He had just taken them into the pesticide section. ‘To make crops grow faster and fatter,' he was saying, 'you need more powerful and improved fertilizers, and new and innovative pesticides as well.’

The group stopped before the bolted doors of the Pesticide Room where Pasarian was working on the P.84. The guide produced the proper identifying papers for himself and then slipped the guard a twenty-dollar bill. This room was not included on the regular tour, but the guide wanted to do something special for the Thorn boys and their friends. The massive doors swung open and the cadets were taken inside. The doors were immediately pushed shut again and locked.

Once inside, the guide had to raise his voice quite a bit in order to be heard over the hum of the computers.

‘This complex operation,' he practically shouted, 'is run entirely by three men at the controls of that computer over there.' He pointed in the direction of a glassed-in area halfway down the room. ‘That's why you see no one here.’

Most of the boys were awestruck, all but Teddy, whose mind remained stuck in its usual groove. 'Isn't there a pesticide that works on sex?' he asked.

'Jesus, Teddy,' one of the other cadets said, 'what a one-track mind!'

But the guide defended him. 'He's absolutely right,' he said. 'Sex attractants—pheromones—are extracted from insects of one sex, and put in a trap to lure in insects of the opposite sex so they can be killed. If you kill enough of just one sex of a given species, you've in effect destroyed the species itself. There's no one left to reproduce with.'

However, that information paled alongside the sheer enormity of what the boys were seeing. The guide took them up a metal stairway to a catwalk high above the maze of colored pipes.

‘This is a shunting device,' the guide continued to shout as they walked, 'computerized, like everything else. It's programmed to deliver precise mixes of grasses and solutions from storage vats into the main plant.'

They would now see Pasarian working down below them on a complicated pressure gauge attached to a yellow-colored pipe connection. He happened to look up just then and recognized his two young friends. 'Mark! Damien!' he called out. 'What are you doing here?’ He was alarmed that they were in this room at all, much less on a day when things were not working quite right.

The boys looked down at him, twenty feet below, and smiled. 'We're taking the grand tour!' shouted Damien. Then both he and Mark waved and moved on, leaving Pasarian puzzled and concerned.

Just then, on the far side of the room, on one of the upper levels, a pipe suddenly broke lose, and a thick, greenish vapor started hissing out into the room.

‘There's a leak!' someone yelled.