"Why not?"
Seconds of silence. The woman with the cart finished her work and moved toward the door. Then: "I've never liked the idea. A man died to give us healthy, living tissue, and you want to throw it away like' The closing door cut him off.
Like the remnants of a ghoul's feast, Matt finished for him.
He was turning toward the hall door when his eye caught something else. Four of the tanks were different from the others. They sat near the hall door, on flooring whose scars and shaded color showed where suspended-animation tanks had stood. Unlike the suspended-animation tanks, these did not have heavy machinery-filled bases. Instead, machinery rested in the tanks themselves, behind the transparent walls. It might have been aerating machinery. The nearest tank contained six small human hearts.
Unmistakably they were hearts. They beat. But they were tiny, no bigger than a child's fist. Matt touched the surface of the tank, and it was blood warm. The tank next to it held five-lobed objects which had to be livers; but they were small, small.
That did it. In what seemed one leap, Matt was out in the hall. He leaned against the wall, gasping, his shoulders heaving, his eyes unable to see anything but those clusters of small hearts and livers.
Someone rounded the corner and came to an abrupt stop.
Matt turned and saw him: a big, soft man in an Implementation-police uniform. Matt tried his voice. It came out blurred but comprehensible: "Where's the vivarium?"
The man stared, then pointed. "Take a right and you'll find a flight of stairs. Up one flight, take a right, then a left, and watch for the sign. It's a big door with an alarm light; you can't miss it."
"Thanks." Matt turned toward the stairs. His stomach hurt, and there was a shivering in his hands. He wished he could drop where he was, but he had to keep going.
Something stung his arm.
Matt turned and raised his arm in the same instant. Already the sting was gone; his arm was as numb as a haunch of meat. Half a dozen tiny red drops bedewed his wrist.
The big, soft man regarded Matt with a puzzled frown. His gun was in his hand.
The galaxy spun madly, receding.
Corporal Halley Fox watched the colonist fall, then bolstered his gun. What was the world coming to? First the ridiculous secrecy about the ramrobot. Then, two hundred prisoners swept up in one night, and the whole Hospital going crazy trying to cope. And now! A colonist wandering the Hospital corridors, actually asking for the vivarium!
Well, he'd get it. Halley Fox lifted the man and slung him over his shoulder, grunting with the effort. Only his face was soft. Report it and forget it. He shifted his burden and staggered toward the stairs.
CHAPTER 6
THE VIVARIUM
AT DAWN the graded peak of Mount Lookitthat swam beneath a sea of fog. For those few who were already abroad, the sky merely turned from black to gray. This was not the poison mist below the void edge but a continuous cloud of water vapor, thick enough to let a blind man win a shooting match. Crew and colonists, one and all, as they stepped outside their homes, their homes vanished behind them. They walked and worked in a universe ten yards in diameter.
At seven o'clock Implementation police moved into the trapped forest, a squad at each end. Yellow fog lights swept the tongue of forest from the nearest sections of wall. The light barely reached the trees. Since the men who had been on watch that night had gone home, the searchers had no idea what animal they were searching for. Some thought it must be colonists.
At nine they met in the middle, shrugged it each other and left. Nothing human or animal lived in the trapped woods, nothing bigger than a big insect. Four aircars nevertheless rose into the fog and sprayed the wood from end to end.
At nine-thirty ...
Jesus Pietro cut the grapefruit in half and held one half upside down. The grapefruit meat dropped in sections into his bowl. He asked, "Did they ever find that rabbit?"
Major Jansen stopped with his first sip of coffee halfway to his lips. "No, sir, but they did find a prisoner."
"In the woods?"
"No, sir. He was pounding on the gate with a rock. The gate man took him inside the Hospital, but from there it becomes a little unclear--'
"Jansen, it's already unclear. What was this man doing pounding on the gate?" A horrible thought struck him. "Was he a crew?"
"No, sir. He was Matthew Keller. Positive identification."
Grapefruit juice spilled on the breakfast rack. "Keller?"
"The same."
"Then who was in the car?"
"I doubt we'll ever know, sir. Shall I ask for volunteers to examine the body?"
Jesus Pietro laughed long and loud. Jansen was pure colonist, though he and his ancestors had been in service so long that their accents and manners were almost pure crew. It would never do for him to joke with his superiors in public. But in private he could be amusing--and he had the sense to know the difference...
"I've been trying to think of a way to shake up Implementation," said Jesus Pietro. "That might do it. Well. Keller came up to the gate and began pounding on it with a rock?"
"Yes, sir. The gateman took him in charge after calling Watts. Watts waited half an hour before he called the gatehouse again. The gateman couldn't remember what happened after he and the prisoner reached the Hospital. He was back on duty, and he couldn't explain that either. He should have reported to Watts, of course. Watts put him under arrest."
"Watts shouldn't have waited half an hour. Where was Keller all this time?"
"A Corporal Fox found him outside the door to the organ banks, shot him, and carted him off to the vivarium."
"Then he and the gateman are both waiting for us. Good. I'll never sleep again until I get this straightened out." Jesus Pietro finished his breakfast in a remarkable hurry.
Then it occurred to him that the mystery was deeper than that. How had Keller reached Alpha Plateau at all? The guards wouldn't have let him past the bridge.
By car? But the only car involved ...
Hobart was scared. He was as frightened as any suspect Jesus Pietro had seen, and he took no interest in hiding it.
"I don't know! I took him through the door, the big door. made him walk ahead so he couldn't jump me-"
"And did he?"
"I can't remember anything like that."
"A bump on the head might have given you amnesia. Sit still." Jesus Pietro walked around the chair to examine Hobart's scalp. His impersonal gentleness was frightening in itself. "No bumps, no bruises. Does your head hurt?"
"I feel fine."
"Now, you walked in the door. Were you talking to him?"
The man bobbed his graying head. "Uh huh. I wanted know what he was doing banging on the gate. He wouldn't say."
"And then?"
"All of a sudden I--" Hobart stopped, swallowed con-
vulsively.
Jesus Pietro put an edge in his voice. "Go on."
Hobart started to cry.
"Stop that. You started to say something. What was
"All of a sudden I-gulp-remembered I was s'posed t'be at the gate--"
"But what about Keller?"
"Who?"
"What about your prisoner?"
"I can't remember!"
"Oh, get out of here." Jesus Pietro thumbed a button.
"Take him back to the vivarium. Get me Keller."
Up a flight of stairs, take a right then a left ...