INTRODUCTION
Abel Asquini was the pseudonym of Oscar Varsavsky (1/18/1920 - 12/17/1976), an Argentine mathematician and physicist who earned a doctorate in 1949 with a dissertation on quantum mechanics and taught at the Universidad de Buenos Aires, and after brief stints at Universidad de Cuyo and la Universidad Nacional del Sur, he returned to the Universidad de Buenos Aires to join the board of directors of la Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. In his later career, he used mathematical modeling for the purposes of analzying social policy. For more information on this stage in his career, see "Ultra-left science policy and anti-modernization in Argentina: Oscar Varsavsky" by Schoijet, Mauricio.
Varsavsky wrote a number of mathematics textbooks and other non-fiction books including "Science, Politics and Scientism", "Latin America: Mathematical Models", and "Towards a National Scientific policy". Under the pseudonym Abel Asquini, he published three stories as part of "The Crimes of the LIO" series in the science fiction magazine Más Allá (Beyond), which includes "Protonickel" (#6, Nov 1953) "Nemobius Fasciatus" (#7, Dec 1953) and "Nyctalopes" (#8, Jan 1954).
For further information on this era of Argentine science fiction, see Rachel Haywood Ferreira's "Más Allá, El Eternauta, and the Dawn of the Golden Age of Latin American Science Fiction (1953-59)" and "How Latin America Saved the World and Other Forgotten Futures".
For complete scans of Más Allá, including the illustrations, see: https://ahira.com.ar/revistas/mas-alla-de-la-ciencia-y-de-la-fantasia/
PROTONICKEL
It was a signal that he was arriving home. Every single day, the neighborhood kids would pull a prank on him, tying the wallet to a string, that would then disappear into some vestibule with a well-timed tug at the very moment when Caldero's hands were about to snatch it. But this never stopped Caldero from crouching down; he told himself that one of these times the wallet really may be authentic. And, after all, crouching down is good exercise.
The truth is though, that he always came home so engrossed in the details of the latest device he was designing at the LIO or at his home, that he didn't even remember the boys' existence, that species sadly indispensable for renewing the human flock, and instinctively crouched down when he saw the wallet.
But that day, Caldero didn't crouch down. Without hesitation, he kicked it with such force that he almost tore Sebo's finger off, the boy who was holding the other end of the string.
- "He's finally getting wise," said one of those watching from the vestibule.
- "He's not getting any wiser," replied Sebo, as being the son of his cook he knew him quite well and was tormentor number one of the "mad wizard," as they called him in the neighborhood. "He must've gotten fired from his job or something like that."
And "something like that" was what indeed had happened. Caldero had just received a scientific lapidary snub in front of all his colleagues at the LIO.
He was always so proud to belong to the renowned Laboratory of Investigation, Orselec (the name that the directors of the Orselec Corporation abbreviated as 'LIO' from their offices in New York, unaware of the numerous bad, repetitive jokes that it would spawn in Buenos Aires), and having to suffer such an insult there! [Translator's note: "Lio", mess, disorder, tangle, etc.] And it's all the fault of El Petiso Trapisóndez, that scoundrel, that... [Translators note: "petiso", short, "trapisonda", disorder, chaos, synonym of "lio"] But there was no point in getting angry with him; they were practically even with each other already. The incredible thing was that Nogler, the head of the laboratory, was giving him his ear. Nogler, who everyone thought was so intelligent, had been incapable of comprehending the importance of his apparatus in producing protonickel!
* * *
ONE week prior, Caldero had presented him with the complete circuits, calculations and plans, and today Nogler had approached his drawing table, handed his excessively large binder back to him and shook his head.
- "I don't quite understand you, Caldero" - he told him - "You're marvellous at improving any instrument that's brought to you; you make it practically perfect."
Caldero impassively received the praise. Nogler raised his voice without realizing it, and little by little the other LIO researchers began paying attention to them. Trapisóndez was brazenly approaching them already, getting up without turning off his pentagonal audio frequency wave generator that produced several decibels of a rattling noise that frayed one's nerves.
- "You, Caldero" - Nogler continued - "are capable of exploiting a vacuum tube down to its last electron, and can modify the position of two atoms on a transistor to squeeze more out of it."
Caldero nodded. Modesty was not among his vices.
- "But..." - continued Nogler, and now the whole world had been forming a circle to listen to him - "but every time you come up with a brilliant idea, it results in something akin to perpetual motion! What you propose is impossible; it can't work, it violates all the laws of physics!"
Caldero almost exploded, but Nogler had employed such a friendly and easy-going tone that he couldn't be offended. He been left with no choice but to respond with a casual chuckle.
- "What did you invent this time?" - asked Flaco Puntualini, one of the "craniums" of the LIO.[Translator's note: "flaco", skinny, "puntual", punctual.]
