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EDITED BY
LEONID CHECHURIN
MIKAEL COLLAN
ADVANCES IN
SYSTEMATIC
CREATIVITY
Creating and Managing Innovations
Advances in Systematic Creativity
Leonid Chechurin • Mikael Collan
Editors
Advances in
Systematic Creativity
Creating and Managing Innovations
Editors
Leonid Chechurin Mikael Collan
School of Business and Management School of Business and Management
Lappeenranta University of Technology Lappeenranta University of Technology
Lappeenranta, Finland Lappeenranta, Finland
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer International
Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2019
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Preface
The general concept of systematic creativity is based on the simple idea that
the creative effort of creating innovations and new designs and ideas can be
made in a systematic way, and on the premise that a systematic way of per-
forming the creative process increases the efficiency of the process and
enhances the likelihood of ending up with good outcomes. One of the
well-known methods for systematic creativity is the “Theory of Inventive
Problem Solving,” or shortly abbreviated TRIZ after the original name of
the method in Russian. Many contributions in this book are connected to
TRIZ, but many are general in the sense that they can be used also with
other available methods for ideation and systematic creativity. This is espe-
cially true for the contributions that describe the management and com-
mercialization of innovations, where the focus is not on any specific ideation
or innovation creation method but on the management and commercial-
ization of the created ideas and innovations themselves.
The topics covered are important to the industry from the point of
view of the ability to sustain a competitive advantage, because innovation
cycles have become shorter and there is constant need for more innova-
tions. The ability to master tools for systematic creativity and efficient
management of innovations are pivotal in keeping up with the competi-
tion. It can be said that only companies that are able to constantly redefine
their products and services are able to stay in business in the highly com-
petitive technical fields we find today in almost every industry.
v
vi Preface
The authors presenting their work in the book hail from more than ten
countries and the industries covered in the examples and illustrations are
numerous. The book comprises eighteen chapters divided into three
parts.
Part I is dedicated to advances in and applications of the theory of
inventive problem solving, better known as TRIZ. These nine chapters
present a diversity of novel approaches to extend and to support the use
of TRIZ in systematically creating innovations.
With the collapse of the USSR, TRIZ left its cradle, parents, and
authorized supervisors and began an “independent life” in the world. In
Chap. 1, Abramov and Sobolev discuss the results of an almost thirty-
year-long trip, the current stage of TRIZ evolution, and its popularity.
While acknowledging the clear and unquestionable achievements and
indicators of growth, the authors also highlight the indicators of TRIZ
development stagnation and speculate on the fundamental reasons for
the stagnation.
One of the critical elements of modern TRIZ-based thinking is the
definition of function, function analysis, and the formalism of manipula-
tion with functions (e.g., “trimming”). There are a number of approaches
to assist in the construction of a function model for a complex real-world
system that can be described by several hierarchical levels. In Chap. 2,
Koziolek presents a systematic approach to decompose functions in the
built model and for linking them with the system architecture. A case
study demonstrates how the presented approach adds functional screen-
ing of possible changes in design.
TRIZ is not alone in the list of industrial innovation development
tools. In Chap. 3, Livotov et al. compare TRIZ and Process Intensification
(PI) principles. It is shown how 155 PI best practices can be clustered
around forty inventive principles of TRIZ. Each generic inventive prin-
ciple is given a subset of specific operations to intensify processes inven-
tively. An illustration is given by the analysis of 150 recent patents in
ceramic and pharmaceutical industries.
Can TRIZ make it in a specific engineering subject where the profes-
sional knowledge of the background is the prerequisite for any ideation?
In Chap. 4, Chechurin et al. enter the field of automation and control
and demonstrate how one of the basic TRIZ concepts—Ideal Final
Result—can assist the design of nontrivial solutions. The main idea is to
Preface vii
does not have to explore the whole universe of possible alternative solutions
that may be very large. The new approach is illustrated with an example.
In Chap. 15, Belski, Skiadopoulos, Aranda-Mena, Cascini, and Russo dis-
cuss the importance of general knowledge and of domain knowledge in the
ability of individuals to create new ideas to solve problems within a given
domain. They present the results of an experiment in which they test the
hypothesis that more general knowledge is more important than domain
knowledge for the ability to create novel solution ideas in engineering and the
hypothesis that the use of ideation heuristics makes ideation more efficient.
