It was quiet in the zoo now. 
Bailey could hear the ocean booming down in the valley, miles from where he was hiding.
He crawled from under the little footbridge and checked his watch. Ten-twenty. He wished it was darker, but they’d left the lights on in the elephant house across the way. Each of its tall windows cast a bar-shadowed beam into the quadrangle. Unrippled, the seal pool at his left gave back perfect reflections.
Silhouettes of walking men crossed it. Bailey ducked back under and heard them come out of the big house, toward him. They shuffled across overhead, talking quietly, then crunched out of earshot down the graveled path toward the admin building. That would be those three holographic technicians, changing the tapes, he thought. Wonder what they’ll show tomorrow.
He stuck his head out again. New windows lit up down at the admin building, the control room. Faint mechanical noises drifted out to him, followed by the squeal of an elephant. It came twice more completely, but the fourth blast was cut off midway, and Tantor subsided in a pop of static. Distant laughter. Then the lights in the elephant house went out.
Bailey scrambled up the low bank, dragging his pack behind. Though the cuffs of his black trousers shone wetly, his feet still comfortably dry in their boots. A pale line showed where the dark jersey had crept up to expose an inch of his thin white belly. He tugged it back down.
His first step toward the live- animal compound seemed to make all the noise in the world. Maybe he should go around on the grass outside the quadrangle of buildings. He changed course and slipped between the bear pits and the aviary. Someone had left the birds on, though the sound was off.
He stopped and watched the tape run through, he couldn’t help it. A smile crossed his wrinkled face, and the man could feel his pulse rate slow back down to normal. Thirty birds danced in the free air there, breathtakingly real. It was as if he was back in Asheville forty years ago. That cardinal there, fluttering so boldly forward to the front of the cage, like the one his sister used to feed from the back veranda ... .
There was a click and a faint discontinuity of motion as the tape turned over for a rerun. There hadn’t been a cardinal alive since the floods began.
Tearing himself away, Bailey slipped along the rows of empty cages. The overstuffed knapsack kept brushing things. Working his way from the admin building toward the live animal compound, he stopped at the last comer and peered carefully around it.
There it stood, dominating one whole side of the square. Eight feet of hurricane fence, outlining an eighty by two hundred foot rectangle. Inside was an empty corridor in which two men with rifles paced endlessly, then another fence like the first. There were batteries of floodlights at either end of the compound, and Bailey could plainly see the old collie where she lay sleeping on the grass near the middle. Men guarding dogs, Bailey thought, times have changed. But Hilda was twenty per cent of the dogs in the world.
Backing out of sight again, Bailey heaved off his knapsack and sat down. He pushed the jumper cables to one side and carefully unwrapped the air pistol. The bottle of bourbon had leaked a little. Where were the darts? Good grief, he hadn’t forgotten -— no, he hadn’t. The test tube bounced out on the ground when he shook the flap. Bailey took a deep breath and tried to calm himself.
When he unstoppered the tube the familiar smell of Amtol wafted up to him. Fishing each of the
six tiny darts out by its tufts with forceps, Bailey dropped them into the magazine of his pistol. He poured the excess sedative in after them, stoppered the tube, closed the gun.
Bailey dropped the tiling in his lap and stared at it He had that empty, waiting feeling, wondering if he had the nerve. After all, it was no skin off his nose if they wanted to start the new world without animals. He wasn’t going to make the trip, himself. He became aware of the angry ocean again, snarling through the West Virginia valleys like a waiting tiger ....
They’d turned the tiger loose twenty years earlier with two surprisingly small bombs. One was a routine blast by the New Zealanders to trigger seismographic echoes in the Antarctic. The other was a mistake, when the French got two for the price of one on their north Australian test facility.
There was talk later of timing and the earth’s crust resonating. Both continents settled about a foot, and the seafloor between them rose a quarter mile. It was still going up, and the rest of the world was being flooded by the displaced water.
