THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN
(c) 1969 by Michael Crichton
January 1969
DAY 1
Contact
1. The Country of Lost Borders
A man with binoculars. That is how it began:
with a man standing by the side of the road,
on a crest overlooking a small Arizona town,
on a winter night.
Lieutenant Roger Shawn must have found the
binoculars difficult. The metal would be cold,
and he would be clumsy in his fir parka and
heavy gloves. His breath, hissing out into
the moonlit air, would have fogged the lenses.
He would be forced to pause to wipe them frequently,
using a stubby gloved finger.
He could not have known the futility of this
action.
Binoculars were worthless to see into that
town and uncover its secrets. He would have
been astonished to learn that the men who
finally succeeded used instruments a million
times more powerful than binoculars.
There is something sad, foolish, and human
in the image of Shawn leaning against a boulder,
propping his arms on it, and holding the binoculars
to his eyes. Though cumbersome, the binoculars
would at least feel comfortable and familiar
in his hands. It would be one of the last
familiar sensations before his death.
We can imagine, and try to reconstruct, what
happened from that point on.
Lieutenant Shawn swept over the town slowly
and methodically. He could see it was not
large, just a half-dozen wooden buildings,
set out along a single main street. It was
very quiet: no lights, no activity, no sound
carried by the gentle wind.
He shifted his attention from the town to
the surrounding hills. They were low, dusty,
and blunted, with scrubby vegetation and an
occasional withered yucca tree crusted in
snow. Beyond the hills were more hills, and
then the flat expanse of the Mojave Desert,
trackless and vast.
The Indians called it the Country of Lost
Borders.
Lieutenant Shawn found himself shivering in
the wind. It was February, the coldest month,
and it was after ten. He walked back up the
road toward the Ford Econovan, with the large
rotating antenna on top. The motor was idling
softly; it was the only sound he could hear.
He opened the rear doors and climbed into
the back, shutting the doors behind him.
He was enveloped in deep-red light: a night
light, so that he would not be blinded when
he stepped outside. In the red light the banks
of instruments and electronic equipment glowed
greenly.
Private Lewis Crane, the electronics technician,
was there, also wearing a parka. He was hunched
over a map, making calculations with occasional
reference to the instruments before him.
Shawn asked Crane if he were certain they
had arrived at the place, and Crane confirmed
that they had. Both men were tired: they had
driven all day from Vandenberg in search of
the latest Scoop satellite. Neither knew much
about the Scoops, except that they were a
series of secret capsules intended to analyze
the upper atmosphere and then return.
Shawn and Crane had the job of finding the
capsules once they had landed.
In order to facilitate recovery, the satellites
were fitted with electronic beepers that began
to transmit signals when they came down to
an altitude of five miles.
That was why the van had so much radio-directional
equipment. In essence, it was performing its
own triangulation. In Army parlance it was
known as single-unit triangulation, and it
was highly effective, though slow. The procedure
was simple enough: the van stopped and fixed
its position, recording the strength and direction
of the radio beam from the satellite. Once
this was done, it would be driven in the most
likely direction of the satellite for a distance
of twenty miles. Then it would stop and take
new coordinates. In this way, a series of
triangulation points could be mapped, and
the van could proceed to the satellite by
a zigzag path, stopping every twenty miles
to correct any error. The method was slower
than using two vans, but it was safer-- the
Army felt that two vans in an area might arouse
suspicion.
For six hours, the van had been closing on
the Scoop satellite. Now they were almost
there.
Crane tapped the map with a pencil in a nervous
way and announced the name of the town at
the foot of the hill: Piedmont, Arizona. Population
forty-eight; both men laughed over that, though
they were both inwardly concerned. The Vandenberg
ESA, or Estimated Site of Arrival, had been
twelve miles north of Piedmont. Vandenberg
computed this site on the basis of radar observations
and 1410 computer trajectory projections.
The estimates were not usually wrong by more
than a few hundred yards.
Yet there was no denying the radio-directional
equipment, which located the satellite beeper
directly in the center of town. Shawn suggested
that someone from the town might have seen
it coming down-- it would be glowing with
the heat-- and might have retrieved it, bringing
it into Piedmont.
This was reasonable, except that a native
of Piedmont who happened upon an American
satellite fresh from space would have told
someone-- reporters, police, NASA, the Army,
someone.
But they had heard nothing.
Shawn climbed back down from the van, with
Crane scrambling after him, shivering as the
cold air struck him.
Together, the two men looked out over the
town.
It was peaceful, but completely dark. Shawn
noticed that the gas station and the motel
both had their lights doused.
Yet they represented the only gas station
and motel for miles.
And then Shawn noticed the birds.
In the light of the full moon he could see
them, big birds, gliding in slow circles over
the buildings, passing like black shadows
across the face of the moon. He wondered why
he hadn't noticed them before, and asked Crane
what he made of them.
Crane said he didn't make anything of them.
As a joke, he added, "Maybe they're buzzards."
"That's what they look like, all right," Shawn
said.
Crane laughed nervously, his breath hissing
out into the night." But why should there
be buzzards here? They only come when something
is dead."
Shawn lit a cigarette, cupping his hands around
the lighter, protecting the flame from the
wind. He said nothing, but looked down at
the buildings, the outline of the little town.
Then he scanned the town once more with binoculars,
but saw no signs of life or movement.
At length, he lowered the binoculars and dropped
his cigarette onto the crisp snow, where it
sputtered and died.
He turned to Crane and said, "We'd better
go down and have a look."
2. Vandenberg
THREE HUNDRED MILES AWAY, IN THE LARGE, square,
windowless room that served as Mission Control
for Project Scoop, Lieutenant Edgar Comroe
sat with his feet on his desk and a stack
of scientific-journal articles before him.
Comroe was serving as control officer for
the night; it was a duty he filled once a
month, directing the evening operations of
the skeleton crew of twelve. Tonight, the
crew was monitoring the progress and reports
of the van coded Caper One, now making its
way across the Arizona desert.
Comroe disliked this job. The room was gray
and lighted with fluorescent lights; the tone
was sparsely utilitarian and Comroe found
it unpleasant. He never came to Mission Control
except during a launch, when the atmosphere
was different. Then the room was filled with
busy technicians, each at work on a single
complex task, each tense with the peculiar
cold anticipation that precedes any spacecraft
launch.
But nights were dull. Nothing ever happened
at night.
Comroe took advantage of the time and used
it to catch up on reading. By profession he
was a cardiovascular physiologist, with special
interest in stresses induced at high-G
accelerations.
Tonight, Comroe was reviewing a journal article
titled
"Stoichiometrics of Oxygen-Carrying Capacity
and Diffusion Gradients with Increased Arterial
Gas Tensions." He found it slow reading, and
only moderately interesting. Thus he was willing
to be interrupted when the overhead loudspeaker,
which carried the voice transmission from
the van of Shawn and Crane, clicked on.
Shawn said, "This is Caper One to Vandal Deca.
Caper One to Vandal Deca. Are you reading.
Over."
Comroe, feeling amused, replied that he was
indeed reading.
"We are about to enter the town of Piedmont
and recover the satellite."
"Very good, Caper One. Leave your radio open.
"Roger."
This was a regulation of the recovery technique,
as outlined in the Systems Rules Manual of
Project Scoop. The SRM was a thick gray paperback
that sat at one corner of Comroe's desk, where
he could refer to it easily. Comroe knew that
conversation between van and base was taped,
and later became part of the permanent project
file, but he had never understood any good
reason for this. In fact, it had always seemed
to him a straightforward proposition: the
van went out, got the capsule, and came back.
He shrugged and returned to his paper on gas
tensions, only half listening to Shawn's voice
as it said, "We are now inside the town. We
have just passed a gas station and a motel.
All quiet here. There is no sign of life.
The signals from the satellite are stronger.
There is a church half a block ahead. There
are no lights or activity of any kind."
Comroe put his journal down. The strained
quality of Shawn's voice was unmistakable.
Normally Comroe would have been amused at
the thought of two grown men made jittery
by entering a small, sleepy desert town. But
he knew Shawn personally, and he knew that
Shawn, whatever other virtues he might have,
utterly lacked an imagination. Shawn could
fall asleep in a horror movie. He was that
kind of man.
Comroe began to listen.
Over the crackling static, he heard the rumbling
of the van engine. And he heard the two men
in the van talking quietly.
Shawn: "Pretty quiet around here."
Crane: "Yes sir."
There was a pause.
Crane:. "Sir?"
Shawn: "Yes?"
Crane: "Did you see that?"
Shawn: "See what?"
Crane: "Back there, on the sidewalk. It looked
like a body."
Shawn: "You're imagining things."
Another pause, and then Comroe heard the van
come to a halt, brakes squealing.
Shawn: "Judas."
Crane: "It's another one, sir.
Shawn: "Looks dead."
Crane: "Shall I--"
Shawn: "No. Stay in the van."
His voice became louder, more formal, as he
ran through the call. "This is Caper One to
Vandal Deca. Over."
Comroe picked up the microphone. "Reading
you. What's happened?"
Shawn, his voice tight, said, "Sir, we see
bodies. Lots of them. They appear to be dead."
"Are you certain, Caper One?"
"For pete's sake," Shawn said. "Of course
we're certain."
Comroe said mildly, "Proceed to the capsule,
Caper One."
As he did so, he looked around the room. The
twelve other men in the skeleton crew were
staring at him, their eyes blank, unseeing.
They were listening to the transmission.
The van rumbled to life again.
Comroe swung his feet off the desk and punched
the red
"Security" button on his console. That button
automatically isolated the Mission Control
room. No one would be allowed in or out without
Comroe's permission.
Then he picked up the telephone and said,
"Get me Major Manchek. M-A-N-C-H-E-K. This
is a stat call. I'll hold."
Manchek was the chief duty officer for the
month, the man directly responsible for all
Scoop activities during February.
While he waited, he cradled the phone in his
shoulder and lit a cigarette. Over the loudspeaker,
Shawn could be heard to say, "Do they look
dead to you, Crane?"
Crane: "Yes Sir. Kind of peaceful, but dead.'
Shawn: "Somehow they don't really look dead.
There's something missing. Something funny
... But they're all over.
Must be dozens of them."
Crane: "Like they dropped in their tracks.
Stumbled and fallen down dead."
Shawn: "All over the streets, on the sidewalks
..."
Another silence, then Crane: "Sir!"
Shawn: "Judas."
Crane: "You see him? The man in the white
robe, walking across the street--"
Shawn: "I see him."
Crane: "He's just stepping over them like--"
Shawn: "He's coming toward us."
Crane: "Sir, look, I think we should get out
of here, if you don't mind my--"
The next sound was a high-pitched scream,
and a crunching noise. Transmission ended
at this point, and Vandenberg Scoop Mission
Control was not able to raise the two men
again.
3. Crisis
GLADSTONE, UPON HEARING OF THE DEATH OF "Chinese"
Gordon in Egypt, was reported to have muttered
irritably that his general might have chosen
a more propitious time to die: Gordon's death
threw the Gladstone government into turmoil
and crisis. An aide suggested that the circumstances
were unique and unpredictable, to which Gladstone
crossly answered: "All crises are the same."
He meant political crises, of course. There
were no scientific crises in 1885, and indeed
none for nearly forty years afterward. Since
then there have been eight of major importance;
two have received wide publicity. It is interesting
that both the publicized crises-- atomic energy
and space capability-- have concerned chemistry
and physics, not biology.
This is to be expected. Physics was the first
of the natural sciences to become fully modern
and highly mathematical. Chemistry followed
in the wake of physics, but biology, the retarded
child, lagged far behind. Even in the time
of Newton and Galileo, men knew more about
the moon and other heavenly bodies than they
did about their own.
It was not until the late 1940's that this
situation changed. The postwar period ushered
in a new era of biologic research, spurred
by the discovery of antibiotics. Suddenly
there was both enthusiasm and money for biology,
and a torrent of discoveries poured forth:
tranquilizers, steroid hormones, immunochemistry,
the genetic code. By 1953 the first kidney
was transplanted and by 1958 the first birthcontrol
pills were tested. It was not long before
biology was the fastest-growing field in all
science; it was doubling its knowledge every
ten years. Farsighted researchers talked seriously
of changing genes, controlling evolution,
regulating the mind-- ideas that had been
wild speculation ten years before.
And yet there had never been a biologic crisis.
The Andromeda Strain provided the first.
According to Lewis Bornheim, a crisis is a
situation in which a previously tolerable
set of circumstances is suddenly, by the addition
of another factor, rendered wholly intolerable.
Whether the additional factor is political,
economic, or scientific hardly matters: the
death of a national hero, the instability
of prices, or a technological discovery can
all set events in motion. In this sense, Gladstone
was right: all crises are the same.
The noted scholar Alfred Pockrun, in his study
of crises (Culture, Crisis and Change), has
made several interesting points. First, he
observes that every crisis has its beginnings
long before the actual onset. Thus Einstein
published his theories of relativity in 1905-15,
forty years before his work culminated in
the end of a war, the start of an age, and
the beginnings of a crisis.
Similarly, in the early twentieth century,
American, German, and Russian scientists were
all interested in space travel, but only the
Germans recognized the military potential
of rockets. And after the war, when the German
rocket installation at Peenernfinde was cannibalized
by the Soviets and Americans, it was only
the Russians who made immediate, vigorous
moves toward developing space capabilities.
The Americans were content to tinker playfully
with rockets and ten years later, this resulted
in an American scientific crisis involving
Sputnik, American education, the ICBM, and
the missile gap.
Pockran also observes that a crisis is compounded
of individuals and personalities, which are
unique:
*** It is as difficult to imagine Alexander
at the Rubicon, and Eisenhower at Waterloo,
as it is difficult to imagine Darwin writing
to Roosevelt about the potential for an atomic
bomb. A crisis is made by men, who enter into
the crisis with their own prejudices, propensities,
and predispositions. A crisis is the sum of
intuition and blind spots, a blend of facts
noted and facts ignored.
Yet underlying the uniqueness of each crisis
is a disturbing sameness. A characteristic
of all crises is their predictability, in
retrospect. They seem to have a certain inevitability,
they seem predestined. This is not true of
all crises, but it is true of sufficiently
many to make the most hardened historian cynical
and misanthropic.
***
In the light of Pockran's arguments, it is
interesting to consider the background and
personalities involved in the Andromeda Strain.
At the time of Andromeda, there had never
been a crisis of biological science, and the
first Americans faced with the facts were
not disposed to think in terms of one. Shawn
and Crane were capable but not thoughtful
men, and Edgar Comroe, the night officer at
Vandenberg, though a scientist, was not prepared
to consider anything beyond the immediate
irritation of a quiet evening ruined by an
inexplicable problem.
According to protocol, Comroe called his superior
officer, Major Arthur Manchek, and here the
story takes a different turn. For Manchek
was both prepared and disposed to consider
a crisis of the most major proportions.
But he was not prepared to acknowledge it.
*** Major Manchek, his face still creased
with sleep, sat on the edge of Comroe's desk
and listened to the replay of the tape from
the van.
When it was finished, he said, "Strangest
damned thing I ever heard," and played it
over again. While he did so, he carefully
filled his pipe with tobacco, lit it, and
tamped it down.
Arthur Manchek was an engineer, a quiet heavyset
man plagued by labile hypertension, which
threatened to end further promotions as an
Army officer. He had been advised on many
occasions to lose weight, but had been unable
to do so.
He was therefore considering abandoning the
Army for a career as a scientist in private
industry, where people did not care what your
weight or blood pressure was.
