"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...."
"They're covering all the possibilities. There are messages for many
different levels of understanding. We just decoded the simplest one."
"Yeah."
I noticed that as he spoke, Rizzo's hand--still tightly clutching the
pencil--was trembling and white with tension.
"Well?"