Institute of Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry, Berlin-Dahlem. July 1909.
The institute's private laboratory possessed a distinctive smell, an acrid mixture of ammonia, strange oxygen, and the earthy aroma of burnt coffee that kept doctoral students awake.
Fritz Haber, the man who at that moment was obsessed with the problem of how to feed the world through nitrogen fixation (or how to make it explode, depending on who paid the bill), paced back and forth with the energy of a poorly calibrated engine.
His bald head gleamed under the crude light of electric lamps and his glasses fogged from agitation. In his hand, he crumpled a sheet of paper as if it were a personal enemy's neck.
Seated before him, with the imperturbable calm of a man who has looked into the abyss of quantum entropy and hasn't blinked, was Max Planck.
"It's absurd, Max," Haber said, striking the paper against a table full of flasks and glass tubing. "This is chemistry and thermodynamics. This is absurd!"
"Are the calculations incorrect?" Planck asked gently, taking a meticulous sip from his porcelain cup.
"No! That's what infuriates me!" Haber shouted, almost knocking over a Bunsen burner. "The calculations are exact. The mathematical derivation of thermal efficiency is impeccable. But the practical application..." Haber threw the document on the table, where it landed next to a spectroscope. "Whoever wrote this, this 'Professor Stanislav' from an unknown office in Saint Petersburg, is proposing a catalysis cycle for combustion engines that requires operating pressures of... two hundred atmospheres! And exhaust temperatures that would melt any steel block known in German industry."
Planck leaned forward and picked up the document with respect. It was written in perfect, somewhat archaic academic German (the work of Grand Duchess Olga, dictated by Alexei and revised with dictionaries from the imperial library), under the humble title: "Theoretical Considerations on Thermal Efficiency in Constant Volume Systems Under High Compression."
"I received it this morning in the ordinary mail," Planck said, smoothing the wrinkled sheet. "It came accompanied by a very polite note, asking my humble opinion on whether these theoretical principles violated any known physical law."
"They don't violate physical laws, Max. They violate the engineering common sense we possess," Haber growled, dropping into a laboratory chair. "If we publish this, it will invalidate three of my own pending patents on high-pressure reactors. And, what's worse, it will completely destroy the priority patent application that British firm filed last week on fuel injectors."
"That is precisely the question, Fritz," Planck said. His voice dropped a tone, adopting the gravity of an academic conspirator. "That same firm has been aggressively buying my best doctoral students. They offer salaries that neither the University nor the Academy can match. They want to patent physics; they want to own what will be created from it. And suddenly, this envelope arrives from Russia, from a technical office nobody knows, and gives away the mathematical solution to the exact problem they're trying to monopolize."
Haber stopped dead. His mind, as sharp for politics as for chemistry, processed the implication of what had happened.
"Are you suggesting it's a deliberate attack? An offensive directed against that firm's line of attack?"
"I suggest it's an intellectual sabotage act of the first order," Planck responded, with a gleam of admiration in his tired eyes. "By sending it to me, the dean of German physics, and explicitly requesting peer review, they turn it into public knowledge. Once I read this before the Prussian Academy of Sciences next week, no one can patent it. The idea passes to the public domain. It becomes basic science, free for all the planet's physicists."
Haber stared at the ceiling, fascinated by the elegance of the move.
"It's brilliant. Evil, destructive, but brilliant."
The chemist stood up and took another of the diagrams attached to the manuscript. It was the scheme of a crystalline structure, the same one Alexei had drawn as "bread with raisins," but translated to a metallurgical phase diagram by Stanislav.
"But look at this, Max," Haber said, pointing to the molecular stress lines. "For the engine to withstand those impossible pressures, they suggest doping the steel matrix with specific percentages of tungsten and... aluminum? In proportions that would make the alloy impossible to machine with our current tools."
"Unless what?" Planck asked.
"Unless they already have the tool to cut it," Haber murmured. The color drained slightly from his face. "Max, these Russians aren't theorizing about just anything. They're describing the properties of a material they've already seen work. They're describing empirical data. That means they're ahead of German industry!"
Haber looked eastward, as if he could see through the laboratory walls to the Russian plains.
"Russia is a swamp without technology. They still use wooden plows and their soldiers march without boots. But this document suggests that someone in Saint Petersburg has access to metallurgy that's a generation ahead of Ruhr industry. If they can make steel that withstands these pressures... they can make cannons that shoot farther and armor our shells can't penetrate."
Planck stood slowly, adjusting his black frock coat.
"Perhaps the swamp has a deeper and darker bottom than we thought, my friend. I'm going to publish the article, Fritz."
"You will? That firm will be furious with us. They've donated millions of marks to the Institute for the new research wing."
"I'm a scientist, not an investment banker," Planck said with unshakeable Prussian dignity. "Truth has no owner or price. And if these mysterious Russians want to give the future to humanity... I won't be the man who hides it in a dark drawer."
Planck walked toward the oak door, but stopped for a moment with his hand on the knob, looking once more at the envelope with the Russian imperial double-headed eagle seals.
"Although I wonder one thing... Who in Saint Petersburg knows more about advanced thermodynamics than we do?"
Haber remained alone in the laboratory, surrounded by his machines and his ambitions.
"Someone who doesn't sleep, perhaps," he responded to the air. "Or someone who is dreaming in a very different and dangerous way than we're accustomed to."