Manchek had come to Vandenberg from Wright
Patterson in Ohio, where he had been in charge
of experiments-- in spacecraft landing methods.
His job had been to develop a capsule shape
that could touch down with equal safety on
either land or sea. Manchek had succeeded
in developing three new shapes that were promising;
his success led to a promotion and transfer
to Vandenberg.
Here he did administrative work, and hated
it. People bored Manchek; the mechanics of
manipulation and the vagaries of subordinate
personality held no fascination for him. He
often wished he were back at the wind tunnels
of Wright Patterson.
Particularly on nights when he was called
out of bed by some damn fool problem.
Tonight he felt irritable, and under stress.
His reaction to this was characteristic: he
became slow. He moved slowly, he thought slowly,
he proceeded with a dull and plodding deliberation.
It was the secret of his success.
Whenever people around him became excited,
Manchek seemed to grow more disinterested,
until he appeared about to fall asleep. It
was a trick he had for remaining totally objective
and clearheaded.
Now he sighed and puffed on his pipe as the
tape spun out for the second time.
"No communications breakdown, I take it?"
Comroe shook his head. "We checked all systems
at this end. We are still monitoring the frequency."
He turned on the radio, and hissing static
filled the room. "You know about the audio
screen?"
"Vaguely," Manchek said, suppressing a yawn.
In fact, the audio screen was a system he
had developed three years before. In simplest
terms, it was a computerized way to find a
needle in a haystack-- a machine program that
listened to apparently garbled, random sound
and picked out certain irregularities. For
example, the hubbub of conversation at an
embassy cocktail party could be recorded and
fed through the computer, which would pick
out a single voice and separate it from the
rest.
It had several intelligence applications.
"Well," Comroe said, "after the transmission
ended, we got nothing but the static you hear
now. We put it through the audio screen, to
see if the computer could pick up a pattern.
And we ran it through the oscilloscope in
the corner."
Across the room, the green face of the scope
displayed a jagged dancing white line-- the
summated sound of static.
"Then," Comroe said, "we cut in the computer.
Like so."
He punched a button on his desk console. The
oscilloscope line changed character abruptly.
It suddenly became quieter, more regular,
with a pattern of beating, thumping impulses.
"I see," Manchek said. He had, in fact, already
identified the pattern and assessed its meaning.
His mind was drifting elsewhere, considering
other possibilities, wider ramifications.
"Here's the audio," Comroe said. He pressed
another button and the audio version of the
signal filled the room.
It was a steady mechanical grinding with a
repetitive metallic click.
Manchek nodded. "An engine. With a knock."
"Yes sir. We believe the van radio is still
broadcasting, and that the engine is still
running. That's what we're hearing now, with
the static screened away."
"All right," Manchek said.
His pipe went out. He sucked on it for a moment,
then lit it again, removed it from his mouth,
and plucked a bit of tobacco from his tongue.
"We need evidence," he said, almost to himself.
He was considering categories of evidence,
and possible findings, contingencies...
"Evidence of what?" Comroe said.
Manchek ignored the question. "Have we got
a Scavenger on the base?
"I'm not sure, sir. If we don't, we can get
one from Edwards."
"Then do it." Manchek stood up. He had made
his decision, and now he felt tired again.
An evening of telephone calls faced him, an
evening of irritable operators and bad connections
and puzzled voices at the other end.
"We'll want a flyby over that town," he said.
"A complete scan. All canisters to come directly.
Alert the labs."
He also ordered Comroe to bring in the technicians,
especially Jaggers. Manchek disliked Jaggers,
who was effete and precious. But Manchek also
knew that Jaggers was good, and tonight he
needed a good man.
*** At 11:07 p.m., Samuel "Gunner" Wilson
was moving at 645
miles per hour over the Mojave Desert. Up
ahead in the moonlight, he saw the twin lead
jets, their afterburners glowing angrily in
the night sky. The planes had a heavy, pregnant
look: phosphorus bombs were slung beneath
the wings and belly.
Wilson's plane was different, sleek and long
and black.
It was a Scavenger, one of seven in the world.
The Scavenger was the operational version
of the X-18.
It was an intermediate-range reconnaissance
jet aircraft fully equipped for day or night
intelligence flights. It was fitted with two
side-slung 16mm cameras, one for the visible
spectrum, and one for low-frequency radiation.
In addition it had a center-mount Homans infrared
multispex camera as well as the usual electronic
and radio-detection gear. All films and plates
were, of course, processed automatically in
the air, and were ready for viewing as soon
as the aircraft returned to base.
All this technology made the Scavenger almost
impossibly sensitive. It could map the outlines
of a city in blackout, and could follow the
movements of individual trucks and cars at
eight thousand feet. It could detect a submarine
to a depth of two hundred feet. It could locate
harbor mines by wave-motion deformities and
it could obtain a precise photograph of a
factory from the residual heat of the building
four hours after it had shut down.
So the Scavenger was the ideal instrument
to fly over Piedmont, Arizona, in the dead
of night.
Wilson carefully checked his equipment, his
hands fluttering over the controls, touching
each button and lever, watching the blinking
green lights that indicated that all systems
were in order.
His earphones crackled. The lead plane said
lazily,
"Coming up on the town, Gunner. You see it?"
He leaned forward in the cramped cockpit.
He was low, only five hundred feet above the
ground, and for a moment he could see nothing
but a blur of sand, snow, and yucca trees.
Then, up ahead, buildings in the moonlight.
"Roger. I see it."
"Okay, Gunner. Give us room."
He dropped back, putting half a mile between
himself and the other two planes. They were
going into the P-square formation, for direct
visualization of target by phosphorus flare.
Direct visualization was not really necessary;
Scavenger could function without it. But Vandenberg
seemed insistent that they gather all possible
information about the town.
The lead planes spread, moving wide until
they were parallel to the main street of the
town.
"Gunner? Ready to roll?"
Wilson placed his fingers delicately over
the camera buttons. Four fingers: as if playing
the piano.
"Ready."
"We're going in now."
The two planes swooped low, dipping gracefully
toward the town. They were now very wide and
seemingly inches above the ground as they
began to release the bombs. As each struck
the ground, a blazing white-hot sphere went
up, bathing the town in an unearthly, glaring
light and reflecting off the metal underbellies
of the planes.
The jets climbed, their run finished, but
Gunner did not see them. His entire attention,
his mind and his body, was focused on the
town.
"All yours, Gunner."
Wilson did not answer. He dropped his nose,
cracked down his flaps, and felt a shudder
as the plane sank sickeningly, like a stone,
toward the ground. Below him, the area around
the town was lighted for hundreds of yards
in every direction. He pressed the camera
buttons and felt, rather than heard, the vibrating
whir of the cameras.
For a long moment he continued to fall, and
then he shoved the stick forward, and the
plane seemed to catch in the air, to grab,
and lift and climb. He had a fleeting glimpse
of the main street. He saw bodies, bodies
everywhere, spread-eagled, lying in the streets,
across cars...
"Judas," he said.
And then he was up, still climbing, bringing
the plane around in a slow arc, preparing
for the descent into his second run and trying
not to think of what he had seen. One of the
first rules of air reconnaissance was "Ignore
the scenery "; analysis and evaluation were
not the job of the pilot. That was left to
the experts, and pilots who forgot this, who
became too interested in what they were photographing,
got into trouble. Usually they crashed.
As the plane came down into a flat second
run, he tried not to look at the ground. But
he did, and again saw the bodies. The phosphorus
flares were burning low, the lighting was
darker, more sinister and subdued. But the
bodies were still there: he had not been imagining
it.
"Judas Priest," he said again. "Sweet Judas."
*** The sign on the door said DATA PROSSEX
EPSILON, and underneath, in red lettering,
ADMISSION BY CLEARANCE CARD
ONLY. Inside was a comfortable sort of briefing
room: screen on one wall, a dozen steel-tubing
and leather chairs facing it, and a projector
in the back.
When Manchek and Comroe entered the room,
Jaggers, was already waiting for them, standing
at the front of the room by the screen. Jaggers
was a short man with a springy step and an
eager, rather hopeful face. Though not well
liked on the base, he was nonetheless the
acknowledged master of reconnaissance interpretation.
He had the sort of mind that delighted in
small and puzzling details, and was well suited
to his job.
Jaggers rubbed his hands as Manchek and Comroe
sat down.
"Well then," he said. "Might as well get right
to it. I think we have something to interest
you tonight. " He nodded to the projectionist
in the back. "First picture."
The room lights darkened. There was a mechanical
click, and the screen lighted to show an aerial
view of a small desert town.
"This is an unusual shot," Jaggers said. "From
our files. Taken two months ago from Janos
12, our recon satellite. Orbiting at an altitude
of one hundred and eighty-seven miles, as
you know. The technical quality here is quite
good. Can't read the license plates on the
cars yet, but we're working on it. Perhaps
by next year."
Manchek shifted in his chair, but said nothing.
"You can see the town here," Jaggers said.
"Piedmont, Arizona. Population forty-eight,
and not much to look at, even from one hundred
and eighty-seven miles. Here's the general
store; the gas station-- notice how clearly
you can read GULF-- and the post office; the
motel. Everything else you see is private
residences. Church over here. Well: next picture."
Another click. This was dark, with a reddish
tint, and was clearly an overview of the town
in white and dark red.
The outlines of the buildings were very dark.
"We begin here with the Scavenger IR plates.
These are infrared films, as you know, which
produce a picture on the basis of heat instead
of light. Anything warm appears white on the
picture; anything cold is black. Now then.
You can see here that the buildings are dark--
they are colder than the ground. As night
comes on, the buildings give up their heat
more rapidly."
"What are those white spots?" Comroe said.
There were forty or fifty white areas on the
film.
"Those," Jaggers said, "are bodies. Some inside
houses, some in the street. By count, they
number fifty. In the case of some of them,
such as this one here, you can make out the
four limbs and head clearly. This body is
lying flat. In the street."
He lit a cigarette and pointed to a white
rectangle. "As nearly as we can tell, this
is an automobile. Notice it's got a bright
white spot at one end. This means the motor
is still running, still generating heat."
"The van," Comroe said. Manchek nodded.
"The question now arises," Jaggers said, "are
all these people dead? We cannot be certain
about that. The bodies appear to be of different
temperatures. Forty-seven are rather cold,
indicating death some time ago. Three are
warmer. Two of those are in this car, here."
"Our men," Comroe said. "And the third?"
"The third is rather puzzling. You see him
here, apparently standing or lying curled
in the street. Observe that he is quite white,
and therefore quite warm. Our temperature
scans indicate that he is about ninety-five
degrees, which is a little on the cool side,
but probably attributable to peripheral vasoconstriction
in the night desert air. Drops his skin temperature.
Next slide."
The third film flicked onto the screen.
Manchek frowned at the spot. "It's moved."
"Exactly. This film was made on the second
passage. The spot has moved approximately
twenty yards. Next picture.
A third film.
"Moved again!"
"Yes. An additional five or ten yards."
"So one person down there is alive?"
"That," Jaggers said, "is the presumptive
conclusion."
Manchek cleared his throat. "Does that mean
it's what you think?"
"Yes sir. It is what we think."
"There's a man down there, walking among the
corpses?"
Jaggers shrugged and tapped the screen. "It
is difficult to account for the data in any
other manner, and--"
At that moment, a private entered the room
with three circular metal canisters under
his arm.
"Sir, we have films of the direct visualization
by P-square."
"Run them," Manchek said.
The film was threaded into a projector. A
moment later, Lieutenant Wilson was ushered
into the room. Jaggers said, "I haven't reviewed
these films yet. Perhaps the pilot should
narrate."
Manchek nodded and looked at Wilson, who got
up and walked to the front of the room, wiping
his hands nervously on his pants. He stood
alongside the screen and faced his audience,
beginning in a flat monotone: "Sir, my flybys
were made between 11:08 and 11: 13 p.m. this
evening. There were two, a start from the
east and a return from the west, done at an
average speed of two hundred and fourteen
miles per hour, at a median altitude by corrected
altimeter of eight hundred feet and an--"
"Just a minute, son," Manchek said, raising
his hand.
"This isn't a grilling. Just tell it naturally."
Wilson nodded and swallowed. The room lights
went down and the projector whirred to life.
The screen showed the town bathed in glaring
white light as the plane came down over it.
"This is my first pass," Wilson said. "East
to west, at 11:08. We're looking from the
left-wing camera which is running at ninety-six
frames per second. As you can see, my altitude
is falling rapidly. Straight ahead is the
main street of the target..."
He stopped. The bodies were clearly visible.
And the van, stopped in the street, its rooftop
antenna still turning slow revolutions. As
the plane continued its run, approaching the
van, they could see the driver collapsed over
the steering wheel.
"Excellent definition," Jaggers said. "That
fine-grain film really gives resolution when
you need--"
"Wilson," Manchek said, "was telling us about
his run."
"Yes sir," Wilson said, clearing his throat.
He stared at the screen. "At this time I am
right over target, where I observed the casualties
you see here. My estimate at that time was
seventy-five, sir."
His voice was quiet and tense. There was a
break in the film, some numbers, and the image
came on again.
"Now I am coming back for my second run,"
Wilson said.
"The flares are already burning low but you
can see--"
"Stop the film," Manchek said.
The projectionist froze the film at a single
frame. It showed the long, straight main street
of the town, and the bodies.
"Go back."
The film was run backward, the jet seeming
to pull away from the street.
"There! Stop it now."
The frame was frozen. Manchek got up and walked
close to the screen, peering off to one side.
"Look at this," he said, pointing to a figure.
It was a man in knee-length white robes, standing
and looking up at the plane. He was an old
man, with a withered face. His eyes were wide.
"What do you make of this?" Manchek said to
Jaggers.
Jaggers moved close. He frowned. "Run it forward
a bit."
The film advanced. They could clearly see
the man turn his head, roll his eyes, following
the plane as it passed over him.
"Now backward," Jaggers said.
The film was run back. Jaggers smiled bleakly.
"The man looks alive to me, sir."
"Yes," Manchek said crisply. "He certainly
does."
And with that, he walked out of the room.
As he left, he paused and announced that he
was declaring a state of emergency; that everyone
on the base was confined to quarters until
further notice; that there would be no outside
calls, or communication; and that what they
had seen in this room was confidential.
Outside in the hallway, he headed for Mission
Control.
Comroe followed him.
"I want you to call General Wheeler," Manchek
said.
"Tell him I have declared an SOE without proper
authorization, and ask him to come down immediately."
Technically no one but the commander had the
right to declare a state of emergency.
Comroe said, "Wouldn't you rather tell him
yourself?"
"I've got other things to do," Manchek said.
4. Alert
WHEN ARTHUR MANCHEK STEPPED INTO THE small
soundproofed booth and sat down before the
telephone, he knew exactly what he was going
to do-- but he was not very sure why he was
doing it.
As one of the senior Scoop officers, he had
received a briefing nearly a year before on
Project Wildfire. It had been given, Manchek
remembered, by a short little man with a dry,
precise way of speaking. He was a university
professor and he had outlined the project.
Manchek had forgotten the details, except
that there was a laboratory somewhere, and
a team of five scientists who could be alerted
to man the laboratory. The function of the
team was investigation of possible extraterrestrial
life forms introduced on American spacecraft
returning to earth.
Manchek had not been told who the five men
were; he knew only that a special Defense
Department trunk line existed for calling
them out. In order to hook into the line,
one had only to dial the binary of some number.
