When I wrote “Ring Around the Sun” I was much taken by the two protagonists. Turner and Snead. It was in my mind, I recall, to write other stories about the pair. This was a natural thought, for in the late 1930s there were a number of “series” of stories about a given character or characters. Campbell himself had written some delightful stories featuring two men named Penton and Blake, and I longed to do a Penton-Blake imitation.
There was a practical value to writing a “series.” For one thing, you had a definite background that was carried on from story to story, so that half your work was done for you. Secondly, if the “series” became popular, it would be difficult to reject new stories that fit into it.
I didn’t make it with Turner and Snead. In fact, I never tried. The time was to come, two years later, when I was to have a pair of very similar characters, Powell and Donovan, who were to be in four stories and who were to be part of a very successful “series” indeed.
By the end of August 1938, then, I had written five stories, of which three were eventually published. Not bad!
However, there followed a dry spell. I was finishing my third year of college and was trying, without success, to get admission into medical school. The situation in Europe was disturbing. It was the time of the surrender at Munich, and for a Jewish teen-ager there was something unsettling about the rapid, sure-fire victories of Hitler.
The next three stories took not one month, as had the previous three, but three months. And all were clearly well below the limits of salability even in the most permissive market. They were “The Weapon,” “Paths of Destiny,” and “Knossos in Its Glory.” Campbell rejected each one in very short order, and all made the rounds without luck. There came a time, nearly three years later, when Astonishing seemed interested in “The Weapon,” but that fell through and the other two didn’t even come that close.
All three stories are now gone forever. I remember nothing at all about two of them, but “Knossos in Its Glory” was an ambitious attempt to retell the Theseus myth in science fiction terms. The minotaur was an extraterrestrial who landed in ancient Crete with only the kindliest of intentions, and I remember writing terribly stilted prose in an attempt to make my Cretans sound as I imagined characters in Homer ought to sound. Campbell, always kind, said in rejecting it that my work “was definitely improving, especially where I was not straining for effect.”
By the time I was writing “Knossos in Its Glory” I had just received my check for “Marooned off Vesta” and I was a professional. My spirits rose accordingly, and toward the end of November I wrote “Ammonium,” which was another attempt (like “Ring Around the Sun”) at humor.
I had a pretty good notion that Campbell wouldn’t like it, however, and I never showed it to him. I sent it to Thrilling Wonder Stories instead. When they rejected it, I lost heart and retired it. It was only after Future Fiction had taken “Ring Around the Sun” that I thought I would chance this other one, too.
On August 23, 1939, I sent it in to Future Fiction , which took it, altering its name to “The Magnificent Possession.”
The Magnificent Possession
Walter Sills reflected now, as he had reflected often before, that life was hard and joyless. He surveyed his dingy chemical laboratory and grinned cynically-working in a dirty hole of a place, living on occasional ore analyses that barely paid for absolutely indispensable equipment, while others, not half his worth perhaps, were working for big industrial concerns and taking life easy.
He looked out the window at the Hudson River, ruddied in the flame of the dying sun, and wondered moodily whether these last experiments would finally bring him the fame and success he was after, or if they were merely some more false alarms.
The unlocked door creaked open a crack and the cheerful face of Eugene Taylor burst into view. Sills waved and Taylor’s body followed his head and entered the laboratory.
“Hello, old soak,” came the loud and carefree hail. “How go things?”
Sills shook his head at the other’s exuberance. “I wish I had your foolish outlook on life. Gene. For your information, things are bad. I need money, and the more I need it, the less I have.”
“Well, I haven’t any money either, have I?” demanded Taylor. “But why worry about it? You’re fifty, and worry hasn’t got you anything except a bald head. I’m thirty, and I want to keep my beautiful brown hair.”
The chemist grinned. “I’ll get my money yet. Gene. Just leave it to me.”
“Your new ideas shaping out well?”
“Are they? I haven’t told you much about it, have I? Well, come here and I’ll show you what progress I’ve made.”
Taylor followed Sills to a small table, on which stood a rack of test tubes, in one of which was about half an inch of a shiny metallic substance.
