job.”
“Yeh? That’s good.” He bent unconcernedly over the revolver. “Anything
else doing?”
“Naw! Some dippy dame killed herself, but dat’s all.”