is a small universe of compressed lightning carrying eighty-two electric moons in its sky!

What might not this Moseley accomplish? If radium turns into helium and then into lead, why might not Moseley upset the central balance of lead and let the lightning out again? If a gram of radium emits enough energy to lift five hundred tons a mile high, a gram of disintegrated lead ought to turn every wheel in a great factory!

Marvin dashed up to Jimmy’s room, where the taciturn youth was shaving, and explained. He unfolded a vision of the future. When all the coal was exhausted, power would be supplied by Moseley motors and would so enrich everybody that there would be no cause for war.

Jimmy listened, washed off the lather, rubbed his chin to see if he had missed anything, adjusted his nose-glasses, and politely informed Marvin that he was a damn fool.

All the same, the economical Jimmy proceeded to call up New Haven on long distance and inquire diligently and expensively until he learned who Moseley was. He proved to be a man not yet twenty-six, the son of an Oxford don. The fact seemed to cheer Jimmy immensely. These English lads were thoroughbreds, much better trained in mathematics than most American youths.

From that day the Moseley numbers became the background of Marvin’s thinking. They presently proved that there are just ninety-two elements.

And since these numbers filled his mind, intruding on all the affairs of his life with the vision of a new world, perhaps the chapters of this book may be allowed to follow the Moseley order. The names of the elements will usually be irrelevant to the chapters, but not to the subject on which Marvin brooded, and not to the deeper nature of the world we live in.

Chapter 4. Beryllium

When he went to Boltwood to inquire further about Moseley, he was heartily received. The discoverer of ionium even admitted that it might be possible some day to unlock the energy of lead, and that the thing might come sooner than anybody expected, but that a hundred years was soon. He gladly admitted the inquirer into a course, found him quick and ingenious, praised him for his mathematics, and encouraged him.

But Marvin was eager for quick results, and finally decided to specialize in power production. He would spend his first year of graduate study in New York and try to master fuels. After that he would study hydro-electric.

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