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 He woke up, covered with sweat, his teeth chattering. Thomas was standing over him in the act of laying another cold compress on his burning forehead.

“That’s good, that’s good,” mumbled Prokop, “now I shan’t sleep any more.” And he lay quietly and watched Thomas sitting near the lamp. George Thomas, he said to himself, and then Duras, and Honza Buchta, Sudik, Sudik, Sudik, and who else? Sudik, Trlica, Trlica, Pesek, Jovanovic, Madr, Holoubek, who wears spectacles, that was our year at chemistry. God, and who’s the other? Aha, Vedral, who was killed in ’sixteen, and behind him there sat Holoubek, Pacovsky, Trlica, Seba, all the men of the year. Then he suddenly heard the words: “Mr. Prokop to be examined.”

He became terribly frightened. At the desk sat Professor Wald, pulling with a dry hand at his beard, as usual. “Let’s hear,” said Professor Wald, “what you know about explosives.”

“Explosives, explosives,” began Prokop nervously, “their explosiveness lies in the fact that—that—that—that a large volume of gas is suddenly liberated which—which expands from the much smaller volume of the explosive mass I beg your pardon, that’s not right.”

“What?” asked Wald severely.

“I—I—I’ve discovered alpha explosives. The explosion takes place, that is to say, through the disintegration of the atom. The parts of the atom fly fly.”

“Rubbish,” the professor interrupted him. “There are no such things as atoms.”