Man’s adaptable. The survivors headed for high ground, scratched out a living. But nearly every animal in the world died. Environments shifted too widely for them, food chains broke and tried to reform along unworkable lines. For two decades people had been watching the water rise around them. Some tried to build arks, failed. As far as anyone in Charleston, West Virginia could tell, theirs was the last one. They’d dug a hole in the mountaintop and intended to cool it by nuclear power to cryogenic temperatures. Fourteen people would be sealed inside, to be automatically awakened in eleven hundred years when the waters subsided.
Fourteen people, no animals. That’s what got Bailey. Noah hadn’t done it that way. And even though he wasn’t one of the fortunate fourteen, the thought of a new world where men were without a single companion species appalled him.
Deterrnined again, Bailey got up and shoved the pistol in his hip pocket. He opened the bourbon bottle, took a deep breath, and began to sing.
“Oh, I was bor-rn in east Vir- gin-yaah —” He rounded the comer, staggered, swore.
“Nor* Car’li-ina I did ro-oam . . . . ” Bailey waved the bottle, sloshing some on his sleeve. Both the guards heard him and stopped where they stood, but they hadn't spotted him yet.
“There I met me-ee a fair pretty maiden-n . . . . ” They saw him. The big one at the. far end of the compound began to run up toward his younger companion. The nearer raised his rifle uncertainly.
“Her name and a-age I do not kno-ow . . . . ” Bailey was at the fence now, stumbled forward against it The pistol almost slid out of his hip pocket. He lurched, a seraphic smile on his face, saluted the nearer guard with the bourbon and subtly pushed the gun back in piece.
“Her hair it wa-as of a bright- some color . . . . ”
“Hey Ed, who in —?” said the big one as he came up.
“Some drunk. Don’t know how he got past the main gate.”
“And her li-ips were rooby reed,” Bailey sang. “Here y’are, guys, how *bout a?” He proffered the fifth, clumsily trying to get it through the wire mesh.
“Come on Mac, cut the crap,” said the smaller guard. “You don't belong in here.” He lowered his rifle. The other one said, “I’H call admin. Give ’em hell, letting a bum in here.” He turned, headed for the call box which hung on a fencepost a few paces away.
Bailey had fallen to the ground and dropped his bottle. Rolling half over in the grass, he rubbed the pistol free and got it between 104 his heels. Then he rose as far as his knees. “Aw now, fellas, don’ go gettin’ mad.”
“You’re drunk, Grandpop,” the young guard said disgustedly.
Chug.
The other turned at the unfamiliar sound, his hand on the receiver. “Ed?”
Chug.
Bailey stood up and thrust the pistol back in his pocket. Both guards lay on the grass inside the compound. The first had fallen across his rifle, and his arm was twisted around it awkwardly. The second was flat on his back, but had fumbled the receiver off its hook before he’d fallen. Bailey would have to hurry.
He trotted back for his pack. Returning, he ran the jumper cables between two consecutive fenceposts and then went to work on the mesh between them. Apparently he’d done it right, no alarm sounded.
Tightness in his lungs reminded Bailey of his heart. He slowed, counted to a hundred, resumed cutting. The wire cutters were clumsy things.
It was so damn quiet. Roused by the earlier noise, Hilda had come over and sniffed at the guard who lay against the inside fence. Bailey called softly, soothing her. Hilda was sixteen years old and blind. She wagged once.
then waddled back to her old spot and threw herself down with a sigh.
Bailey thought he could get through. Wriggling under the four-loop slit he’d made, he got about as far as his chest and had to wriggle back again. His shirt had ripped, and there was a little blood underneath. He opened the mesh two more loops. His hands looked old, working away in the hard glare of the floodlights. This time he made it.
Scrambling across to the call box, he stepped over the bigger guard and raised the receiver cautiously to his ear. Nothing, not even a buzz. Was that good or bad? He didn’t know. He replaced it, then went over and straightened the kid’s twisted arm from around his rifle. A quick professional glance told him that it wasn’t broken, and Bailey felt relieved.
Reaching back through the hole for his knapsack, he got up and went around the guard aisle to the inner gate. They’d left it open. He went across the dewy grass into the live animal house.