He reached into his pocket and withdrew his
wallet, then fumbled for a moment until he
found the card he had been given by the professor:
IN CASE OF FIRE -- Notify Division 87 -- Emergencies
Only
He stared at the card and wondered what exactly
would happen if he dialed the binary of 87.
He tried to imagine the sequence of events:
Who would he talk to? Would someone call him
back? Would there be an inquiry, a referral
to higher authority?
He rubbed his eyes and stared at the card,
and finally he shrugged. One way or the other,
he would find out.
He tore a sheet of paper from the pad in front
of him, next to the telephone, and wrote:
2^0
2^1
2^2
2^3
2^4
2^5
2^6
2^7
This was the basis of the binary system: base
two raised to some power. Two to the zero
power was one; two to the first was two, two
squared was four; and so on. Manchek quickly
wrote another line beneath:
2^0 -> 1
2^1 -> 2
2^2 -> 4
2^3 -> 8
2^4 -> 16
2^5 -> 32
2^6 -> 64
2^7 -> 128
Then he began to add up the numbers to get
a total of 87. He circled these numbers:
2^0 -> (1)
2^1 -> (2)
2^2 -> (4)
2^3 -> (8)
2^4 -> (16)
2^5 -> (32)
2^6 -> (64)
2^7 -> (128)
= (87)
And then he drew in the binary code. Binary
numbers were designed for computers which
utilize an on-off, yes-no kind of language.
A mathematician once joked that binary numbers
were the way people who have only two fingers
count. In essence, binary numbers translated
normal numbers which require ten digits, and
decimal places-- to a system that depended
on only two digits, one and zero.
2^0 -> (1) -> 1
2^1 -> (2) -> 1
2^2 -> (4) -> 1
2^3 -> (8) -> 0
2^4 -> (16) -> 1
2^5 -> (32) -> 0
2^6 -> (64) -> 1
2^7 -> (128) -> 0
Manchek looked at the number he had just written,
and inserted the dashes: 1-110-1010. A perfectly
reasonable telephone number. Manchek picked
up the telephone and dialed.
The time was exactly twelve midnight.
DAY 2
Piedmont
5. The Early Hours
THE MACHINERY WAS THERE. THE CABLES, THE codes,
the teleprinters had all been waiting dormant
for two years. It only required Manchek's
call to set the machinery in motion.
When he finished dialing, he heard a series
of mechanical clicks, and then a low hum,
which meant, he knew, that the call was being
fed into one of the scrambled trunk lines.
After a moment, the humming stopped and a
voice said,
"This is a recording. State your name and
your message and hang up."
"Major Arthur Manchek, Vandenberg Air Force
Base, Scoop Mission Control. I believe it
is necessary to call up a Wildfire Alert.
I have confirmatory visual data at this post,
which has just been closed for security reasons."
As he spoke it occurred to him that it was
all rather improbable. Even the tape recorder
would disbelieve him. He continued to hold
the telephone in his hand, somehow expecting
an answer.
But there was none, only a click as the connection
was automatically broken. The line was dead;
he hung up and sighed. It was all very unsatisfying.
Manchek expected to be called back within
a few minutes by Washington; he expected to
receive many calls in the next few hours,
and so remained at the phone. Yet he received
no calls, for he did not know that the process
he had initiated was automatic. Once mobilized,
the Wildfire Alert would proceed ahead, and
not be recalled for at least twelve hours.
Within ten minutes of Manchek's call, the
following message clattered across the scrambled
maximum-security cable Five minutes later,
there was a second cable which named units
of the nation: the men on the Wildfire team:
*** =UNIT=
TOP SECRET
CODE FOLLOWS
AS
CBW 9/9/234/435/6778/90
PULG COORDINATES DELTA 8997
MESSAGE FOLLOWS
AS
WILDFIRE ALERT HAS BEEN CALLED. REPEAT WILDFIRE
ALERT
HAS BEEN CALLED. COORDINATES TO READ NASA/AMC/NSC
COMB DEC.
TIME OF COMMAND TO READ LL-59-07 ON DATE.
FURTHER NOTATIONS
AS
PRESS BLACKFACE POTENTIAL DIRECTIVE 7-L2 ALERT
STATUS
UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE
END MESSAGE
=== DISENGAGE
*** This was an automatic cable. Everything
about it, including the announcement of a
press blackout and a possible directive 7-12,
was automatic, and followed from Manchek's
call.
*** =UNIT=
TOP SECRET
CODE FOLLOWS
AS
MESSAGE FOLLOWS AS THE FOLLOWING MALE AMERICAN
CITIZENS
ARE BEING PLACED ON ZED KAPPA STATUS. PREVIOUS
TOP SECRET
CLEARANCE HAS BEEN CONFIRMED. THE NAMES ARE+
STONE, JEREMY ..81
LEAVITT, PETER ..04
BURTON, CHARLES .L51
CHRISTIANSENKRIKECANCEL THIS LINE CANCEL
TO READ AS
KIRKE, CHRISTIAN .142
HALL, MARK .L77
ACCORD THESE MEN ZED KAPPA STATUS UNTIL FURTHER
NOTICE
END MESSAGE END MESSAGE
In theory, this cable was also quite routine;
its purpose was to name the five members who
were being given Zed Kappa status, the code
for "OK" status. Unfortunately, however, the
machine misprinted one of the names, and failed
to reread the entire message. (Normally, when
one of the printout units of a secret trunk
line miswrote part of a message, the entire
message was rewritten, or else it was reread
by the computer to certify its corrected form.)
The message was thus open to doubt. In Washington
and elsewhere, a computer expert was called
in to confirm the accuracy of the message,
by what is called "reverse tracing."
The Washington expert expressed grave concern
about the validity of the message since the
machine was printing out other minor mistakes,
such as "L" when it meant "1."
The upshot of all this was that the first
two names on the list were accorded status,
while the rest were not, pending confirmation.
*** Allison Stone was tired. At her home in
the hills overlooking the Stanford campus,
she and her husband, the chairman of the Stanford
bacteriology department, had held a party
for fifteen couples, and everyone had stayed
late. Mrs.
Stone was annoyed: she had been raised in
official Washington, where one's second cup
of coffee, offered pointedly without cognac,
was accepted as a signal to go home. Unfortunately,
she thought, academics did not follow the
rules. She had served the second cup of coffee
hours ago, and everybody was still there.
Shortly before one a.m., the doorbell rang.
Answering it, she was surprised to see two
military men standing side by side in the
night. They seemed awkward and nervous to
her, and she assumed they were lost; people
often got lost driving through these residential
areas at night.
"May I help you?"
"I'm sorry to disturb you, ma'am," one said
politely.
"But is this the residence of Dr. Jeremy Stone?"
"Yes," she said, frowning slightly. "It is."
She looked beyond the two men, to the driveway.
A blue military sedan was parked there. Another
man was standing by the car; he seemed to
be holding something in his hand.
"Does that man have a gun?" she said.
"Ma'am," the man said," we must see Dr. Stone
at once.
It all seemed strange to her, and she found
herself frightened. She looked across the
lawn and saw a fourth man, moving up to the
house and looking into the window. In the
pale light streaming out onto the lawn, she
could distinctly see the rifle in his hands.
"What's going on?"
"Ma'am, we don't want to disturb your party.
Please call Dr. Stone to the door."
"I don't know if--"
"Otherwise, we will have to go get him," the
man said.
She hesitated a moment, then said, "Wait here."
She stepped back and started to close the
door, but one man had already slipped into
the hall. He stood near the door, erect and
very polite, with his hat in his hand. "I'll
just wait here, ma'am," he said, and smiled
at her.
She walked back to the party, trying to show
nothing to the guests. Everyone was still
talking and laughing; the room was noisy and
dense with smoke. She found Jeremy in a corner,
in the midst of some argument about riots.
She touched his shoulder, and he disengaged
himself from the group.
"I know this sounds funny," she said, "but
there is some kind of Army man in the hall,
and another outside, and two others with guns
out on the lawn. They say they want to see
you."
For a moment, Stone looked surprised, and
then he nodded. "I'll take care of it," he
said. His attitude annoyed her; he seemed
almost to be expecting it.
"Well, if you knew about this, you might have
told--"
"I didn't," he said. "I'll explain later."
He walked out to the hallway, where the officer
was still waiting. She followed her husband.
Stone said, "I am Dr. Stone."
"Captain Morton," the man said. He did not
offer to shake hands. "There's a fire, sir."
"All right," Stone said. He looked down at
his dinner jacket. "Do I have time to change?"
"I'm afraid not, sir."
To her astonishment, Allison saw her husband
nod quietly. "All right."
He turned to her and said, "I've got to leave."
His face was blank and expressionless, and
it seemed to her like, a nightmare, his face
like that, while he spoke. She was confused,
and afraid.
"When will you be back?"
"I'm not sure. A week or two. Maybe longer."
She tried to keep her voice low, but she couldn't
help it, she was upset. "What is it?" she
said. "Are you under arrest?"
"No," he said, with a slight smile. "It's
nothing like that. Make my apologies to everyone,
will you?"
"But the guns--"
"Mrs. Stone," the military man said, "it's
our job to protect your husband. From now
on, nothing must be allowed to happen to him."
"That's right," Stone said. "You see, I'm
suddenly an important person. " He smiled
again, an odd, crooked smile, and gave her
a kiss.
And then, almost before she knew what was
happening, he was walking out the door, with
Captain Morton on one side of him and the
other man on the other. The man with the rifle
wordlessly fell into place behind them; the
man by the car saluted and opened the door.
Then the car lights came on, and the doors
slammed shut, and the car backed down the
drive and drove off into the night. She was
still standing by the door when one of her
guests came up behind her and said, "Allison,
are you all right?"
And she turned, and found she was able to
smile and say,
"Yes, it's nothing. Jeremy had to leave. The
lab called him: another one of his late-night
experiments going wrong."
The guest nodded and said, "Shame. It's a
delightful party."
In the car, Stone sat back and stared at the
men. He recalled that their faces were blank
and expressionless. He said, "What have you
got for me?"
"Got, sir?"
"Yes, dammit. What did they give you for me?
They must have given you something."
"Oh. Yes sir."
He was handed a slim file. Stenciled on the
brown cardboard cover was PROJECT SUMMARY:
SCOOP.
"Nothing else?" Stone said.
"No sir."
Stone sighed. He had never heard of Project
Scoop before; the file would have to be read
carefully. But it was too dark in the car
to read; there would be time for that later,
on the airplane. He found himself thinking
back over the last five years, back to the
rather odd symposium on Long Island, and the
rather odd little speaker from England who
had, in his own way, begun it all.
*** In the summer of 1962, J. J. Merrick,
the English biophysicist, presented a paper
to the Tenth Biological Symposium at Cold
Spring Harbor, Long Island. The paper was
entitled "Frequencies of Biologic Contact
According to Speciation Probabilities." Merrick
was a rebellious, unorthodox scientist whose
reputation for clear thinking was not enhanced
by his recent divorce or the presence of the
handsome blond secretary he had brought with
him to the symposium. Following the presentation
of his paper, there was little serious discussion
of Merrick's ideas, which were summarized
at the end of the paper.
*** I must conclude that the first contact
with extraterrestrial life will be determined
by the known probabilities of speciation.
It is an undeniable fact that complex organisms
are rare on earth, while simple organisms
flourish in abundance. There are millions
of species of bacteria, and thousands of species
of insects. There are only a few species of
primates, and only four of great apes. There
is but one species of man.
With this frequency of speciation goes a corresponding
frequency in numbers. Simple creatures are
much more common than complex organisms. There
are three billion men on the earth, and that
seems a great many until we consider that
ten or even one hundred times that number
of first contact would consist of a plague
brought back from the bacteria can be contained
within a large flask.
All available evidence on the origin of life
points to an evolutionary progression from
simple to complex life forms. This is true
on earth. It is probably true throughout the
universe. Shapley, Merrow, and others have
calculated the number of viable planetary
systems in the near universe. My own calculations,
indicated earlier in the paper, consider the
relative abundance of different organisms
throughout the universe.
My aim has been to determine the probability
of contact between man and another life form.
That probability is as follows:
FORM: PROBABILITY
Unicellular organisms or less (naked genetic
in formation): .7840
Multicellular organisms, simple: .1940
Multicellular organisms, complex but lacking
coordinated central nervous system: .0140
Multicellular organisms with integrated organ
systems including nervous system: .0018
Multicellular organisms with complex nervous
system capable of handling 7+ data (human
capability): .0002
TOTAL: 1.0000
*** These considerations lead me to believe
that the first human interaction with extraterrestrial
life will consist of contact with organisms
similar to, if not identical to, earth bacteria
or viruses. The consequences of such contact
are disturbing when one recalls that 3 per
cent of all earth bacteria are capable of
exerting some deleterious effect upon man.
***
Later, Merrick himself considered the possibility
that the first contact would consist of a
plague brought back from the moon by the first
men to go there. This idea was received with
amusement by the assembled scientists.
One of the few who took it seriously was Jeremy
Stone.
At the age of thirty-six, Stone was perhaps
the most famous person attending the symposium
that year. He was professor of bacteriology
at Berkeley, a post he had held since he was
thirty, and he had just won the Nobel Prize.
The list of Stone's achievements-- disregarding
the particular series of experiments that
led to the Nobel Prize-- is astonishing. In
1955, he was the first to use the technique
of multiplicative counts for bacterial colonies.
In 1957, he developed a method for liquid-pure
suspension. In 1960, Stone presented a radical
new theory of operon activity in E. coli and
S. tabuh, and developed evidence for the physical
nature of the inducer and repressor substances.
His 1958 paper on linear viral transformations
opened broad new lines of scientific inquiry,
particularly among the Pasteur Institute group
in Paris, which subsequently won the Nobel
Prize in 1966.
In 1961, Stone himself won the Nobel Prize.
The award was given for work on bacterial
mutant reversion that he had done in his spare
time as a law student at Michigan, when he
was twenty-six.
Perhaps the most significant thing about Stone
was that he had done Nobel-caliber work as
a law student, for it demonstrated the depth
and range of his interests. A friend once
said of him: "Jeremy knows everything, and
is fascinated by the rest." Already he was
being compared to Einstein and to Bohr as
a scientist with a conscience, an overview,
an appreciation of the significance of events.
Physically, Stone was a thin, balding man
with a prodigious memory that catalogued scientific
facts and blue jokes with equal facility.
But his most outstanding characteristic was
a sense of impatience, the feeling he conveyed
to every one around him that they were wasting
his time. He had a bad habit of interrupting
speakers and finishing conversations, a habit
he tried to control with only limited success.
His imperious manner, when added to the fact
that he had won the Nobel Prize at an early
age, as well as the scandals of his private
life-- he was four times married, twice to
the wives of colleagues-- did nothing to increase
his popularity.
Yet it was Stone who, in the early 1960's,
moved forward in government circles as one
of the spokesmen for the new scientific establishment.
He himself regarded this role with tolerant
amusement-- a vacuum eager to be filled with
hot gas, " he once said-- but in fact his
influence was considerable.
By the early 1960's America had reluctantly
come to realize that it possessed, as a nation,
the most potent scientific complex in the
history of the world. Eighty per cent of all
scientific discoveries in the preceding three
decades had been made by Americans. The United
States had 75
per cent of the world's computers, and 90
per cent of the world's lasers. The United
States had three and a half times as many
scientists as the Soviet Union and spent three
and a half times as much money on research;
the U. S. had four times as many scientists
as the European Economic Community and spent
seven times as much on research. Most of this
money came, directly or indirectly, from Congress,
and Congress felt a great need for men to
advise them on how to spend it.
