_"Ah! But it_ didn't _stop at the osmium," said the hooded man. "It went
on and on and on. Plus four plus four plus four plus four plus
four--until there were so many plus fours in there that the place looked
like an old-fashioned golf course."_

_"My legs hurt," said de Hooch. The man was no longer wearing a hood,
but de Hooch couldn't tell if it was Willows or himself._

_"We will all go together when we go," said the man._

_De Hooch turned his head away and looked at the ceiling._

And he realized that it was the ceiling of the antechamber.

"My legs hurt," he repeated. And he could hear the hoarse whisper inside
the helmet. He realized that he was lying flat on his back. He had been
jarred around quite a bit in the suit.

He wondered if he could sit up. He managed to get both arms behind him
and push himself into a sitting position. He wiggled his feet. The
servos responded. He hurt all over, but a little experiment told him
that he was only bruised. Nothing was broken. He hadn't been hit as hard
as Ferguson and Metty had been.

"Willows?" he said. "Willows?"

There was no answer from the earphones.

He looked at the chronometer dial inside his helmet. Oh two forty-nine.
He had been unconscious less than ten minutes.

The same glance brought his eyes to two other dials. The internal
radiation of the suit was a little high, but nothing to worry about. But
the dial registering the external radiation was plenty high. Without the
protection of the suit, he wouldn't have lived through those ten
minutes.

Where was Willows?

And then he knew, and he pushed any thought of further help from that
quarter out of his mind. What had to be done would have to be done by
Peter de Hooch alone. He climbed to his feet.

His head hurt, and he swayed with nausea and pain. Only the massive
weight of the suit's shoes kept him upright. Then it passed, and he
blinked his eyes and shook his head to clear it. He found he was holding
his breath, and he let it out.

The trouble had been so simple, and yet he hadn't seen it. Oh, yes, he
had! He _must_ have, subconsciously. Otherwise, how would he have
guessed that the stuff in the sampling chamber was Osmium 187? Ferguson
and Metty _had_ been trying to make Mercury 203 by adding eight
successive tritium nuclei to Hafnium 179, progressing through Tantalum
182, Tungsten 185, Rhenium 188, Osmium 191, Iridium 194, Platinum 197,
and Gold 200, all of which were unstable.

But