The ticket booth was open too, fortunately. As he snatched the keys from the hook inside the door, Bailey smelled the boiling coffee. He stepped quickly across the little cubicle and snapped off the hotplate. Now, where were the new tickets? He yanked open the cupboard under the sign which read, "Admission $3, Children $1.” There they were, four rolls of them, three white and one blue. Holding his knapsack under the shelf, he swept them all in.
Bailey swung back out the door and down the short corridor into the darkened main hall of the building. The raccoon was up, prowling back and forth under the small red light at the back of his pen. Assorted chirps and squeaks came from the far wall, where the last known living family of chipmunks had lived in in- bred idiocy for ten years.
Bailey faced right, walked down the line of cages, counting, his hand dragging tentatively along the heavy brass rail. Canada Jay, Parula Warbler, Least Tern .... He stopped at the Killdeer’s cage.
Switching on his flashlight, he  peered in on two slender, sleepy birds. The male was perched by the window to his outdoor cage, and when the light hit him he flew out. But the female seemed unruffled and didn’t move from her nest. Bailey slid under the rail and opened the door with the third key he tried. She squawked indignantly and flew out to join her mate. Bailey heard them take up that high, bisyllabic cry of theirs and frowned. They could probably hear that down at admin.
Holding each brown-on-brown blotched egg over the lens of his light, Bailey smiled quickly twice, grimaced, then grimaced again. Two duds;. That settled that, the chances of the remaining two both being of the same sex were dangerously high- He replaced all four as close to the way he'd found them as possible.
Shutting the cage, he glanced wistfully back at the nest. Too bad, they were so small. They’d have been so much easier to hide.
He walked quickly down to the end and threw his beam into the biggest cage in the room. Perched high on a dead stump, the only other brooding pair of birds in the world peered proudly down with cruel eyes. Ospreys. Bailey dreaded going in there.
From behind him came the faint but unmistakable ring of the phone. The edges of Bailey’s field of vision flared brilliantly, and His lungs blew up in his chest.
Fumbling open the phial, he got the tablet down as he went. He made it to the phone in the ticket-seller’s cage before it Had rung twice more.
“Saul?” demanded an irritated voice in the receiver. “Ed?”
Clearing his throat, Bailey tried to remember the flat tenor of the kid. “It’s Ed,” he said. “What is it?”
“What is it, what’s with you? I thought I heard those birds and when I called the other phone you didn’t answer.”
“Just having some coffee.” “Both together? You guys know better than that.”
“Sorry.”
“Sorry he says. Now get the hell back out there.” There was a loud click, then the line went dead.
Bailey hung up, stumbled over to the bench and leaned against it Actually, it was a lucky break. He’d probably not be bothered now. But it occurred to him that one more onset of angina would probably kill him.
Bailey hurried back out into the " dark roomful of cages. He should tackle the birds under the influence of that last pill. It would help, certainly. Maybe he ought to alter his plans and hit them each with a dart. But no, two unconscious birds would give away the whole thing. Once they discovered the eggs were stolen it would be obvious who’d done it. He’d said too much in public.
So Bailey put on the heavy vest, gloves and hood he’d brought, and loaded the water gun with ammonia. Then he opened the cage and went in. The shale rocks on the left wall of the cage would eventually bring him within reaching distance. He took a last look up at the unruly bale of sticks that served as an eyrie. It was twenty feet from the floor. Then he started to climb.
Bailey could see the female turn nervously to face him, though not rising from the eggs. The male stood more erectly, opening his beak, hunching his shoulders and hissing.
Ospreys lay somewhere between hawks and eagles. They caught fish by diving for them, so people used to call them fish hawks. And perched, they weren’t larger than hawks. Their bellies and throats were a clear white, and their backs, slate gray.
In a sort of lethal way they were almost attractive. Unless you dwelt too long on their heads or feet, or until they spread their wings. Those parts were an eagle’s.
Bailey was halfway up when the male launched himself from the nest. In the dim light he could have sworn those black- barred wings reached from one wall to the other, but he knew better. Only six feet. He locked his heels in a shale fissure and backed securely against the ledge.
