“He made a big point of what a beautiful violet shade they had,” Chalmers remarked. “How hard they were. And how rare they were. And how they would match a pretty girl’s eyes on her ring finger after you proposed. Gail — you’ve met her — has eyes the wrong color, so that wouldn’t work for me, assuming that someday I have a solid job so I can propose to her.”

“Yes, they appear to be proper gemstones,” Watership agreed, “so perhaps we will see more of them. Perhaps there are more in one of those boxes.”

“Haven’t found more yet,” Chalmers answered. “But Eisenhower told me: He paid someone to go to the edge of the Heath and look, finding a dozen, all in the same place.”

“Oh, that reminds me,” Watership said, “the Governor’s Office contacted the Chemistry Dean. They saw the newspaper report on your elements, were concerned it was a hoax, were happy that we’d all confirmed what you did, and said there’d be financial support for your research. Soon. Lots of money. They did hope that if you find another element, it will be named Californium.”

“Happy to do that. Ummh, a reporter did come around,” Chalmers said, “while you were in Los Angeles. I told him ‘professional ethics’. I can’t talk about results until they are published. But he had all my results right. Someone took very good notes.”

“That is several of your fellow students,” Watership said. “If it happens again, you can say ‘completely off the record, I’d warn you if you were so wrong you’d hurt your career’. Or suggest to him that he skip something. Wait? Did he have any idea where we got our samples?”

Chalmers shook his head. “No. And he only had two element names, Arizonium and Berkelium. Now I have all these. With the first stone, I was very lucky on fractional crystallization. I could have needed a year to separate them.”

“Which you would have had, thanks to spectroscopy.” Watership observed. “If I were not covering for colleagues, teaching three courses, I’d be in here analyzing. Well, keep up the good work. You’re going to go far.”

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