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Show 25 Six Robeck has been sitting with his pen poised above the surface of his Defense for fifteen minutes when there is a loud and agitated thump at the door, a noise that is part curse, part cry. It is Liller, coming from the rat lab. "Air," he yells, "it was the air." Robeck hurries behind him into the rat room. Yesterday two of the fifty rats were dead, though they showed no evidence of wounds: Liller had been excited, as it had seemed to show some evidence of a process whereby overcrowding produces not merely antisocial behavior, but an inability to live. Now Robeck peers through the plexiglas cover into the rat environment: all the rest are dead. "Look at this," Liller says, and he holds up a part of the tubing that serves the environment's air supply. There is a large kink in the tubing, where it has gotten caught between the environment and a heavy chair. Liller swears angrily, and in his frustration smashes a huge chemical reference text down on the thin plexiglas cover. His research is ruined. He turns and strides in fury out the door. Robeck bends forward over the rat box, and moves a large piece of the fractured plexiglas out of the way. The box is littered with prostrate rats, their small eyes bulging, their small thick tongues protruding and their small nailed claws drawn up in a primitive reflex. He and Liller will eventually remove the plexiglas lid and shovel the dirt and the dead rats together into |