“Sodium-mercury mixture, or sodium amalgam, as it is called,” explained Sills pointing to it.
He took a bottle labeled “Ammonium Chloride Sol.” from the shelf and poured a little into the tube. Immediately the sodium amalgam began changing into a loosely-packed, spongy substance.
“That,” observed Sills, “is ammonium amalgam. The ammonium radical (NH4) acts as a metal here and combines with mercury.” He waited for the action to go to completion and then poured off the supernatant liquid.
“Ammonium amalgam isn’t very stable,” he informed Taylor, “so I’ll have to work fast.” He grasped a flask of straw-colored, pleasant-smelling liquid and filled the test-tube with it. Upon shaking, the loosely-packed ammonium amalgam vanished and in its stead a small drop of metallic liquid rolled about the bottom.
Taylor gazed at the test-tube, open-mouthed. “What happened?”
“This liquid is a complex derivative of hydrazine which I’ve discovered and named Ammonaline. I haven’t worked out its formula yet, but that doesn’t matter. The point about it is that it has the property of dissolving the ammonium out of the amalgam. Those few drops at the bottom are pure mercury; the ammonium is in solution.”
Taylor remained unresponsive and Sills waxed enthusiastic. “Don’t you see the implications? I’ve gone half way towards isolating pure ammonium, a thing which has never been done before! Once accomplished it means fame, success, the Nobel Prize, and who knows what else.”
“Wow!” Taylor’s gaze became more respectful. “That yellow stuff doesn’t look so important to me.” He snatched for it, but Sills withheld it.
“I haven’t finished, by any means, Gene. I’ve got to get it in its free metallic state, and I can’t do that so far. Every time I try to evaporate the Ammonaline, the ammonium breaks down to everlasting ammonia and hydrogen… But I’ll get it-I’ll get it!”
Two weeks later, the epilogue to the previous scene was enacted. Taylor received a hurried and emphatic call from his chemist friend and appeared at the laboratory in a flurry of anticipation.
“You’ve got it?”
“I’ve got it-and it’s bigger than I thought! There’s millions in it, really,” Sills’ eyes shone with rapture.
“I’ve been working from the wrong angle up to now,” he explained. “Heating the solvent always broke down the dissolved ammonium, so I separated it out by freezing. It works the same way as brine, which, when frozen slowly, freezes into fresh ice, the salt crystallizing out. Luckily, the Ammonaline freezes at 18 degrees Centigrade and doesn’t require much cooling.”
He pointed dramatically to a small beaker, inside a glasswalled case. The beaker contained pale, straw-colored, needlelike crystals and, covering the top of this, a thin layer of a dullish, yellow substance.
“Why the case?” asked Taylor.
“I’ve got it filled with argon to keep the ammonium (which is the yellow substance on top of the Ammonaline) pure. It is so active that it will react with anything else but a helium-type gas.”
Taylor marveled and pounded his complacently-smiling friend on the back.
“Wait, Gene, the best is yet to come.”
Taylor was led to the other end of the room and Sills’ trembling finger pointed out another airtight case containing a lump of metal of a gleaming, yellow that sparkled and glistened.
“That, my friend, is ammonium oxide (NH420), formed by passing absolutely dry air over free ammonium metal. It is perfectly inert (the sealed case contains quite a bit of chlorine, for instance, and yet there is no reaction). It can be made as cheaply as aluminum, if not more so, and yet it looks more like gold than gold does itself. Do you see the possibilities?”
“Do I?” exploded Taylor. “It will sweep the country. You can have ammonium jewelry, and ammonium-plated tableware, and a million other things. Then again, who knows how many countless industrial applications it may have? You’re rich, Walt-you’re rich.”
“ We’re rich,” corrected Sills gently. He moved towards the telephone, “The newspapers are going to hear of this. I’m going to begin to cash in on fame right now.”
Taylor frowned, “Maybe you’d better keep it a secret, Walt.”
“Oh, I’m not breathing a hint as to the process. I’ll just give them the general idea. Besides, we’re safe; the patent application is in Washington right now.”