The osprey preee’d twice, buffeting the air in a larruping hover not two feet from Bailey’s face. He could smell the thing even under his hood, foul and fishy and sharp. Those talons were as big as his own hands, and they BAILEY'S ARK chopped in unison — open toward him, closed away — with each beat of the huge wings. Bailey opened fire with the ammonia.
That shrill scream again. Talons slamming against his chest like the open-palmed thrust of a bully, then closing. Cloth and plastic ripping, beartraps in the meat of his bosom. Bailey fired again. A dull hatchet battering at the lenses of his mask, head slipping backward and bouncing on the rock, things turning red. Bailey fired again. His own scream, the bird’s scream, the round gray tongue seen through a cracked lens, the other lens cracking, beartraps gone. Bird gone.
The female followed. Bailey scrambled the rest of the way up, and reached across two feet of empty air to the nest in the crotch of the tall stump.
Four eggs, red and gold on brown, round, hensize. Into the foam stockings, into the sac of gel, into his shirt
Birds outside screaming to high heaven, voices from the other end of the zoo, running feet on gravel. From the other pocket came four false eggs, plastic, carefully painted. Into the nest.
Bailey swung down, jumped the last four feet.
Wipe up the blood. His. Out of the cage and lock it. Into the little room to replace the keys.
Outside. Up from the water fountain to the window ledge to the porch roof to the main roof. Over to the ledge. Heart again, but not so bad. Lay off the pills, use the serum. »
Bailey slid the syringe into his left buttock. The warm feeling spread, enveloping his groin, his belly, his screaming chest and finally his head. People were shouting down below, but their voices seemed blurred. Everything was slowing down. He'd be unable to run if they discovered him, he knew. But if he could run and did, the run would kill him. Preee! he heard. Pre pre pre. Silly birds, he was doing it for their own good. Dogs barking. Stupor coming. Make it through the night if they don’t find me up here, Bailey thought.
'They didn’t. At ten-thirty the next morning, Bailey awoke. He gazed straight up into a gray' sky through two cracked lenses. When he took off the heavy hood, each movement of each muscle was an intricate study in pain. Then he lay there for a while, because things wouldn’t focus.
The eggs. Incautiously, Bailey sat bolt upright, to find himself looking over the low roof wall at a burgeoning crowd of zoo-goers down in front of the building. He ducked again.
The knapsack was still on his back, he’d been lying on it. Perhaps that accounted for the state of his neck. Oh, no, he remembered the osprey. Sliding the straps up, Bailey shrugged away from the bulky pack. Fumbling through the junk inside, he found the gelsac. Four apples of foam shockproofing floated within the translucent slime. He carefully opened the sac, then each of the seeks.
Removing the eggs, he held them up to the cloudy sun and peered at the shadowy creatures inside. He smiled, then repacked the eggs. That done, he concentrated on his wounds.
There were painful lumps all over his head, but nothing serious. Removing the thick vest, he
found his chest entirely purple, with one lump that was obviously a hemorrhage. But only two cuts, The initial wirescrape had drawn blood as well, and his belly was streaked with the dry brown of it.
Bailey struggled into his light buff shirt, then unpacked the blue sports jacket and put it on too. He found the mirror and a few minutes with the emwipes and swabs turned him into a fair replica of his normal self: Doctor David Bailey, taking the morning off at the zoo as usual.
He put the gelsac into his camera case, then shoved the knapsack beneath the roof vent where a casual check wouldn’t uncover it.
He listened to the chatter down below. A thousand dollars worth of tickets had been stolen the night before. Screwy, eh? Why take on two armed guards for some tickets that could be voided anyway? Oh, a couple of drunks, two of them, at least. No sense to it. Could see it if they stole the dogs. Meat, you know. Some people are really to be hung up on it. No, I haven’t either. But a lot of older people have. Screwy, eh? But they left the dogs alone, the screwballs.