They find evidence to support both claims. Understanding what the favor-
able circumstances for ideation are is important from the point of view of
being able to provide such circumstances—be they in terms of education
given, or in terms of the supporting methodologies used.
In Part III, the focus is on managing innovations and the innovation
process. The four chapters in this part discuss evaluation of innovations
in the different stages of the innovation process and the commercializa-
tion of innovations. It is evident from the chapters presented that evalu-
ation is an integral part of a systematic innovation process and hence also
of the concept of systematic creativity, even if it is commonly understood
as concentrating mainly on the process of innovation creation.
In Chap. 16, Kozlova, Chechurin, and Efimov-Soini discuss how
economic evaluation performed already in the early stages of the design
process can help make the innovation process more efficient. The idea
presented has similarity to “fail fast” piloting: if resources are used in
taking an innovation process of a design further, while it is clear from
very early on that in any case the design is not feasible from the eco-
nomic point of view, one is wasting resources. This is why it makes
sense to include also economic feasibility measurement in the early
stages of the innovation process. The authors propose the use of level-
ized function cost for this purpose and show how it can be used in
weeding out economically unsuitable designs already early on in the
innovation process.
Stoklasa, Talásek, and Stoklasová, in Chap. 17, present an interesting
essay on how soft and emotional aspects and uncertainty can be incorpo-
rated in the evaluation of innovation alternatives. The authors present a
new procedure for how this rather difficult task can be accomplished in
x Preface
Current Stage of TRIZ Evolution and Its Popularity 3
Oleg Abramov and Sergey Sobolev
Design for Change: Disaggregation of Functions in System
Architecture by TRIZ-Based Design 17
Sebastian Koziołek
Systematic Innovation in Process Engineering: Linking TRIZ
and Process Intensification 27
Pavel Livotov, Arun Prasad Chandra Sekaran, Richard Law,
Mas’udah, and David Reay
Heuristic Problems in Automation and Control Design: What
Can Be Learnt from TRIZ? 45
Leonid Chechurin, Victor Berdonosov, Leonid Yakovis, and Vasilii
Kaliteevskii
xi
xii Contents
The Adaptive Problem Sensing and Solving (APSS) Model and
Its Use for Efficient TRIZ Tool Selection 71
Alexander Czinki and Claudia Hentschel
Case: Can TRIZ Functional Analysis Improve FMEA? 87
Christian Spreafico and Davide Russo
Function Analysis Plus and Cause-Effect Chain Analysis Plus
with Applications 133
Min-Gyu Lee
Identification of Secondary Problems of New Technologies in
Process Engineering by Patent Analysis 151
Pavel Livotov, Mas’udah, Arailym Sarsenova, and Arun Prasad
Chandra Sekaran
Control Design Tools for Intensified Solids Handling Process
Concepts 167
Markku Ohenoja, Marko Paavola, and Kauko Leiviskä
Contents xiii
Anticipatory Failure Determination (AFD) for Product
Reliability Analysis: A Comparison Between AFD and Failure
Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) for Identifying Potential
Failure Modes 181
Renan Favarão da Silva and Marco Aurélio de Carvalho
Computer-Aided Conceptual Design of Building Systems:
Linking Design Software and Ideas Generation Techniques 201
Ivan Renev
Optimized Morphological Analysis in Decision-Making 225
Shqipe Buzuku and Andrzej Kraslawski
Engineering Creativity: The Influence of General Knowledge
and Thinking Heuristics 245
Iouri Belski, Anne Skiadopoulos, Guillermo Aranda-Mena, Gaetano
Cascini, and Davide Russo
Levelized Function Cost: Economic Consideration for Design
Concept Evaluation 267
Mariia Kozlova, Leonid Chechurin, and Nikolai Efimov-Soini
Reflecting Emotional Aspects and Uncertainty in Multi-expert
Evaluation: One Step Closer to a Soft Design-Alternative
Evaluation Methodology 299
Jan Stoklasa, Tomáš Talášek, and Jana Stoklasová
xiv Contents
Using Innovation Scorecards and Lossless Fuzzy Weighted
Averaging in Multiple-criteria Multi-expert Innovation
Evaluation 323
Mikael Collan and Pasi Luukka
Innovation Commercialisation: Processes, Tools and
Implications 341
Mikko Pynnönen, Jukka Hallikas, and Mika Immonen
Index 367
Notes on Contributors
Oleg Abramov is the CTO at Algorithm Ltd., St. Petersburg, Russia—a strate-
