The boys nodded enthusiastically. They kissed their parents good-bye and watched them as they walked out with Dr Kane.

As they left, Damien studied Kane intently, as though trying to commit his face to memory.

Late that night, Dr Kane was still bent over his microscope, trying to understand the meaning of what he saw.

He was all alone in the hospital laboratory. He had skipped dinner, staying later than anyone else, and as he looked for perhaps the hundredth time at the thin sliver of blood on the glass plate under the microscope, he felt a faint shudder of revulsion, oddly coupled with the kind of thrill that comes only when a scientist has seen something he is sure no other man before him has ever seen.

He looked again at the book beside him, a thick, blue book with tiny print and meticulously detailed photographs, then back to the slide. There was no mistaking it.

Damien Thorn had the chromosome structure of a jackal.

It didn't make sense, it sounded like a bad joke, and yet here was seemingly irrefutable proof with which Kane's logical mind was forced to cope.

Somehow he didn't want to deal with it alone. On the chance that a respected friend and colleague of his was still in his office at this hour, Kane picked up the phone and dialed an extension number he knew by heart.

Kane was about to hang up after about seven rings, when a voice suddenly crackled across the line. 'Yes?'

'Ben!' cried Kane. 'Thank God you're still in! May I come down and see you for a second?'

'Well,' came the crackling voice, 'I was just on my way out.'

'Please,' said Kane. 'It's urgent!'

'All right then,' his colleague replied, 'come on down.'

‘Thanks, Ben. I'll see you in a minute.' Kane hung up the phone, put the slide carefully into a container, tucked the book under one arm, and headed for the elevator.

***

At Lakeside, almost everyone was sound asleep. Only Damien was not lost in slumber. His body was absolutely rigid, and his eyes, though open and focused, were looking at nothing in the room. They seemed to be looking at something somewhere else, and he was having to concentrate on it very hard. So hard, in fact, that sweat broke out on his forehead and his body began to tremble.

***

Dr Kane stepped into the elevator and pressed the button to go down to the sixteenth floor. The doors glided shut and the elevator began to move.

But rather than down, the elevator went up.

Kane checked the overhead floor indicator: 21... 22... 23... He pressed 16 again. The elevator stopped and its doors opened.

But no one was there. Kane pushed 16 a third time.

The doors shut, and the elevator finally began to descend: 19... 18... 17...

It went right past the sixteenth floor and kept on going, picking up speed as it went.