“Morlus—I have the word in your language—but I do not know the element. What is it?”
“Why—here is some!”
Tonlos handed Arcot a small block of metal that had been used as a weight on a table in one corner of the room. It seemed fairly dense, about as heavy as iron, but it had a remarkably bluish tint. Obviously, it was the element that composed the wings of the airplane they had seen that afternoon. Arcot examined it carefully, handicapped somewhat by its heat. He picked up a small copper rod and tried to scratch it but there was no noticeable effect.
“You cannot scratch it with copper,” said Tonlos. “It is the second hardest metal we know—it is not as hard as chromium, but far less brittle. It is malleable, ductile, very very strong, very tough, especially when alloyed with iron, but those alloys are used only in very particular work because of iron's rarity.”
Indicating the bluish block, Arcot said, “I'd like to identify this element. May I take it back to the ship and test it?”
“You may, by all means. You will have considerable difficulty getting it into solution, however. It is attacked only by boiling selenic acid which, as you must know, dissolves platinum readily. The usual test for the element is to so dissolve it, oxidize it to an acid, then test with radium selenate, when a brilliant greenish blue salt is—”
“Test with radium selenate!” Arcot exclaimed. “Why, we have no radium salts whatever on Earth that we could use for that purpose. Radium is exceedingly rare!”
“Radium is by no means plentiful here,” Tonlos replied, “but we seldom have to test for morlus, and we have plenty of radium salts for that purpose. We have never found any other use for radium—it is so active that it combines with water just as sodium does; it is very soft—a useless metal, and dangerous to handle. Our chemists have never been able to understand it—it is always in some kind of reaction no matter what they do, and still it gives off that very light gas, helium, and a heavy gas, niton, and an unaccountable amount of heat.”
“Your world is vastly different from ours,” Arcot commented. He told Tonlos of the different metals of Earth, the non-metals, and their occurrence. But try as he would, he could not place the metal Tonlos had given him.
Morey's arrival interrupted their discussion. He looked very tired, and very serious. His head ached from his unwonted mental strain, just as Arcot's had. Briefly Arcot told him what he had learned, concluding with a question as to why Morey thought the two planets, both members of the same solar family, should be so different.