“Well, perhaps from the atom,” suggested Plinius.
“Aha,” cried Prokop exultantly, and wiped the sweat away from his face. “That’s the amusing part of it. Simply from the atom. It throws the atoms together … and t‑t‑t—tears off the Beta layer … and the core disintegrates. It’s an Alpha explosion. Do you realize who I am? I am the first man, sir, who has overcome the coefficient of compressibility. I … I have extracted tantalum from bismuth. Listen, do you know the amount of power there is in one gram of mercury? Four hundred and sixty-two millions of kilogramometres. Matter is frightfully powerful. Matter is a regiment which is marching without moving: one two, one two; but give it the right order and the regiment will attack. En avant! That’s the explosion, you understand? Hurrah!”
Prokop was pulled up by his own exclamation; the beating in his head was so loud that he ceased to understand anything. “Excuse me,” he said, in order to cover his confusion, and with a shaking hand felt for his cigar case. “You smoke?”
“No.”
“Even the ancient Romans used to smoke,” Prokop assured him, and opened his case. Inside was nothing but some heavy fuses.
“Light up,” he urged, “this one’s a small Nobel Extra.” He himself bit off the end of a tetryl cartridge and looked round for matches. “Never mind,” he said, “but have you ever heard of explosive glass? A pity. Listen, I can make you explosive paper. You write a letter, someone throws it into the fire, and crash! The whole of the place collapses. Would you like that?”
“What for?” asked Plinius, raising his eyebrows.
“Well, I don’t know. Power must out. I’ll tell you something. If you were to walk on the ceiling, what would happen to you? To begin with I have no use for the theory of valency. Everything is possible. Listen, you hear that noise outside? That’s the grass growing; nothing but little explosions. Every seed is an explosive cartridge which goes off. Poof, like a rocket. And those fools think that there is no such thing as tautomerism. I’ll show them such merotropy that they’ll go off their heads. Pure laboratory experience, my dear sir.”
Prokop suddenly had a dreadful feeling that he was babbling nonsense. He tried to extricate himself from his position, but only jabbered all the more quickly, mixing everything up. Plinius nodded his head seriously and finally inclined his body forward more and more, as if he were bowing. Prokop gabbled confused formulae, unable to stop himself, his eyes fixed on Plinius who was swinging backwards and forwards with increasing speed, like a machine. The floor began to move and lift under him.
“But stop it, man,” roared Prokop, terrified, and woke up.
Instead of Plinius he saw Thomas who grunted, “Don’t shout, please,” without turning round from the table.
“I’m not shouting,” said Prokop, and closed his eyes. Inside his head the blows had become faster and more painful.
It appeared that he was moving with the minimum velocity of light; in some way his heart was compressed. But that was only the Fitzgerald-Lorentz contraction, he explained to himself; soon he would become as flat as a pancake. And suddenly there appeared in front of him countless glass prisms; no, they were only endless, highly polished planes which intersected at sharp angles like models of crystals. He was thrown against the edge of one of them with terrible speed. “Look out!” he shouted to himself, for in a thousandth of a second he would be smashed to pieces; but at that moment he flew at an enormous speed towards the apex of a huge pyramid. Thrown back from this like a beam of light, he was cast against a wall as smooth as glass, slid along it, whizzed madly along walls set at angles, was hurled back against he knew not what. Cast away again he was falling on to a sharp angle, but at the last moment was thrown upwards again. Now he struck his head on a Euclidean plane and now fell headlong downwards, downwards into darkness. A sudden blow, a painful shuddering of his whole body, but he immediately picked himself up and took to flight. He tore along a labyrinthine passage and heard behind him the noise made by his pursuers; the passage became narrower and narrower, its walls came together with a frightful and inevitable movement; he became as thin as an awl, held his breath and dashed along in horror, so as to escape before the walls crushed him. They crashed behind him with a stony impact, while he whirled into a chasm. A frightful blow, and he lost consciousness. When he awoke he was in black darkness; he groped along the slimy stone walls and cried for help, but no sound came from his lips. Such was the darkness.
Shivering with fear, he stumbled about the bottom of the pit. He came upon a path along the side and followed it. Actually it consisted of steps, and above, an incredible distance away, there gleamed a tiny opening, as in a mine. Then he ran up endless and terribly steep stairs; but at the top there was nothing but a platform, a light metal platform which trembled above the dizzy abyss, and downwards there descended endless spiral steps of iron plates. And again he heard behind him the panting breath of his pursuers. Beside himself with fear he dashed down the twisting stairs, and behind him the steps