It was exactly what Bailey wanted to hear. He edged across the roof to peer down over the back door. Most people used the front, but there was a crowd of kids at the back now. He’d have to wait.
In a few minutes a young woman came out and led them away. With no one in sight, Bailey dropped to the porch roof, then from the sill to the fountain to the ground. A middle-aged man came out as he struck earth, but Bailey pretended to be tying a shoe.
Going around front, he mingled with the outgoing stream of people, turning his face as they passed the guards. But no worry, the two he’d seen were off duty.. He stopped at the seal pond, agreed casually with an old woman there, who said it wasn’t very good, holograms don’t splash.
Then, one hand cupped selfconsciously over the camera case, Bailey went out the main gate of the zoo.
He’d brought it off.
Bailey suppressed a cheer; his step was unusually light. A ten- minute walk brought him to the West Virginia State Hospital, where he worked. Checking in, he smiled affably at the head nurse, who waved with a curious grin. Of course, he thought ruefully, I need a shave.
Bailey went down to the basement, past a sign that said, “Restricted to ARK personnel only,” and into his office.
He showered, shaved, dressed the cuts on his stomach and chest. Opening a can of peas, he took it along with a handful of supplemental wafers over to his desk. Janie’d brought the newspaper, and it waited there.
Nothing new. The colony over at Goff’s Mountain was gone for sure, but most people had known that for weeks. There was a vitamin B 12 shortage. The tides now swept as high as the old glass factory, and the available land area of Charleston had shrunk another two per cent. Best prediction of total deluge remained the same at six and a half years. Some ninny had broken into the zoo.
Good enough, Bailey thought and tossed down the paper. Finishing the peas, he noticed the date on the can. Thirty-four years old, borderline. They shouldn’t really be issuing this stuff. He made a note. Then he went through his IN box.
Right on top was the memo he’d sent the Board. As usual, they hadn’t honored him with a formal reply. Typed on the back of his own note was the usual red-printed rebuff.
Dear Dr. Bailey:
Your idea of cryofying unborn puppies to accompany the human occupants of the ARK is touching in its sentimentality. But, Doctor, you know better than that.
How many reasons do you need? First of all, nobody scheduled for preservation in the ARK wants them. Second, while the danger of contamination is slight, it’s real. Finally and most significantly, the ARK’S limited capacity precludes taking on any but human cargo.
To elaborate on this: even if you could reduce the puppies to less than five pounds, (which despite your considerable abilities we doubt), you’d still be requiring the human occupants of the ARK to lose a collective five pounds of body weight to make room. You know the dynamics of cryobiology as well as we do, Doctor, and such action could well be fatal.
It may interest you that the latest estimate of re-emergence has been moved up to fifteen hundred years, which makes fat storage even more critical.
We’re aware of your feelings about animals, but these requests of yours are becoming a nuisance. Believe us when we say that animals aren’t needed, aren’t wanted, aren’t possible in the new world.
Arnold J. Carter, Jr.
For the Board Scribbled underneath in red pencil was a note from Amie himself, “Come on, Dave, lay off, will you?”
Bailey wadded the thing up and hurled it across the room. Getting up, he went into the lavatory and brought out the eggs. An afterthought, he buzzed his secretary.
“Janie?” he said into the grille. “Good morning, Doctor.” “What’s on?”
“Nothing just now. Gordon Alton at one.”
“All right. I’ll be analyzing prints till then. Don’t let anyone in, eh?”
“Yes, Doctor.”
It was almost noon. He’d have to hurry to be ready for young Gordon. Bailey primed the autoclave, left the vent open, switched it on. He got the resin from his lower desk drawer.
Dipping the teflon cloths in the fluid, he patted them into place on each of the eggs. He wished they weren't so big. When he opened the autoclave only a few wisps of steam escaped, the rest having gone out the vent Good. The stuff was supposed to cure in dry heat, but this would probably do.
Now to set up the ruse. The kid had an eidetic memory, so no need to overdo it. Bailey got out a plaster model of a man’s wrist, splinted it, bound it doused it with resin.
Into the autoclave it went, and Bailey set the timer.
