Slimer

were doing there.

It was a big room and obviously a laboratory of some sort. It was filled with all kinds of scientific equipment — microscopes, racks of test tubes, sterilising cabinets, humidifiers, refrigerators and various other things he couldn’t identify. The only touch of colour amidst the oppressive whiteness was provided by several wall charts featuring graphs and diagrams, and what appeared to be a piece of abstract sculpture made up of hundreds of garishly painted ping pong balls. The latter stood on a dais in the centre of the room.

The others spilled in behind him and stared around. ‘Wow,’ said Rochelle, ‘it’s like something out of a sci-fi movie. All that’s missing is the men in the white coats.’ ‘What on earth is a lab like this doing on an oil rig?’ asked Linda.

‘No mystery,’ said Alex. ‘They use it for analysing mineral samples, oil shale, mud and stuff like that.’

Paul shook his head. ‘No. This is a medical lab. I recognise a lot of the gear. When I got out of college I spent a year working as a lab technician in a medical school. And it fits in with that air-lock thing out in the corridor. It’s some kind of safety device to stop bacteria getting out…’

‘Oh my God!’ cried Chris ‘you mean this place might be full of dangerous germs?’

Paul couldn’t help smiling. She had a fetish against any kind of pollution and an accompanying mania about personal hygiene. ‘Take it easy,’ he said. ‘No need to jump to any wild conclusions. The air-lock is probably just a precaution. Who knows, it may be there to stop contamination coming in from outside.’

‘I hope you’re right,’ she said. ‘I just wish we could find someone to talk to. Where is everydne? What happened to them?’

‘Whatever happened they certainly left in a hurry,’ said Linda. ‘Look at this.’ She pointed at a coffee cup sitting on one of the tables. ‘It’s half full.’

‘Gee, just like the Marie Celeste,' said Rochelle, and gave a theatrical shudder. ‘That ship where all the people disappeared right in the middle of their meal.’

‘It was called the Mary Celeste, not Marie,’ said Mark. ‘And it wasn’t such a big mystery as everyone thinks it was.’

‘Oh yeah? How do you know?’ demanded Rochelle.

‘Yeah, pinhead’ said Alex belligerently, ‘What the hell do you know about what really happened? You got psychic powers like your old lady too?’

They all looked expectantly at Mark, including Paul. Mark gave a resigned sigh. ‘When I was a kid my father told me the story of the Mary Celeste. We were out alone on the yacht at the time, miles froi^i anywhere. He wanted to scare me, I think, and he did a damned good job of it. Every-time I went out on the yacht with him after that — and he was always making me go on trips with him — I couldn’t get the story out of my mind. Whenever we lost sight of land my imagination used to run riot. I expected to see God knows what come out of the water, or out of the sky, and grab us. So eventually, when I got older, I decided to do some checking up on the Celeste story…’

‘How?’ asked Paul.

Mark shrugged. ‘Easy. The records are still on file with Lloyds of London. I arranged to go look at them. Turns out that the whole Celeste thing got wildly exaggerated by the newspapers at the time, and by writers since then. For example, the legend has it that all the lifeboats were on the ship when it was found but that isn’t true. One of the boats was missing, which led the official enquiry to conclude that the ship encountered bad weather and the crew panicked and abandoned her in the mistaken belief she was sinking. There was certainly a lot of evidence that the ship had been through a storm…’

‘So there goes another illusion,’ said Paul with a grin. ‘But it just goes to prove we shouldn’t let ourselves get spooked by this place. We stay calm and loose until we figure out what the set-up is here.’

‘Yes sir, Mr Boss-Man,’ said Alex sarcastically. ‘Whatever you say.’ Then suddenly he bent down behind a chair and picked something up off the floor. Paul saw it was a white lab coat. And as Alex held it up a bra and a pair of white lace briefs fell out. Leering, Alex snatched up the briefs. ‘Hey! They got women here.’ To Paul’s disgust he put them to his nose and made exaggerated sniffing noises. ‘Mmm-mm, I’d sure like to meet the owner of these. You think they had some kind of orgy in here?’

