The Early Asimov Volume 3
Chapter Fourteen

It is doubtful if the Gurrow Groupings had ever before seen a community venture of such breadth as now took place. East Harbor Grouping, as has been remarked, was a shipping center, and certainly a trans-Atlantic vessel was not beyond the capacity of a Grouping that traded along the full lengths of both coasts of the Americas. What was unusual was the vast-ness of the co-operation of Gurrows from many Groupings, Gurrows of many interests.
Not that they were all happy.
Raph, for instance, on the particular morning that now concerns us, six months from the date of his first arrival in East Harbor, was searching anxiously for Lernin.
Lernin, for his part, was searching for nothing but greater speed.
They met on the docks, where Lernin, biting the end off a cigar and leading the way to a region where smoking was permitted, said: 'And you, my friend, seem concerned. Not, certainly, about the progress of our ocean liner?'
'I am concerned,' said Raph, gravely, 'about the reports I have received of the expedition testing the age of the rocks.'
'Oh - And you are unhappy about it?'
'Unhappy!' exploded Raph. 'Have you seen them?'
'I have received a copy. I have looked at it. I have even read parts of it. But I have had little time and most of it bounced off. Will you please enlighten me?"
'Certainly. In the last several months, three of the regions I have indicated as being fossiliferous have been tested. The first region was in the area of East Harbor Grouping itself. Another was in the Pacific Bay Grouping, and a third in the Central Lakes Grouping. I purposely asked that those be done first because they are the richest areas and because they are widely separated. Do you know, for instance, what age they tell me the rocks upon which we stand are?'
Two billion years, I think, is the oldest figure I noticed.'
'And that's the figure for the oldest rocks - the basic igneous stratum of basalt. The upper strata, however - the recent sedimentary layers containing dozens of fossils of Primate Primeval - how old do you think these are supposed to be? Five -hundred - trillion - years! How is that? Do you understand?'
Trillion?' Lernin squinted upwards and shook his head.
That's strange.'
'I'll add to it. The Pacific Coast Grouping is one hundred trillion years old - so I am told - and Central Lakes almost eighty trillion years old.'
Lernin said: 'And the other measurements? The ones that did not involve your strata?'
'That is the most peculiar thing of all. Most of the chosen investigations were carried on in strata that were not particularly fossiliferous. They had their own criteria of choice based on geological reasoning - and they got consistent results - one million to two billion years depending upon the depth and geological history of the particular region tested. Only my areas give these strange and impossible vagaries.'
And Lernin said, 'But what do the geologists say about all this? Can there be some error?'
'Undoubtedly. But they have fifty decent, reasonable measurements. For themselves, they have proved the method and are happy. There are three anomalies, to be sure, but they view them with equanimity as involving some unknown factors. I don't see it that way. These three measurements mean everything.' Raph interrupted himself fiercely: 'How sure are you that radioactivity is an absolute constant?'
'Sure? Can one ever be sure? Nothing we know of so far affects it, and such is likewise the definite testimony of our Eekahs. Besides, my friend, if you are implying that radioactivity was more extensive in the past than in the present, why only in your fossil regions? Why not everywhere?'
'Why, indeed? It's another aspect of a problem which is growing more important daily. Consider. We have regions which show a past of abnormal radioactivity. We have regions which show abnormal fossil frequencies. Why should these regions coincide, Lernin?'
'One obvious answer suggests itself, my friend. If your Primate Primeval existed at a time when certain regions were highly radioactive, certain individuals would wander into them and die. Radioactive radiation is deadly in excess, of course. Radioactivity and fossils, there you are.'
'Why not other creatures,' demanded Raph. 'Only Primate Primeval occurs in excess, and he was intelligent. He would not be trapped by dangerous radiation.'
'Perhaps he was not intelligent. That is, after all, only your theory and not a proven fact.'
'Certainly, then, he was more intelligent than his small-brained contemporaries.'
'Perhaps not even that. You romanticize too much.'
'Perhaps I do.' Raph spoke in half a whisper. 'It seems to me that I can conjure up visions of a great civilization of a million years back - or more. A great power; a great intelligence - that has vanished completely, except for the tiny whispers of ossified bones which retain that huge cavity in which a brain once existed, and a bony five-fingered hand curving into slender signs of manipulative skill - with an opposing thumb. They must have been intelligent.'
