She watched through the magnifying lens, waiting for a telltale bead of fluid to form, signaling the need for another zap. But the membrane remained dry. She'd sealed the opening.

Success. Finally. A tiny triumph. Hardly made up for the fiasco in Marsden's officer Monday or Allard's accident this morning, but right now she'd take anything.

Gin looked up and found Oliver's round face grinning at her.

"It's going to be swell having someone else around who can fill these things. I'm sick to death of it."

"Why don't you just hire an assistant or two to help with the scut work? " "There's really not all that much to be done at this stage of the studies. And I'd like to limit the number of people who know what we're working with."

"And just what are we working with? " "Secret sauce."

"Oliver, come on.

Don't you think I have a right to know.

He thought a moment. "All right. Fair enough. But keep it under your hat. This solution is not patentable, sodon't want anyone stealing my thunder by beating me to market with it."

"Mum's the word, " she said.

"I'm sure I can trust you, " he murmured as if he'd just now realized it.

He removed his thick, horn-rimmed glasses as he sat down next to her.

He began to talk, rapidly, as if someone had opened a valve. Gin realized he must have been dying to expound on his secret sauce.

'"Are you familiar with the work done by the Department of Cell and Structural Biology in the University of Manchester in England? " "No.

Not a bit."

"Not many clinicians are. Okay then, how about fetal surgery? Have you seen any of that? " "Some down in Tulane. It wasn't part of the internal medicine rotation, obviously, but I picked up some information by osmosis."

"Good. Then you know that a fetus can have surgery in utero and be born months later completely scar free.

" "Yes, I remember a couple of OB residents talking about that. This high-risk baby they'd delivered had had a mass removed from its abdominal wall at about sixteen weeks' gestation and was born without a trace of an incision."

"Exactly. But the surgery has to be performed during the first five months. Any procedure done later leaves a scar just as it would on an adult. Cellular biologists have wondered about it for years. What's happening in there? What's different? What prevents the usual excess amount of collagen from being laid down and forming the scars we all know so well? The folks at the University of Manchester came up with the answer a few years ago." Gin snapped her fingers. She remembered something . . . where had she seen it? "Some sort of growth factor, wasn't it? " Oliver clapped his hands. "Excellent! Transforming growth factor beta, to be precise. They identified three types of the growth factor, and found that the third, beta type 3, falls off sharply at the end of the second tnmester of pregnancy. The type-three molecule, I call it beta-3 for short, has been synthesized since then and that's the key ingredient in the secret sauce." '"So that's the secret behind Duncan's incredible results. " ''llh-uh, " Oliver said, wagging a finger. "Duncan has the eyes and the hands that do the remodeling. Even without a drop of beta-3 his patients would have minimal scarring. All I've done is find a way to gild the lily."

"But why the implants? Couldn't he just coat the incisions with beta-3? ' "No. You need it in the final phase of healing. Remember the three stages of wound repair, inflammation, proliferas ion, and remodeling?

Beta-3 does its work in stage three where scar tissue forms to replace granulation tissue. At suturing time, beta-3 would accomplish nothing.

You need a means of delayed release." as, slaving away, testing antidepressants on rats in Skinner boxes as a psychopharmacologist at GEM Pharm during the day, and at night working in my home on a continuous delivery system for medication. Norplant was the hot topic then, but the Norplant implants have to be removed after five years. I thought I could improve on that, develop an implant that would deliver its medication in a metered dose for five years, maybe longer, and then dissolve. Great idea, no? " "I take it that didn't happen."

"Not completely. I developed a soft, flexible, crystalprotein matrix that would indeed dissolve without a trace.

However, it was nonpermeable. Wouldn't allow a drop of anything on one side to pass through to the other, until it dissolved, and then it would dump its entire contents into the surrounding tissues. I'd come up with nothing more than a very elaborate and expensive way of giving someone an injection. I was terribly discouraged. ' "And then along came Duncan."

"Right. After his . . . well, after he left vascular surgery, I heard about Manchester's results with transforming growth factor beta type 3 and saw how my imperfect slow-delivery membrane might be perfect for delivering something else. The FDA approved us for clinical trials and the results have been astounding." Gin had seen patients on postsurgical follow-up visits and only with a magnifying glass was it possible to tell they'd had surgery. Suddenly Gin was struck by the enormous potential for Oliver's implants.

"But plastic surgery is just icing on the cake, " she said. "Think of what you could do in general surgery." Oliver was nodding excitedly.

"Of course. The implants would-have the most value in trauma cases, but they'll become routine in procedures like hysterectomies and appendectomies. A few weeks post-op you could wear your bikini, heck, you could even go to a nxde beach if you wished, and no one would even guess you'd had surgery." Gin's hand strayed to the front of her blouse. Through the fabric she could feel the upper end of the thick, numb, puckered ridge of scar that ran the length of her abdomen.

Duncan's scar.

Bikini? she thought. I've never owned even a two-piece. Never even considered it.

"But the biggest benefit I see is in pediatrics, " Oliver was saying.

"Kids scar more than adults, and some of those scars, depending where they are, can be disabling because they don't stretch as the rest of the body grows." Tell me about it.

"That sounds wonderful."

"It will be. And the word is out. Other surgeons want to try the implant. Companies are calling every day wanting to license it and the FDA has put it on the fast track for approval. And that's only the start. Duncan came up with an innovative idea on how to enhance the implant, and I've just about got the bugs worked out of the new, improved model. And . . . " He raised his hand and wagged his index finger in the air. "And . . . someone very important has taken a very personal interest in the implant procedure." ' Who? " "Sorry. I can't tell you. Not yet, anyway." She didn't want to care, but the way his eyes shone with excitement piqued her curiosity.

"Come on, Oliver. You just told me about beta-3, you can trust me with this too."

"No. Duncan would kill me. It's his secret after all.

And it's big."

"Okay, " she declaimed with her best forlorn sigh. "I guess I'll just have to read about it in the papers." '"Oh, dear. I hope you never do that. But I have a feeling Duncan may tell you himself when the time comes."

"Speaking of Duncan, you started telling me about the daughter Lisa he had. Does that mean what I think it does? " Oliver nodded glumly.

"She was just eighteen when she died five years ago." From her days as a teenaged file clerk in Duncan's office, Gin vaguely remembered an occasional mention of his two children, a boy and a girl, both younger than she.

"Five years ago . . . I was away in medical school then. I never heard about it. What happened? " "A fall. She never regained consciousness. It was terrible. Duncan was devastated. It was the straw that almost broke his back."