Epidemics -- Fiction; Physicians -- Fiction; Science fiction; Space colonies -- Fiction; Space medicine -- Fiction
But his hands were steady as he drew a sample of a few drops from the
vaccine bottle. He lowered a wall panel and behind it there was a
minute but astonishingly complete biological laboratory. 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. "It spins a biological sample
through a chromatograph gele."
The small device hummed more shrilly. The sound rose in pitch until it
was a whine, and then a whistle, and then went up above the highest
pitch to which human ears are sensitive. Murgatroyd scratched at his
ears and complained:
"_Chee! Chee! Chee!_"
"It won't be long," Calhoun assured him. 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!"
It was, of course. That different dissolved substances can be
separated by their different rates of diffusion through wetted powders
and geles had been known since the early twentieth century, but was
largely forgotten because not often needed. But the Med Service did
not abandon processes solely because they were not new.
Calhoun took another droplet of the vaccine and put it between two
plates of glass, to spread out. He separated them and put them in a
vacuum drier.
"I'm not going to try an analysis," he observed. "It would be silly to
try to do anything so complicated if I only need to identify
something. Which I hope is all I do need!"
He brought out an extremely small vacuum device. He cleaned the
garments he'd just removed, drawing every particle of dust from them.
The dust appeared in a transparent tube which was part of the machine.
"I was sprayed with something I suspect the worst of," he added. "The
spray left dust behind. I _think_ it made sure that anybody who left
Government Center would surely be a para. It's another reason for
haste."
The grid operator ground his teeth again. He did not really hear
Calhoun. He was deep in a private hell of shame and horror.
The inside of the ship was quiet, but it was not tranquil. Calhoun
worked calmly enough, but there were times when his inwards seemed to
knot and cramp him, which was not the result of any infection or
contagion or demoniac possession, but was reaction to thoughts of the
imprisoned para in the laboratory. That man had gobbled the
unspeakable because he could not help himself, but he was mad with
rage and shame over what he had become. Calhoun could become like
that--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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