Dusk was beginning to blur the shadows outside the long, low buildings of The Renwell Experimental Center. One light was burning brightly near the end of the building, the other lights blinked on as more than one research project was continued into the night.
Inside, corridors and doors opened in all directions. The first lab was neatly labeled - Insomnia, Dr. Hopkins - the next door carried the sign Polio, H. James and Dr. Wilson. Each unit was designated as one certain disease research laboratory. Renwell Center was famous for its experimental research and its progressive results. The one project which had yielded no progress was the Cancer Research Lab which was the last door on the left at the end of the corridor. It was closed, but lights burned brightly inside the laboratory.
One lone researcher sat poring over tables of figures and charts of experiment results. A rack of test tubes sat to the left of the desk. Experimental animals were caged near the windows. Suddenly a timer rang, and the figure unfolded itself to stride across the room. As Dan Langly closed a vent and turned a flame down lower, the door was opened, and a slim girl entered, carrying a metal tray. Dan turned and smiled tiredly as Karol poured a cup of coffee and handed it to him.
They relaxed and ate as the compact little machine whirred through a reel of taped instructions. Dan filled his cup again and glanced at his co-worker. The first time he had met her, he hadn't believed that she, too, was a doctor in the field of experimental science. She looked like a social butterfly, whose one duty in life was to appear beautiful. How wrong that first impression was, he soon discovered. She was as tireless and hardworking as he, and several times she had caught errors of his when he had been working too long without enough sleep. Not that she wasn't beautiful, she was. Dan had found that she was as brilliant an addition to dinner and the dance floor at Ramon's as she was to the technical work at the Cancer Lab.
He had heard the expression, "Beauty sees only Beauty...," and now fully believed it. He had seen Karol stop in the midst of an experiment to show him a beautiful color in a reaction, or to call him to the window to see a sunset or a lightning display. Dan glanced over at his desk, where an unusual rock lay. The flat, smooth surface was marbled in an almost definite pattern of turquoise and deep gold. Karol had found it during a break when she had gone for a walk in a field near Renwell Center. She loved the lavender rock patterned with the gold and the aqua, and had asked if Dan could use it for a paperweight in his office. That had been over a year before, just as they had struck the first snag in this experiment.
Karol moved the snack tray, and Dan crossed to his desk to get the papers for the last two experiments. As he slid them from beneath the marbled rock, Karol called to him. In turning to answer, the heavy folder pushed the rock to the edge of the table and it fell to the floor. Karol gasped, and knelt to pick up the pieces. The marbled pattern at the break began to fade and quickly disappeared. Dan picked up a piece of the rock then suddenly turned and strode out of the room. Astonished, Karol followed him to the door, then returned and replaced the broken half of the rock on the desk.
She quietly worked and wondered why Dan had left with no explanation. She suddenly dropped a test tube and its contents, which she had never done before. She picked up the pieces and spilled some of the liquid on her hand as she carried the pieces to the incinerator. As she started to wash the coffee cups, she noticed the cut on her hand, and walked out of the lab. She quietly opened the door of the Infirmary at the end of the corridor, and spoke to Dr. Miller. "Mill," as most of the Renwell people called him, examined the cut and bandaged it.
Karol returned to the lab to find Dan pacing the floor, muttering to himself. As he saw her, he stopped pacing and crossed the room to where she stood. He caught her by the shoulders and asked breathlessly, "How would you like to have a new element named for you, Karol?"
She stared at him for a long while then asked, "What is wrong, Dan? Where did you go?"
Dan picked Karol up and placed her on his desk. He sat down in the chair and quietly began to speak: "Do you remember that we both felt that we had a very unusual rock for a paperweight?"
He picked up the rock to show a charred area on the statistic sheet below it. "These burns are a reaction made by a totally unknown substance. This rock, which you picked up because it was beautiful, is, in all appearances, a new element or combination of more than one. If the Central Lab verifies what I think, you will be the discoverer of a new element, which will be named for you!"
Karol sat in stunned silence, then gently said, "I didn't discover it, you did. Besides, you couldn't create a dignified scientific name from Karol Crane! Call it Langlyte - and you take the credit for it; please Dan, for my sake?"
Dan pulled Karol to her feet and held her closely. He bent his head close to hers and whispered, "I'll still name it in your honor - because I'm going to make you Mrs. Dan J. Langly!"
Karol looked up to Dan and smiled. "In that case," she said, "I'll accept the honor, Darling, both of them."
The Renwell Center Authorities gave Dan and Karol two weeks leave for a wedding present. The Langlys found a small house near the Center to move into. The first day they were back on the job, Karol brought Dan a large manila envelope from Lab Central. He opened it and quickly scanned its contents and began to read:
"Renwell Experimental Center has done it again! The Dan J. Langlys - a husband and wife team at REC - have discovered three new elements.
"Langlyte, element #102, Cranem, element #103, and Karanjen, element #104, were discovered in a rock which Karol Langly found and put on her husband's desk to be used as a paperweight! All three elements have been named for this outstanding scientific team.
"Who can say, in the face of this discovery, that women should not be experimental scientists? Many of Renwell's advancements have been made by its women researchists. They have helped to give Renwell Center its progressive standing."
Work in the REC cancer lab progressed smoothly and quickly. There were no more accidents, and Karol never told Dan about spilling the fluid in the broken test tube over her cut hand, just that she had broken it.
About six months after Dan and Karol received the Science Federation Achievement Award for discovering the new elements, REC located a vein of the three elements in the field near the Center. Karol jokingly said that the publicity had worn off, and that they should find the cure for cancer from one of "their" elements. Dan thoughtfully wrote an order for a supply of Langlyte, Cranem and Karanjen. When the supplies came, Dan and Karol began a new series of experiments, half in fun, halfway seriously.
Time and lab work again sped by, and the Langlys' first wedding anniversary arrived. That morning, Dan came to work alone. He had taken Karol to the hospital in Fort Walling the day before. Dan was leaving to go visit Karol at the hospital when his phone rang. "Dan, I think you had better come to the hospital as quickly as possible, Karol is more gravely ill than we had imagined."
"I'll be there in fifteen minutes, Dr. Jon," Dan said.
..............
Anyway, Karol dies of inoperable, incurable cancer, just as the cure she has developed is approved - Sad, isn't it!
January 17, 1962
copyright PG
Wisps of Wonder
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