The biologist R. A. Janek has said that increasing vision is "increasingly expensive." He meant by this that any machine to enable men to see finer or fainter details increased in cost faster than it increased in resolving power. This hard fact of research was discovered first by the astronomers, who learned painfully that construction of a two-hundred-inch telescope mirror was far more difficult and expensive than construction of a one-hundred-inch mirror.

In biology this was equally true. A light microscope, for example, was a small device easily carried by a technician in one hand. It could outline a cell, and for this ability a scientist paid about $1,000.

An electron microscope could outline small structures within the cell. The EM was a large console and cost up to $100,000.

In contrast, X-ray crystallography could outline individual molecules. It came as close to photographing atoms as science could manage. But the device was the size of a large automobile, filled an entire room, required specially trained operators, and demanded a computer for interpretation of results.

This was because X-ray crystallography did not produce a direct visual picture of the object being studied.. It was not, in this sense, a microscope, and it operated differently from either the light or electron microscope.

It produced a diffraction pattern instead of an image. This appeared as a pattern of geometric dots, in itself rather mysterious, on a photographic plate. By using a computer, the pattern of dots could be analyzed and the structure deduced.

It was a relatively new science, retaining an old-fashioned name. Crystals were seldom used any more; the term "X ray crystallography" dated from the days when crystals were chosen as test objects. Crystals had regular structures and thus the pattern of dots resulting from a beam of X rays shot at a crystal were easier to analyze. But in recent years the X rays had been shot at irregular objects of varying sorts. The X rays were bounced off at different angles. A computer could "read" the photographic plate and measure the angles, and from this work back to the shape of the object that had caused such a reflection.

The computer at Wildfire performed the endless and tedious calculations. All this, if done by manual human calculation, would take years, perhaps centuries. But the computer could do it in seconds.

"How are you feeling, Mr. Jackson?" Hall asked.

The old man blinked his eyes and looked at Hall, in his plastic suit.

"All right. Not the best, but all right."

He gave a wry grin.

"Up to talking a little?"

"About what?

"Piedmont."

"What about it?"

"That night," Hall said. "The night it all happened."

"Well, I tell you. I've lived in Piedmont all my life. Traveled a bit—been to LA, and even up to Frisco. Went as far east as St. Louis, which was far enough for me. But Piedmont, that's where I've lived. And I have to tell you—"

"The night it all happened," Hall repeated.