- "A method for fabricating protonickel" - said Caldero with dignity.
- "What does that mean?" several people chanted.
- "Caldero wants to make superdense matter, he proposes starting with nickel and as such calls it that" - Nogler explained -. "He says he's capable of removing all the electrons from their atoms and combining thousands of nuclei in the space occupied by a single atom!"
* * *
CALDERO exploded:
- "And why not? Is that not what happens inside dwarf stars?" - everyone instinctively looked at Trapisóndez, who reddened - "Inside them, each cubic centimeter weighs several tons."
- "It doesn't seem so far-fetched" - ventured Puntualini, always impartial - "An atom's nucleus occupies a volume that's billions of times smaller than the entire atom. And that's where all its mass is; if you could fill all that empty space with other nuclei..."
- "But you can't fabricate very large nuclei" - protested Manuelski, another of the craniums -. "More than a hundred protons induces fission on its own."
- "Breaking news!" Caldero roared. "Do you think I don't know? But my method isn't making one huge nucleus, but rather, placing several nuclei a short distance from one another. Protonickel will be the first successful nuclear polymerization."
- "And you've already done the calculations?" - Puntualini asked.
Caldero almost betrayed himself in his eagerness to crush these non-believers, but he stopped himself in time and confined himself to pointing at the binder.
- "Everything is here," he replied, more serenely now that he remembered that the last laugh was going to be his anyways. "I've discovered which radioactive decay gives nickel a temperature capable of removing its electrons until the bare nuclei can be condensed under the pressure of a helium jet."
Nogler seemed a little disconcerted.
- "The thing is," - he admitted - "I couldn't personally oversee everything. There is nothing worse than being appointed to management. The whole day's wasted on bureaucratic red tape and there's no time left for any research."
- "So how dare you say that there's anything's wrong?" - Caldero roared.
- "I handed your project to Mr. Trapisóndez" - and he pointed to El Petiso, who cynically smiled - "in whose ability I have complete confidence, and he's studied it and found several fundamental flaws..."
And upon reaching this stage in his reminiscences, Caldero raised his arms to the sky, which alarmed the boys who were following him with intrigue a few meters behind.
- "Nogler, Nogler, I will never forgive you for this!" - Caldero's voice exploded loudly, and entered his house in a fury.
Yes, the object of his indignation was Nogler and not El Petiso. And for a very simple reason: he was already at peace with El Petiso.
He had decided to kill him, naturally.
Such a weakling who thought himself capable of stopping the progress of science did not deserve to live; he must not live. It was a moral duty to make him disappear!
* * *
PEPA, the cook and housekeeper in Caldero's disorderly laboratory suite, received him with her habitual protests.
- "You've fixed my iron wrong again, sir! The fuse is blown! There's no light!
- "Fine, fine, Pepa, I'll fix everything now..."
- "You wouldn't think he knew so much about electricity, would you?" Sebo shouted venomously, who had come in behind him, "He doesn't even know how to fix an iron!"
Which was not true, as Sebo knew very well, since he himself was responsible for short-circuiting the iron every time the "mad wizard" fixed it.
But Caldero didn't even hear him. He was already heading to his laboratory, iron in hand. His secret was lying there...
Caldero's laboratory was homogeneous chaos. At first glance, it seemed completely at odds with his meticulous and orderly personality. But there was a method in that apparent disorder. Caldero never wasted a second looking for a 100-microfarad capacitor or an 18 by 25 screw; without hesitation, a strictly localized section of his brain directed his hand to the exact spot where the desired part was located.
Caldero closed the door behind him and let his gaze rest lovingly on a strange object lying on a well-isolated steel table. The blood, sweat and pesos that this had cost him!
It was a metal sphere about fifty centimeters in diameter, with several protuberances on its surface through which pipes of all kinds entered, and a small opening in front, closed off by a lid. It looked like a giant spider whose legs had become independent, each one grasping onto a different device in the laboratory...
A Mephistophelian smile lit up Caldero's flat physiognomy. Those ignorant people laughed at his methods, and here was tangible proof that he was a genius. That sphere was the small-scale model, the pilot protonickel fabrication plant. And it worked!
Caldero, out of scientific vanity, had not mentioned the existence of said sphere. He entertained the idea of appearing in future physics textbooks as the luminary who had foreseen the theoretical details of nuclear polymerization, just as Leverrier had discovered Neptune by simple calculation, without the need for telescopes. The truth, of course, was that he had proceeded by trial and error, trying countless systems until he found the satisfactory method.
And now his scheme for achieving glory as a theorist perfectly suited his plans to liquidate El Petiso Trapisóndez.
What spiritual satisfaction! He would kill him with the very substance that El Petiso had denied him the possibility of fabricating. Protonickel shall become the Trapisondic weapon!