During the 1950's, all the great advisers
had been physicists: Teller and Oppenheimer
and Bruckman and Weidner.
But ten years later, with more money for biology
and more concern for it, a new group emerged,
led by DeBakey in Houston, Farmer in Boston,
Heggerman in New York, and Stone in California.
Stone's prominence was attributable to many
factors: the prestige of the Nobel Prize;
his political contacts; his most recent wife,
the daughter of Senator Thomas Wayne of Indiana;
his legal training. All this combined to assure
Stone's repeated appearance before confused
Senate subcommittees--
and gave him the power of any trusted adviser.
It was this same power that he used so successfully
to implement the research and construction
leading to Wildfire.
*** Stone was intrigued by Merrick's ideas,
which paralleled certain concepts of his own.
He explained these in a short paper entitled
"Sterilization of Spacecraft," printed in
Science and later reprinted in the British
journal Nature.
The argument stated that bacterial contamination
was a two-edged sword, and that man must protect
against both edges.
Previous to Stone's paper, most discussion
of contamination dealt with the hazards to
other planets of satellites and probes inadvertently
carrying earth organisms.
This problem was considered early in the American
space effort; by 1959, NASA had set strict
regulations for sterilization of earth origin
probes.
The object of these regulations was to prevent
contamination of other worlds. Clearly, if
a probe were being sent to Mars or Venus to
search for new life forms, it would defeat
the purpose of the experiment for the probe
to carry earth bacteria with it.
Stone considered the reverse situation. He
stated that it was equally possible for extraterrestrial
organisms to contaminate the earth via space
probes. He noted that spacecraft that burned
up in reentry presented no problem, but "live"
returns-- manned flights, and probes such
as the Scoop satellites-- were another matter
entirely. Here, he said, the question of contamination
was very great.
His paper created a brief flurry of interest
but, as he later said, "nothing very spectacular."
Therefore, in 1963 he began an informal seminar
group that met twice monthly in Room 410,
on the top floor of the University of California
Medical School biochemistry wing, for lunch
and discussion of the contamination problem.
It was this group of five men: Stone and John
Black of Berkeley, Samuel Holden and Terence
Lisset of Stanford Med, and Andrew Weiss of
Stanford biophysics-- that eventually formed
the early nucleus of the Wildfire Project.
They presented a petition to the President
in 1964, in a letter consciously patterned
after the Einstein letter to Roosevelt, in
1940, concerning the atomic bomb.
*** University of California
Berkeley, Calif.
June 10, 1964
The President of the United States
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, D.C.
Dear Mr. President:
Recent theoretical considerations suggest
that sterilization procedures of returning
space probes may be inadequate to guarantee
sterile reentry to this planet's atmosphere.
The consequence of this is the potential introduction
of virulent organisms into the present terrestrial
ecologic framework.
It is our belief that sterilization for reentry
probes and manned capsules can never be wholly
satisfactory. Our calculations suggest that
even if capsules received sterilizing procedures
in space, the probability of contamination
would still remain one in ten thousand, and
perhaps much more. These estimates are based
upon organized life as we know it; other forms
of life may be entirely resistant to our sterilizing
methods.
We therefore urge the establishment of a facility
designed to deal with an extraterrestrial
life form, should one inadvertently be introduced
to the earth. The purpose of this facility
would be twofold: to limit dissemination of
the life form, and to provide laboratories
for its investigation and analysis, with a
view to protecting earth life forms from its
influence.
We recommend that such a facility be located
in an uninhabited region of the United States;
that it be constructed underground; that it
incorporate all known isolation techniques;
and that it be equipped with a nuclear device
for self-destruction in the eventuality of
an emergency. So far as we know, no form of
life can survive the two million degrees of
heat which accompany an atomic nuclear detonation.
Yours very truly,
Jeremy Stone
John Black
Samuel Holden
Terence Lisset
Andrew Weiss
*** Response to the letter was gratifyingly
prompt.
Twenty-four hours later, Stone received a
call from one of the President's advisers,
and the following day he flew to Washington
to confer with the President and members of
the National Security Council. Two weeks after
that, he flew to Houston to discuss further
plans with NASA officials.
Although Stone recalls one or two cracks about
"the goddam penitentiary for bugs," most scientists
he talked with regarded the project favorably.
Within a month, Stone's informal team was
hardened into an official committee to study
problems of contamination and draw up recommendations.
This committee was put on the Defense Department's
Advance Research Projects List and funded
through the Defense Department. At that time,
the ARPL was heavily invested in chemistry
and physics-- ion sprays, reversal duplication,
pi-meson substrates-- but there was growing
interest in biologic problems. Thus one ARPL
group was concerned with electronic pacing
of brain function (a euphemism for mind control);
a second had prepared a study of biosynergics,
the future possible combinations of man and
machines implanted inside the body; still
another was evaluating Project Ozma, the search
for extraterrestrial life conducted in 1961-4.
A fourth group was engaged in preliminary
design of a machine that would carry out all
human functions and would be self-duplicating.
All these projects were highly theoretical,
and all were staffed by prestigious scientists.
Admission to the ARPL was a mark of considerable
status, and it ensured future funds for implementation
and development.
Therefore, when Stone's committee submitted
an early draft of the Life Analysis Protocol,
which detailed the way any living thing could
be studied, the Defense Department responded
with an outright appropriation of $22,000,000
for the construction of a special isolated
laboratory. (This rather large sum was felt
to be justified since the project had application
to other studies already under way. In 1965,
the whole field of sterility and contamination
was one of major importance. For example,
NASA was building a Lunar Receiving Laboratory,
a high-security facility for Apollo astronauts
returning from the moon and possibly carrying
bacteria or viruses harmful to man. Every
astronaut returning from the moon would be
quarantined in the LRL for three weeks, until
decontamination was complete. Further, the
problems of "clean rooms" of industry, where
dust and bacteria were kept at a minimum,
and the "sterile chambers"
under study at Bethesda, were also major.
Aseptic environments, "life islands," and
sterile support systems seemed to have great
future significance, and Stone's appropriation
was considered a good investment in all these
fields.)
Once money was funded, construction proceeded
rapidly.
The eventual result, the Wildfire Laboratory,
was built in 1966 in Flatrock, Nevada. Design
was awarded to the naval architects of the
Electric Boat Division of General Dynamics,
since GD had considerable experience designing
living quarters on atomic submarines, where
men had to live and work for prolonged periods.
The plan consisted of a conical underground
structure with five floors. Each floor was
circular, with a central service core of wiring,
plumbing, and elevators. Each floor was more
sterile than the one above; the first floor
was non-sterile, the second moderately sterile,
the third stringently sterile, and so on.
Passage from one floor to another was not
free; personnel had to undergo decontamination
and quarantine procedures in passing either
up or down.
Once the laboratory was finished, it only
remained to select the Wildfire Alert team,
the group of scientists who would study any
new organism. After a number of studies of
team composition, five men were selected,
including Jeremy Stone himself. These five
were prepared to mobilize immediately in the
event of a biologic emergency.
Barely two years after his letter to the President,
Stone was satisfied that "this country has
the capability to deal with an unknown biologic
agent." He professed himself pleased with
the response of Washington and the speed with
which his ideas had been implemented. But
privately, he admitted to friends that it
had been almost too easy, that Washington
had agreed to his plans almost too readily.
Stone could not have known the reasons behind
Washington's eagerness, or the very real concern
many government officials had for the problem.
For Stone knew nothing, until the night he
left the party and drove off in the blue military
sedan, of Project Scoop.
*** "It was the fastest thing we could arrange,
sir," the Army man said.
Stone stepped onto the airplane with a sense
of absurdity. It was a Boeing 727, completely
empty, the seats stretching back in long unbroken
rows.
"Sit, first class, if you like," the Army
man said, with a slight smile. "It doesn't
matter." A moment later he was gone. He was
not replaced by a stewardess but by a stern
MP
with a pistol on his hip who stood by the
door as the engines started, whining softly
in the night.
Stone sat back with the Scoop file in front
of him and began to read. It made fascinating
reading; he went through it quickly, so quickly
that the MP thought his passenger must be
merely glancing at the file. But Stone was
reading every word.
Scoop was the brainchild of Major General
Thomas Sparks, head of the Army Medical Corps,
Chemical and Biological Warfare Division.
Sparks was responsible for the research of
the CBW installations at Fort Detrick, Maryland,
Harley, Indiana, and Dugway, Utah. Stone had
met him once or twice, and remembered him
as being mild-mannered and bespectacled.
Not the sort of man to be expected in the
job he held.
Reading on, Stone learned that Project Scoop
was contracted to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory
of the California Institute of Technology
in Pasadena in 1963. Its avowed aim was the
collection of any organisms that might exist
in "near space, " the upper atmosphere of
the earth. Technically speaking, it was an
Army project, but it was funded through the
National Aeronautics and Space Administration,
a supposedly civilian organization. In fact,
NASA was a government agency with a heavy
military commitment; 43 per cent of its contractual
work was classified in 1963.
In theory, JPL was designing a satellite to
enter the fringes of space and collect organisms
and dust for study.
This was considered a project of pure science--
almost curiosity-- and was thus accepted by
all the scientists working on the study.
In fact, the true aims were quite different.
The true aims of Scoop were to find new life
forms that might benefit the Fort Detrick
program. In essence, it was a study to discover
new biological weapons of war.
Detrick was a rambling structure in Maryland
dedicated to the discovery of chemical-and-biological-warfare
weapons.
Covering 1,300 acres, with a physical plant
valued at $100,000,000, it ranked as one of
the largest research facilities of any kind
in the United States. Only 15 per cent of
its findings were published in open scientific
journals; the rest were classified, as were
the reports from Harley and Dugway. Harley
was a maximum-security installation that dealt
largely with viruses. In the previous ten
years, a number of new viruses had been developed
there, ranging from the variety coded Carrie
Nation (which produces diarrhea) to the variety
coded Arnold (which causes clonic seizures
and death). The Dugway Proving Ground in Utah
was larger than the state of Rhode Island
and was used principally to test poison gases
such as Tabun, Sklar, and Kuff-11.
Few Americans, Stone knew, were aware of the
magnitude of U.S. research into chemical and
biological warfare. The total government expenditure
in CBW exceeded half a billion dollars a year.
Much of this was distributed to academic centers
such as Johns Hopkins, Pennsylvania, and the
University of Chicago, where studies of weapons
systems were contracted under vague terms.
Sometimes, of course, the terms were not so
vague. The Johns Hopkins program was devised
to evaluate "studies of actual or potential
injuries and illnesses, studies on diseases
of potential biological-warfare significance,
and evaluation of certain chemical and immunological
responses to certain toxoids and vaccines."
In the past eight years, none of the results
from Johns Hopkins had been published openly.
Those from other universities, such as Chicago
and UCLA, had occasionally been published,
but these were considered within the military
establishment to be "trial balloons"-- examples
of ongoing research intended to intimidate
foreign observers. A classic was the paper
by Tendron and five others entitled "Researches
into a Toxin Which Rapidly Uncouples Oxidative
Phosphorylation Through Cutaneous Absorption."
The paper described, but did not identify,
a poison that would kill a person in less
than a minute and was absorbed through the
skin. It was recognized that this was a relatively
minor achievement compared to other toxins
that had been devised in recent years.
With so much money and effort going into CBW,
one might think that new and more virulent
weapons would be continuously perfected. However,
this was not the case from 1961 to 1965; the
conclusion of the Senate Preparedness Subcommittee
in 1961 was that "conventional research has
been less than satisfactory" and that "new
avenues and approaches of inquiry" should
be opened within the field.
That was precisely what Major General Thomas
Sparks intended to do, with Project Scoop.
In final form, Scoop was a program to orbit
seventeen satellites around the earth, collecting
organisms and bringing them back to the surface.
Stone read the summaries of each previous
flight.
Scoop I was a gold-plated satellite, cone-shaped,
weighing thirty-seven pounds fully equipped.
It was launched from Vandenberg Air Force
Base in Purisima, California, on March 12,
1966. Vandenberg is used for polar (north
to south) orbits, as opposed to Cape Kennedy,
which launches west to east; Vandenberg had
the additional advantage of maintaining better
secrecy than Kennedy.
Scoop I orbited for six days before being
brought down.
It landed successfully in a swamp near Athens,
Georgia.
Unfortunately, it was found to contain only
standard earth organisms.
Scoop II burned up in reentry, as a result
of instrumentation failure. Scoop III also
burned up, though it had a new type of plastic-and-tungsten-laminate
heat shield.
Scoops IV and V were recovered intact from
the Indian Ocean and the Appalachian foothills,
but neither contained radically new organisms;
those collected were harmless variants of
S. albus, a common contaminant of normal human
skin. These failures led to a further increase
in sterilization procedures prior to launch.
Scoop VI was launched on New Year's Day, 1967.
It incorporated all the latest refinements
from earlier attempts. High hopes rode with
the revised satellite, which returned eleven
days later, landing near Bombay, India.
Unknown to anyone, the 34th Airborne, then
stationed in Evreux, France, just outside
Paris, was dispatched to recover the capsule.
The 34th was on alert whenever a spaceflight
went up, according to the procedures of Operation
Scrub, a plan first devised to protect Mercury
and Gemini capsules should one be forced to
land in Soviet Russia or Eastern Bloc countries.
Scrub was the primary reason for keeping a
single paratroop division in Western Europe
in the first half of the 1960's.
Scoop VI was recovered uneventfully. It was
found to contain a previously unknown form
of unicellular organism, coccobacillary in
shape, gram-negative, coagulase, and triokinase-positive.
However, it proved generally benevolent to
all living things with the exception of domestic
female chickens, which it made moderately
ill for a four-day period.
Among the Detrick staff, hope dimmed for the
successful recovery of a pathogen from the
Scoop program. Nonetheless, Scoop VII was
launched soon after Scoop VI. The exact date
is classified but it is believed to be February
5, 1967. Scoop VII immediately went into stable
orbit with an apogee of 317
miles and a perigee of 224 miles. It remained
in orbit for two and a half days. At that
time, the satellite abruptly left stable orbit
for unknown reasons, and it was decided to
bring it down by radio command.
The anticipated landing site was a desolate
area in northeastern Arizona.
*** Midway through the flight, his reading
was interrupted by an officer who brought
him a telephone and then stepped a respectful
distance away while Stone talked.
"Yes?" Stone said, feeling odd. He was not
accustomed to talking on the telephone in
the middle of an airplane trip.
"General Marcus here," a tired voice said.
Stone did not know General Marcus. "I just
wanted to inform you that all members of the
team have been called in, with the exception
of Professor Kirke."
"What happened?"
"Professor Kirke is in the hospital," General
Marcus said. "You'll get further details when
you touch down."
The conversation ended; Stone gave the telephone
back to the officer. He thought for a minute
about the other men on the team, and wondered
at their reactions as they were called out
of bed.
There was Leavitt, of course. He would respond
quickly.
Leavitt was a clinical microbiologist, a man
experienced in the treatment of infectious
disease. Leavitt had seen enough plagues and
epidemics in his day to know the importance
of quick action. Besides, there was his ingrained
pessimism, which never deserted him. (Leavitt
had once said, "At my wedding, all I could
think of was how much alimony she'd cost me.")
He was an irritable, grumbling, heavyset man
with a morose face and sad eyes, which seemed
to peer ahead into a bleak and miserable future;
but he was also thoughtful, imaginative, and
not afraid to think daringly.
