out that this would certainly trap him if he did not. After his changes the gene records of his offspring were not what they were supposed to be. Resultantly, when the cull-tissue sample was analyzed, the two did not match. An improbably high number showed a particular chromo­some group. A group not in the sperm-bank records. A mutant. A mutation that bred without Morkth supervision. Slowly, slowly, the method­ical net of the Morkth was closing in on the Alpha-Morkth guard on the roof of the hive.
There were two possible ways that S’kith 235 could evade certain capture and death at the hands of his masters. A Beta-Morkth raid, or flight. The probability of the former was about 0.2 percent. The Beta-Morkth would simply kill him, it was true; they despised the Alpha’s use of humanity. The human race was some­thing to be destroyed utterly, and not consorted with. The probability of S’kith 235 fleeing was even slimmer: The hive was his universe, a conditioning going to the core of his being from his earliest thought. The Alpha-Morkth had