to his face, Denison pulled back with clear distaste. "Why the devil should I be interested in your tungsten?" he demanded. "Why should anyone? If you'll look at the bottle, you'll see that the thing hasn't been opened for twenty years; and if you hadn't put your own grubby paws on it, you would have seen no one had touched it."
Hallam flushed a slow, angry red. He said, tightly, "Listen, Denison, someone has changed the contents. That's not the tungsten."
Denison allowed himself a small, but distinct sniff. "How would you know?"
Of such things, petty annoyance and aimless thrusts, is history made.
It would have been an unfortunate remark in any case. Denison's scholastic record, as fresh as Hallam's, was far more impressive and he was the bright-young-man of the department. Hallam knew this and, what was worse, Denison knew it too, and made no secret of it Denison's "How would you know?" with the clear and unmistakable emphasis on the "you," was ample motivation for all that followed. Without it, Hallam would never have become the greatest and most revered scientist in history, to use the exact phrase Denison later used in his interview with Lamont.
Officially, Hallam had come in on that fateful morning, noticed the dusty gray pellets gone - not even the dust on the inside surface remaining - and clear iron-gray metal in their place. Naturally, he investigated -
But place the official version to, one side. It was Denison. Had he confined himself to a simple negative, or a shrug, the chances are that Hallam would have asked others, then eventually weariest of the unexplained event, put the bottle to one side, and let subsequent tragedy, whether subtle or drastic (depending on how long the ultimate discovery was delayed), guide the future. In any event, it would not have been Hallam who rode the whirlwind to the heights.
With the "How would you know?" cutting him down, however, Hallam could only retort wildly, "I'll show you that I know."
And after that, nothing could prevent him from going to extremes. The analysis of the metal in the old container became his number-one priority, and his prime goal was to wipe the haughtiness from Denison's thin-nosed face and the perpetual trace of a sneer from his pale lips.
Denison never forgot that moment for it was his own remark that drove Hallam to the Nobel Prize and himself to oblivion.
He had no way of knowing (or if he knew he would not then have cared) that there was an overwhelming stubbornness in Hallam, the mediocrity's frightened need to safeguard his pride, that would carry the day at that time more than all Denison's native brilliance would have.
Hallam moved at once and directly. He carried his metal to the mass spectrography department. As a radiation chemist it was a natural move. He knew the technicians there, he had worked with them, and he was forceful. He was forceful to such an effect, indeed, that the job was placed ahead of projects of much greater pith and moment.
The mass spectrographer said eventually, "Well, it isn't tungsten."
Hallam's broad and humorless face wrinkled into a harsh smile. "All right. Well tell that to Bright-boy Denison. I want a report and - "
"But wait awhile, Dr. Hallam. I'm telling you it's not tungsten, but that doesn't mean I know what it is."
"What do you mean you don't know what it is."
"I mean the results are ridiculous." The technician thought a while. "Impossible, actually. The charge-mass ratio is all wrong."
"All wrong in what way?"
"Too high. It just can't be."
"Well, then," said Hallam and, regardless of the motive that was driving him, his next remark set him on the road to the Nobel Prize and, it might even be argued, a deserved one, "get the frequency of its characteristic x-radiation and figure out the charge. Don't just sit around and talk about something being impossible."
It was a troubled technician who came into Hallam's office a few days later.
Hallam ignored the trouble on the other's face - he was never sensitive - and said, "Did you find - " He then cast a troubled look of his own at Denison, sitting at the desk in his own lab and shut the door. "Did you find the nuclear charge?"
"Yes, but it's wrong."
"All right, Tracy. Do it over."
"I did it over a dozen times. It's wrong."
"If you made the measurement, that's it; Don't argue with the facts."
Tracy rubbed his ear and said, "I've got to, Doc. If I take the measurements seriously,