Booby Prize by George O. Smith

In the days that followed, Peter Mansfield re-read all the books he could find on binding energies. He studied meson theory and he computed packing fraction energies. He bombarded elements as pure as he could find, and he measured the resultant gamma radiation as close as he could measure it. Something was missing, all right. The binding force radiated off in a random pattern that he could not collect and direct through his parabolic reflector. Neutrinos were spinning off at any odd angle; positron holes sucked in corrective energies; he even detected the evanescent negatron as it came into being and dissipated in a gout of annihilation energy.

He caught what looked like the evidence of the proposed but never detected anti-neutron, although he himself was far from sure just how anything could consist of factors which were opposite to zero charge and positive mass. He looked into the abstract often, and at one period he tried to reconcile the rather high-altitude suggestion that the positron, the positive electron, was equivalent to the usual electron traveling backwards in time. All the math available said that there was no way of telling one concept from the other; that the effects of a positron would be the same as the effect of an electron in reversed timefield. This completely abstract concept also covered the negatron and the anti-neutron.