Caldero replaced the blown fuses, fixed the iron, handed it over to Sebo to take to his mother, and, free from any commitments to the outside world, began to prepare the protonickel.
* * *
HE already had some seven kilos of molybdenum powder that would be transformed into nickel through radioactive decay. He mixed them with a little beryllium and, opening the lid of the metal sphere, or the nucleus polymerizer, rather, introduced the mixture inside, well wrapped in tin foil, placing it in a spot crudely marked with a dermographic pencil. He flipped a switch, and the foil rose with its contents and hung in balance in the center of the sphere, held in place by a finely tuned electromagnetic field. Slight movements were corrected by modifying the stabilizing circuits, and the molybdenum-beryllium mixture remained motionless, suspended in the air at the exact center of the sphere.
Caldero sighed. It was a miracle that the circuits built in such haste didn't fall out of alignment.
He closed the lid of the sphere and put the vacuum pumps into action, finishing with the silicone oil diffuser. After a few minutes, the Knutzen instrument indicated that the required vacuum had been attained.
All of that was just preparation. Now came the hard part. Caldero closed his eyes and started up the alpha particle accelerator and the helium compressor. The alpha particles were to collide with the beryllium mixed with the molybdenum and produce neutrons that would incite a chain reaction in the molybdenum, transforming it into nickel, and at the same time would release a phenomenal energy that would tear all the electrons from their position surrounding the nuclei, like throwing off a protective cape. At the same time, jets of extremely high pressure helium would be shot from all sides at the reacting substance, absorbing the excess energy and forcing the stripped nuclei to approach one another up to a critical distance where certain forces of attraction would act that would then be responsible for keeping them together forever. Protonickel!
At least, that was Caldero's explanation for what was happening inside his polymerizer. No wonder they didn't want to take him seriously!
But what's strange was that the thing worked. A red light indicated the beginning of disintegration, and a small explosion shook the sphere. Everything was taking place at the desired pressure. Caldero turned off the alpha particle accelerator; it was no longer necessary since it incited a chain reaction. The Geiger counters indicated satisfactory radioactivity levels.
He opened the polymerizer's clasps and examined it under the light of a potent lamp.
Yes, there was something at the bottom: a miniscule sphere, less than a millimeter in diameter.
Using strong, delicate tweezers, Caldero carefully removed it. Although he was prepared for it, he was once again surprised by the effort required to lift it. The proto-nickel sphere weighed as much as the seven kilos of the molybdenum that it came from! That is, almost seven kilos, since a small percentage of the mass had been transformed into the energy needed for polymerization.
The little sphere looked like a pellet of ammunition used to hunt partridges. And its mission was going to be equally deadly, but with a more important target: El Petiso.
* * *
THE plan was extremely simple. The heavy little sphere, falling from a certain height onto El Petiso's head, would completely pass through him and leave him as if struck by a fainting spell. And that's what everyone would think, because who was going to find the little sphere afterwards! And everything could be done in the presence of witnesses. The ceiling of the laboratory was high. He would have the little sphere suspended there with an electromagnet. He would invite El Petiso and other fellows from the LIO to visit him under any pretext, and as soon as that cursed man was right under the electromagnet he would cut the current and the little sphere would fall, passing through him from top to bottom. It's worthy of a detective novel! Only here there would be no Sherlock Holmes capable of even suspecting that a crime was involved.
But he had to make sure things were well prepared. His aim had to be perfect.
First, the electromagnet. Three thousand coils of 0.5 gauge wire would suffice. He wound them quickly, fitted the core, connected the windings to the rectifier and measured their load-bearing force.
- "Ten kilos, that's more than enough" - he muttered.
He had so many things hanging from the ceiling that no one would notice the powerful electromagnet. He installed it above the heavy chair where Trapisóndez used to sit every time he came to visit him.
When connected, it held the protonickel sphere perfectly, and it remained there, attached to the electromagnet on the ceiling like the sword of Damocles over the head of whoever was sitting in the chair.
But he had to be more precise. He moistened the sphere with a little bit of water and observed where the drop fell. He had to move the chair a little. He sat down on it, adopting El Petiso's usual posture.
Yes, now it was perfect. As soon as El Petiso rested his head on his hands like that, he would cut the current and the little sphere would detach from the electromagnet, falling like divine justice upon the heretic...
In the kitchen, Pepa plugged in the iron that her boss had fixed. She didn't know that in the meantime, Sebo had shorted it out again.
The flash made her cry out in fright. The house went dark; the fuses had blown again, and the current was cut off.
In the laboratory, Caldero was lying on the floor, lifeless.
The doctors ruled a stroke as the cause death.
No one ever discovered the tiny protonickel sphere buried in the cement floor, nor the tiny entry and exit holes in Caldero's head, where not even a drop of blood had managed to form...
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