Then there was the pathologist, Burton, in
Houston.
Stone had never liked Burton very well, though
he acknowledged his scientific talent. Burton
and Stone were different: where Stone was
organized, Burton was sloppy; where Stone
was controlled, Burton was impulsive; where
Stone was confident, Burton was nervous, jumpy,
petulant.
Colleagues referred to Burton as "the Stumbler,"
partly because of his tendency to trip over
his untied shoelaces and baggy trouser cuffs
and partly because of his talent for tumbling
by error into one important discovery after
another.
And then Kirke, the anthropologist from Yale,
who apparently was not going to be able to
come. If the report was true, Stone knew he
was going to miss him. Kirke was an ill-informed
and rather foppish man who possessed, as if
by accident, a superbly logical brain. He
was capable of grasping the essentials of
a problem and manipulating them to get the
necessary result; though he could not balance
his own checkbook, mathematicians often came
to him for help in resolving highly abstract
problems.
Stone was going to miss that kind of brain.
Certainly the fifth man would be no help.
Stone frowned as he thought about Mark Hall.
Hall had been a compromise candidate for the
team; Stone would have preferred a physician
with experience in metabolic disease, and
the choice of a surgeon instead had been made
with the greatest reluctance. There had been
great pressure from Defense and the AEC to
accept Hall, since those groups believed in
the Odd Man Hypothesis; in the end, Stone
and the others had given in.
Stone did not know Hall well; he wondered
what he would say when he was informed of
the alert. Stone could not have known of the
great delay in notifying members of the team.
He did not know, for instance, that Burton,
the pathologist, was not called until five
a.m., or that Peter Leavitt, the microbiologist,
was not called until six thirty, the time
he arrived at the hospital.
And Hall was not called until five minutes
past seven.
*** It was, Mark Hall said later, "a horrifying
experience.
In an instant, I was taken from the most familiar
of worlds and plunged into the most unfamiliar.
" At six forty-five, Hall was in the washroom
adjacent to OR 7, scrubbing for his first
case of the day. He was in the midst of a
routine he had carried out daily for several
years; he was relaxed and joking with the
resident, scrubbing with him.
When he finished, he went into the operating
room, holding his arms before him, and the
instrument nurse handed him a towel, to wipe
his hands dry. Also in the room was another
resident, who was prepping the body for surgery--
applying iodine and alcohol solutions-- and
a circulating nurse. They all exchanged greetings.
At the hospital, Hall was known as a swift,
quick-tempered, and unpredictable surgeon.
He operated with speed, working nearly twice
as fast as other surgeons. When things went
smoothly, he laughed and joked as he worked,
kidding his assistants, the nurses, the anesthetist.
But if things did not go well, if they became
slow and difficult, Hall could turn blackly
irritable.
Like most surgeons, he was insistent upon
routine.
Everything had to be done in a certain order,
in a certain way. If not, he became upset.
Because the others in the operating room knew
this, they looked up toward the overhead viewing
gallery with apprehension when Leavitt appeared.
Leavitt clicked on the intercom that connected
the upstairs room to the operating room below
and said, "Hello, Mark."
Hall had been draping the patient, placing
green sterile cloths over every part of the
body except for the abdomen. He looked up
with surprise. "Hello, Peter," he said.
"Sorry to disturb you," Leavitt said. "But
this is an emergency."
"Have to wait," Hall said. "I'm starting a
procedure."
He finished draping and called for the skin
knife. He palpated the abdomen, feeling for
the landmarks to begin his incision.
"It can't wait," Leavitt said.
Hall paused. He set down the scalpel and looked
up.
There was a long silence.
"What the hell do you mean, it can't wait?"
Leavitt remained calm. "You'll have to break
scrub. This is an emergency."
"Look, Peter, I've got a patient here. Anesthetized.
Ready to go. I can't just walk--"
"Kelly will take over for you."
Kelly was one of the staff surgeons.
"Kelly?"
"He's scrubbing now," Leavitt said. "It's
all arranged.
I'll expect to meet you in the surgeon's change
room. In about thirty seconds."
And then he was gone.
Hall glared at everyone in the room. No one
moved, or spoke. After a moment, he stripped
off his gloves and stomped out of the room,
swearing once, very loudly.
*** Hall viewed his own association with Wildfire
as tenuous at best. In 1966 he had been approached
by Leavitt, the chief of bacteriology of the
hospital, who had explained in a sketchy way
the purpose of the project. Hall found it
all rather amusing and had agreed to join
the team, if his services ever became necessary;
privately, he was confident that nothing would
ever come of Wildfire.
Leavitt had offered to give Hall the files
on Wildfire and to keep him up to date on
the project. At first, Hall politely took
the files, but it soon became clear that he
was not bothering to read them, and so Leavitt
stopped giving them to him. If anything, this
pleased Hall, who preferred not to have his
desk cluttered.
A year before, Leavitt had asked him whether
he wasn't curious about something that he
had agreed to join and that might at some
future time prove dangerous.
Hall had said, "No."
Now, in the doctors' room, Hall regretted
those words.
The doctors' room was a small place, lined
on all four walls with lockers; there were
no windows. A large coffeemaker sat in the
center of the room, with a stack of paper
cups alongside. Leavitt was pouring himself
a cup, his solemn, basset-hound face looking
mournful.
"This is going to be awful coffee," he said.
"You can't get a decent cup anywhere in a
hospital. Hurry and change.
Hall said, "Do you mind telling me first why--"
"I mind, I mind," Leavitt said. "Change: there's
a car waiting outside and we're already late.
Perhaps too late."
He had a gruffly melodramatic way of speaking
that had always annoyed Hall.
There was a loud slurp as Leavitt sipped the
coffee.
"Just as I suspected, " he said. "How can
you tolerate it?
Hurry, please."
Hall unlocked his locker and kicked it open.
He leaned against the door and stripped away
the black plastic shoe covers that were worn
in the operating room to prevent buildup of
static charges. "Next, I suppose you're going
to tell me this has to do with that damned
project."
"Exactly," Leavitt said. "Now try to hurry.
The car is waiting to take us to the airport,
and the morning traffic is bad."
Hall changed quickly, not thinking, his mind
momentarily stunned. Somehow he had never
thought it possible. He dressed and walked
out with Leavitt toward the hospital entrance.
Outside, in the sunshine, he could see the
olive U.S. Army sedan pulled up to the curb,
its light flashing. And he had a sudden, horrible
realization that Leavitt was not kidding,
that nobody was kidding, and that some kind
of awful nightmare was coming true.
*** For his own part, Peter Leavitt was irritated
with Hall.
In general, Leavitt had little patience with
practicing physicians. Though he had an M.D.
degree, Leavitt had never practiced, preferring
to devote his time research. His field was
clinical microbiology and epidemiology, and
his specialty was parasitology. He had done
parasitic research all over the world; his
work had led to the discovery of the Brazilian
tapeworm, Taenia renzi, which he had characterized
in a paper in 1953.
As he grew older, however, Leavitt had stopped
traveling. Public health, he was fond of saying,
was a young man's game; when you got your
fifth case of intestinal amebiasis, it was
time to quit. Leavitt got his fifth case in
Rhodesia in 1955. He was dreadfully sick for
three months and lost forty pounds. Afterward,
he resigned his job in the public health service.
He was offered the post of chief of microbiology
at the hospital, and he had taken it, with
the understanding that he would be able to
devote a good portion of his time to research.
Within the hospital he was known as a superb
clinical bacteriologist, but his real interest
remained parasites. In the period from 1955
to 1964 he published a series of elegant metabolic
studies on Ascaris and Necator that were highly
regarded by other workers in the field.
Leavitt's reputation had made him a natural
choice for Wildfire, and it was through Leavitt
that Hall had been asked to join. Leavitt
knew the reasons behind Hall's selection,
though Hall did not.
When Leavitt had asked him to join, Hall had
demanded to know why. "I'm just a surgeon,"
he had said.
"Yes," Leavitt said. "But you know electrolytes."
"So?"
"That may be important. Blood chemistries,
pH, acidity and alkalinity, the whole thing.
That may be vital, when the time comes."
"But there are a lot of electrolyte people,"
Hall had pointed out. "Many of them better
than me."
"Yes," Leavitt had said. "But they're all
married."
"So what?"
"We need a single man."
"Why?"
"It's necessary that one member of the team
be unmarried."
"That's crazy," Hall had said.
"Maybe," Leavitt had said. "Maybe not."
They left the hospital and walked up to the
Army sedan.
A young officer was waiting stiffly, and saluted
as they came up.
"Dr. Hall?"
"Yes."
"May I see your card, please?"
Hall gave him the little plastic card with
his picture on it. He had been carrying the
card in his wallet for more than a year; it
was a rather strange card-- with just a name,
a picture, and a thumbprint, nothing more.
Nothing to indicate that it was an official
card.
The officer glanced at it, then at Hall, and
back to the card. He handed it back.
"Very good, sir."
He opened the rear door of the sedan. Hall
got in and Leavitt followed, shielding his
eyes from the flashing red light on the car
top. Hall noticed it.
"Something wrong?"
"No. Just never liked flashing lights. Reminds
me of my days as an ambulance driver, during
the war." Leavitt settled back and the car
started off. "Now then," he said. "When we
reach the airfield, you will be given a file
to read during the trip."
"What trip?"
"You'll be taking an F-104," Leavitt said.
"Where?"
"Nevada. Try to read the file on the way.
Once we arrive, things will be very busy."
"And the others in the team?"
Leavitt glanced at his watch." Kirke has appendicitis
and is in the hospital. The others have already
begun work.
Right now, they are in a helicopter, over
Piedmont, Arizona.
"Never heard of it," Hall said.
"Nobody has," Leavitt said, "until now."
6. Piedmont
AT 9:59 A.M. ON THE SAME MORNING, A K-4 JET
helicopter lifted off the concrete of Vandenberg's
maximum-security hangar MSH-9 and headed east,
toward Arizona.
The decision to lift off from an MSH was made
by Major Manchek, who was concerned about
the attention the suits might draw. Because
inside the helicopter were three men, a pilot
and two scientists, and all three wore clear
plastic inflatable suits, making them look
like obese men from Mars, or, as one of the
hangar maintenance men put it, "like balloons
from the Macy's parade."
As the helicopter climbed into the clear morning
sky, the two passengers in the belly looked
at each other. One was Jeremy Stone, the other
Charles Burton. Both men had arrived at Vandenberg
just a few hours before-- Stone from Stanford
and Burton from Baylor University in Houston.
Burton was fifty-four, a pathologist. He held
a professorship at Baylor Medical School and
served as a consultant to the NASA Manned
Spaceflight Center in Houston.
Earlier he had done research at the National
Institutes in Bethesda. His field had been
the effects of bacteria on human tissues.
It is one of the peculiarities of scientific
development that such a vital field was virtually
untouched when Burton came to it. Though men
had known germs caused disease since Henle's
hypothesis of 1840, by the middle of the twentieth
century there was still nothing known about
why or how bacteria did their damage. The
specific mechanisms were unknown.
Burton began, like so many others in his day,
with Diplococcus pneumoniae, the agent causing
pneumonia. There was great interest in pneumococcus
before the advent of penicillin in the forties;
after that, both interest and research money
evaporated. Burton shifted to Staphylococcus
aureus, a common skin pathogen responsible
for "pimples" and
"boils." At the time he began his work, his
fellow researchers laughed at him; staphylococcus,
like pneumococcus, was highly sensitive to
penicillin. They doubted Burton would ever
get enough money to carry on his work.
For five years, they were right. The money
was scarce, and Burton often had to go begging
to foundations and philanthropists. Yet he
persisted, patiently elucidating the coats
of the cell wall that caused a reaction in
host tissue and helping to discover the half-dozen
toxins secreted by the bacteria to break down
tissue, spread infection, and destroy red
cells.
Suddenly, in the 1950's, the first penicillin-resistant
strains of staph appeared. The new strains
were virulent, and produced bizarre deaths,
often by brain abscess. Almost overnight Burton
found his work had assumed major importance;
dozens of labs around the country were changing
over to study staph; it was a "hot field."
In a single year, Burton watched his grant
appropriations jump from $6,000 a year to
$300,000.
Soon afterward, he was made a professor of
pathology.
Looking back, Burton felt no great pride in
his accomplishment; it was, he knew, a matter
of luck, of being in the right place and doing
the right work when the time came.
He wondered what would come of being here,
in this helicopter, now.
Sitting across from him, Jeremy Stone tried
to conceal his distaste for Burton's appearance.
Beneath the plastic suit Burton wore a dirty
plaid sport shirt with a stain on the left
breast pocket; his trousers were creased and
frayed and even his hair, Stone felt, was
unruly and untidy.
He stared out the window, forcing himself
to think of other matters. "Fifty people,"
he said, shaking his head.
"Dead
within eight hours of the landing of Scoop
VII. The question is one of spread."
"Presumably airborne," Burton said.
"Yes. Presumably."
"Everyone seems to have died in the immediate
vicinity of the town," Burton said. "Are there
reports of deaths farther out?
Stone shook his head. "I'm having the Army
people look into it. They're working with
the highway patrol. So far, no deaths have
turned up outside."
"Wind?"
"A stroke of luck," Stone said. "Last night
the wind was fairly brisk, nine miles an hour
to the south and steady. But around midnight,
it died. Pretty unusual for this time of year,
they tell me."
"But fortunate for us."
"Yes." Stone nodded. "We're fortunate in another
way as well. There is no important area of
habitation for a radius a of nearly one hundred
and twelve miles. Outside that, of course,
there is Las Vegas to the north, San Bernardino
to the west, and Phoenix to the east. Not
nice, if the bug gets to any of them."
"But as long as the wind stays down, we have
time."
"Presumably," Stone said.
For the next half hour, the two men discussed
the vector problem with frequent reference
to a sheaf of output maps drawn up during
the night by Vandenberg's computer division.
The output maps were highly complex analyses
of geographic problems; in this case, the
maps were visualizations of the southwestern
United States, weighted for wind direction
and population.
[Graphic: About page 58. First map of mountain
west of USA, showing examples of the staging
of computerbase output mapping. Each shows
coordinates around population centers and
other important areas. A second map shows
the weighting that accounts for wind and population
factors and is consequently distorted in Southern
CA, and Southern NV. A third map shows the
computer projection of the effects of wind
and population in a specific "scenario." None
of the maps is from the Wildfire Project.
They are similar, but they represent output
from a CBW scenario, not the actual Wildfire
work. (Courtesy General Autonomics Corporation)]
Discussion then turned to the time course
of death. Both men had heard the tape from
the van; they agreed that everyone at Piedmont
seemed to have died quite suddenly.
"Even if you slit a man's throat with a razor,"
Burton said, "you won't get death that rapidly.
Cutting both carotids and jugulars still allows
ten to forty seconds before unconsciousness,
and nearly a minute before death."
"At Piedmont, it seems to have occurred in
a second or two."
Burton shrugged. "Trauma," he suggested. "A
blow to the head."
"Yes. Or a nerve gas."
"Certainly possible."
"It's that, or something very much like it,"
Stone said.
"If it was an enzymatic block of some kind--
like arsenic or strychnine-- we'd expect fifteen
or thirty seconds, perhaps longer. But a block
of nervous transmission, or a block of the
neuro-muscular junction, or cortical poisoning--
that could be very swift. It could be instantaneous."
