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Part One

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There was a ringing sound Having spent half an hour exchanging rather forced, joking remarks to calm their nerves, the candidates were now silent In spite of their usual self-control, all of the of the heart The heavy door of the institute was pushed open by an usher in his vest a dark corridor and then entered the large amphitheatre where the examinations were to take place There were thirteen of thee from thirty-five to fifty

Faas one of the first to enter the arena Like the others, he was not carrying any docuarithm tables and even simple calculation rules were prohibited For this final examination they were only allowed to use the resources of their ination

This examination, or rather this co the best of the thirteen, was the final round in a serious assess on for three months and included an impressive series of tests, some of which had been eliminatory

The candidates, ere nu, found theher mathematics, theoretical and experiy and questions on diverse branches of biological sciences In short an ie of the most noble and most diverse fields in which the human mind can be trained

As the average level was very high (they all cauished theinal theories), each of the exaht with difficulties Not only did they require the solving of challenging problems, but they also demanded a considerable personal contribution, so much so that the compositions were of doctoral thesis standard Thus they were authorised to make use, at their convenience, of all sorts of tables and calculating machines and could even use the Institute’s computers and consult all the works in the library, which contains ale It was not a question in any way of craenuine scientific knowledge The subjects were established by an asse undisputed world authorities, known as the Nobels, that is to say those who had received the supre awarded the prize

During the three long months of the preliminary examinations, the candidates remained cloistered in the Institute, with access to laboratories, computers and the library, but without any co in cells which were monastic in appearance, constructed for this event in the sa

The examiners were also Nobels No one else could have replaced theiven the transcendant nature of the subjects chosen by theed without leniency, imbued with their immense sense of responsibility The several thousand candidates who had presented theradually The first three compositions, those of mathematics, theoretical physics and chemistry had narrowed the field irade of sixteen was eliminated This was the case for most of them The rest, about a hundred, were subjected to all the following exaiven permission to leave the Institute, while the Nobel jury in its turn retired to a cell to discuss its verdicts

The results of these debates were published a few days ago Only thirteen were fortunate enough to qualify This had been clear since the beginning of the competition, as there were only thirteen places Faas a the chosen ones

He reached the bench which had been assigned to him His co the distribution of the envelopes containing the topics The great amphitheatre, which could hold about a thousand people, seeely empty The thirteen survivors had been placed as far as possible fro (the nature of the final examination made such actions pointless and the honesty of the candidates was not in doubt), but to allow the on his shoulders in an unpleasant way In spite of his experience of innumerable examinations which he had passed before, and all brilliantly, he felt a sudden attack of nerves, the like of which he had not experienced since he was young He observed his co to detect if they felt the same unease

The two nearest to hi: Yranne and Mrs Betty Han They had attended the same university previously and had never lost contact with each other Yranne was a pure mathematician, a Frenchman, who often stayed in the United States Fawell, an American himself, called on his talents from time to time to resolve certain difficulties in calculation, which he happened to encounter in the course of his research He always appreciated collaborating with Yranne due to his logical mind and the force of his deductions

Fawell’s speciality was nuclear physics On leaving university he had initially worked under the direction of one of the greatest masters, the Nobel called O’Kearn Then, by his own efforts, he had got hi discoveries concerning anti-particles Like Yranne he was a little over forty, the average age for the coulations fixed strict limits for the candidates: thirty-five and fifty years The tasks to be carried out by the thirteen chosen ones, and especially the final winner, were not co, nor with the sclerosis of extree

Mrs Betty Han, Betty to those who knew her inti on a lower tier She was the only woive rise to several malicious remarks by the other candidates who had been elis here: the conscience and objectivity of the Nobel jury had never been generally in doubt Faas happy and surprised to see her there because he had been afraid that she had been eliminated He certainly considered her to be of superior intelligence, but h she had started by undertaking serious scientific studies, she had abandoned the colours, in order to tackle other fields considered frivolous by certain scholars Thus she had become infatuated with literature, only to turn soon after to philosophy Finally she had devoted herself to psychology She had gained significant honours in this field, but many of her forence That she had been successful in the pure science exan of her profound intelligence, and of her diligence too, for she had relearned long-forgotten subjects during the feeeks prior to th

e competition