Forty minutes later it rang, and ten after that, Janie buzzed. That would be Gordon. He told her to send him in.
The door opened a cautious six inches, and most of a chubby freckled face appeared five and a half feet from the floor. Bailey smiled and beckoned. “Come on in, Gordon.” With the awkwardness of extreme weight, Gordon Alton crossed and took a chair. He was twelve and parentless, the only survivor of a family lost when Wheeling had gone under. His IQ was close to two hundred, and he was one of the fourteen people going into the ARK.
He sat politely and watched as Bailey labored to remove a plastic cast from a plaster model of a hand. The doctor had apparently just run out of solvent and was spitting on the thing to soften the plastic.
“That’s pretty neat, Doc.” ‘‘One of the marvels of modern medicine,’’ Bailey said ruefully. “Oh, to hell with it.” Bailey shoved- it into his lower desk drawer, his point made.
He folded his hands on the desk, looked up and smiled. “How’ve you been, Gordon?” “Oh, okay. They gave me a sending-off party yesterday, and all the girls cried.”
“Well, that’s women. Did you make your weight?”
The boy looked ruefully down at his enormous stomach. “Just two-thirty. Guess that ought to hold me for a thousand years.” “Fifteen hundred’s the latest guess.”
“Oh?” Gordon was silent for a while. “We going to the zoo?” Bailey played it cool. “If you want to.”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
Bailey got up, took his jacket off the hook, patting the breast pocket to check. He wasn’t sure what good the dartgun would be if he was recognized, but it made him feel better to have it.
They left the hospital and headed across town.
Bailey paid for the tickets at the main gate, and they went into the zoo. Gordon hadn’t said much. Naturally he’d be subdued, Bailey reminded himself, he's going: under tonight.
Aloud he said, “Let’s try the elephants, I think they've changed the tapes.” As they crossed the footbridge over the seal pool’s spillway, Bailey smiled.
The elephant house did not smell of elephants, it smelled of cigarettes and the stickiness of melted ice cream, like a movie theater on Saturday afternoon. A few adults and a lot of children gazed in on the display.
“Grandma saw a real elephant once, Sally,” an old woman said. “Sack before the floods. We used to feed them.”
Sally shrugged. But as Tan tor dumped past with his trunk extended for peanuts, she tossed part of her sucker. It went through the image to join the other wasted gifts on the floor. Bailey winced.
Gordon caught it. ‘You know, Doctor Bailey, you old guys are amazing.”
“You’re getting to like animals, aren’t you, Gordon?”
“Well, sort of. But not like you, Doc, not like you old guys. I like it when you bring me to the zoo and all.” The round freckled face frowned. “But you know."
Bailey nodded and they drifted out of the elephant house. No, you can’t just tell someone to love something. But there was still his last card. “Let’s go to the live animals, Gordon.”
Out on the perimeter of the compound, the guard called Saul was talking through the fence to two small boys.
Bailey paid again, and they went in. With more enthusiasm now, Gordon went over to the killdeer’s cage, “You’re right. Doc. So those are eggs, the real thing.” The boy leaned over the rail, resting on his paunch and eventually lifting up his feet. “Sa-ay.”
Bailey gazed down at the back of the round, curly head. Sa-ay. Was that a say of curiosity, or a say of honest wonder? He could hope.
At any rate, this seemed like the right time. Leaving the boy, Bailey went over to the keeper. “Hello, Mr. Hart.”
“Oh, hi Doctor, How’re you today?”
“Fine. Listen. I brought him, he’s with me now.”
Hart tilted the blue cap back on his head. “The one that’s going in the ARK, eh? That one?” He pointed.
“No, the heavyset boy to the left. Do you think we could do what I asked you about?”
Hart grimaced. “Yah, guess so. Don’t tell 'em down at admin, though.”
Bailey went over and retrieved Gordon, then propelled him by the shoulder after Hart’s retreating back. He led them to a workroom adjacent to the ticket window and snapped on the light.
Blinking blind eyes, Hilda raised her head from a box by the window. Gordon jumped backward.
