An hour later, after they'd finished their meals and the Captain had made his apologies and left, Jeffcott was left unsupervised to wander the base as he wanted, a Visitor's pass hanging from a chain around his neck. He remembered that they had several captive anomaly creatures somewhere on the base and went in search of them.

  After questioning several people he was directed to a shed on the edge of the base, guarded by a pair of smartly dressed guards. They let him through without a word and he guessed that their job was to keep the creatures in rather than to keep humans out. There was another pair of guards inside the door and they glanced at him as he went past, but Jeffcott's attention was seized by what he saw inside.

  An electric fence bad been set up around a section of the floor about a dozen feet across within which four anomaly creatures were turning their flower-heads towards him, their six eyes blinking one at a time. They moved towards him as he approached but kept well clear of the fence. Even without the control of the anomaly Intelligence, it seemed that they were smart enough to stay away from something that had hurt them in the past.

  Jeffcott had expected the pen to be covered with sand or straw or something, but the creatures were slithering around on the bare wooden boards of the cabin floor. There were various foodstuffs scattered around the pen. Mainly vegetables, including lettuce and carrots that showed signs of having been nibbled at by hundreds of tiny teeth. There was also a scattered pile of bird seed that he could see, from when his parents had owned a budgerigar, had been reduced to empty shells. There was also a leg of lamb on the other side of the pen and he was disturbed to see that it had been almost completely stripped of flesh. In one corner was a tidy pile of black pellets. He wondered if they were creature droppings.

  There was a man outside the pen, leaning over the low fence to examine one of the creatures. He looked up as Jeffcott entered. "Can I help you?" he asked.

  "Just curious," Jeffcott replied. "I'm David Jeffcott. The man who went into the anomaly. I heard you had some of the creatures here and I got curious."

  "And well you might," the man replied. "These creatures are fascinating. Neil Young. No relation." He held out a hand and Jeffcott shook it.

  "The last time I saw these creatures they were trying to kill me," Jeffcott told him.

  "We haven't seen any sign of hostile behaviour from them," Young replied. "We've put several kinds of animal in with them but they made no move to attack them. Not even in self defence. We put a hungry fox in with one of them. The fox was wary of the creature for a while, as you'd expect, but when it had gotten used to it it ate it. The creature made no move to escape or defend itself as it was consumed."

  "They have claws on the end of their tentacles," Jeffcott told him.

  Young nodded. "We found the claws on a specimen we dissected, but they were deep inside it. We saw no sign of the tentacles you described, though. I've read the transcripts of your interviews."

  "I shall probably just assume that everyone's read them from now on. The tentacles were made from those globular body elements, stretched out into long sausages and linked end to end. They haven't done that at all?"

  "Nope. They've just slither around on the tube feet sprouting from the bottom-most body elements." He smiled. "You called then fish eggs," he said.

  "Because that's what they look like," said Jeffcott defensively. "Big eggs, of course. I don't know if any real fish lays eggs an inch across."

  "The whale shark lays eggs that are a foot across," Young replied. "Certain species of catfish lay spherical eggs that are about the size of a modularis body element."

  "Modularis?"

  "Modularis ovumsicut," said Young. "Egg-like modular organism. That's what we've decided to call them. We couldn't just keep on calling them creatures."

  "You're a zoologist then," said Jeffcott.

  "A doctor of zoology," the other man replied. "They called me in to study these things. Biochemically they're just like us, as you'd expect as they grew out of a human being, but the structure of their bodies is like nothing on Earth."

  "The modular body plan," said Jeffcott, nodding. "They can literally swap body parts with each other. I saw one of those things with most of its fish-eggs destroyed. I saw what was left of it merge with another. I saw one drop from a high window. When it hit the ground it broke apart, fish-eggs rolling around all over the place. It just pulled itself back together. I can imagine one of them eating a meal while the others perform a task they don't want to leave. I can imagine the one that fed swapping modules with the ones doing the task. Giving it modules full of food and taking back modules full of waste products."

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  "We've actually seen them doing that," the zoologist replied. "We separated one from the others and gave it food while starving the others. The one that had fed swapped modules with the others just as you described. That's not what I meant, though. There are Earth organisms not too different in that respect. Colony creatures. Swarms of organisms that act like a single creature. That's not why they're like nothing on Earth."

  "Then what is?"

  "They're designed rationally," Young replied. "As if they were, truly, designed by someone. Have you ever heard of the recurrent laryngeal nerve?"

  "Can't say I have," Jeffcott replied.