"If it is a fast-acting gas," Burton said,
"it must have high diffusibility across the
lungs--"
"Or the skin," Stone said. "Mucous membranes,
anything.
Any porous surface."
Burton touched the plastic of his suit. "If
this gas is so highly diffusible..."
Stone gave a slight smile. "We'll find out,
soon enough."
*** Over the intercom, the helicopter pilot
said, "Piedmont approaching, gentlemen. Please
advise."
Stone said, "Circle once and give us a look
at it."
The helicopter banked steeply. The two men
looked out and saw the town below them. The
buzzards had landed during the night, and
were thickly clustered around the bodies.
"I was afraid of that," Stone said.
"They may represent a vector for infectious
spread,"
Burton said. "Eat the meat of infected people,
and carry the organisms away with them."
Stone nodded, staring out the window.
"What do we do?"
"Gas them," Stone said. He flicked on the
intercom to the pilot. "Have you got the canisters?"
"Yes sir."
"Circle again; and blanket the town."
"Yes sir."
The helicopter tilted, and swung back. Soon
the two men could not see the ground for the
clouds of pale-blue gas.
"What is it?"
"Chlorazine," Stone said. "Highly effective,
in low concentrations, on aviary metabolism.
Birds have a high metabolic rate. They are
creatures that consist of little more than
feathers and muscle; their heartbeats are
usually about one-twenty, and many species
eat more than their own weight every day."
"The gas is an uncoupler?"
"Yes. It'll hit them hard."
The helicopter banked away, then hovered.
The gas slowly cleared in the gentle wind,
moving off to the south. Soon they could see
the ground again. Hundreds of birds lay there;
a few flapped their wings spastically, but
most were already dead.
Stone frowned as he watched. Somewhere, in
the back of his mind, he knew he had forgotten
something, or ignored something. Some fact,
some vital clue, that the birds provided and
he must not overlook.
Over the intercom, the pilot said, "Your orders,
sir?"
"Go to the center of the main street," Stone
said, "and drop the rope ladder. You are to
remain twenty feet above ground. Do not put
down. Is that clear?"
"Yes sir."
"When we have climbed down, you are to lift
off to an altitude of five hundred feet."
"Yes sir."
"Return when we signal you."
"Yes sir."
"And should anything happen to us--"
"I proceed directly to Wildfire," the pilot
said, his voice dry.
"Correct."
The pilot knew what that meant. He was being
paid according to the highest Air Force pay
scales: he was drawing regular pay plus hazardous-duty
pay, plus non-wartime special-services pay,
plus mission-over-hostile-territory pay, plus
bonus air-time pay. He would receive more
than a thousand dollars for this day's work,
and his family would receive an additional
ten thousand dollars from the short-term life
insurance should he not return.
There was a reason for the money: if anything
happened to Burton and Stone on the ground,
the pilot was ordered to fly directly to the
Wildfire installation and hover thirty feet
above ground until such time as the Wildfire
group had determined the correct way to incinerate
him, and his airplane, in midair.
He was being paid to take a risk. He had volunteered
for the job. And he knew that high above,
circling at twenty thousand feet, was an Air
Force jet with air-to-air missiles.
It was the job of the jet to shoot down the
helicopter should the pilot suffer a last-minute
loss of nerve and fail to go directly to Wildfire.
"Don't slip up," the pilot said. "Sir."
The helicopter maneuvered over the main street
of the town and hung in midair. There was
a rattling sound: the rope ladder being released.
Stone stood and pulled on his helmet.
He snapped shut the sealer and inflated his
clear suit, puffing it up around him. A small
bottle of oxygen on his back would provide
enough air for two hours of exploration.
He waited until Burton had sealed his suit,
and then Stone opened the hatch and stared
down at the ground. The helicopter was raising
a heavy cloud of dust.
Stone clicked on his radio. "All set?"
"All set."
Stone began to climb down the ladder. Burton
waited a moment, then followed. He could see
nothing in the swirling dust, but finally
felt his shoes touch the ground. He released
the ladder and looked over. He could barely
make out Stone's suit, a dim outline in a
gloomy, dusky world.
The ladder pulled away as the helicopter lifted
into the sky. The dust cleared. They could
see.
"Let's go," Stone said.
Moving clumsily in their suits, they walked
down the main street of Piedmont.
7. "An Unusual Process"
SCARCELY TWELVE HOURS AFTER THE FIRST KNOWN
human contact with the Andromeda Strain was
made at Piedmont, Burton and Stone arrived
in the town. Weeks later, in their debriefing
sessions, both men recalled the scene vividly,
and described it in detail.
The morning sun was still low in the sky;
it was cold and cheerless, casting long shadows
over the thinly snow-crusted ground. From
where they stood, they could look up and down
the street at the gray, weathered wooden buildings;
but what they noticed first was the silence.
Except for a gentle wind that whined softly
through the empty houses, it was deathly silent.
Bodies lay everywhere, heaped and flung across
the ground in attitudes of frozen surprise.
But there was no sound-- no reassuring rumble
of an automobile engine, no barking dog, no
shouting children.
Silence.
The two men looked at each other. They were
painfully aware of how much there was to learn,
to do. Some catastrophe had struck this town,
and they must discover all they could about
it. But they had practically no clues, no
points of departure.
They knew, in fact, only two things. First,
that the trouble apparently began with the
landing of Scoop VII. And second, that death
had overtaken the people of the town with
astonishing rapidity. If it was a disease
from the satellite, then it was like no other
in the history of medicine.
For a long time the men said nothing, but
stood in the street, looking about them, feeling
the wind tug at their over-sized suits. Finally,
Stone said, "Why are they all outside, in
the street? If this was a disease that arrived
at night, most of the people would be indoors."
"Not only that," Burton said, "they're mostly
wearing pajamas. It was a cold night last
night. You'd think they would have stopped
to put on a jacket, or a raincoat.
Something to keep warm."
"Maybe they were in a hurry."
"To do what?" Burton said.
"To see something," Stone said, with a helpless
shrug.
Burton bent over the first body they came
to. "Odd," he said. "Look at the way this
fellow is clutching his chest.
Quite a few of them are doing that."
Looking at the bodies, Stone saw that the
hands of many were pressed to their chests,
some flat, some clawing.
"They didn't seem to be in pain," Stone said.
"'Their faces are quite peaceful."
"Almost astonished, in fact," Burton nodded.
"These people look cut down, caught in midstride.
But clutching their chests."
"Coronary?" Stone said.
"Doubt it. They should grimace-- it's painful.
The same with a pulmonary embolus."
"If it was fast enough, they wouldn't have
time."
"Perhaps. But somehow I think these people
died a painless death. Which means they are
clutching their chests because--"
"They couldn't breathe," Stone said.
Burton nodded. "It's possible we're seeing
asphyxiation.
Rapid, painless, almost instantaneous asphyxiation.
But I doubt it. If a person can't breathe,
the first thing he does is loosen his clothing,
particularly around the neck and chest. Look
at that man there-- he's wearing a tie, and
he hasn't touched it. And that woman with
the tightly buttoned collar."
Burton was beginning to regain his composure
now, after the initial shock of the town.
He was beginning to think clearly. They walked
up to the van, standing in the middle of the
street, its lights still shining weakly. Stone
reached in to turn off the lights. He pushed
the stiff body of the driver back from the
wheel and read the name on the breast pocket
of the parka.
"Shawn."
The man sitting rigidly in the back of the
van was a private named Crane. Both men were
locked in rigor mortis.
Stone nodded to the equipment in the back.
"Will that still work?"
"I think so," Burton said.
"Then let's find the satellite. That's our
first job. We can worry later about--"
He stopped. He was looking at the face of
Shawn, who had obviously pitched forward hard
onto the steering wheel at the moment of death.
There was a large, arc-shaped cut across his
face, shattering the bridge of his nose and
tearing the skin.
"I don't get it," Stone said.
"Get what?" Burton said.
"This injury. Look at it."
"Very clean," Burton said. "Remarkably clean,
in fact.
Practically no bleeding..."
Then Burton realized. He started to scratch
his head in astonishment, but his hand was
stopped by the plastic helmet.
"A cut like that," he said, "on the face.
Broken capillaries, shattered bone, torn scalp
veins-- it should bleed like hell."
"Yes," Stone said. "It should. And look at
the other bodies. Even where the vultures
have chewed at the flesh: no bleeding."
Burton stared with increasing astonishment.
None of the bodies had lost even a drop of
blood. He wondered why they had not noticed
it before.
"Maybe the mechanism of action of this disease--"
"Yes," Stone said. "I think you may be right."
He grunted and dragged Shawn out of the van,
working to pull the stiff body from behind
the wheel. "Let's get that damned satellite,"
he said. "This is really beginning to worry
me."
Burton went to the back and pulled Crane out
through the rear doors, then climbed in as
Stone turned the ignition. The starter turned
over sluggishly, and the engine did not catch.
Stone tried to start the van for several seconds,
then said, "I don't understand. The battery
is low, but it should still be enough--"
"How's your gas?" Burton said.
There was a pause, and Stone swore loudly.
Burton smiled, and crawled out of the back.
Together they walked up the street to the
gas station, found a bucket, and filled it
with gas from the pump after spending several
moments trying to decide how it worked. When
they had the gas, they returned to the van,
filled the tank, and Stone tried again.
The engine caught and held. Stone grinned.
"Let's go."
Burton scrambled into the back, turned on
the electronic equipment, and started the
antenna rotating. He heard the faint beeping
of the satellite.
"The signal's weak, but still there. Sounds
over to the left somewhere."
Stone put the van in gear. They rumbled off,
swerving around the bodies in the street.
The beeping grew louder.
They continued down the main street, past
the gas station and the general store. The
beeping suddenly grew faint.
"We've gone too far. Turn around."
It took a while for Stone to find reverse
on the gearshift, and then they doubled back,
tracing the intensity of the sound. It was
another fifteen minutes before they were able
to locate the origin of the beeps to the north,
on the outskirts of the town.
Finally, they pulled up before a plain single-story
woodframe house. A sign creaked in the wind:
Dr. Alan Benedict.
"Might have known," Stone said. "They'd take
it to the doctor."
The two men climbed out of the van and went
up to the house. The front door was open,
banging in the breeze. They entered the living
room and found it empty. Riming right, they
came to the doctor's office.
Benedict was there, a pudgy, white-haired
man. He was seated before his desk, with several
textbooks laid open.
Along one wall were bottles, syringes, pictures
of his family and several others showing men
in combat uniforms. One showed a group of
grinning soldiers; the scrawled words: "For
Benny, from the boys of 87, Anzio."
Benedict himself was staring blankly toward
a corner of the room, his eyes wide, his face
peaceful.
"Well," Burton said, "Benedict certainly didn't
make it outside--"
And then they saw the satellite.
It was upright, a sleek polished cone three
feet high, and its edges had been cracked
and seared from the heat of reentry. It had
been opened crudely, apparently with the help
of a pair of pliers and chisel that lay on
the floor next to the capsule.
"The bastard opened it," Stone said. "Stupid
son of a bitch."
"How was he to know?"
"He might have asked somebody," Stone said.
He sighed.
"Anyway, he knows now. And so do forty-nine
other people. "
He bent over the satellite and closed the
gaping, triangular hatch. "You have the container?"
Burton produced the folded plastic bag and
opened it out. Together they slipped it over
the satellite, then sealed it shut.
"I hope to hell there's something left," Burton
said.
"In a way," Stone said softly, "I hope there
isn't."
They turned their attention to Benedict. Stone
went over to him and shook him. The man fell
rigidly from his chair onto the floor.
Burton noticed the elbows, and suddenly became
excited.
He leaned over the body. "Come on," he said
to Stone. "Help me."
"Do what?"
"Strip him down."
"Why?"
"I want to check the lividity.
"But why?"
"Just wait," Burton said. He began unbuttoning
Benedict's shirt and loosening his trousers.
The two men worked silently for some moments,
until the doctor's body was naked on the floor.
"There," Burton said, standing back.
"I'll be damned," Stone said.
There was no dependent lividity. Normally,
after a person died, blood seeped to the lowest
points, drawn down by gravity. A person who
died in bed had a purple back from accumulated
blood. But Benedict, who had died sitting
up, had no blood in the tissue of his buttocks
or thighs.
Or in his elbows, which had rested on the
arms of the chair.
"Quite a peculiar finding," Burton said. He
glanced around the room and found a small
autoclave for sterilizing instruments. Opening
it, he removed a scalpel. He fitted it with
a blade-- carefully, so as not to puncture
his airtight suit-- and then turned back to
the body.
"We'll take the most superficial major artery
and vein,"
he said.
"Which is?"
"The radial. At the wrist."
Holding the scalpel carefully, Burton drew
the blade along the skin of the inner wrist,
just behind the thumb. The skin pulled back
from the wound, which was completely bloodless.
He exposed fat and subcutaneous tissue. There
was no bleeding.
"Amazing."
He cut deeper. There was still no bleeding
from the incision. Suddenly, abruptly, he
struck a vessel. Crumbling red-black material
fell out onto the floor.
"I'll be damned," Stone said again.
"Clotted solid," Burton said.
"No wonder the people didn't bleed."
Burton said, "Help me turn him over. " Together,
they got the corpse onto its back, and Burton
made a deep incision into the medial thigh,
cutting down to the femoral artery and vein.
Again there was no bleeding, and when they
reached the artery, as thick as a man's finger,
it was clotted into a firm, reddish mass.
"Incredible."
He began another incision, this time into
the chest. He exposed the ribs, then searched
Dr. Benedict's office for a very sharp knife.
He wanted an osteotome, but could find none.
He settled for the chisel that had been used
to open the capsule. Using this he broke away
several ribs to expose the lungs and the heart.
Again there was no bleeding.
Burton took a deep breath, then cut open the
heart, slicing into the left ventricle.
The interior was filled with red, spongy material.
There was no liquid blood at all.
"Clotted solid," he said. "No question."
"Any idea what can clot people this way?"
"The whole vascular system? Five quarts of
blood? No."
Burton sat heavily in the doctor's chair and
stared at the body he had just cut open. "I've
never heard of anything like it. There's a
thing called disseminated intravascular coagulation,
but it's rare and requires all sorts of special
circumstances to initiate it."
"Could a single toxin initiate it?"
"In theory, I suppose. But in fact, there
isn't a toxin in the world--"
He stopped.
"Yes," Stone said. "I suppose that's right.'
He picked up the satellite designated Scoop
VII and carried it outside to the van. When
he came back, he said,
"We'd better search the houses.
"Beginning here?"
"Might as well," Stone said.
*** It was Burton who found Mrs. Benedict.
She was a pleasant-looking middle-aged lady
sitting in a chair with a book on her lap;
she seemed about to turn the page. Burton
examined her briefly, then heard Stone call
to him.
He walked to the other end of the house. Stone
was in a small bedroom, bent over the body
of a young teenage boy on the bed. It was
obviously his room: psychedelic posters on
the walls, model airplanes on a shelf to one
side.
The boy lay on his back in bed, eyes open,
staring at the ceiling. His mouth was open.
In one hand, an empty tube of model-airplane
cement was tightly clenched; all over the
bed were empty bottles of airplane dope, paint
thinner, turps.
Stone stepped back. "Have a look."
Burton looked in the mouth, reached a finger
in, touched the now-hardened mass. "Good God,"
he said.
Stone was frowning. "This took time," he said.
"Regardless of what made him do it, it took
time. We've obviously been oversimplifying
events here. Everyone did not die instantaneously.
