r of the proposal
and its inevitability.

In the following days Ken was especially glad to be able to bury himself
in the problems at the laboratory. His father, too, seemed to work with
increasing fury as they got further into an investigation of the
material originated by Dr. French. As if seized by some fanatic
compulsion, unable to stop, Professor Maddox spent from 18 to 20 hours
of every day at his desk and laboratory bench.

Ken stayed with him although he could not match his father's great
energy. He often caught snatches of sleep while his father worked on.
Then, one morning, as an especially long series of complex tests came to
an end at 3 a.m., he said to Ken in quiet exultation, "We can
decontaminate now, if nothing else. That's the thing that French had
found. Whether we can ever put it into the atmosphere is another matter,
but at least we can get our metals clean."

Excited, Ken leaned over the notebook while his father described the
results of the reaction. He studied the photographs, taken with the
electron microscope, of a piece of steel before and after treatment with
a compound developed by his father.

Ken said slowly, in a voice full of emotion. "French didn't do this,
Dad."

"Most of it. I finished it up from where he left off."

"No. He wasn't even on the same track. You've gone in an entirely
different direction from the one his research led to. _You_ are the one
who has developed a means of cleaning the dust out of metals."

Professor Maddox looked away. "You give me too much credit, Son."

Ken continued to look at his father, at the thick notebook whose
scrawled symbols told the story. So this is the way it happens, he
thought. You don't set out to be a great scientist at all. If you can
put all other things out of your mind, if you can be absorbed with your
whole mind and soul in a problem that seems important enough, even
though the world is collapsing about your head; then, if you are clever
enough and persevering enough, you may find yourself a great scientist
without ever having tried.

"I don't think I'll ever be what the world calls a great scientist,"
Professor Maddox had said on that day that seemed so long ago. "I'm not
clever enough; I don't think fast enough. I can teach the fundamentals
of chemistry, and maybe some of those I teach will be great someday."

So he had gone along, Ken thought, and by applying his own rules he had
achieved greatness. "I think you give me fa