The sun had come out.
CHAPTER III.
Persikov Catches It What had happened was this.
When the Professor put his discerning eye to the microscope, he noticed for the first time in his life that one particular ray in the coloured tendril stood out more vividly and boldly than the others.
This ray was bright red and stuck out of the tendril like the tiny point of a needle, say.
Thus, as ill luck would have it, this ray attracted the attention of the great man's experienced eye for several seconds.
In it, the ray, the Professor detected something a thousand times more significant and important than the ray itself, that precarious offspring accidentally engendered by the movement of a microscope mirror and lens.
Due to the assistant calling the Professor away, some amoebas had been subject to the action of the ray for an hour-and-a-half and this is what had happened: whereas the blobs of amoebas on the plate outside the ray simply lay there limp and helpless, some very strange phenomena were taking place on the spot over which the sharp red sword was poised.