gic partner of GEN TRIZ, Boston, USA. He received his undergraduate degree
and Ph.D. in Radio Engineering from Saint Petersburg Electrotechnical
University (ETU “LETI”). For 15 years, Abramov worked at this university as a
researcher and an associate professor until, in 1997, he joined Algorithm Ltd. as
head of the department. At Algorithm, he managed over 80 successful innova-
tion consulting projects for companies such as Xerox, FMC, Intel, Honda, and
BAT. In 2006, the MaxBeam75 Smart Antenna by Airgain, developed by
Abramov’s team, received an award from the government of California as the
most innovative product of the year. In 2012, he received a TRIZ Master Degree
from the International TRIZ Association. He is the author of 38 granted patents
and over 50 scientific papers in radio engineering and TRIZ.
Guillermo Aranda-Mena (PhD) is an associate professor, the director of
RMIT’s Construction Procurement Group, and UNESCO architecture profes-
sor at the Politecnico di Milano, Italy. He has worked on research, consulting
and education in the built environment disciplines of architecture, planning and
procurement for over two decades, in particular, life-cycle design, construction
and operations under public-private partnerships. Guillermo is cofounder of
MelBIM—the largest building information modeling professional group in
Australia—a well-published scholar and regional editor—Australasia—for
Facilities by Emerald Scientific Publishers. Guillermo provides independent
consulting and expert advice to public and corporate clients at early project
stages.
xv
xvi Notes on Contributors
Iouri Belski received his M.Eng. degree in Quantum Electronics in 1981 and
a Ph.D. in Physics (Semiconductors and Dielectrics) in 1989 from the Moscow
Institute of Physics and Technology, Dolgoprudny, Russia. He is Professor of
Engineering Problem Solving in the School of Engineering, the Royal Melbourne
Institute of Technology (RMIT). Iouri is the author of a book on systematic
thinking and problem solving and over 80 peer-reviewed papers, and has been
granted 24 patents. His research interests include engineering creativity and
problem solving, as well as novel methods and technologies for education. Iouri
is a TRIZ Master (MATRIZ Diploma 75). He is also the recipient of numerous
awards including the 2006 Carrick Citation for Outstanding Contribution to
Student Learning, the Inaugural Vice-Chancellor’s Distinguished Teaching
Award (2007), and the Australian Award for Teaching Excellence (2009). In
2016 the Australian government awarded him with the Australian National
Senior Teaching Fellowship.
Victor Berdonosov is a professor of Komsomolsk-na- Amure State University.
In 1971 he graduated with honors from the Leningrad Institute of Aerospace
Instrumentation with specialization in Engineer in Computer Science. He got
his Ph.D. on Radiolocation and Radio Navigation. In 1999 he became a project
leader of “Application of TRIZ in Higher Education”. He has served as the chair
of “Design and TRIZ” Department. In 2004 he founded the TRIZ-Amur—a
public organization aimed at introducing TRIZ to the public. He also has a
certificate of TRIZ Master (number 84). Since 2003 he’s been taking part in
international scientific conferences, both in Russia and abroad. Berdonosov is
the author of several monographs, more than a dozen teaching aids in different
languages, and more than a hundred scientific publications.
Shqipe Buzuku is a doctoral researcher in Industrial Engineering and
Management, at LUT with a major in Systems Engineering. She received her
master’s degree in 2010 from University of Pristina, Faculty of Natural Science
in Chemistry and Chemical Engineering. In 2014, she received a grant for
Ph.D. studies at LUT from the Finnish Cultural Foundation and in 2016, a
grant from Foundation for Economic Development in Finland. Her research
interest focuses on design-thinking and problem solving, applying systems
design methods with their applications including knowledge management, deci-
sion-making in systems, and on process engineering. In 2014, she was a visiting
researcher at South China University of Technology in Guangzhou, China; in
2015, at University of Washington College of Engineering in Seattle, WA, USA;
and in 2018 at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany. She has authored a
number of scientific articles published in several journals and conferences.
