Ben stood on
his carpeted office floor, dripping in his dive suit, his chest
heaving and leg muscles cramping badly. But his mind was working
fluidly.
It was a relief
to find his workspace unoccupied. As dangerous as it had been
to return, Ben simply couldn’t leave things where they lay.
He had worked
alone through the holiday weekend, feverishly setting flasks of
nutrient broth inoculated with strains of genetically altered
bacteria on an orbital mixer and watching three timers. He’d
had no choice but to keep the manufacturing process moving at
a frantic pace. Time was of the essence.
After growing
the genetically altered bacteria, he had used the sonicator to
break them up and then put the solution in the centrifuge to separate
out the constituent protein of interest. He’d planned on
completing the project by the wee hours of Monday morning, then
leaving Sanker forever. The entire time he’d worked as if
someone’s life depended on it – in this case, it was
his own.
On the wood bench
in front of him lay priceless tubes of organic molecules; all
of which had never previously been manufactured except by Ben.
In fact the last part of the process was using a new gene that
promised to be even more effective. Nothing on earth existed like
these particular organics, and in the future men would study them
with the devotion of acolytes.
An hour earlier
Ben had been working on the last phase when the Sunday morning
quiet had been pierced by the sound of a horn that sounded similar
to the dive signal on a World War II submarine. It meant the lab’s
saltwater system was in some jeopardy. In minutes Ben had concluded
the problem was in the octopus pen, and he’d left his work
to don scuba gear and fix the malfunctioning pump. Just as Frick
had planned.
Fortunately, as
far as Ben could tell, Frick’s people hadn’t tampered
with his lab. Perhaps they were waiting for confirmation of his
“accident” and the death certificate before exercising
the Foundation’s legal right to take possession of all Ben
Anderson’s research, materials, and lab work.