‘More likely she took them off because her clothes had become contaminated,’ said Paul coldly.

Alex dropped the underwear as if it had burnt his fingers. He took a quick step backwards and stared at Paul with wide, scared eyes. ‘Hey, what kind of shit are you pulling? Contaminated? How come?’

Paul couldn’t resist twisting the knife. ‘It’s possible. There could have been a release of dangerous bacteria in here. Why else would someone strip off in the middle of a lab? Perhaps that’s the reason this place seems deserted.’ ‘You don’t really believe that, do you Paul?’ asked Chris in a panicky voice.

Paul immediately regretted his words. For the sake of scoring a cheap shot against Alex he’d made things worse. He was supposed to be calming their fears, not scaring them even more. ‘No, I guess not,’ he told her reassuringly. ‘If there was anything loose in the air I think this whole area would have been automatically sealed off. That airlock outside is probably designed to do just that.’

‘Which still leaves us with the question of why the owner of these clothes took them all off,’ said Linda. ‘Look, her shoes are here too.’

‘Perhaps there was an outbreak of something but it’s all dissipated now,’ suggested Mark.

‘Yeah,’ said Paul doubtfully. ‘Even so maybe we should be careful about touching anything.’ The latter was directed at Linda who was crouching down beside the clothes that Alex had dropped and examining them. ‘Hey,’ she said, ‘There’s an identification label on this coat. And a photograph too.’

Paul leaned over her shoulder and stared at the plastic covered badge she was pointing at. The small photo showed a very attractive blonde woman in her late 20s. He could just make out the name. ‘Carol Soames,’ he read aloud. ‘Doctor Carol Soames. I wonder where she is now.’

7 wonder if she’s still alive,’ said Chris darkly.

‘Hey, has anyone but me noticed something weird about those clothes?’ asked Rochelle.

‘Like what?’ asked Paul.

‘The underwear was inside the coat.’

Paul frowned. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes, she’s right,’ said Linda. ‘They fell out of the coat. Now why would anyone go to the trouble of doing that, especially if they were undressing in a hurry?’

‘Who gives a shit?’ muttered Alex, still casting anxious looks at his fingers as if expecting to see signs of contamination. ‘I just hope I get to run into her before she has a chance to get dressed again.’

‘God, you’re so predictable, Alex,’ said Chris with a grimace. ‘There’s more to life than sex, you know…’

‘Yeah?’ Alex’s smile was ugly. ‘How would you know? You’ve never slept with a real man.’

As he said this he turned and gave Mark a challenging stare but Mark just sighed and looked away.

‘Okay,’ said Paul quickly, ‘Can we save the arguments for later? Right now we’ve got more important things to worry about.’

‘Yes,’ said Linda, ‘Like where’s the nearest bathroom. I’m bursting.’

‘So am I,’ said Rochelle. ‘And I’m starving.’

‘Then let’s get moving. We’ll finish checking out this floor then go down to the next one. There’s got to be somebody here.’ ‘And what if we don’t find anyone?’ asked Chris.

‘Then we’ll just make ourselves at home until someone turns up,’ said Paul.

‘Paul, what do you think this is?’ Mark was standing next to the sculpture made of different coloured ping pong balls. It was at least eight feet high.

‘Its obvious, jerk,’ said Alex before Paul could reply, ‘It’s a model of a molecule. The balls are supposed to be atoms. We had one in our science room at high school.’

Paul shook his head. ‘No, I don’t think it is.’

‘Then what is it, wise guy?’

‘I think it’s a model of a chromosome. See how the rows of ping pong balls spiral round each other. That’s the famous “double helix”. I think each represents a separate gene.’

There was silence in the room while they all stared at the model. Then Chris said, in a bleak voice, ‘Genetic engineering.’