“Dr. Shelly White,” Barry introduced her, “Dr. Henry Shoo.” “Please call me Henry, Doctor,” he said, extending his hand. “Shelly,” she said simply as they shook hands.
“And you must be Nick Harris.”
“It is quite a pleasure, Dr. Shoo,” offered Nick.
“Please, everyone, call me Henry. And this is my staff handling scientific coding, my bio-team, the group responsible for what we are about to test.”
They entered the building and headed toward the lab. The tension in the air grew thicker; the excitement more electric.
Inside the lab, Dr. Shoo gave his guests a small tour, and as they approached the simulator, he reiterated how he could not get the model to fail with the code sequence. He said the entire biotech team was attempting to make batches of serum to try on rodents, but were running into a problem.
“There is a side effect,” he announced.
Shelly’s heart sank. “Like what?” she asked, looking at Barry. “The compound attacks the tumor with such energy that it
literally makes the Petri dish vibrate.”
“You can feel the reaction?” asked Nick.
“This formula creates a reaction. A violent one, at that. This thing destroys cancer cells. The bigger the tumor, the bigger the vibration. I’ve never seen anything like it before.”
Shelly understood the implications, but silently prayed it could be controlled. Dr. Shoo led them to an area of the lab with cages of laboratory rats. Nick spied a large lab rat in a cage and backed up. “C’mon, don’t tell me you’re afraid of a rat, are you?” kidded
Shelly.
“No, I’m not afraid. It’s just—”
“I think you might like Oscar,” said Dr. Shoo. “Oscar? Oscar the rat?”
“Oscar the rat. You see, when Doctors White and Wall called, he looked like this.” He, showing them a photo of the rat with tumors on each side of his body and a small hump on his back. “And there are six more of his friends in the back who seem to be doing just as well.”
Shelly examined the photo and watched Oscar gnawing on a sunflower seed he held with his eight front fingers. She thought back to the lab rats she worked with in college. Surely she’d never