Three

In Darmstadt they make it one atom at a time, and one at a time it goes, in seconds or less. To find how hard it holds its six they blow it, new, down a tube past a warm wall where anything incomplete sticks at first touch, the bare ones, the ones with one to five, and on to gold chilled toward the cold end where only the whole can arrive.

Tungsten, from the row above, got there one time in five. Seaborgium, one in twenty-five. Three in the whole cold array, three small decays on a gold plate, known by what they threw off going.

From that, a number. Four less, give or take two. The first time down that column the heavier hand holds weaker: the inner electrons so fast they pull in close and the outer ones, the ones that do the holding, loosen. Relativity, at a table laid for six.

What I keep is how they knew. Not from the ones that dropped on the warm wall. From how few kept all six long enough to reach the cold.