and Brad Hinshaw so that he could more closely watch what Dr. Engersol was doing. All through breakfast he’d kept looking for Amy, hoping that somehow, after he’d fallen asleep in his chair, she might have miraculously returned to the Academy. When there was still no sign of her by the time breakfast was over, he’d almost gone to Hildie Kramer’s office to find out if anyone had heard anything. But then he’d changed his mind, because once he started talking about Amy, he was pretty sure he’d start talking about what had happened in the basement last night, when he’d gone looking for her. And the only person he wanted to talk to about the strange sounds he’d heard, and the funny shaft that seemed to go right through the basement floor, was Steve Conners.
For a while he’d thought about cutting Dr. Engersol’s seminar and going to find Steve, but in the end he’d decided to wait until after the English class.
Now, though, he sort of wished he’d decided to cut the special seminar. This morning they were going to do some more experiments on the same cat they’d been working with yesterday morning.
The cat was unconscious, and part of its skull had been cut away to expose the animal’s brain. As he stared at the convoluted mass of matter contained within the cat’s skull, Josh tried to keep his mind on what Dr. Engersol was saying, but he kept thinking about Amy and her objections to what had happened the day before.
If she’d been here this morning, she probably would have left already. Even as Dr. Engersol began telling him what they were going to do, Josh wasn’t sure he would be able to stay, either.
“We’re going to begin exploring the various parts of the brain today,” their teacher explained. “The cat, as you can see, is unconscious right now, but in a little while we’re going to wake him up. First, though, we’re going to immobilize him, not only so that he can’t hurt any of you, but so he can’t hurt himself, either.”
Carefully, aided by Jeff Aldrich, Engersol bound the cat’s four legs and torso to a wooden slab that sat on the tabletop, using nylon straps that had been designed for that specific purpose. When he was finished, even the cat’s head was held immobile.
“As most of you already know,” Engersol went on, “a great deal of the cat’s brain is used for coordinating the functions of its body and reacting to stimuli from the outside. This morning we’re going to begin identifying those areas of the brain, and start disabling some of them. And I want to assure you,” he said, his eyes fixing on Josh as if he knew what was going on in the boy’s mind, “that the cat will feel nothing. The brain itself has no pain sensors at all, and as I disable certain areas of the brain, I won’t be causing the animal any serious discomfort. It will undoubtedly be aware of certain false stimuli, but that will be all.”
Josh frowned. Whether the stimuli were real or not, the cat would still hurt, wouldn’t it? Before he could ask the question, Dr. Engersol had begun.
He slipped a needle into a vein on the animal’s left foreleg, pressed the plunger, and a few seconds later the cat began to stir. Then it came fully awake, and tensed as it realized it couldn’t move.
For a moment it struggled, but then, as if sensing there was no way it could escape its bonds, it relaxed under the restraints, its eyes narrowing to slits as it studied the faces of the boys gathered around the table.
“As you can see, the cat is now fully awake, and responds to various stimuli.” Engersol waved his hand in front of the cat’s eyes, and the animal tried to turn its head away.
Then he snapped his fingers by one of its ears. The cat’s body tensed as it tried to turn toward the sound.
When Engersol touched the tip of one of its ears with the probe in his hand, the ear twitched reflexively, as if flicking away an offending fly.
After Engersol had demonstrated the cat’s responses to various other stimuli, the real work began. Using a laser probe that was guided by a computer, he began focusing the instrument on a spot within the cortex of the cat’s brain. “First, I’m going to destroy the area of the brain that responds to visual stimuli,” he explained. “And