“Now that you've seen one of these things up close, what are your conclusions?” Gamay said.

Throckmorton took a deep breath and puffed out his plump cheeks. “It's as I feared. Judging from his unusual physical size, I'd say he's definitely a genetically modified salmon. A lab-produced mutant, in other words. It's the same species as the one I showed you in my lab.”

“But your fish was smaller and more normal-looking.”

Throckmorton nodded. “They were both programmed with growth genes, I'd venture, but where my experiment was kept under control, there seems to have been no effort to restrain size with this fellow. It's almost as if someone wanted to see what would happen. But size and ferociousness led to its downfall. Once these creatures destroyed and replaced the natural stocks, they turned on each other.” “They were too hungry to breed, in other words?”

“That's possible. Or this design may simply have had a problem adapting to the wild, in the same way a big tree would be uprooted in a storm while a straggly little scrub pine survives. Nature tends to cull out mutants that don't fit into the scheme of things.”

“There's another possibility,” Gamay said. “I think Dr. Barker said something about producing neutered biofish so they couldn't breed.”

“Yes, that's entirely possible, but it would involve some sophisti- cated bioengineering.”

“What's next for your survey?” Paul said.

"We'll see what we can catch over the next few days, then I'll bring this specimen and anything else I catch back to Montreal, where we can map the genes. I may be able to match it up with some of the stuff

I have in the computers. Maybe we can figure out who designed it.“ ”Is that possible?"

“Oh, sure. A genetic program is almost as good as a signature. I sent Dr. Barker a message telling him what I found. Frederick is a whiz at this sort of thing.”

“You speak very highly of him,” Paul said.

“He's brilliant, as I said before. I only wish that he weren't affili- ated with a commercial venture.”

“Speaking of commercial ventures, we heard there's a fish- processing plant of some sort up the coast. Could they have had any- thing to do with this?”

“In what way?”

“I don't know. Pollution, maybe. Like those two-headed frogs they sometimes find in contaminated waters.”

“Interesting premise, but unlikely. You might see some deformed fish or fish kills, but this monster is no accident. And we would have seen deformities in other species, which doesn't seem to have been the case. Tell you what, though. We'll motor out and anchor for the night near the fish plant and make a few sets with the net in the morning. How long can you stay on board?”

“As long as you can stand us,” Paul said. “We don't want to im- pose.”