Lisa opened the box to find several tiny slivers of a lusterless metal housed in a plastic container. She selected one of the samples and placed it onto a slide, then examined it under a microscope. The tiny sliver resembled a furry snowball under magnification. Measuring the mass of the sample, she placed it in the sealed compartment of a large gray housing that was attached to a mass spectrometer. No less than four computers and several pressurized gas tanks were affixed to the device. Lisa sat down at one of the keyboards and typed in a string of software commands, which initiated a test program.

“Is that the one that’s going to be your ticket to the Nobel Prize?” Bob asked.

“I’d settle for a ticket to a Redskins game if it works.”

Glancing at a wall clock, she asked, “Want to go grab some lunch? I won’t be able to get any preliminary results for at least an hour or so.”

“I’m there,” Bob replied, slipping off his lab coat and racing her to the door.

After a turkey sandwich in the cafeteria, Lisa returned to her tiny office at the back of the lab. A minute later, Bob ducked his head around the door, his eyes opened wide in bewilderment.

“Lisa, you better come take a look at this,” he stammered.

Lisa quickly followed him into the lab, her heart skipping a beat as she saw Bob approach the spectrometer. He pointed to one of the computer monitors, which showed a string of numbers rushing down the screen beside a fluctuating bar graph.

“You forgot to remove the rhodium sample before you initiated the new test. But look at the results. The oxalate count is off the charts,” he said quietly.

Lisa looked at the monitor and trembled. Inside the spectrometer, a detector system was tabulating the molecular outcome of the forced chemical reaction. The ruthenium catalyst was successfully breaking the carbon dioxide bond, causing the particles to recombine into a two-carbon compound called an oxalate. Unlike her earlier catalysts, the ruthenium/rhodium combination created no material waste by-product. She had stumbled upon a result that scientists around the world had been seeking.

“I can hardly believe it,” Bob muttered. “ The catalytic reaction is dead-on.”

Lisa felt light-headed and dropped into a chair. She checked and rechecked the output, searching for an error but finding none. She finally allowed herself to accept the probability that she had hit pay dirt.

“I’ve got to tell Maxwell,” she said. Dr. Horace Maxwell was director of the GWU Environmental Research and Technology Lab.

“Maxwell? Are you crazy? He’s testifying before Congress in two days.”

“I know. I’m supposed to accompany him to the Hill.”

“Now, there’s a suicide mission,” Bob said, shaking his head. “If you tell him now, he’s liable to bring it up in testimony in order to obtain more funding for the lab.”