after the smash reduced to short stubs, with the nickel flushed out of its den and exposed to attack; and I did not feel much different from the remote hunter of Altamira who painted an antelope on the rock wall so that the next day’s hunt would be lucky.
The propitiatory ceremonies did not last long: the lieutenant was not there, but he could arrive from one hour to the next, and I was afraid that he would not accept, or would not readily accept, my very unorthodox hypothesis of work. But I felt it itch all over my skin: what’s done is done, best get to work immediately.
There is nothing more vivifying than a hypothesis. Watched with an amused and skeptical expression by Alida, who, since it was now late in the afternoon, kept looking ostentatiously at her wristwatch, I set to work like a whirlwind. In a moment the apparatus was mounted, the thermostat set at 800° centigrade, the pressure regulator on the tank set, the fluxmeter put in order. I heated the material for half an hour, then reduced the temperature and passed the hydrogen through for another hour: by now it was dark, the girl had gone, all was silence against the backdrop of the grim hum of the Grading Department, which also worked at night. I felt part conspirator, part alchemist.
When the time came, I took the porcelain boat out of the quartz tube, let it cool off in the vacuum, then dispersed in water the powder, which had turned from greenish to a dirty yellow: a thing which seemed to me a good sign. I picked up the magnet and set to work. Each time I took the magnet out of the water, it brought with it a tuft of brown powder: I removed it delicately with filter paper and put it aside, perhaps a milligram each time; for the analysis to be well-founded at least a half gram of material was needed, that is, several hours of work. I decided to stop about midnight: to interrupt the separation, I mean to say, because at no cost would I have put off the beginning of the analysis. For this, since it involved a magnetic fraction (and therefore presumably poor in silicates), and yielding to my haste, I there and then tried a simplified variant. At three in the morning I had the result: no longer the usual pink little cloud of nickel-dimethylglyoxime but rather a visibly abundant precipitate. Filtered, washed, dried, and weighed. The final datum appeared to me written in letters of fire on the slide rule: 6 percent of nickel, the rest iron. A victory: even without a further separation, an alloy to be sent to the electric oven as is. I returned to the submarine when it was almost dawn with an acute desire to go immediately and wake the director, telephone the lieutenant, and roll around on the dark fields, which were dripping wet with dew. I was thinking many foolish things, and I was not thinking of anything sensible and sad.
I was thinking of having opened a door with a key, and of possessing the key to many doors, perhaps to all of them. I was thinking of having thought of something that nobody else had yet thought, not even in Canada or New Caledonia, and I felt invincible and untouchable even when faced by close enemies, closer each month. Finally, I was thinking of having had a far from ignoble revenge on those who had declared me biologically inferior.
I was not thinking that if the method of extraction I had caught sight of could have found industrial application, the nickel produced would have entirely ended up in Fascist Italy’s and Hitler Germany’s armor plate and artillery shells. I was not thinking that during those very months there had been discovered in Albania deposits of nickel mineral before which ours could go and hide, and along with it every project of mine, the director’s, and the lieutenant’s. I did not foresee that my interpretation of the magnetic separability of nickel was substantially mistaken, as the lieutenant showed me a few days later, as soon as I told him of my results. Nor did I foresee that the director, after having
The propitiatory ceremonies did not last long: the lieutenant was not there, but he could arrive from one hour to the next, and I was afraid that he would not accept, or would not readily accept, my very unorthodox hypothesis of work. But I felt it itch all over my skin: what’s done is done, best get to work immediately.
There is nothing more vivifying than a hypothesis. Watched with an amused and skeptical expression by Alida, who, since it was now late in the afternoon, kept looking ostentatiously at her wristwatch, I set to work like a whirlwind. In a moment the apparatus was mounted, the thermostat set at 800° centigrade, the pressure regulator on the tank set, the fluxmeter put in order. I heated the material for half an hour, then reduced the temperature and passed the hydrogen through for another hour: by now it was dark, the girl had gone, all was silence against the backdrop of the grim hum of the Grading Department, which also worked at night. I felt part conspirator, part alchemist.
When the time came, I took the porcelain boat out of the quartz tube, let it cool off in the vacuum, then dispersed in water the powder, which had turned from greenish to a dirty yellow: a thing which seemed to me a good sign. I picked up the magnet and set to work. Each time I took the magnet out of the water, it brought with it a tuft of brown powder: I removed it delicately with filter paper and put it aside, perhaps a milligram each time; for the analysis to be well-founded at least a half gram of material was needed, that is, several hours of work. I decided to stop about midnight: to interrupt the separation, I mean to say, because at no cost would I have put off the beginning of the analysis. For this, since it involved a magnetic fraction (and therefore presumably poor in silicates), and yielding to my haste, I there and then tried a simplified variant. At three in the morning I had the result: no longer the usual pink little cloud of nickel-dimethylglyoxime but rather a visibly abundant precipitate. Filtered, washed, dried, and weighed. The final datum appeared to me written in letters of fire on the slide rule: 6 percent of nickel, the rest iron. A victory: even without a further separation, an alloy to be sent to the electric oven as is. I returned to the submarine when it was almost dawn with an acute desire to go immediately and wake the director, telephone the lieutenant, and roll around on the dark fields, which were dripping wet with dew. I was thinking many foolish things, and I was not thinking of anything sensible and sad.
I was thinking of having opened a door with a key, and of possessing the key to many doors, perhaps to all of them. I was thinking of having thought of something that nobody else had yet thought, not even in Canada or New Caledonia, and I felt invincible and untouchable even when faced by close enemies, closer each month. Finally, I was thinking of having had a far from ignoble revenge on those who had declared me biologically inferior.
I was not thinking that if the method of extraction I had caught sight of could have found industrial application, the nickel produced would have entirely ended up in Fascist Italy’s and Hitler Germany’s armor plate and artillery shells. I was not thinking that during those very months there had been discovered in Albania deposits of nickel mineral before which ours could go and hide, and along with it every project of mine, the director’s, and the lieutenant’s. I did not foresee that my interpretation of the magnetic separability of nickel was substantially mistaken, as the lieutenant showed me a few days later, as soon as I told him of my results. Nor did I foresee that the director, after having
Similar Books
