Gabe inched around the corner and peered down the corridor. At the end were two more doors, identical to the others. The right one was closed and the left one open. Pressed against the wall, every muscle tensed, he moved ahead. If someone came through the doors behind him now, there would be no retreat and, in all likelihood, no meeting with Ferendelli. Still, he had to see.

". . . This slide is a photo taken two months after the subjects were dosed with ten micrograms of fullerenes coated with antibodies specifically coded to hypothalamus neuroprotein. Administration in this subject was oral, but the results for intravenous and aerosolized fullerene administration were virtually the same. As you can see, there has been virtually no change in the location and concentration of immunofluorescence, even after thirty days. When these little fellows attach, they stay pretty well attached, although there is a very gradual leeching out."

Gabe thought the line about the "little fellows" and the way Rosenberg delivered it might have engendered at least a chuckle or two, but the assemblage remained stonily silent.

Five more feet.

Gabe was just a few steps from the closed door now. Through the glass he could see seven white-coated scientists—five men and two women—their backs to him, standing shoulder to shoulder at the far end of a carpeted room that was about a twenty-five-foot square—probably a conference room with the chairs removed.

Turn around and leave! Leave while you have the chance!

A slide was being projected on a screen before the small gathering. From what Gabe could see, the image was a cross section of brain, with the jade green glow of an immunofluorescent marker dye scattered over an area that apparently was the hypothalamus. At his very sharpest in neuroanatomy, which would have been a few minutes after finishing the course in med school, he could have easily identified the structures in the brain slice. Now, though, those days were long past and he would have to take Dr. Rosenberg's word.

A grainy slide with fluorescent marker was hardly the real living brains without bodies that the security guards had talked about. Gabe inched closer. At that moment, as if on cue, one of the scientists at the center of the line stepped back, turned to her left, and coughed deeply several times.

Through the opening she had created, Gabe saw three large glass cylinders, four feet high and a foot in diameter. They were filled to near the top with a translucent golden liquid—serum or some other form of nutrient, he guessed—which was being aerated by a bubbler built into the base, the source of the mechanical hum. A large number of monitoring wires snaked over the lips of each cylinder, connecting outside them with elaborate monitoring equipment, at least one of which was an EEG—an electroencephalogram—that was showing continuous brain-wave activity.