  "It's the nerve that runs from the brain to the larynx in all vertebrates. It doesn't go by the shortest route, though. Instead it goes down the neck from the brain, around the heart and then back up to the larynx. It's because we're evolved from fish, you see. In fish the nerve goes in a straight line right past the heart on its way to the organ that would become the larynx in land animals and as the neck evolved the nerve was forced to take a longer route. It's not so bad in humans but in a giraffe the nerve has to go down a fifteen foot neck and then all the way back up to reach an organ that's only a few inches away from the brain. It's solid proof that we're the products of evolution, rather than design."

  "And the anomaly creatures aren't like that?"

  "No they are not. We've dissected several of the creatures and we haven't found a single evolutionary contingency. Everything is in the ideal arrangement. The simplest, most efficient arrangement. As if they were designed."

  "The two doctors who went into the anomaly with us thought the same," Jeffcott replied. "They thought at first that the living tumours were random. Just cells growing haphazardly, by chance, but they weren't."

  "No," Young replied. "They were becoming something very specific, and that's despite the fact that some of the victims were only exposed to the anomaly for a few minutes. You tell us that Mark Summers was exposed for less than a minute, and yet that was long enough for something to reach inside him and leave instructions for the growth of those things."

  "Changed their DNA perhaps," suggested Jeffcott.

  "Nope," Young replied. "Those creatures have the exact same DNA as the people they emerged from. You could identify the exact person by DNA fingerprinting. No, this is something else. Methylation of nucleotides perhaps. The lab boys are looking into it."

  "Hard to believe that the intelligence, or whatever it is, worked out how to do that in just a few days after seeing a human being for the first time."

  "Impossible to believe!" declared Young fervently. "And I don't believe it. No matter how godlike this intelligence might be, it has to have seen a human being before. Somehow, sometime, there's been contact between our universe and its universe in the past."

  "But the anomaly has only existed for a few days. Could time be going faster in the other universe? Something like that."

  "You tell us, Mister Jeffcott. You're the one who's seen the other universe. A landscape of crystals, you said. Did it look as if time was passing faster?"

  Jeffcott thought back. There hadn't been much of a wind blowing, he remembered. If time had been passing faster, even the slightest breeze would have been like a hurricane. There'd been no change to the angle of the light as the sun passed across the sky either. "I don't think so," he said. "In fact, from what I could tell, time might have been frozen over there."

  Young nodded. "And even if they'd had years, reprogramming a man's DNA to make those things grow inside him is a stupendous accomplishment. We are dealing with something that makes us look as dumb as bricks in comparison. I mean, it's not as if we're only dealing with humans here. This thing can make creatures emerge from any animal we send in, and we've tried everything. Dogs, cats, rabbits. Whatever we send in suffers cell reversion and starts to have creatures grow inside it, or just a few fish-egg modules if it's not big enough for a whole creature."

  "And the plants too," added Jeffcott. "Two species that I know of, turnips and potatoes, but if they can modify the development of things as different as humans and potatoes, they can modify anything. The General thinks we're in for a walk in the park. A Captain I spoke to a few minutes ago seems to have a little more sense but even he thinks the danger'll come from acid and poison darts. I think the danger'll come from biological weapons. Plague bacteria, or an airborne virus that can exist outside the anomaly and infect the whole world."

  "I think you underestimate Bromley," said Young though. "I've warned him to be on guard against airborne pathogens. I think that's part of the reason he's so keen to get this expedition under way as soon as possible. I think he might be thinking about using a nuke against Maricopa. I overheard him asking an engineer whether a strong enough magnetic field would protect a nuclear weapon."

  "Maybe they should just send the nuke in first and have done with it," said Jeffcott.

  "I'm sure he'd like to, but I doubt the President'll authorise the use of a nuke on American soil until all other options have been exhausted."

  "I've always hated nuclear weapons," Jeffcott confided, glancing back at the guards still standing by the door. He felt an insane suspicion that they might report him to someone important for the comment and that he might end up in trouble. He almost laughed aloud at the thought. "Now, though, I'm suddenly glad we've got such a powerful weapon. Thank God for Tube Alloys."

  The zoologist nodded soberly and the two men turned to look at the four alien creatures. They were still staring at the two humans, Jeffcott saw, and he couldn't rid himself of the suspicion that they were biding their time. Plotting something. He remembered killing the big, three headed one back in Maricopa, grabbing it with his hands and crushing the life out of it with his fingers. He felt a strong desire to jump over the electric fence and do the same to the four smaller creatures staring back at him. Just crushing and squeezing until there was nothing left of them but foul smelling gore dripping between his fingers.