Notes on Contributors xvii
LUT. The focus areas of his research are function analysis, TRIZ, inventive
methods and Computer Aided-Design in the conceptual design stage. In addi-
tion, he works as the lead developer at CompMechLab Inc., in Saint-Petersburg,
Russia, that works in the aeronautical industry.
Kalle Elfvengren is an adjunct professor at the School of Engineering Science,
LUT, Finland. He has authored over 80 international scientific papers that have
been published in various books and journals during his academic career.
Currently, he works as a project researcher and is involved in several teaching
and research activities at the university. His research interests include process
development in the health-care sector, management of technology, and risk
management. His interests also cover decision-analysis, creativity tools, such as
TRIZ, and the fuzzy front end of the innovation process. Elfvengren is also a
board member of the ETRIA.
Jukka Hallikas D.Sc. (Tech), is Professor of Supply Chain Management at
the LUT. His research interests focuses on the purchasing and supply chain
management, risk management in supply chains, and innovation management.
He has authored several scientific articles, books, and book chapters on these
topics which have appeared in several publications.
Jens Hammer is director of Digital Business Innovation at Schaeffler AG and
Ph.D. student at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg. He is
MA TRIZ Level 3 and has the accreditation for MA TRIZ-Level 1 trainings. He
received his diploma in Mechanical Engineering in 2010 and his master’s degree
in Industrial Engineering in 2013.
Claudia Hentschel Prof. Dr.-Ing., Germany, first studied Economics, switched
to Mechanical Engineering, and received an Industrial Engineering Diploma of
TU Berlin, Germany, and Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées ENPC Paris,
France. Engineer by profession, she turned to Fraunhofer Gesellschaft/TU
Berlin and worked five years as academic assistant, researcher and consultant at
the Institute for Assembly Technology and Factory Organization IWF at
Production Technology Center PTZ, Berlin, and at the Mechanical Engineering
Institute of Technion, Haifa, Israel. After her doctorate in Disassembly in 1996,
she started an industrial career at Siemens AG, Information and Communication
Mobile, Munich. Since 2000, she is Professor of Innovation, Technology and
Production Management at University of Applied Sciences HTW, Berlin, where
she holds several functions in administration. Her teaching and research focuses
on technical management, systems engineering, product and process design and
development, with particular attention to the management of inventions.
xx Notes on Contributors
xxvii
xxviii List of Figures
Language: English
By RAYMOND F. JONES
Illustrated by FINLAY
Sam turned back to look at the robot machine and the swarming
technicians. "Yes, you could," he said. "All of us have gone through
heartbreak time and again the past five years, watching them blow
up, or fall back and burn in the atmosphere because the motors didn't
ignite. Or seeing them get all the way to the moon and have some
five-dollar transistor conk out. But we always have at it again. You
will, too. You're new, but you're one of us now. You never back out
when you've come this far."
Watching the Prospector, Jim knew Sam was right. It had taken some
persuasion to bring him to this point, however. Until a couple of years
ago he had believed he would be content with ivory-tower plastics
research for the rest of his life. The persuasion had been applied
when Mary's brother, Allan Wright, had made the astronaut team.
Allan and Jim had grown up together. There was no other person Jim
felt closer to except Mary and their two children. Allan had dreamed
of space when they were kids, and when he was fifteen, he said, "I'm
going out there. I don't know how. But, somehow, I'm going out there."
Now, he had been selected to captain the first Apollo voyage. He had
been born for that purpose, he said.
But while he was still in the general pool of astronauts he had opened
his campaign to get Jim into the space program. "They need the best
brains they can get," Allan said. "You haven't got any right to sit in a
musty old plastics lab while guys with half your ability try to get us into
space. NASA will take you tomorrow!"
Jim didn't try to tell him that his plastics lab wasn't exactly musty, or
that he didn't think of himself as one of the best brains in the country.
