PART 190

He took a rack of test tubes.

''From it's indication it seems the fragment has a thin film of some thing slightly oily on it.''

He applied pure water to two of the test tubes and with a pair of twizzers dropped the fragment into the first test tube and brought the mixture to a full boil for about eight minutes.

Then with the twizzers removed the fragment and dropped it in the second test tube to cool off.