Some people died in their homes; some got
out into the street. And this kid here..."
He shook his head. "Let's check the other
houses."
On the way out, Burton returned to the doctor's
office, stepping around the body of the physician.
It gave him a strange feeling to see the wrist
and leg sliced open, the chest exposed-- but
no bleeding. There was something wild and
inhuman about that. As if bleeding were a
sign of humanity.
Well, he thought, perhaps it is. Perhaps the
fact that we bleed to death makes us human.
*** For Stone, Piedmont was a puzzle challenging
him to crack its secret. He was convinced
that the town could tell him everything about
the nature of the disease, its course and
effects. It was only a matter of putting together
the data in the proper way.
But he had to admit, as they continued their
search, that the data were confusing:
*** A house that contained a man, his wife,
and their young daughter, all sitting around
the dinner table. They had apparently been
relaxed and happy, and none of them had had
time to push back their chairs from the table.
They remained frozen in attitudes of congeniality,
smiling at each other across the plates of
now-rotting food, and flies. Stone noticed
the flies, which buzzed softly in the room.
He would, he thought, have to remember the
flies.
*** An old woman, her hair white, her face
creased. She was smiling gently as she swung
from a noose tied to a ceiling rafter. The
rope creaked as it rubbed against the wood
of the rafter.
At her feet was an envelope. In a careful,
neat, unhurried hand: "To whom it may concern."
Stone opened the letter and read it. "The
day of judgment is at hand. The earth and
the waters shall open up and mankind shall
be consumed. May God have mercy on my soul
and upon those who have shown mercy to me.
To hell with the others. Amen."
Burton listened as the letter was read. "Crazy
old lady," he said. "Senile dementia. She
saw everyone around her dying, and she went
nuts."
"And killed herself?"
"Yes, I think so."
"Pretty bizarre way to kill herself, don't
you think?"
"That kid also chose a bizarre way," Burton
said.
Stone nodded.
*** Roy O. Thompson, who lived alone. From
his greasy coveralls they assumed he ran the
town gas station. Roy had apparently filled
his bathtub with water, then knelt down, stuck
his head in, and held it there until he died.
When they found him his body was rigid, holding
himself under the surface of the water; there
was no one else around, and no sign of struggle.
"Impossible," Stone said. "No one can commit
suicide that way."
*** Lydia Everett, a seamstress in the town,
who had quietly gone out to the back yard,
sat in a chair, poured gasoline over herself,
and struck a match. Next to the remains of
her body they found the scorched gasoline
can.
***
William Arnold, a man of sixty sitting stiffly
in a chair in the living room, wearing his
World War I uniform. He had been a captain
in that war, and he had become a captain again,
briefly, before he shot himself through the
right temple with a Colt .45. There was no
blood in the room when they found him; he
appeared almost ludicrous, sitting there with
a clean, dry hole in his head.
A tape recorder stood alongside him, his left
hand resting on the case. Burton looked at
Stone questioningly, then turned it on.
A quavering, irritable voice spoke to them.
"You took your sweet time coming, didn't you?
Still I am glad you have arrived at last.
We are in need of reinforcements. I tell you,
it's been one hell of a battle against the
Hun. Lost 40 per cent last night, going over
the top, and two of our officers are out with
the rot. Not going well, not at all. If only
Gary Cooper was here. We need men like that,
the men who made America strong. I can't tell
you how much it means to me, with those giants
out there in the flying saucers. Now they're
burning us down, and the gas is coming. You
can see them die and we don't have gas masks.
None at all. But I won't wait for it. I am
going to do the proper thing now. I regret
that I have but one life to kill for my country."
The tape ran on, but it was silent.
Burton turned if off. "Crazy," he said. "Stark
raving mad."
Stone nodded.
"Some of them died instantly, and the others...went
quietly nuts."
"But we seem to come back to the same basic
question.
Why? What was the difference?"
"Perhaps there's a graded immunity to this
bug," Burton said. "Some people are more susceptible
than others. Some people are protected, at
least for a time."
"You know," Stone said, "there was that report
from the flybys, and those films of a man
alive down here. One man in white robes."
"You think he's still alive?"
"Well, I wonder," Stone said. "Because if
some people survived longer than others--
long enough to dictate a taped speech, or
to arrange a hanging-- then you have to ask
yourself if someone maybe didn't survive for
a very long time. You have to ask yourself
if there isn't someone in this town who is
still alive."
It was then that they heard the sound of crying.
*** At first it seemed like the sound of the
wind, it was so high and thin and reedy, but
they listened, feeling puzzled at first, and
then astonished. The crying persisted, interrupted
by little hacking coughs.
They ran outside.
It was faint, and difficult to localize. They
ran up the street, and it seemed to grow louder;
this spurred them on.
And then, abruptly, the sound stopped.
The two men came to a halt, gasping for breath,
chests heaving. They stood in the middle of
the hot, deserted street and looked at each
other.
"Have we lost our minds?" Burton said.
"No," Stone said. "We heard it, all right."
They waited. It was absolutely quiet for several
minutes. Burton looked down the street, at
the houses, and the jeep van parked at the
other end, in front of Dr.
Benedict's house.
The crying began again, very loud now, a frustrated
howl.
The two men ran.
It was not far, two houses up on the right
side. A man and a woman lay outside, on the
sidewalk, fallen and clutching their chests.
They ran past them and into the house. The
crying was still louder; it filled the empty
rooms.
They hurried upstairs, clambering up, and
came to the bedroom. A large double bed, unmade.
A dresser, a mirror, a closet.
And a small crib.
They leaned over, pulling back the blankets
from a small, very red-faced, very unhappy
infant. The baby immediately stopped crying
long enough to survey their faces, enclosed
in the plastic suits.
Then it began to howl again.
"Scared hell out of it," Burton said. "Poor
thing."
He picked it up gingerly and rocked it. The
baby continued to scream. Its toothless mouth
was wide open, its cheeks purple, and the
veins stood out on its forehead.
"Probably hungry," Burton said.
Stone was frowning. "It's not very old. Can't
be more than a couple of months. Is it a he
or a she?"
Burton unwrapped the blankets and checked
the diapers.
"He. And he needs to be changed. And fed."
He looked around the room. "There's probably
a formula in the kitchen..."
"No," Stone said. "We don't feed it."
"Why not?"
"We don't do anything to that child until
we get it out of this town. Maybe feeding
is part of the disease process; maybe the
people who weren't hit so hard or so fast
were the ones who hadn't eaten recently. Maybe
there's something protective about this baby's
diet. Maybe..." He stopped. "But whatever
it is, we can't take a chance. We've got to
wait and get him into a controlled situation."
Burton sighed. He knew that Stone was right,
but he also knew that the baby hadn't been
fed for at least twelve hours.
No wonder the kid was crying.
Stone said, "This is a very important development.
It's a major break for us, and we've got to
protect it. I think we should go back immediately."
"We haven't finished our head count."
Stone shook his head. "Doesn't matter. We
have something much more valuable than anything
we could hope to find. We have a survivor."
The baby stopped crying for a moment, stuck
its finger in its mouth, and looked questioningly
up at Burton. Then, when he was certain no
food was forthcoming, he began to howl again.
"Too bad," Burton said, "he can't tell us
what happened."
"I'm hoping he can," Stone said.
*** They parked the van in the center of the
main street, beneath the hovering helicopter,
and signaled for it to descend with the ladder.
Burton held the infant, and Stone held the
Scoop satellite-- strange trophies, Stone
thought, from a very strange town. The baby
was quiet now; he had finally tired of crying
and was sleeping fitfully, awakening at intervals
to whimper, then sleep again.
The helicopter descended, spinning up swirls
of dust.
Burton wrapped the blankets about the baby's
face to protect him. The ladder came down
and he climbed up, with difficulty.
Stone waited on the ground, standing with
the capsule in the wind and dust and thumpy
noise from the helicopter.
And, suddenly, he realized that he was not
alone on the street. He turned, and saw a
man behind him.
He was an old man, with thin gray hair and
a wrinkled, worn face. He wore a long nightgown
that was smudged with dirt and yellowed with
dust, and his feet were bare. He stumbled
and tottered toward Stone. His chest was heaving
with exertion beneath the nightgown.
"Who are you?" Stone said. But he knew: the
man in the pictures. The one who had been
photographed by the airplane.
"You..." the man said.
"Who are you?"
"You... did it..."
"What is your name?"
"Don't hurt me... I'm not like the others..."
He was shaking with fear as he stared at Stone
in his plastic suit. Stone thought, We must
look strange to him.
Like men from Mars, men from another world.
"Don't hurt me..."
"We won't hurt you," Stone said. "What is
your name?"
"Jackson. Peter Jackson. Sir. Please don't
hurt me."
He waved to the bodies in the street. "I'm
not like the others..."
"We won't hurt you," Stone said again.
"You hurt the others .
"No. We didn't."
"They're dead."
"We had nothing--"
"You're lying," he shouted, his eyes wide.
"You're lying to me. You're not human. You're
only pretending. You know I'm a sick man.
You know you can pretend with me. I'm a sick
man.
I'm bleeding, I know. I've had this ... this
... this..."
He faltered, and then doubled over, clutching
his stomach and wincing in pain.
"Are you all right?"
The man fell to the ground. He was breathing
heavily, his skin pale. There was sweat on
his face.
"My stomach," he gasped. "It's my stomach."
And then he vomited. It came up heavy, deep-red,
rich with blood.
"Mr. Jackson--"
But the man was not awake. His eyes were closed
and he was lying on his back. For a moment,
Stone thought he was dead, but then he saw
the chest moving, slowly, very slowly, but
moving.
Burton came back down.
"Who is he?"
"Our wandering man. Help me get him up."
"Is he alive?"
"So far."
"I'll be damned," Burton said.
*** They used the power winch to hoist up
the unconscious body of Peter Jackson, and
then lowered it again to raise the capsule.
Then, slowly, Burton and Stone climbed the
rope ladder into the belly of the helicopter.
They did not remove their suits, but instead
clipped on a second bottle of oxygen to give
them another two hours of breathing time.
That would be sufficient to carry them to
the Wildfire installation.
The pilot established a radio connection to
Vandenberg so that Stone could talk with Major
Manchek.
"What have you found?" Manchek said.
"The town is dead. We have good evidence for
an unusual process at work."
"Be careful," Manchek said. "This is an open
circuit."
"I am aware of that. Will you order up a 7-12?"
"I'll try. You want it now?"
"Yes, now."
"Piedmont?"
"Yes."
"You have the satellite?"
"Yes, we have it."
"All right," Manchek said. "I'll put through
the order."
8. Directive 7-12
DIRECTIVE 7-12 WAS A PART OF THE FINAL Wildfire
Protocol for action in the event of a biologic
emergency. It called for the placement of
a limited thermonuclear weapon at the site
of exposure of terrestrial life to exogenous
organisms.
The code for the directive was Cautery, since
the function of the bomb was to cauterize
the infection-- to burn it out, and thus prevent
its spread.
As a single step in the Wildfire Protocol,
Cautery had been agreed upon by the authorities
involved-- Executive, State, Defense, and
AEC-- after much debate. The AEC, already
unhappy about the assignment of a nuclear
device to the Wildfire laboratory, did not
wish Cautery to be accepted as a program;
State and Defense argued that any aboveground
thermonuclear detonation, for whatever purpose,
would have serious repercussions internationally.
The President finally agreed to Directive
7-12, but insisted that he retain control
over the decision to use a bomb for Cautery.
Stone was displeased with this arrangement,
but he was forced to accept it; the President
had been under considerable pressure to reject
the whole idea and had compromised only after
much argument. Then, too, there was the Hudson
Institute study.
The Hudson Institute had been contracted to
study possible consequences of Cautery. Their
report indicated that the President would
face four circumstances (scenarios) in which
he might have to issue the Cautery order.
According to degree of seriousness, the scenarios
were: 1. A satellite or manned capsule lands
in an unpopulated area of the United States.
The President may cauterize the area with
little domestic uproar and small loss of life.
The Russians may be privately informed of
the reasons for breaking the Moscow Treaty
of 1963 forbidding aboveground nuclear testing.
2. A satellite or manned capsule lands in
a major American city. (The example was Chicago.)
The Cautery will require destruction of a
large land area and a large population, with
great domestic consequences and secondary
international consequences.
3. A satellite or manned capsule lands in
a major neutralist urban center. (New Delhi
was the example.) The Cautery will entail
American intervention with nuclear weapons
to prevent further spread of disease. According
to the scenarios, there were seventeen possible
consequences of American-Soviet interaction
following the destruction of New Delhi. Twelve
led directly to thermonuclear war.
4. A satellite or manned capsule lands in
a major Soviet urban center. (The example
was Stalingrad.) Cautery will require the
United States to inform the Soviet Union of
what has happened and to advise that the Russians
themselves destroy the city. According to
the Hudson Institute scenario, there were
six possible consequences of American-Russian
interaction following this event, and all
six led directly to war. It was therefore
advised that if a satellite fell within Soviet
or Eastern Bloc territory the United States
not inform the Russians of what had happened.
The basis of this decision was the prediction
that a Russian plague would kill between two
and five million people, while combined Soviet-American
losses from a thermonuclear exchange involving
both first and second-strike capabilities
would come to more than two hundred and fifty
million persons.
As a result of the Hudson Institute report,
the President and his advisers felt that control
of Cautery, and responsibility for it, should
remain within political, not scientific, hands.
The ultimate consequences of the President's
decision could not, of course, have been predicted
at the time it was made.
Washington came to a decision within an hour
of Manchek's report. The reasoning behind
the President's decision has never been clear,
but the final result was plain enough:
The President elected to postpone calling
Directive 7-12
for twenty-four to forty-eight hours. Instead,
he called out the National Guard and cordoned
off the area around Piedmont for a radius
of one hundred miles. And he waited.
9. Flatrock
MARK WILLIAM HALL, M.D., SAT IN THE TIGHT
rear seat of the F- 104 fighter and stared
over the top of the rubber oxygen mask at
the file on his knees. Leavitt had given it
to him just before takeoff-- a heavy, thick
wad of paper bound in gray cardboard. Hall
was supposed to read it during the flight,
but the F-104 was not made for reading; there
was barely enough room in front of him to
hold his hands clenched together, let alone
open a file and read.
Yet Hall was reading it.
On the cover of the file was stenciled WILDFIRE,
and underneath, an ominous note:
THIS FILE IS CLASSIFIED TOP SECRET.
Examination by unauthorized persons is a criminal
offense punishable by fines and imprisonment
up to 20 years and $20,000.
When Leavitt gave him the file, Hall had read
the note and whistled.
"Don't you believe it," Leavitt said.
"Just a scare?"
"Scare, hell," Leavitt said. "If the wrong
man reads this file, he just disappears."
"Nice."
"Read it," Leavitt said, "and you'll see why."
The plane flight had taken an hour and forty
minutes, cruising in eerie, perfect silence
at 1.8 times the speed of sound. Hall had
skimmed through most of the file; reading
it, he had found, was impossible. Much of
its bulk of 274 pages consisted of cross-references
and interservice notations, none of which
he could understand. The first page was as
bad as any of them:
THIS IS PAGE 1 OF 274 PAGES
PROJECT: WILDFIRE
AUTHORITY: NASA/AMC
CLASSIFICATION: TOP SECRET (NTK BASIS)
PRIORITY: NATIONAL (DX)
SUBJECT: Initiation of high-security facility
to prevent dispersion of toxic extraterrestrial
agents.