Then, what killed them?' Lernin shrugged: 'Several million species of living things have survived.'
Raph looked up, half in anger: 'I cannot accompany your group, Lernin, on a Voluntary basis. To go to the other world would be useful, yes, if I could engage in my own studies. For your purposes, it can be only a Community Job to me. I cannot give my heart to it.'
But Lernin's jaw was set: 'That arrangement would not be fair. There are many of us, my friend, who are sacrificing our own interests. If we all placed them first and investigated the other world in terms of our own particular provincialisms only, our great purpose would be destroyed. My friend, there is not one of our men that we can spare. We must all work as if our lives depended on our instant solution of the Eekah problem, which, believe me, it does.'
Raph's jaws twisted in distaste. 'On your side, you have a vague apprehension of these weak, stupid little creatures. On my side I have a definite problem of great intellectual attraction to myself. And between the two I can see no connection -no possible connection at all.'
'Nor can I. But listen to me a moment. A small group of our most trusted men returned last week from a visit to the other world. It was not official, as ours will be. It made no contacts. It was a frank piece of espionage, which I am telling you about now. I ask your discretion on the matter.'
'Naturally.'
'Our men possessed themselves of Eekah event-sheets.'
'Pardon me?'
'It is a created name to describe the objects. Printed records are issued daily in the various centers of Eekah population of events and occurrences of the day, and what passes for literary efforts as well.'
Raph was momentarily interested: 'It strikes me as an excellent idea.'
'Yes, in its essence. The Eekah notion of interesting events, however, appears to consist entirely of antisocial events. However, leave that be. My point is that the existence of the Americas is well-known there these days - and it is universally spoken of as a "new land of opportunity." The various divisions of Eekahs eye it with a universal desire. The Eekahs are many, they are crowded, their economy is irrational. They want new land, and that is what this is to them - new and empty land.'
'Not empty,' pointed out Raph, mildly.
'Empty to them,' insisted Lernin terribly. 'That is the vast danger. Lands occupied by Gurrows are to them empty and they mean to take it, all the more so since they have often enough striven to take the lands of one another.'
Raph shrugged: 'Even so, they -'
'Yes. They are weak and stupid. You said that, and so they are. But only singly. They will unite for a purpose. To be sure, they will fall apart when the purpose is done - but momentarily they will join and become strong, which we perhaps cannot do, witness yourself. And their weapons of war have been keened in the fire of conflict. Their flying machines, for instance, are superb war weapons.'
'But we have duplicated it -'
'In quantity? We have also duplicated their chemical explosives, but only in the laboratory, and their firing tubes and armored vehicles, but only in experimental plants. And yet there is more - something developed within the last five years, for our own Eekahs know nothing about it.'
'And what is that?'
'We don't know. Their event-sheets speak of it - the names applied to it mean nothing to us - but the context implies the terror of it, even on the part of these kill-mad Eekahs. There seems no evidence that it has been used, or that all the Eekah groups have it - but it is used as a supreme threat. It will perhaps be clearer to you when all the evidence is presented once our voyage is under way.'
'But what is it? You talk of it as if it were a bogey.'
'Why, they talk of it as if it were a bogey. And what could be a bogey to an Eekah? That is the most frightening aspect of it. So far, we know only that it involves the bombardment of an element they call plutonium - of which we have never heard and of which our own Eekahs have never heard either - by objects called neutrons, which our Eekahs say are subatomic particles without charge, which seems to us completely ridiculous.'
'And that is all?'
'All. Will you suspend judgment till we show you the sheets?'
Raph nodded reluctantly: 'Very well.'
Raph's leaden thoughts revolved in their worn groove as he stood there alone.
Eekahs and Primate Primeval. A living creature of erratic habits and a dead creature that must have aspired to heights. A sordid present of explosives and neutron bombardments and a glorious, mysterious past -
No connection! No connection!
***
By June 1947 I had already been working on my Ph.D. research with near-total concentration (I was no longer working in the candy store; my younger brother, Stanley, had taken over) for nearly a year. I was in the home stretch and beginning to think forward to writing my Ph.D. dissertation. I rather dreaded that, since the obligatory style of dissertations is turgid in the extreme, and I had by now spent nine years trying to write well and was afraid I simply might not be able to write badly enough to qualify for my degree.
