AGNUS DEI

16

October 8, 12:15 a.m.

Colonel Tuan Anh Phan, wearing a white helmeted suit with self-contained breathing apparatus, stood beside two assistants in similar garb in the isolation chamber once occupied by the Guest, and now by its corpse. Harry Feinman entered the chamber in his own suit, stepping with some awkwardness around the others. With four in the chamber, and equipment brought in for the autopsy, there was little room for maneuvering. Arthur sat in the laboratory beyond the glass and observed.

The Guest lay on its back on the central table, now elevated a meter above the floor. Its long head extended full length with "chin" paralleling the tabletop. The four limbs were splayed outward, held against a natural resilience by plastic straps.

Phan indicated with a sweep of one plastic-gloved hand the three video cameras behind their protective plastic plates. "Beginning twelve-seventeen A.M., October eighth, 1996. I am Colonel Tuan Anh Phan, and I am beginning an autopsy of the extraterrestrial biological specimen found near Death Valley, California. The specimen, also called the Guest, died at five fifty-eight P.M., October seventh, in isolation room three of the Vandenberg Emergency Retrieval Laboratory, Shuttle Launch Center Six, Vandenberg Air Force Base, California.

"There is no evidence of physical injury or any apparent sign of internal trauma." Phan removed a scalpel from a tray proffered by an assistant. "I've already collected external culture samples from the Guest when it was alive. I will now take samples from sites along its limbs and on its body and head to see if terrestrial microorganisms have begun to multiply on its external tissues." Using the scalpel to abrade the skin, and swabs to pick up the samples, he carried out this task. Each swab was dropped into a tube which was then stoppered. "As you can see, the body exhibits no signs of lividity, or indeed of any decay or change, external or internal." Phan lifted a forward limb. "There is resilience, but no stiffness. Indeed, the only visible evidence of death is a lack of movement and no reaction to stimuli.

"There is no sign of electrical activity within the Guest's cranium, or anywhere else in the body. As such activity existed before, we can only assume that this is another indicator of death. The Guest has not moved in ten hours and thirty-one minutes. Dr. Feinman, do you concur that the Guest is now dead, by any measurements we can make?"

"I concur," Harry said. "There are no reflexes. The Guest's body previously exhibited a living tension when touched. In its present state, there is no living tension in evidence."