But Mary sided with Allan; she was almost as excited about space as
he was. In the end, Jim went to NASA. Within days, he had been
assigned to head the development of the Prospector chemical
mechanization.
It had been something of a jolt to pull up all the roots he had so
carefully put down for him and his family, and move to the hectic,
bustling, space-frontier community of the Center. But he wasn't sorry.
It put something new in the blood, something men had never known
before.
Space!
The great Saturn lifted slowly, on a vast blossom of fire, with snowy
lox streaming down its sides. Then it was gone, a twinkle of fire high
above, among the stars. That was all.
Mary and Jim Cochran continued to stare at the fading twinkle, and
finally they turned away. Allan had obtained permission to be in the
blockhouse during the firing. It hadn't been necessary for Jim to be
there. He didn't want to know the instant-by-instant telemetry reports
which told whether or not the flight was successful. Sam or Allan
would call him when they knew. That would be soon enough for him.
"Let's drive down to the beach and watch the moon from there," said
Mary. "We can't just turn around and go home, like—like nothing had
happened."
Jim smiled in the darkness. Mary was as eager as he was for the
success of the flight. And she didn't have his fear of failure, that kept
him from wanting to know the maybe-yes, maybe-no indications that
the telemetry would first show.
"Sure," he said, "that's a good place to watch it."
The moon.
They were still in the blockhouse, but the tension was relaxed. They
were talking and watching the meters and cathode ray tubes without
the strain and fear of failure. Jim knew the answer even before Sam
and Allan walked up to him and slapped him on the back.
"Where the devil did you go?" said Sam. "I thought you were going to
be right behind me when we fired, and you weren't here at all!"
"It's like your first baby, you want to be there, and you don't. Was it a
good shot?"
"Was it a good shot?" Allan's face became ecstatic. "We've never had
a better one. On course all the way!"
The Project Director, Emil Hennesey was behind them. His face was
bleak. "I expected you to be here for the firing, Cochran," he said. "It
seems to display little interest in your end of the project that you didn't
feel it necessary to show up."
Jim looked at him steadily and shrugged without answer. Hennesey
was one guy whose presence on the space team Jim couldn't figure
out. He was an ex-Major, and he had no capacity for dreaming. Men,
machines, transistors, rockets—they were all the same thing, merely
objects to be made to obey.
"You are aware of your next sequence of duties, I trust?" said
Hennesey.
Jim nodded curtly. "I'll be ready."
Sixty-six hours to the moon. That's what it takes with marginal escape
velocity and free-fall conditions. But it was really five hundred
thousand years and sixty-six hours, Jim thought. Surely there hadn't
been a single hour in all that time when someone, somewhere on
earth had not felt the longing to solve the secret mystery of the moon.
Now they were about to find the answer. But what would they have
when they found it? They would know that the surface dust of the
moon consisted of certain percentages of silicates and oxides. They
would know that the under layers were composed of rocks, maybe of
granite or limestone or basalt. They would determine how much of
each.
And then it would be over. The quest of the ages would be answered
with a few simple statements that could be obtained in any high-
school chemistry lab—if the lab were on the moon.
Jim Cochran felt there had to be more to it than that.
Why do dogs howl at the moon on winter nights?
Why do men say that madness of the mind is lunacy?
Why must planting be done in the right phase of the moon?
Little sleep was had by any of the crew during the next two nights,
even though the instrument stage of the ship was now completely
inert except for occasional telemetry signals that were fed to the
computers for course checking and correction. The ship was simply
falling on its own momentum.
Six hours before moonfall, activities in the tracking center accelerated
and the tension increased. There was no question of hitting the
moon; the landing had to be made safe for the cargo of instruments.
Jim Cochran watched the operators during this period. He told
himself he didn't understand it, but he had actually learned a great
deal of electronics during the past two years. He had had to in order
to design and operate a chemical laboratory 240,000 miles away.
The television screens came on, showing the pock-marked surface of
the moon as the ship orbited. The thrill and the fear of the great
unknown began to rise in Jim's throat. By the silence in the room, he
was sure the others sensed it, too.
