The Eyes of Darkness

filmed with frost.
    Dr. Carlton Dombey, a curly-haired man with a bushy mustache, stood at the window, blotting his damp hands on his medical whites and peering anxiously through one of the few frost-free patches of glass. Although he was struggling to cast off the seizure of claustrophobia that had gripped him, was trying to pretend that the organic-looking ceiling wasn't pressing low over his head and that only open sky hung above him instead of thousands of tons of concrete and steel rock, his own panic attack concerned him less than what was happening beyond the viewport.
    Dr. Aaron Zachariah, younger than Dombey, cleanshaven, with straight brown hair, leaned over one of the computers, reading the data that flowed across the screen. "The temperature's dropped thirty-five degrees in there during the past minute and a half," Zachariah said worriedly. "That can't be good for the boy."
    "Every time it's happened, it's never seemed to bother him," Dombey said.
    "I know, but—"
    "Check out his vital signs."
    Zachariah moved to another bank of computer screens, where Danny Evans's heartbeat, blood pressure, body temperature, and brainwave activity were constantly displayed. "Heartbeat's normal, maybe even slightly slower than before. Blood pressure's all right. Body temp unchanged. But there's something unusual about the EEG reading."
    "As there always is during these cold snaps," Dombey said. "Odd brainwave activity. But no other indication he's in any discomfort."
    "If it stays cold in there for long, we'll have to suit up, go in, and move him to another chamber," Zachariah said.
    "There isn't one available," Dombey said. "All the others are full of test animals in the middle of one experiment or another."
    "Then we'll have to move the animals. The kid's a lot more important than they are. There's more data to be gotten from him."
    He's more important because he's a human being, not because he's a source of data, Dombey thought angrily, but he didn't voice the thought because it would have identified him as a dissident and as a potential security risk.
    Instead, Dombey said, "We won't have to move him. The cold spell won't last." He squinted into the smaller room, where the boy lay motionless on a hospital bed, under a white sheet and yellow blanket, trailing monitor wires. Dombey's concern for the kid was greater than his fear of being trapped underground and buried alive, and finally his attack of claustrophobia diminished. "At least it's never lasted long. The temperature drops abruptly, stays down for two or three minutes, never longer than five, and then it rises to normal again."
    "What the devil is wrong with the engineers? Why can't they correct the problem?"
    Dombey said, "They insist the system checks out perfectly."
    "Bullshit."
    "There's no malfunction. So they say."
    "Like hell there isn't!" Zachariah turned away from the video displays, went to the window, and found his own spot of clear glass. "When this started a month ago, it wasn't that bad. A few degrees of change. Once a night. Never during the day. Never enough of a variation to threaten the boy's health. But the last few days it's gotten completely out of hand. Again and again, we're getting these thirty- and forty-degree plunges in the air temperature in there. No malfunction, my ass!"
    "I hear they're bringing in the original design team," Dombey said. "Those guys'll spot the problem in a minute."
    "Bozos," Zachariah said.
    "Anyway, I don't see what you're so riled up about. We're supposed to be testing the boy to destruction, aren't we? Then why fret about his health?"
    "Surely you can't mean that," Zachariah said. "When he finally dies, we'll want to know for sure it was the injections that killed him. If he's subjected to many more of these sudden temperature fluctuations, we'll never be certain they didn't contribute to his death. It won't be clean research."
    A thin, humorless laugh escaped Carlton Dombey, and he looked away from the window. Risky as it might be to express doubt to any colleague on the project, Dombey could not control himself: "Clean? This whole thing was never clean. It was a dirty piece of business right from the start."
    Zachariah faced him. "You know I'm not talking about the morality of it."
    "But I am."
    "I'm talking about clinical standards."
    "I really don't think I want to hear your opinions on either subject," Dombey said. "I've got a splitting headache."
    "I'm just trying to be conscientious," Zachariah said,