would be Rolsom screaming blue murder. Skrote said, 'When the director arrives take him immediately to Section M. I'll do what I can from here.'
'Hyman, I think you'd--'
Skrote canceled him out but didn't replace the handset. He watched the light on the panel winking futilely. After thirty seconds it ceased. They were on their way. Get in that launch and get over here. The web is woven and the spider is waiting.
On one of the screens he saw Fonkle emerge from the guardpost and look anxiously toward the landing jetty. Under the arc lights his tan was the color of bad meat. On the larger screen the Meeks slept on, probably forever. The needle on the oxygen gauge stood dead still at zero. They were breathing pure methane.
Skrote flexed his right hand, circled the numbered buttons, hesitated, then like a cobra striking punched up a view of the maternity ward. It looked peaceful. A shaded light burned in the night nurse's station. The two rows of beds on either side of the ward contained seventeen women, one of them Natassya, but he didn't want to know which one. She was not his anymore. She was an incubatory receptacle for an experiment in genetics. An experiment he had helped create. She would give birth to his monster-child. Their love would bring forth horror. He had worked for five years in order to destroy the only human being who had meant anything to him in his adult life.
The screens blurred into prismatic fragments and Skrote realized that he was weeping. A momentous revelation made him stop and blink the tears away. He had regained his sanity. After five years of madness. So real and painful that it was like someone twisting a knife in his belly . . . and he came to recognize the long gradual decline that had brought him to accept these obscene experiments as if they were the most natural, logical thing in the world.
How could it have happened? He had never wished ill or harm to another living soul and yet he had obeyed, acquiesced, played his part in a scheme so monstrous it froze the blood. Where had he, Cyrus Ingram Skrote, been all those years? Not here--not him. An imposter had been walking around wearing his face, dressed in his clothes, walking in his shoes. It had to be--because the real Cy Skrote, the one from Portland, Maine, would never in a million years have participated in such loathsome depravities.
He must have been literally mad. There was no other explanation. And now that it had become clear, shockingly clear, he felt like screaming.
His throat tightened, but instead of a scream a throaty animal sound came out as he saw the hurrying cluster of figures pass through the main gate and enter the brilliantly lit stage set of the inner compound.
Rolsom, because of his height and color, he spotted at once. After a brief heart-stopping moment of doubt he picked out the slight frame and sharp features of Madden, made to seem even less substantial in a short-sleeved tan shirt and white loafers.
Fonkle, poor bastard, was making a valiant attempt at explaining what he himself plainly didn't understand. There was some insistent questioning and unsatisfactory replies, after which Madden turned and stormed toward the main building, issuing orders that Skrote couldn't hear. The others followed and passed out of sight.
Dry-mouthed, Skrote stabbed a button and picked up the group as it entered the building. What would Madden decide to do? Head for the control room or go to Section M?
Madden was pointing. Three of the guards broke away and came toward the stairs leading up to the control room, while Madden himself, Rolsom, Fonkle, and the two remaining guards turned in the other direction.
Skrote wiped his greasy palms, unbuckled his holster, and placed the automatic on the panel in front of him, making sure the safety was off. A diagrammatic layout under a sheet of plastic told him the locations and relevant numbers of the cameras throughout the complex, and he sat back and observed Madden's progress toward the center of the web.
He saw the group pass through the complicated system of steel doors into Section M and take the corridor leading to the ward where the Meeks lay gasping their last. He felt happier now that his prey was inside Section M, and happier still when he had closed the electronic circuits, sealing the doors of Section M behind them.
Boots clattered in the corridor outside the control room. Without taking his eyes off the screens, Skrote picked up the automatic and curled his finger around the trigger.
Madden, Rolsom, and the others were approaching the final barrier that led to the Meeks' ward--a steel- barred gate. On the diagram it was numbered forty-three. Skrote punched up the picture on the screen and at the same time closed the electronic circuit. One of the guards inserted a key, turned it, and nothing happened. Madden shouldered him aside and tried it himself. When the gate refused to open he turned in a slow circle, the first pucker of doubt beginning to show on his face. Skrote could read his mind, and he smiled. Madden and Rolsom had gloated over him during the bleakest moment of his life and now it was his turn to watch and gloat. . . .
fists pounded on the door and a voice shouted
Still smiling, Skrote was looking with glassy intent at Madden's face on the screen, which was pointed and peaky in the caged lights of the corridor, and the smile didn't waver when a rifle butt splintered the door panel behind him. Another shuddering crash almost knocked the door off its hinges. An arm appeared through the splintered gap and for the first time in his life Skrote aimed a gun at a human being and blew the arm off at the elbow.
There was a choking scream and the bloody stump vanished.
On the screen Madden was debating what to do. He had a number of choices. Farther progress to the Meeks' ward wasn't possible, so he could either return along the main corridor to the entrance or take one of the side corridors to an emergency exit. The problem (and Skrote could see the indecision, born of reluctance, working in his face) was that the side corridors were lined with confinement cells. The confinement cells housed all kinds of creatures. Moreover the security system of Section M was foolproof, designed to keep the inmates safely locked away. Both Madden and Rolsom had had a hand in making it totally secure and it must have occurred to them that it was just as effective in containing them as the inmates.
An automatic weapon stuttered like a tractor starting up, and what was left of the control room door was pulverized in a cloud of flying splinters.
Skrote spun around in the swivel chair, gun at arm's length, and pumped three shots into the first man through. At such close range his ineptitude didn't matter. Two hits and a miss: one passing messily through the man's throat and out the other side, the other smashing his rib cage and making a dog's dinner of his innards.
The anatomical destruction was so violent and spectacular that Skrote was surprised, until he remembered that the shells were of the percussion exploding type that spread on impact, reducing everything to jellied pulp.
Three guards had been dispatched to the control room, and with one dead and the other disabled, the third would have to be nothing short of an imbecile to try it on his own. He wouldn't dare toss a grenade, even of the stun variety, because it would wreck the control room and transform all this fancy and expensive electronic gadgetry into a heap of junk.
For the moment, Skrote reckoned, he was safe. He prayed there would be enough time,
Madden and the others were moving back along the main corridor, hurrying now, almost running. Skrote switched cameras in time to see them arrive at the steel door that gave access outside. That too, they discovered, was electronically sealed. So the way forward and the way back were barred. Which left only the emergency exits--and to reach those they had to pass the confinement cells.
The trap was closing.
It was only now that Madden raised stony eyes to the surveillance camera. Then with an abrupt gesture he led the way to the gate of Block 6. Fonkle tried it with his key and of course the gate slid open.
Skrote switched viewpoints and picked them up as they entered the smaller corridor lined with cell doors. He wondered why Block 6, and then he knew why. The control room was on the floor above and there was a stairway past the emergency exit leading up to it.
Madden was moving to the offensive.
There was a sound, behind him and Skrote swiveled, the automatic ready in his hand. The guard he had cut to pieces was lying like butchered meat, legs splayed, in a lake of blood. Had the last guard summoned reinforcements and were they grouping for an assault in the corridor? Skrote had been too busy with the other