The experiments I was doing at the time required me, periodically, to dissolve a compound called catechol in water. The catechol existed in fine, feathery, fluffy needles that dissolved very readily in water. In fact, when I sprinkled catechol into the beaker of water, the individual needles dissolved as soon as they struck the water surface. Idly, it occurred to me that if the catechol were any more soluble than it was, it would dissolve before it struck the water surface.
Naturally, I thought at once that this notion might be the basis for an amusing story. It occurred to me, however, that instead of writing an actual story based on the idea, I might write up a fake research paper on the subject and get a little practice in turgid writing.
I did the job on June 8, 1947, even giving it the kind of long-winded title that research papers so often have - 'The Endo-chronic Properties of Resublimated Thiotimoline' - and added tables, graphs and fake references to non-existent journals.
I was not at all sure that Thiotimoline' (no use trying to quote the entire name every time) was publishable. Astounding, however, ran serious articles on scientific subjects of particular interest to science fiction readers and I thought it just possible Campbell might be interested in a gag article that would be on the borders of science fiction.
I brought it in to him on the tenth, and he took it almost at once.
The Endochronic Properties of Resublimated Thiotimoline
The correlation of the structure of organic molecules with their various properties, physical and chemical, has in recent years afforded much insight into the mechanism of organic reactions, notably in the theories of resonance and mesomer-ism as developed in the last decade. The solubilities of organic compounds in various solvents has become of particular interest in this connection through the recent discovery of the endochronic nature of thiotimoline.
It has been long known that the solubility of organic compounds in polar solvents such as water is enhanced by the presence upon the hydrocarbon nucleus of hydrophilic - i.e., water-loving - groups, such as the hydroxy (-OH), amino (-NH2), or sulfonic acid (SO3H) groups. Where the physical characteristics of two given compounds - particularly the degree of subdivision of the material - are equal, then the time of solution - expressed in seconds per gram of material per milli-liter of solvent - decreases with the number of hydrophilic groups present. Catechol, for instance, with two hydroxy groups on the benzene nucleus, dissolves considerably more quickly than does phenol, with only one hydroxy group on the nucleus. Feinschreiber and Hravlek in their studies on the problem have contended that with increasing hydrophilism, the time of solution approaches zero. That this analysis is not entirely correct was shown when it was discovered that the compound thiotimoline will dissolve in water - in the proportions of 1 gm./ml. - in minus 1.12 seconds. That is, it will dissolve before the water is added.
Previous communications from these laboratories indicated thiotimoline to contain at least fourteen hydroxy groups, two amino groups and one sulfonic acid group. The presence of a nitro group (-NO2) in addition has not yet been confirmed, and no evidence as yet exists as to the nature of the hydrocarbon nucleus, though an at least partly aromatic structure seems certain of solution of thiotimoline quantitatively met with considerable difficulty because of the very negative nature of the value. The fact that the chemical dissolved prior to the addition of the water made the attempt natural to withdraw the water after solution and before addition. This, fortunately for the law of Conservation of Mass-Energy, never succeeded, since solution never took place unless the water was eventually added. The question is, of course, instantly raised as to how the thiotimoline can 'know' in advance whether the water will ultimately be added or not. Though this is not properly within our province as physical chemists, much recent material has been published within the last year upon the psychological and philosophical problems thereby posed.
Nevertheless, the chemical difficulties involved rest in the fact that the time of solution varies enormously with the exact mental state of the experimenter. A period of even slight hesitation in adding the water reduces the negative time of solution, not infrequently wiping it out below the limits of detection. To avoid this, a mechanical device has been constructed, the essential design of which has already been reported in a previous communication.6 This device, termed the endochronometer, consists of a cell 2 cubic centimeters in size into which a desired weight of thiotimoline is placed, making certain that a small hollow extension at the bottom of the solution cell - 1 millimeter in internal diameter - is filled. To the cell is attached an automatic pressure micro-pipette containing a specific volume of the solvent concerned. Five seconds after the circuit is closed, this solvent is automatically delivered into the cell containing the thiotimoline. During the time of action, a ray of light is focused upon the small cell-extension described above, and at the instant of solution, the transmission of this light will no longer be impeded by the presence of solid thiotimoline. Both the instant of solution - at which time the transmission of light is recorded by a photoelectric device - and the instant of solvent addition can be determined with an accuracy of better than 0.01 %. If the first value is subtracted from the second, the time of solution (T) can be determined.
