Research Opta

by Neil Charles, Denis Hughes

Genres: Science Fiction; Sci-fi Action & Adventure; Alien Contact; Space Opera

Synopsis

From the unplumbed depths of new and startling fields of research a man, groping after the truth, contrived a group of life-forms of microscopic size. It was a daring experiment, made possible through the medium of advanced instruments and techniques which offered scope in the realms of micro-dissection. In that respect, then, the operation was successful: life-forms had been created by means of chromosomic manipulation. But the impact of the resulting entities was to have a disturbing effect on the man who made them...

Release date: October 27, 2016

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 108

Sample

DARKNESS stretched through the length of the white walled laboratory like a solid thing. No sound broke the stillness of the night outside, so that for long minutes on end this place might well have been as isolated in its solitude and secrecy as if it was built on the barren face of the Moon. The fact that it was not on the Moon, but in the grounds of a quiet, secluded country house not many miles from the turmoil of London’s evening traffic made no difference to the illusion.

Then the song of a nightingale came clearly from the trees outside, penetrating into the silence of the long dark room with its benches and burners and varied equipment.

As if the lilting notes of the night bird were a signal for the lifelessness to be shaken off, a single light, closely shaded over one of the benches at the far end of the room, was switched on. A door closed slowly with a sigh from its pneumatic damper. Coming from the darkness, the dim shape of a man moved into the narrow circle of light cast by the shaded lamp. Not until he took a seat at the bench where the localised glow was concentrated were his features visible. And when he bent forward the shadows on his face accentuated its thinness, the tightness of the lips, the hawk-like set of the long thin nose. The light gleamed on his forehead, a bare, unwrinkled expanse of taut skin below thinning hair rapidly receding backwards from the bulge of the brow. His shoulders were stooped almost to a point of deformity, so rounded were they. But it was his eyes that would have riveted the attention of any watcher from the shadows a few feet away. They were the eyes of a man who sees into the future—or thinks he does. The eyes of one who is bent on attaining some object at no matter what cost to himself or his fellow men. They were slate coloured eyes, ugly in their coldness, a little frightening in their faraway expression that somehow isolated the man from other people as if he constantly dreamed of things not of this world. But the dreams, a watcher would guess, were not pretty ones, and if the eyes are indeed the window of a human being’s soul then this man’s was not pretty either.

Because of the peculiarity of the lighting, of the still quietness, of the late hour and the air of secrecy about the entire setting, the man himself appeared detached from the everyday world, suspended, as it were, in that solitary aura of soft radiance.

His white overall coat, draped untidily over his stooped shoulders, only increased the effect, heightening it by the white glare of the creased material.

For several minutes he did absolutely nothing but sit quite still, his hands, short, thick, capable hands, resting quietly on the glazed surface of the bench before him. Then his lips moved soundlessly and he raised his head, his gaze coming to rest on the complex piece of equipment that occupied the centre of the bench before him.

“I must be right!” he said suddenly, his voice harsh and loud against the background of silence. “The cellular mutations must come out as I meant them to!”

His hands went out to the instrument, drawing it towards him with a certain eagerness tempered by caution. It was almost as if he wanted to use it but was frightened by what it would reveal. For several seconds he stared at the instrument longingly, clenching and unclenching his hands in a fever of uncertainty.

At last he built up the courage he needed.

Leaving the complicated instrument in place, he rose to his feet and moved quickly across the floor to a steel cabinet against the wall. He did not bother to turn on any more lights, knowing every inch of the way. But when he opened the cabinet door a low power bulb came to life inside, its glow illuminating a curious looking piece of apparatus rather like a small safe planted squarely in the middle of a shelf waist high to the man as he stood there peering at it.

The glow of the interior light brought glistening stars from perspiration beading his forehead. Twitches of nervousness worked his mouth and he had to grip the sides of the cabinet to steady himself before the next move.

With hands that were still not quite steady he gripped a handle in the centre of the safe door, his eyes noting the temperature and humidity indicators set beside it. All was in order; if nothing unforeseen had happened within the safe-like incubator—for that was what it was—the fine gauge slides should by now be protecting organisms such as the modern world of science had never before seen.

Excitement rose by leaps and bounds in the mind of the man. He was the pioneer, the master mind, the conqueror of fresh fields of research! This was to be the greatest operation, the most staggering discovery since the harnessing of radium! No wonder he was subject to excitement at this special moment.

A glance at the chronometer alongside the incubator told him the exact second had arrived. With a swift twist of the handle he drew the door open. He was breathing rapidly, fighting to control himself. And then when the interior of the incubator was visible a new sense of cool and calculating calm swept over him. His nerves ceased their tense jangling; his mind became crystal clear in an instantaneous change from its previous excitement. Now he was the scientist, the dispassionate, almost inhuman delver after natural and unnatural secrets. No longer was he a man subject to human emotions likely to upset his mental balance or confuse the cold powers of reasoning so vital at such a time.

