The door was the entrance to a huge cavern in the rock, lit by an eerie green light. When they entered they found they were standing on a metal platform, ten metres above the floor of the cavern and part of a gallery that ran right the way around. The ceiling was another good ten metres above them.
‘It’s bloody enormous,’ whispered Leavey. ‘What the hell’s it for?’
The floor space was occupied by parallel rows of large glass tanks, each filled with liquid, as if the place were some sort of giant marine museum. Leavey led the way to a flight of steps leading down to the floor, their footsteps echoing on the metal rungs and MacLean went up to one of the tanks for a closer look.
‘What in God’s name is that?’ exclaimed Leavey with revulsion as he joined him.
‘It’s a human foetus,’ said MacLean, finding exactly the same in the next tank along and the one after that.
Leavey grimaced at the discovery but MacLean was puzzled. He couldn’t see the point in keeping so many exhibits of the same thing when they all seemed to be perfectly healthy. There was nothing of any pathological interest at all.
‘This place gives me the creeps,’ said Leavey.
MacLean thought such an admission strange coming from Leavey. ‘It’s the strangest museum I’ve ever been in,’ he admitted. He rested his fingers on the glass of one of the tanks but immediately recoiled as he found it warm. He opened his mouth to say something when suddenly the foetus inside gave a spastic jerk and both men jumped back.
‘They’re alive!’ exclaimed Leavey.
MacLean took more than a few moments to come to terms with the sheer horror of the discovery then realisation dawned. ‘My God, he’s succeeded in gestating children outside the womb.’
‘Surely that’s not possible?’ whispered Leavey.
‘I didn’t think it was either but I knew various Japanese research teams have been trying. To succeed in simulating placental function for nine months in vitro is an incredible feat.’
‘Unless your name is Von Jonek and you have an 18 million dollar budget apparently,’ said Leavey.
‘But why?’ murmured MacLean as they moved among the tanks.
‘They all have numbers on them,’ said Leavey. ‘This one has a seven.’
MacLean looked at the contents and said, ‘It’s a seven month old foetus, perfect in every way.’
‘What’s the German for “month”?’ asked Leavey.
‘Monat,’ replied MacLean.
‘I thought so,’ said Leavey. ‘The label says, Sieben Woche. That, if I’m not much mistaken, means seven weeks!’
‘That’s crazy,’ protested MacLean, ‘It’s far too well developed.’ He looked at the labels on other tanks but still had a problem with labelling. ‘There is just no way that… ‘ And then the truth hit him. It was obvious. he should have realised it at once. It was Cytogerm that was speeding up cell proliferation and shortening the gestation period. That’s how Von Jonek had succeeded where others had failed. Everything fell into place. The cell cultures he had found in the incubator room were human ova. They were being fertilised with the sperm of celebrated men and brought to maturity in the tanks with the aid of Cytogerm.
‘Someone’s coming!’ hissed Leavey and MacLean dropped to his knees beside him to look anxiously up at the gallery. They heard the sound of approaching footsteps on metal and Leavey signalled that they should get underneath the tanks. They held their breath as the sound grew louder. MacLean wriggled up into a position where he could see the entrance to the high gallery through a gap in the tank’s supporting frame. He saw a man appear and rest his hands on the guardrail to look down at the tanks.
MacLean’s first reaction was to press his face back to the ground but he found that he could not take his eyes off the man. He was well over six feet tall and dressed entirely in black, a colour which emphasised the fact that he was completely hairless and had skin the colour of alabaster. Even at that range MacLean could see the redness of the eyes. The man was an albino.
MacLean and Leavey adjusted their position under the tanks to follow his progress as he walked slowly round the echoing gallery, pausing at intervals to look over the rail like an animal sniffing the air. He made a complete circuit of the gallery and disappeared through a door, which banged behind him; the noise reverberated round the cavern.
Leavey let out his breath and said, ‘I guess that was Hartmut, Von Jonek’s little helper.’
The two men started to make their way back to the steps leading up to the gallery. MacLean paused when he got to the foot of them and looked back.
Leavey read his mind and said, ‘What do you want to do about this place?’
‘I don’t know,’ he confessed sadly. ‘I simply don’t know. When I think about the people these thugs killed in order to… do what? Create designer children? Jesus!’
‘We could alter the thermostats,’ said Leavey.
The tanks were fitted with thermostats maintaining human body temperature. MacLean looked at Leavey as if inviting him to share the moral dilemma.
Leavey pointed to a water supply valve. ‘Maybe a flood?’ he suggested. ‘When the water reaches the electrics, the system will short out.’
MacLean sought resolve for a moment in remembering Jutte and thinking about Carrie. ‘Open it up,’ he said.
Leavey failed to budge the wheel and looked around for something to provide added leverage. He found a spanner and inserted the narrow end through the spokes of the wheel, putting his weight against it, straining until the veins on his forehead stood out. The wheel suddenly gave, sending the spanner spinning to the floor and Leavey sprawling as a torrent of water erupted from the outlet to knock him over and soak him.
‘Let’s get out of here!’ said MacLean helping Leavey up.
They had barely made it back to the foot of the steps when a door opened above them and Hartmut re-appeared on the gallery. There was a moment when the three men stared at each other then Hartmut withdrew a thin silver whistle from his pocket and put it to his lips. There was no sound that Leavey or MacLean could hear but two massive Dobermans came bounding along the gallery to sit snarling at Hartmut’s heels.
Hartmut raised his arm to point at MacLean and Leavey. He let out a cry and the dogs bounded into action. Leavey traced the path of the first dog with the barrel of his gun as it coped with the difficult steps and squeezed the trigger. There was a quiet click and nothing else. ‘The bloody water!’ he exclaimed.
MacLean kept his gun on the second animal, waiting for a sure body hit when suddenly it veered from the steps and leapt over the rail at him. He tried to get out of the way of the animal but the proximity of one of the tanks stopped him. The animal hit him squarely in the chest sending him and the tank behind him crashing to the floor in a shower of broken glass and warm fluid. Somewhere in the process, the gun fell from his grasp.
His hands fought desperately for something to grip on the mound of writhing muscle that was intent on tearing his throat out and he managed to get his fingers under the studded collar. He could now keep it at arm length but knew that he could not sustain the enormous effort it required for much longer. As the animal lunged again at his face he used it’s own weight against it and slid out to one side. At least he was out from underneath the beast but the stalemate persisted and he was tiring fast.
MacLean went for one last gamble. There were several shards of broken glass around him. He removed one of his hands from the dog’s collar to snatch it up and sweep it across the animal’s throat. A fountain of warm, sticky blood rewarded his efforts.
There was no time to relax; the sounds of snarling said that Leavey was still locked in combat with the other animal. He pulled his legs clear of the limp, heavy carcass lying on them and crawled towards the sound. Leavey was still fighting but the blood on his face and arms said it was an uneven contest.
MacLean saw the spanner that Leavey had used to open the water valve and picked it up. He came up behind the dog and raised it in the air but at the last moment the beast caught sight of him and turned on its haunches to spring at him. He raised his foot to fend it off but it sank its teeth into the calf of his right leg and brought him to the floor, which was now awash with swirling water from the open valve.