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It was designed for microanalysis the quantitative and qualitative analysis of tiny quantities of matter. He swung out a miniaturized Challis fractionator. He inserted half a droplet of the supposed vaccine and plugged in the fractionator's power cable. It began to hum. The grid operator ground his teeth. "This is a fractionator," said Calhoun.
He looked once at the grid operator and then looked away. There was sweat on the man's forehead. Calhoun said casually: "The substance that makes the vaccine do what it does do is in the vaccine, obviously. So the fractionator is separating the different substances that are mixed together." He added, "It doesn't look much like chromatography, but the principle's the same. It's an old, old trick!"
He'd gotten an index-of-refraction reading on crystals too small to be seen except through a microscope. That information, plus specific gravity, plus crystalline form, plus rate of diffusion in a fractionator, went to the stores of information in the computer's memory banks somewhere between the ship's living quarters and its outer skin.
He examined the dried glass plates from the vacuum drier. The fractionator turned itself off and he focused on and studied the slide it yielded. He inspected a sample of the dust he'd gotten from the garments that had been sprayed at the south gate. The dust contained common dust particles and pollen particles and thread particles and all sorts of microscopic debris.
In the fractionator slide he could get more information the rate-of-diffusion of a substance in solution ruled out all but a certain number of compounds that it could be. The two items together gave a definite clue. Another voice from the speaker: "Headquarters! Paras are massing by the north gate! They act ugly! They're trying to force their way into Government Center!
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