There was little enough to see inside the safe-like incubator. Nothing more, in fact, than a shelf crosswise in the middle. Below it were various heating elements, humidifiers, dials and twitching meters. The tiny tick of a clockwork mechanism sounded loud in the momentary stillness before the man himself moved again. Then he reached in a hand and lifted something small and barely noticeable from the shelf, holding it with the utmost care between finger and thumb.

Seen in the glow of light that flooded the main cabinet, the small thing was plain, a fragile plate of glass two or three inches long, an inch wide, incredibly thin. But on closer examination a watcher would have seen that it consisted of two sheets of the finest glass clamped together by clips. Protruding from either side were two tiny silver coloured terminals, alongside which were two further projections, each of which had a tiny squared keyway in their outer ends.

Still holding it as if it was the most precious thing in the world—which to him it certainly was—the man turned slowly and moved back across the big room towards the lighted bench with its central piece of equipment gleaming black and brass in the glare.

Bending over the instrument, he fitted the double glass slide below the microscope, standing erect again, rubbing his hands together with a hint of nervousness. Now that the slide was secured and ready for examination, the tension was mounting within him again. He had to steady himself before operating the delicate adjustments needed.

“Now!” he breathed a few moments later. “Now, it must have worked out according to plan! I can’t have failed this time!”

Again he was calm and cold and detached, a man in whose hands perhaps lay one of the great secrets of scientific advancement, perhaps even the greatest secret of all—the changing of life-form through the medium of cell manipulation and pre-development resection.

Even now, when everything was ready and a normal man could not have borne to wait a moment longer before checking success or failure, the man in the creased white overall coat still hesitated before peering down through the column of the microscope.

When at length he did his body might have been carved from stone, so still and rigid was it as he bent over the eyepiece.

Suddenly he straightened up, eyes gleaming, a wild look on his face. Standing with hands clenched he stared into space, past the central light over the bench, past the walls of the laboratory, out past the gentle summer night beyond the walls, unseeing. His heart pounded with a mixture of disbelief and fear that was partly triumphant, partly anxious. He had without doubt achieved an end, but it was not the one at which his efforts had been aimed.

“A new life-form!” he whispered to himself. Then he bent quickly and once more studied the microscopic organisms enclosed in the slide and now enlarged enormously to his vision.

Those tiny forms were certainly fantastic in appearance. Brought to development in the incubator—a specially made piece of equipment for this very purpose and no other—they were entire and separate beings, stunted to microscopic proportions by the scientist’s earlier operations on the undeveloped cells before incubation. Such pre-development manipulation was only possible with the aid of the microscope he was using. Minute probes connected to control knobs made it possible to use tiny surgical instruments working inside the double glass slide within which organisms were held secure. It was by means of this amazing development that the new life-form became reality, though in this case the result was far from what the operator had expected.

For long minutes on end he stared through the eyepiece of the instrument, still finding it hard to realise that what he saw was but a parody of his original aims. He had fully intended to produce a life-form slightly different and infinitely smaller than the human form, but this was something else. Here were tiny beings perfect in every detail as they moved about in the shallow space that trapped them in the slide, but they were barely recognisable as miniature human beings, being ugly and grotesque and wholly fantastic.

Taking his courage in both hands, the man manipulated the controls of the instrument. The tiny probes moved in response to the micro gearing connected to the controls. They groped forward towards one of the minute entities, jerking a little as the operator fumbled the controls in his eager haste. Then the two probes converged on the little humanoid being with its grotesquely-shaped head and body.

Holding his breath, the man closed them up till they actually touched the subject of experiment. Only then did he get any reaction from the subject. Beneath his eye, it squirmed and struggled against the delicate grip of the probes. A fraction of a turn more on the controls would destroy it, but the operator was too skilled to let that happen. This thing he touched by remote control, and on which, if he chose, he could carry out simple surgical operations, was too precious to endanger. He must know more about it before ever harm came to it through further experiment.

Very gently and with the finest degree of delicacy, he worked the probes so that the little figure was gripped and turned over, face downwards.

Its reaction was curious and unexpected. With what amounted to a vicious twist it broke free of the probes and turned over again, squirming violently. Then, to the amazement and discomfort of the observer, it raised one arm and shook a tiny fist in obvious anger.

The man at the eyepiece stepped backwards a pace, his mouth dropping open, cheeks suddenly pale from the shock of what he had seen. When he looked again the little figure was on the rampage within the restricting limitations of the hollow space between the slides. Its fellow entities—these were three all told—huddled at the edge of their prison, looking on as the central figure grasped the ends of the probes and bent them with savage and unlooked for strength.

The operator seized the controls and hurriedly turned them, retracting the delicate probes before they could be damaged beyond repair. The entity’s face wore an ugly expression which turned to a sneer of triumph with the heightening of the operator’s dismay and anxiety. While the man stared the tiny figure gesticulated in a manner that was purely taunting, daring him, as it were, to do his worst.

Because he was moment. . .