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now. He felt he couldn’t afford to lose it.
    â€œMutagen desensitizer,” he said.
    Svengaard hesitated. The Krebs cycle was following a slow sine curve that dipped perilously into the death cycle now. He knew why Potter had made this decision, but the carcinogenic peril of it had to be weighed. He wondered if he should argue the step. The embryo hung less than four points from a deadly plunge into dissolution. Chemical mutagens administered at this point could shock it into a spurt of growth or destroy it. Even if the mutagen treatment worked, it could leave the embryo susceptible to cancer.
    â€œMutagen desensitizer!” Potter repeated.

    â€œDosage?” Svengaard asked.
    â€œHalf minim on fractional-minim feed. I’ll control it from here.”
    Svengaard shifted the feeder keys, his eyes on the Krebs-cycle repeater. He’d never heard of applying such drastic treatment this close to the borderline. Mutagens usually were reserved for the partly-flawed Sterrie embryo, a move that sometimes produced dramatic results. It was like shaking a bucket of sand to level the grains. Sometimes the germ plasm presented with a mutagen sought a better level on its own. They’d even produced an occasional viable this way … but never an Optiman.
    Potter reduced amplification, studied the flow of movement in the embryo. Gently, he depressed the feeder key, searched for Optiman signs. The cellular action remained unsteady, partly blurred.
    â€œKrebs cycle twenty-two eight,” the computer nurse said.
    Climbing a bit , Potter thought.
    â€œVery slow,” Svengaard said.
    Potter maintained his vigil within the morula. It was growing, expanding in fits and starts, fighting with all the enormous power contracted in its tiny domain.
    â€œKrebs cycle thirty point four,” Svengaard said.
    â€œI am withdrawing mutagens,” Potter said. He backed off the microscope to a peripheral cell, desensitized the nucleoproteins, searched for the flawed configurations.
    The cell was clean.
    Potter traced down into the coiled-coil helices of the DNA chains with a dawning wonder.
    â€œKrebs cycle thirty-six eight and climbing,” Svengaard said. “Shall I start the choline and aneurin?”
    Potter spoke automatically, his attention fixed on the cell’s gene structure. “Yes, start them.” He completed the scope tracing, shifted to another peripheral cell.
    Identical.
    Another cell—the same.
    The altered gene pattern held true, but it was a pattern, Potter realized, which hadn’t been seen in humankind since the second century of gene shaping. He thought of calling
for a comparison to be sure. The computer would have it, of course. No record was ever lost or thrown away. But he dared not … there was too much at stake in this. He knew he didn’t need the comparison, though. This was a classic form, a classroom norm which he had stared at almost daily all through his medical education.
    The super-genius pattern that had caused Sven to call in a Central specialist was there, firmed up by the cutting-room adjustments. It was close-coupled, though, with a fully stable fertility pattern. The longevity basics lay locked in the configurations of the gene structure.
    If this embryo reached maturity and encountered a fertile mate, it could breed healthy, living children without the interference of the gene surgeon. It needed no enzyme prescription to survive. It would outlive ten standard humans without that prescription … and with a few delicate enzymic adjustments might join the ranks of the immortals.
    The Durant embryo could father a new race—like the live-forevers of Central, but dramatically unlike them. This embryo’s progeny might fit themselves into the rhythms of natural selectivity … completely outside Optiman control.
    It was the template pattern from which no human could deviate too far and live, yet it was the single thing feared most by