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gave him the thumbs-up. Quickly but very carefully, Nathan peeled the electrodes off the speckled green shell. He listened again with his stethoscope, to satisfy himself that the embryo’s heart was still beating. Then he carefully tapped the top of the egg with his hammer.
    He tapped it once – twice – three times – but it didn’t crack. It was obviously much thicker and stronger than he had calculated.
    He looked at Richard but all Richard could do was shrug. Keira and Tim looked equally helpless.
    ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Here goes nothing.’
    He struck the egg as hard as he could, and it broke into three large pieces, although they didn’t fall apart. He put down his hammer, and gently lifted the uppermost piece. Inside, there was a thin translucent membrane which stretched and then tore. A gray feathered head appeared, glistening with mucus, and a single orange eye which stared at him, unblinking.
    ‘Holy Ker- ist!’ said Tim.
    An appalling stench poured out of the egg, so foul that Keira made a retching noise and clamped her hand over her nose and her mouth, and even Richard coughed and took two steps back. The smell was sulfurous, like a rotten chicken’s egg, but it also had a strong undertone of chicken meat that was turning green, and a sinus-burning corrosiveness. It reminded Nathan of a blocked kitchen sink filled with Drano – hair and fat dissolving in sodium hydroxide.
    ‘Oh God,’ said Richard. ‘Look at it! It’s still alive, but it’s half decomposed.’
    Nathan turned his head away, took a deep breath, and held it. He turned back and tugged away the second piece of shell, and then the third. The embryo’s wing feathers were slimy, and its body was like a soft, half-collapsed sack. It had all the component parts that he had expected – the head, the beak, the legs and the claws – and there was no doubt that its heart was still beating.
    But it took one sticky breath, and then another, and then it choked, and stopped breathing altogether. Nathan carefully scooped both hands underneath it, trying to lift it up.
    ‘Tim – bring me the nest! Like, now ! Keira – get ready with the oxygen!’
    Tim carried over a red plastic bowl filled with fine sand and feathers and shreds of soft purple wool. Nathan had designed it himself, based on the scrapes that were hollowed out on cliffsides by peregrine falcons, to rear their young.
    With trembling hands, Tim held the bowl close to the incubator unit.
    ‘OK, now, easy,’ said Nathan. ‘We’ve put too much love and effort into this little guy to see him die now.’
    ‘He’s eighty per cent necrotic already,’ said Richard. ‘He. It . Maybe it’s a she.’
    Nathan raised his hands, and as he did so, the embryo fell apart. The wings dropped off, on to the floor, and the head rolled into the nest. The rest of the body collapsed into a mush of skin and bones and putrescent slime.
    ‘Oh God,’ said Keira, and walked off toward the other side of the laboratory, one hand raised in utter revulsion. ‘That is totally disgusting.’
    Nathan let the embryo’s remains fall back into the incubating unit, scraping the gelatinous green flesh off his fingers. Then he peeled off his latex gloves, and went to the sink to wash his hands with antiseptic gel.
    He said nothing. He couldn’t find the words. Tim watched him, still holding the nesting bowl. Keira stayed in the corner, by the door.
    With undisguised distaste, Richard picked up the embryo’s wings and restored its head to the top of its body. He coughed again, and said, ‘ Feurrgh !’ and spat into a tissue. Then, ‘What happened, Professor?’
    Nathan finished drying his hands before he answered. ‘Some kind of bacterial infection is my first guess. Group A Streptococcus, most likely.’
    ‘But how did its heart go on beating for so long? No human could have survived that degree of necrosis.’
    ‘Of course not. But we’re not dealing with a human here, are we? We’re not even dealing