Stormbreaker

metal fence sprang up. It was brand-new, twenty feet high, topped with razor wire. Arc lamps on scaffolding towers stood at regular intervals and there were huge signs, red on white. You could have read them from the next county:
    SAYLE ENTERPRISES
    Strictly Private
    “Trespassers will be shot,” Alex muttered to himself. He remembered what Mrs. Jones had told him. “He’s more or less formed his own private army. He’s acting as if he’s got something to hide.” Well, that was certainly his own first impression. The whole complex was somehow shocking, alien to the sloping hills and fields.
    The car reached the main gate, where there was a security cabin and an electronic barrier. A guard in a blue-and-gray uniform with SE printed on his jacket waved them through. The barrier lifted automatically.
    And then they were following a long, straight road over a stretch of land that had somehow been hammered flat with an airstrip on one side and a cluster of four high tech buildings on the other. The buildings were large, smoked glass and steel, each one joined to the next by a covered walkway. There were two aircraft next to the landing strip. A helicopter and a small cargo plane. Alex was impressed. The whole complex must have been a couple of miles square. It was quite an operation.
    The Mercedes came to a roundabout with a fountain at the center, swept around it, and continued up toward a fantastic sprawling house. It was Victorian, redbrick topped with copper domes and spires that had long ago turned green. There must have been at least a hundred windows on five floors facing the drive. It was a house that just didn’t know when to stop.
    The Mercedes pulled up in the front and the driver got out. “Follow me.”
    “What about my luggage?” Alex asked.
    “It’ll be brought.”
    Alex and the driver went through the front door and into a hall dominated by a huge canvas—Judgment Day, the end of the world painted four centuries ago as a swirling mass of doomed souls and demons.
    There were artworks everywhere. Watercolors and oils, prints, drawings, sculptures in stone and bronze, all crowded together with nowhere for the eye to rest. Alex followed the driver along a carpet so thick that he almost bounced. He was beginning to feel claustrophobic and he was relieved when they passed through a door and into a vast, cathedral-like room that was practically bare.
    “Mr. Sayle will be here shortly,” the driver said, and left.
    Alex looked around him. This was a modern room with a curving steel desk near the center, carefully positioned halogen lights, and a spiral staircase leading down from a perfect circle cut in the ceiling about fifteen feet high. One entire wall was covered with a single sheet of glass, and walking over to it, Alex realized that he was looking at a gigantic aquarium. The sheer size of the thing drew him toward it. It was hard to imagine how many thousands of gallons of water the glass held back, but he was surprised to see that the tank was empty. There were no fish, although it was big enough to hold a shark.
    And then something moved in the turquoise shadows and Alex gasped with a mixture of horror and wonderment as the biggest jellyfish he had ever seen drifted into view. The main body of the creature was a shimmering, pulsating mass of white and mauve, shaped roughly like a cone. Beneath it, a mass of tentacles covered with circular stingers twisted in the water, at least ten feet long. As the jellyfish moved, or drifted in the artificial current, its tentacles writhed against the glass so that it looked almost as if it was trying to break out. It was the single most awesome and repulsive thing Alex had ever seen.
    “Physalia physalia.” The voice came from behind him and Alex twisted around to see a man coming down the last of the stairs.
    Herod Sayle was short. He was so short that Alex’s first impression was that he was looking at a reflection that had somehow been distorted. In his immaculate and expensive black suit with gold signet ring and brightly polished black shoes, he looked like a scaled-down model of a multimillionaire businessman. His skin was dark and his teeth flashed when he smiled. He had a round, bald head and very horrible eyes.
    The gray pupils were too small, surrounded on all sides by white. Alex was reminded of tadpoles before they hatch. When Sayle stood next to him, the eyes were at the same level as his and held less warmth than the jellyfish.
    “The