Earl looked into the vat and caught his breath. Floating in the tank was a human embryo. It was alive, its umbilical cord growing from a spongy mass on the floor of the tank. Forgetting his danger, Earl grabbed the man's shoulder. "What is this?" he demanded. "Human babies growing in tanks?" The worker waited unresisting until Earl released his grip, then continued on his routine way. He was, in every respect, a robot, doing his specialized job, his mind a complete blank to anything else. A zombie. Earl looked out over the vast baby factory and realized with numb horror that all the hundreds of people working here were the same. Walking dead, their minds capable of only one thing--doing this specialized task. And the human embryos in the tanks? Would they become walking zombies? Over his head came the sound of the trap door opening. Earl didn't take time to look up. He ran. Down an aisle between rows of unborn humans tended by undead zombies. Up another ladder into another observation room, ignoring shouts that caught up with him. Out another door, down another hall, through another door, and into a street again. Miles of streets, and then something recognizable. A factory with belching smokestacks. He plunged toward it recklessly, desperately hoping to find intelligent men. Men with minds. Men able to help him hide. He found himself inside a huge plant where giant ladles were pouring molten metal into molds. There were men running the machines that controlled the pouring. They wore thick asbestos-like suits. As Earl ran toward them he saw one of them slip and fall so that his arm went into the stream of molten metal. The man didn't cry out nor jerk away. Splattering metal cascaded on the others. There was the stench of burned flesh. His mind numb with the shock of what he was seeing, Earl stood rooted, watching the others continue their work with expressionless faces, blank eyes. Mindless creatures, controlled like inanimate robots. "Earl!" He turned in the direction of the voice. He saw Nadine beckoning for him to come to her. He started toward her, then stopped. She was different from these--or was she? No, she wasn't any different. She too was an automaton. She was beckoning him to walk into another trap. He turned to run the other way, but in that moment of indecision he had been surrounded by men like George Ladd, carrying the little paralysis guns--and they were automatons too. He turned, searching for a way of escape, the smell of molten metal and cooked flesh strong in his nostrils. And then he felt the sting of the paralysis gun and was falling forward. A sharp pain entered the base of his skull. He lost consciousness then with the monstrous horror of what was around him searing into his soul. * * * * *