Norah looked alarmed.
"You too? What on earth would anybody want with a lot of laboratory rats? They aren't worth anything, are they—financially, I mean?"
"Not a cent. That's why I'm sure one of the clean-up kids must have done it. Probably wanted them for pets. They're all tame, of course, not like wild rats—though they can bite like wild rats if they want to. Some of the ones missing are treated, and some are controls. It would just be a nuisance if they hadn't taken SK540. Now they've got to find him, or do about five years' work over again, without any assurance of as great a success. To say nothing of letting our super-rat loose on the world."
"What on earth could even a super-rat do that would matter—to human beings, I mean?"
"Nobody knows. Maybe that's what we're going to find out."
That night Norah woke suddenly with a loud scream. Philip got the gas lighted—there was no electricity in the old house—and held her shaking body in his arms. She found her breath at last long enough to sob: "It was a rat! A rat ran right over my face!"
"You're dreaming, darling. It's because I told you about the theft at the lab. There couldn't be rats in this place. It's too solidly built, from the basement up."
He finally got her to sleep again, but he lay awake for a long time, listening. Nothing happened.
Rats can't talk, but they can communicate. About the time Norah Vinson dropped off after her frightened wakening, SK540 was confronting a culprit. The culprit was one of the liberated males. His beady eyes tried to gaze into the implacable ones of SK540, but his tail twitched nervously and if he bared his teeth it was more in terror than in fight. They all knew that strict orders had been given not to disturb the humans in the house until SK540 had all his preparations made.