“He's loose!”
Bailey went over and crouched by the old collie. “It’s a she, Gordon. Hilda. Want to pet her?”
The boy edged across the floor. Hilda inclined a muzzle toward him, nostrils going. Her heavy tail thumped once, tentatively, against the side of the box.
Gordon squatted beside and a little behind Bailey. He took the boy’s hand and guided it to Hilda’s thick white ruff.
“Like this?”
“Yes, Gordon.”
Hart coughed politely after a few minutes. Bailey stood up, then bent down and gently moved Hilda’s head from the boy’s lap, Gordon let himself be led out.
“Well,” Bailey said with forced lightness. “Let’s take a look at the ospreys. They’re brooding, too.”
They watched in silence for a few minutes. The female’s head peered imperiously down at them over the edge of her nest. Gordon got his voice back. “How long’ll she have to sit there before they hatch?”
“I don’t really know.” But of course he did. “It’s all on the card there, down below. Look it over while I make a head inn.”
As Bailey walked down to the men’s room he was mentally rubbing his hands together. Eidetic memory. All he has to do is read the card.
He was washing his face when the stall behind him opened and the guard Ed’s eyes met his own in the mirror.
“You!”
The kid was fast. Bailey rolled but the billie still grazed his ear and smashed across his collarbone. Turning, Bailey braced his left leg against the washbowl, put both hands squarely on the man’s chest and pushed The blue uniform fell back into the stall. But Ed caught himself on the doorjamb, shouted again, raised the club for another blow. Bailey knew better than to match reflexes with a younger man. He backed quickly down the line of washstands.
A head popped out of the last stall and was almost sheared off as Ed crashed past toward Bailey, who was reaching for his gun.
Chug. But the guard was on top of him; panicked, Bailey fired again. A man could die from two shots of the stuff. He’d have to —
Now the bystander poked his head out again, saw the prostrate guard, began to yell. Bailey aimed carefully, got him in the thick of the arm.
Behind him the door was swinging open. Jamming the gun back in his jacket, Bailey shouted, “Help, help!” and bulled his way through the incoming crowd.
“In there,” he called over his shoulder. “They’re sick, they need Anamtol,” and prayed someone heard and would remember.
The room spun. Where were the pills? No time to — here. Sagging against the wall, he fumbled the tablet into his mouth.
Gordon trotted up, out of breath. “What is it?”
“Never mind. Come on.”
They were back at the hospital in a few minutes. Bailey made up enough of a story to at least stem Gordon’s tide of questions.
He gave himself two hours until the bystander awoke and described him. Others in the crowd would be able to fill the picture in, since Bailey was a regular at the zoo. Altogether, he might Have three Hours.
Which was enough. Gordon would be in the ARK by then.
“You’d better go up to the prep room,” he told the boy. As he headed obediently for the door, Bailey had a thought. Maybe he should tell him what was going on. “Gordon.”
“Yes?”
God, he’s young. Brilliant or not, he’s still twelve. You don’t tell a twelve-year-old kid you’ve been using him, or that he’s about to break most of the rules in the Board’s little book. Stick to your plan, man. “Nothing. Good Luck.”
“Thanks, Doc. You’ve been great to me since my folks —”
Bailey’s conscience was bludgeoning him. He lowered his eyes.
“Well, all right,” the boy said. “But thanks for today, too.”
They wheeled Gordon in an hour later in deep hypothermia. Bailey had two operations to perform on the boy’s pale body, before passing him along for further work. These were both subcutaneous insertions of crystalline hormones and drugs, which were to augment those expended by the body even while deep in cryo. They were easy operations.
The only difficult part was installing the pull tabs, so that they wouldn’t infect during the few hours between coming out of cryo and their removal.
He made the two normal insertions in the loose fat over Gordon’s stomach. The third and fourth were placed carefully, so that the tab would be hidden in the fold of flesh between the boy’s upper thighs and buttocks. Two of the osprey’s eggs went in each.
Once he found them, Gordon would know what to do.
— BURT K. FILER