Bent over their instruments, three hundred Fertilizers were plunged, as the Director
of Hatcheries and Conditioning entered the room, in the scarcely breathing
silence, the absent-minded, soliloquizing hum or whistle, of absorbed
concentration.
Identical twins-but not in piddling twos and threes as
in the old viviparous days, when an egg would sometimes accidentally divide;
actually by dozens, by scores at a time.
The procession advanced; one by
one the eggs were transferred from their test-tubes to the larger containers; deftly
the peritoneal lining was slit, the morula dropped into place, the saline solution
poured in. and already the bottle had passed, and it was the turn of the
labellers.