Abruptly, the braking command was given and the ship began to fall
out of orbit towards the planned landing in the Sea of Rains. On the
screens, the images swelled as the ship plummeted faster. In one
corner could be seen the spring-loaded extension legs, like those of
some great spider. It seemed impossible that these could cushion the
violent shock of landing.
The sudden surge of a retro rocket and the blast of moondust blinded
the television eye, but there was a sense of crazy, rocking, rolling
motion. Then the eye went dead.
Jim almost cried out. The ship couldn't have crashed.
There were hours of testing and calibration yet to be done before the
Prospector could be used for its primary mission. Hundreds of
electronic circuits had to be checked to see that they survived the
takeoff and landing without becoming distorted or inoperative.
Jim went home for the rest of the night. When he returned the next
morning Sam reported that all circuits were go, and the Prospector
was his.
He had operated the laboratory in the Prospector many times, either
on a mock-up or from this control panel while the Prospector was in
the hangar. But he couldn't keep the faint tremor from his hand as he
reached for the first control that would manipulate the machine on the
moon.
The drill had been extended to operating position, but the head had
not yet been energized. Jim touched it to the fine dust of the floor of
the Sea of Rains. The drill went quickly to a depth of eighteen inches
in the dust before it struck something firmer.
"That kills the theory about eighty feet of that stuff, anyway," said Sam
as he read the instruments.
Jim was not interested in depth at this time. He fed some of the
surface material into the laboratory and set the controls to run the
preprogrammed analysis. They waited minutes; then the analysis
began to appear in cryptic symbols on a paper tape.
Jim glanced at it and frowned.
"What's the matter? Isn't it working right?" Sam asked anxiously.
Jim hesitated. "It indicates the presence of several silicates, some
carbonates, and a high percentage of oxides. These are mostly of
sodium, calcium, and iron, as you might expect. But there's
something wrong with your calibration. The atomic and molecular
characteristics aren't coming through right."
"The boys ran checks on the standard samples aboard the
Prospector last night," said Sam. "The results tallied exactly. I'll show
you the tapes."
Jim waited, puzzled, while Sam brought up the check tapes. When he
saw them, he shook his head. "There's a standard calcium carbonate
sample carried aboard the Prospector. Here's a calcium carbonate
picked off the surface. You can see the difference yourself. The
nominal analysis is the same, but the atomic weights and the energy
levels are just slightly different. That doesn't make sense unless your
circuits are out of calibration."
"Let's run another standard sample," said Sam.
Within a few minutes the calibration check had been repeated. Jim
held up the tape. Sam peered over his shoulder. "Just like the first
one," said Sam. "Nothing's wrong with the circuits. Maybe you've got
some new stuff there, that's never been identified before."
"That's hardly possible," said Jim. "There aren't any new elements in
the places where sodium and calcium and silica are supposed to be.
Yet, I don't understand how this can be. If the atomic weights are
different, and the energy levels are different, they have to be different
elements. It doesn't make sense."
"Well, why don't we push on," said Sam, "that is, if you've completed
the surface sampling in this spot. Some samples at lower depths may
give other indications."
Jim agreed. He drove the drill deeper into the face of the moon. At
ten-foot intervals he removed samples and ran them through the
analyzer. The results were the same down to the hundred-foot level.
All results showed common chemical elements with slightly variant
atomic characteristics.
Which made them different chemical elements!
After six hours, Jim stood up from the console and shook his head
wearily. "It's no good, Sam. There's something wrong that I can't put
my finger on. If it isn't in the circuits, I don't know where it is. But
these readings just aren't right. There's no use going deeper until we
find out where the error is."
Sam's face was somber. "There just isn't any error. There can't be.
Unless it was made by whoever put the moon together—"
"Please make a complete check of every analyzer and telemetry
circuit tonight, and we'll try again tomorrow. I want to think about this."
He thought about it, and he dreamed about it. And along about three
o'clock in the morning he sat bolt upright in bed and stared at the dim
moonlight on the opposite wall of the bedroom.
It wasn't possible, he told himself audibly. It just wasn't possible!
Mary stirred and leaned on one elbow beside him. "What's the matter.
Are you having nightmares?"