The entire process is conducted in a thermostat maintained at 25.00 C. - to an accuracy of 0.01 C.
Thiotimoline Purity - The extreme sensitivity of this method highlights the deviations resulting from trifling impurities present in thiotimoline. (Since no method of laboratory synthesis of the substance has been devised, it may be practically obtained only through tedious isolation from its natural source, the bark of the shrub Rosacea Karlsbadensis rugo.) Great efforts were therefore made to purify the material through repeated recrystallizations from conductivity water - twice redistilled in an all-tin apparatus - and through final sublimations. A comparison of the solution times (T) at various stages of the purification process is shown in Table I.
Table I
Averaee 'T'
Purification stage  (12 obser-  'T' extremes  % error
vations)  
As isolated   -0.72   -0.25; -1.01 34.1
First recrystallization  -0.95  -0.84; -1.09 9.8
Second recrystallization  -1.05   -0.99; -1.10 4.0
Third recrystallization   -1.11   -1.08; -1.13 1.8
Fourth recrystallization -1.12  -1.10; -1.13  1.7
First resublimation  -1.12 -1.11; -1.13  0.9
Second resublimation  -1.122 -1.12; -1.13  0.7
It is obvious from Table I that for truly quantitative significance, thiotimoline purified as described must be used. After the second resublimation, for instance, the error involved in an even dozen determinations is less than 0.7%, with the extreme values being -1.119 seconds and -1.126 seconds.
In all experiments described subsequently in this study, thiotimoline so purified has been used.
Time of Solution and Volume of Solvent - As would seem reasonable, experiments have shown that increasing the volume of solvent enables the thiotimoline to dissolve more quickly - i.e., with an increasingly negative time of solution. From Figure 1, however, we can see that this increase in endo-chronic properties levels off rapidly after a volume of solvent of approximately 1.25 ml. This interesting plateau effect has appeared with varying volume of solvent for all varieties of solvents used in these laboratories, just as in all cases the time of solution approaches zero with decreasing volume of solvent.
Time of Solution and Concentration of a Given Ion - In Figure 2, the results are given of the effect of the time of solution (T) of varying the volume of solvent, where the solvent consists of varying concentrations of sodium chloride solution. It can be seen that, although in each case the volume at which this plateau is reached differs markedly with the concentration, the heights of the plateau are constant (i.e. -1.13). The volume at which it is reached, hereinafter termed the Plateau Volume (PV), decreases with decreasing concentration of sodium chloride, approaching the PV for water as the NaCl concentration approaches zero. It is, therefore, obvious that a sodium chloride solution of unknown concentration can be quite accurately characterized by the, determination of its PV, where other salts are absent.
The Early Asimov. Volume 3
Figure 1
The Early Asimov. Volume 3
Figure 2
The Early Asimov. Volume 3
Figure 3
This usefulness of PV extends to other ions as well. Figure 3 gives the endochronic curves for 0.001 molar solutions of sodium chloride, sodium bromide and potassium chloride. Here, the PV in each case is equal within the limits of experimental error - since the concentrations in each case are equal - but the Plateau Heights (PH) are different.
A tentative conclusion that might be reached from this experimental data is that the PH is characteristic of the nature of the ions present in solution, whereas the PV is characteristic of the concentration of these ions. Table II gives the values of Plateau Height and Plateau Volume for a wide variety of salts in equal concentrations, when present alone.
The most interesting variation to be noted in Table II is that of the PV with the valence type of the salt present. In the case of salts containing pairs of singly-charged ions - i.e., sodium chloride, potassium chloride and sodium bromide - the PV is constant for all. This holds also for those salts containing one singly charged ion and one double charged ion - i.e. sodium sulphate, calcium chloride and magnesium chloride - where the PV, though equal among the three, varies markedly from those of the first set. The PV is, therefore, apparently a function of the ionic strength of the solution.
This effect also exists in connection with the Plateau Height, though less regularly. In the case of singly charged ions, such as in the first three salts listed in Table II, the PH is fairly close to that of water itself. It falls considerably where doubly charged ions, such as sulphate or calcium, are present. And when the triply charged phosphate ion or ferric ion is present, the value sinks to merely a quarter of its value in water.