Hall nodded. "The labs here can do everything?"

"Everything. Even assays for adrenal hormones and things like partial thromboplastin times. Every known medical test is possible."

"All right. We'd better get started."

She turned on the computer. "This is how you order laboratory tests," she said. "Use this light pen here, and check off the tests you want. Just touch the pen to the screen."

She handed him a small penlight, and pushed the START button.

The screen glowed.

MEDCOM PROGRAM

LAB/ANALYS

CK/JGG/1223098

Hall stared at the list. He touched the tests he wanted with the penlight; they disappeared from the screen. He ordered fifteen or twenty, then stepped back.

The screen went blank for a moment, and then the following appeared:

TESTS ORDERED WILL REQUIRE FOR EACH SUBJECT

The technician said, "I'll draw the bloods if you want to do physicals. Have you been in one of these rooms before?"

Hall shook his head.

"It's quite simple, really. We crawl through the tunnels into the suits. The tunnel is then sealed off behind us."

"Oh? Why?"

"In case something happens to one of us. In case the covering of the suit is broken—the integrity of the surface is ruptured, as the protocol says. In that case, bacteria could spread back through the tunnel to the outside."

"So we're sealed off."

"Yes. We get air from a separate system—you can see the thin lines coming in over there. But essentially you're isolated from everything, when you're in that suit. I don't think you need worry, though. The only way you might possibly break your suit is to cut it with a scalpel, and the gloves are triple-thickness to prevent just such an occurrence."

She showed him how to crawl through, and then, imitating her, he stood up inside the plastic suit. He felt like some kind of giant reptile, moving cumbersomely about, dragging his tunnel like a thick tail behind him.

After a moment, there was a hiss: his suit was being sealed off. Then another hiss, and the air turned cold as the special line began to feed air in to him.

The technician gave him his examining instruments. While she drew blood from the child, taking it from a scalp vein, Hall turned his attention to Peter Jackson.

An old man, and pale: anemia. Also thin: first thought, cancer. Second thought, tuberculosis, alcoholism, some other chronic process. And unconscious: he ran through the differential in his mind, from epilepsy to hypoglycemic shock to stroke.