"I don't know—man or monkey, it makes no difference. Whatever it is, it's Thurston's Disease. Come along. You might as well see what goes on in our ultra modern necropsy suite."

"I'd like to." She put down the bottle she was holding and followed him to a green door at the rear of the laboratory.

"Inside," Kramer said, "you will find a small anteroom, a shower, and a dressing room. Strip, shower, and put on a clean set of lab coveralls and slippers which you will find in the dressing room. You'll find surgical masks in the wall cabinet beside the lockers. Go through the door beyond the dressing room and wait for me there. I'll give you ten minutes."

"We do this both ways," Kramer said as he joined her in the narrow hall beyond the dressing room. "We'll reverse the process going out."

"You certainly carry security to a maximum," she said through the mask that covered the lower part of her face.

"You haven't seen anything yet," he said as he opened a door in the hall. "Note the positive air pressure," he said. "Theoretically nothing can get in here except what we bring with us. And we try not to bring anything." He stood aside to show her the glassed-in cubicle overhanging a bare room dominated by a polished steel post-mortem table that glittered in the harsh fluorescent lighting. Above the table a number of jointed rods and clamps hung from the ceiling. A low metal door and series of racks containing instruments and glassware were set into the opposite wall together with the gaping circular orifice of an open autoclave.

"We work by remote control, just like they do at the AEC. See those handlers?" He pointed to the control console set into a small stainless steel table standing beside the sheet of glass at the far end of the cubicle. "They're connected to those gadgets up there." He indicated the jointed arms hanging over the autopsy table in the room beyond. "I could perform a major operation from here and never touch the patient. Using these I can do anything I could in person with the difference that there's a quarter inch of glass between me and my work. I have controls that let me use magnifiers, and even do microdissection, if necessary."

"Where's the cadaver?" Mary asked.

"Across the room, behind that door," he said, waving at the low, sliding metal partition behind the table. "It's been prepped, decontaminated and ready to go."

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