"Try another list. They're not all the same."
He shrugged and returned to his desk. After a while he called out, "their second number is 3.97123; it works out to 4.003-something."
It checked! "Good. That's helium. What about the next one, lithium?"
"That's 6.940."
"Right!"
Rizzo went to work furiously after that. I pushed a chair to the desk and began working up from the end of the list. It all checked out, from hydrogen to a few elements beyond the artificial ones that had been created in the laboratories here on Earth.
"That's it," I said. "That's the key. That's our Rosetta Stone ... the periodic table."
Rizzo stared at the scribbled numbers and jumble of papers. "I bet I know what the other lists are ... the ones that don't make sense."
"Oh?"
"There are other ways to identify the elements ... vibration resonances, quantum wavelengths ... somebody named Lewis came out a couple years ago with a Quantum Periodic Table...."