"Yeah—yeah, I guess I am. I'll be back in a minute, honey." He got up
and padded to the door. "I've got to make a phone call."
"At this time of night?"
But Jim was gone. He turned on the hall light and dialed Sam's
number. After a long time Sam answered sleepily.
"Wake up!" said Jim. "I've just figured it out!"
"Who the devil—? Oh, it's you, Jim. Figured out what? Do you know
what time it is."
"Do you know the results of your calibration re-check?"
"How would I know that? I've got the night crew on it, but I didn't ask
them to report to me in the middle of the night. Go back to bed, and
let's talk about it in the morning."
"They're not going to find anything wrong, Sam."
"I could have told you that."
"But the elements of the moon are different—and there's only one
explanation."
"What?"
"Think about it a minute, Sam. We take a spectrograph of the sun,
and we find the same elements that are here on earth. We turn it on
Alpha Centauri and find the same thing. We turn it to the farthest
stars we can find that give enough light to record by. Always the
same. Calcium is calcium, whether it's on the earth or on a star a half
billion light years away."
"So?" Sam's voice was tired, and he sounded as if he was listening
only because Jim was too good a friend to tell to go to hell for calling
in the middle of the night.
"So? So what?" Sam repeated.
"So we go to the moon," said Jim, "and all of a sudden calcium isn't
calcium, and the sodium on the moon isn't the same as the sodium
on earth and on the sun and on Alpha Centauri and the stars a half
billion light years away. Don't you see what that means!"
"No, I guess not," said Sam dully. "Maybe in the morning—"
"It means the moon just doesn't belong, Sam! It means the moon is
completely foreign to anything in the Solar System, in the whole
galaxy—in any galaxy we have been able to analyze. It means the
moon has come from somewhere else, from a region of space where
atoms and electrons are not even the same as atoms and electrons
here. It must be a somewhere that's so far away it's beyond the edge
of space as we know it!"
"I'll get dressed and come over," said Sam.
Mary made chocolate and toast, and they sat around the kitchen
table thinking and talking of the awesome implications of Jim's theory.
"If what you say is true," said Sam, "it might be that the slightest
contact with any substance of the moon would be sheer poison to a
human being. A returning vessel could never be permitted to enter
the earth's atmosphere, and decontamination would become one of
the major branches of science."
"That's entirely possible. It would complicate enormously the
problems of establishing a moon-base. A speck of moondust inside
the base might be as lethal as an unshielded reactor."
Mary was looking out the kitchen window toward the thin crescent of
moon that was setting over the city. She thought of Allan, who would
soon be voyaging to that alien world. "It's like a trap up there in the
sky. We should never have tried to reach it."
"No—it's not like that at all," said Jim vigorously. "We'll solve whatever
problems we find there. But think of it! We don't have to build a ship
capable of crossing billions of light years of space to see what's out
there. Something from out there has come to us and parked right in
our own front yard. We have a thousand times more reason to go
now!"
Sam toyed with his toast and dunked it in the chocolate. "I think you
ought to keep it quiet—until we really know, don't you."
"Why? I'll run some more tests, sure. I'll plug every loophole there can
possibly be. But unless I find something new I'm going to announce it.
Why shouldn't I?"
"I don't think Hennesey will like it, for one thing. Too sensational.
Even when we actually land there and confirm your analyses by on-
the-spot checks—it's still only a theory that the moon doesn't belong
to this galaxy. You'll never be able to prove that."
"What we've found already is proof enough!"
"Not for Hennesey. He'll ask to see the shipping manifest by which
the moon was transferred here. You know Hennesey."
"Sure, I know Hennesey," said Jim bitterly. "And he doesn't count. Not
in something like this. This is big, and important, and I'm going to
announce it. I want the credit for discovering it. It'll be called
Cochran's Theory, and some University will offer me at least an
honorary Ph.D. Is that bad?"
Sam shook his head. "Of course it's not bad. But I wonder what the
public reaction will be like, and how about Congress—especially if
this business about possible poisoning from moondust turns out to be
correct? There might be a lot of pressure to cut funds and maybe
cancel the whole moon project."
"If moondust is lethal, there's no better time to be warned against it
than right now!"