CROSSFILE: Project CLEAN, Project ZERO CONTAMINANTS,
Project CAUTERY
SUMMARY OF FILE CONTENTS:
By executive order, construction of a facility
initiated January 1965. Planning stage March
1965. Consultants Fort Detrick and General
Dynamics (EBD) July 1965. Recommendation for
multistory facility in isolated location for
investigation of possible or probable contaminatory
agents.
Specifications reviewed August 1965. Approval
with revision same date. Final drafts drawn
and filed AMC under WILDFIRE
(copies Detrick, Hawkins). Choice of site
northeast Montana, reviewed August 1965. Choice
of site southwest Arizona, reviewed August
1965. Choice of site northwest Nevada, reviewed
September 1965. Nevada site approved October
1965.
Construction completed July 1966. Funding
NASA, AMC, DEFENSE (unaccountable reserves).
Congressional appropriation for maintenance
and personnel under same.
Major alterations: Millipore filters, see
page 74.
Self-destruct capacity (nuclear), page 88.
Ultraviolet irradiators removed, see page
81. Single Man Hypothesis (Odd Man Hypothesis),
page 255.
PERSONNEL SUMMARIES HAVE BEEN ELIMINATED FROM
THIS FILE.
PERSONNEL MAY BE FOUND IN AMC (WILDFIRE) FILES
ONLY.
The second page listed the basic parameters
of the system, as laid down by the original
Wildfire planning group.
This specified the most important concept
of the installation, namely that it would
consist of roughly similar, descending levels,
all underground. Each would be more sterile
than the one above.
THIS IS PAGE 2 OF 274 PAGES
PROJECT: WILDFIRE
PRIMARY PARAMETERS
1. THERE ARE TO BE FIVE STAGES:
Stage 1: Non-decontaminated, but clean. Approximates
sterility of hospital operating room or NASA
clean room. No time delay of entrance.
Stage II: Minimal sterilization procedures:
hexachlorophene and methitol bath, not requiring
total immersion. One-hour delay with clothing
change.
Stage III: Moderate sterilization procedures:
total-immersion bath, UV irradiation, followed
by two-hour delay for preliminary testing.
Afebrile infections of UR and GU tracts permitted
to pass. Viral symptomatology permitted to
pass.
Stage IV: Maximal sterilization procedures:
total immersion in four baths of biocaine,
monochlorophin, xantholysin, and prophyne
with intermediate thirty-minute UV
and IR irradiation. All infection hafted at
this stage on basis of symptomatology or clinical
signs. Routine screening of all personnel.
Six-hour delay.
Stage V: Redundant sterilization procedures:
no further immersions or testing, but destruct
clothing x2 per day.
Prophylactic antibiotics for forty-eight hours.
Daily screen for superinfection, first eight
days.
2. EACH STAGE INCLUDES:
1. Resting quarters, individual
2. Recreation quarters, including movie and
game room 3. Cafeteria, automatic
4. Library, with main journals transmitted
by Xerox or TV from main library Level 1.
5. Shelter, a high-security antimicrobial
complex with safety in event of level contamination.
6. Laboratories:
a) biochemistry, with all necessary equipment
for automatic amino-acid analysis, sequence
determination, O/R
potentials, lipid and carbohydrate determinations
on human, animal, other subjects.
b) pathology, with EM, phase and LM, microtomes
and curing rooms. Five full-time technicians
each level. One autopsy room. One room for
experimental animals.
c) microbiology, with all facilities for growth,
nutrient, analytic, immunologic studies. Subsections
bacterial, viral, parasitic, other.
d) pharmacology, with material for dose-relation
and receptor site specificity studies of known
compounds.
Pharmacy to include drugs as noted in appendix.
e) main room, experimental animals. 75 genetically
pure strains of mice; 27 of rat; 17 of cat;
12 of dog; 8 of primate.
f) nonspecific room for previously unplanned
experiments.
7. Surgery: for care and treatment of staff,
including operating room facilities for acute
emergencies.
8. Communications: for contact with other
levels by audiovisual and other means.
COUNT YOUR PAGES
REPORT ANY MISSING PAGES AT ONCE
COUNT YOUR PAGES
As Hall continued to read, he found that only
on Level 1, the topmost floor, would there
be a large computer complex for data analysis,
but that this computer would serve all other
levels on a time-sharing basis. This was considered
feasible since, for biologic problems, real
time was unimportant in relation to computer
time, and multiple problems could be fed and
handled at once.
He was leafing through the rest of the file,
looking for the part that interested him--
the Odd Man Hypothesis-- when he came upon
a page that was rather unusual.
THIS IS PAGE 255 OF 274 PAGES
BY THE AUTHORITY OF THE DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE
THIS PAGE
FROM A HIGH-SECURITY FILE HAS BEEN DELETED
THE PAGE IS NUMBER: two hundred fifty-five/255
THE FILE IS CODED: Wildfire
THE SUBJECT MATTER DELETED IS: Odd Man Hypothesis
PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS CONSTITUTES A LEGAL
DELETION FROM
THE FILE WHICH NEED NOT BE REPORTED BY THE
READER.
MACHINE SCORE REVIEW BELOW
Hall was frowning at the page, wondering what
it meant, when the pilot said, "Dr. Hall?"
"Yes."
"We have just passed the last checkpoint,
Sir. We will touch down in four minutes."
"All right." Hall paused. "Do you know where,
exactly, we are landing?"
"I believe," said the pilot, "that it is Flatrock,
Nevada."
"I see," Hall said.
A few minutes later, the flaps went down,
and he heard a whine as the airplane slowed.
*** Nevada was the ideal site for Wildfire.
The Silver State ranks seventh in size, but
forty-ninth in population; it is the least-dense
state in the Union after Alaska. Particularly
when one considers that 85 per cent of the
state's 440,000
people live in Las Vegas, Reno, or Carson
City, the population density of 1.2 persons
per square mile seems well suited for projects
such as Wildfire, and indeed many have been
located there.
Along with the famous atomic site at Vinton
Flats, there is the Ultra-Energy Test Station
at Martindale, and the Air Force Medivator
Unit near Los Gados. Most of these facilities
are in the southern triangle of the state,
having been located there in the days before
Las Vegas swelled to receive twenty million
visitors a year. More recently, government
test stations have been located in the northwest
corner of Nevada, which is still relatively
isolated. Pentagon classified lists include
five new installations in that area; the nature
of each is unknown.
10. Stage I
HALL LANDED SHORTLY AFTER NOON, THE hottest
part of the day. The sun beat down from a
pale, cloudless sky and the airfield asphalt
was soft under his feet as he walked from
the airplane to the small quonset hut at the
edge of the runway. Feeling his feet sink
into the surface, Hall thought that the airfield
must have been designed primarily for night
use; at night it would be cold, the asphalt
solid.
The quonset hut was cooled by two massive,
grumbling air conditioners. It was furnished
sparsely: a card table in one corner, at which
two pilots sat, playing poker and drinking
coffee. A guard in the corner was making a
telephone call; he had a machine gun slung
over his shoulder. He did not look up as Hall
entered.
There was a coffee machine near the telephone.
Hall went over with his pilot and they each
poured a cup. Hall took a sip and said, "Where's
the town, anyway? I didn't see it as we were
coming in."
"Don't know, Sir."
"Have you been here before?"
"No Sir. It's not on the standard runs."
"Well, what exactly does this airfield serve?"
At that moment, Leavitt strode in and beckoned
to Hall.
The bacteriologist led him through the back
of the quonset and then out into the heat
again, to a light-blue Falcon sedan parked
in the rear. There were no identifying marks
of any kind on the car; there was no driver.
Leavitt slipped behind the wheel and motioned
for Hall to get in.
As Leavitt put the car in gear, Hall said,
"I guess we don't rate any more."
"Oh yes. We rate. But drivers aren't used
out here. In fact, we don't use any more personnel
than we have to. The number of wagging tongues
is kept to a minimum."
They set off across desolate, hilly countryside.
In the distance were blue mountains, shimmering
in the liquid heat of the desert. The road
was pock-marked and dusty; it looked as if
it hadn't been used for years.
Hall mentioned this.
"Deceptive," Leavitt said. "We took great
pains about it. We spent nearly five thousand
dollars on this road."
"Why?"
Leavitt shrugged. "Had to get rid of the tractor
treadmarks. A hell of a lot of heavy equipment
has moved over these roads, at one time or
another. Wouldn't want anyone to wonder why."
"Speaking of caution," Hall said after a pause,
"I was reading in the file. Something about
an atomic self-destruct device."
"What about it?"
"It exists?"
"It exists."
Installation of the device had been a major
stumbling block in the early plans for Wildfire.
Stone and the others had insisted that they
retain control over the detonate/no detonate
decision; the AEC and the Executive branch
had been reluctant. No atomic device had been
put in private hands before. Stone argued
that in the event of a leak in the Wildfire
lab, there might not be time to consult with
Washington and get a Presidential detonate
order. It was a long time before the President
agreed that this might be true.
"I was reading," Hall said, "that this device
is somehow connected with the Odd Man Hypothesis."
"It is."
"How? The page on Odd Man was taken from my
file."
"I know," Leavitt said. "We'll talk about
it later."
*** The Falcon turned off the potted road
onto a dirt track.
The sedan raised a heavy cloud of dust, and
despite the heat, they were forced to roll
up the windows. Hall lit a cigarette.
"That'll be your last," Leavitt said.
"I know. Let me enjoy it."
On their fight, they passed a sign that said
GOVERNMENT
PROPERTY KEEP OFF, but there was no fence,
no guard, no dogs-- just a battered, weather-beaten
sign.
"Great security measures," Hall said.
"We try not to arouse suspicion. The security
is better than it looks."
They proceeded another mile, bouncing along
the dirt rut, and then came over a hill. Suddenly
Hall saw a large, fenced circle perhaps a
hundred yards in diameter. The fence, he noticed,
was ten feet high and sturdy; at intervals
it was laced with barbed wire. Inside was
a utilitarian wooden building, and a field
of corn.
"Com?" Hall said.
"Rather clever, I think."
They came to the entrance gate. A man in dungarees
and a T-shirt came out and opened it for them;
he held a sandwich in one hand and was chewing
vigorously as he unlocked the gate. He winked
and smiled and waved them through, still chewing.
The sign by the gate said:
GOVERNMENT PROPERTY
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
DESERT RECLAMATION TEST STATION
Leavitt drove through the gates and parked
by the wooden building. He left the keys on
the dashboard and got out. Hall followed him.
"Now what?"
"Inside," Leavitt said. They entered the building,
coming directly into a small room. A man in
a Stetson hat, checked sport shirt, and string
tie sat at a rickety desk. He was reading
a newspaper and, like the man at the gate,
eating his lunch. He looked up and smiled
pleasantly.
"Howdy," he said.
"Hello," Leavitt said.
"Help you folks?"
"Just passing through," Leavitt said. "On
the way to Rome."
The man nodded. "Have you got the time?"
"My watch stopped yesterday," Leavitt said.
"Durn shame," the man said.
"It's because of the heat."
The ritual completed, the man nodded again.
And they walked past him, out of the anteroom
and down a corridor. The doors had hand-printed
labels: "Seedling Incubation";
"Moisture Control"; "Soil Analysis." A half-dozen
people were at work in the building, all of
them dressed casually, but all of them apparently
busy.
"This is a real agricultural station," Leavitt
said. "If necessary, that man at the desk
could give you a guided tour, explaining the
purpose of the station and the experiments
that are going on. Mostly they are attempting
to develop a strain of corn that can grow
in low-moisture, high-alkalinity soil.
"And the Wildfire installation?"
"Here," Leavitt said. He opened a door marked
"Storage"
and they found themselves staring at a narrow
cubicle lined with rakes and hoes and watering
hoses.
"Step in," Leavitt said.
Hall did. Leavitt followed and closed the
door behind him. Hall felt the floor sink
and they began to descend, rakes and hoses
and all.
In a moment, he found himself in a modern,
bare room, lighted by banks of cold overhead
fluorescent lights. The walls were painted
red. The only object in the room was a rectangular,
waist-high box that reminded Hall of a podium.
It had a glowing green glass top.
"Step up to the analyzer," Leavitt said. "Place
your hands flat on the glass, palms down."
Hall did. He felt a faint tingling in his
fingers, and then the machine gave a buzz.
"All right. Step back." Leavitt placed his
hands on the box, waited for the buzz, and
then said, "Now we go over here. You mentioned
the security arrangements; I'll show them
to you before we enter Wildfire."
He nodded to a door across the room.
"What was that thing?"
"Finger and palm-print analyzer," Leavitt
said. "It is fully automatic. Reads a composite
of ten thousand dermatographic lines so it
can't make a mistake; in its storage banks
it has a record of the prints of everyone
cleared to enter Wildfire."
Leavitt pushed through the door.
They were faced with another door, marked
SECURITY, which slid back noiselessly. They
entered a darkened room in which a single
man sat before banks of green dials.
"Hello, John," Leavitt said to the man. "How
are you?"
"Good, Dr. Leavitt. Saw you come in."
Leavitt introduced Hall to the security man,
who then demonstrated the equipment to Hall.
There were, the man explained, two radar scanners
located in the hills overlooking the installation;
they were well concealed but quite effective.
Then closer in, impedance sensors were buried
in the ground; they signaled the approach
of any animal life weighing more than one
hundred pounds. The sensors ringed the base.
"We've never missed anything yet," the man
said. "And if we do . . . " He shrugged. To
Leavitt: "Going to show him the dogs?"
"Yes," Leavitt said.
They walked through into an adjoining room.
There were nine large cages there, and the
room smelled strongly of animals. Hall found
himself looking at nine of the largest German
shepherds he had ever seen.
They barked at him as he entered, but there
was no sound in the room. He watched in astonishment
as they opened their mouths and threw their
heads forward in a barking motion.
No sound.
"These are Army-trained sentry dogs," the
security man said. "Bred for viciousness.
You wear leather clothes and heavy gloves
when you walk them. They've undergone laryngectomies,
which is why you can't hear them. Silent and
vicious."
Hall said, "Have you ever, uh, used them?"
"No," the security man said. "Fortunately
not."
*** They were in a small room with lockers.
Hall found one with his name on it.
"We change in here," Leavitt said. He nodded
to a stack of pink uniforms in one corner.
"Put those on, after you have removed everything
you are wearing."
Hall changed quickly. The uniforms were loose-fitting
one-piece suits that zipped up the side. When
they had changed they proceeded down a passageway.
Suddenly an alarm sounded and a gate in front
of them slid closed abruptly. Overhead, a
white light began to flash.
Hall was confused, and it was only much later
that he remembered Leavitt looked away from
the flashing light.
"Something's wrong," Leavitt said. "Did you
remove everything?"
"Yes," Hall said.
"Rings, watch, everything?"
Hall looked at his hands. He still had his
watch on.
"Go back," Leavitt said. "Put it in your locker."
Hall did. When he came back, they started
down the corridor a second time. The gate
remained open, and there was no alarm.
"Automatic as well?" Hall said.
"Yes," Leavitt said. "It picks up any foreign
object.
When we installed it, we were worried because
we knew it would pick up glass eyes, cardiac
pacemakers, false teeth--
anything at all. But fortunately nobody on
the project has these things."
"Fillings?"
"It is programmed to ignore fillings."
"How does it work?"
"Some kind of capacitance phenomenon. I don't
really understand it," Leavitt said.
They passed a sign that said:
YOU ARE NOW ENTERING LEVEL I -- PROCEED DIRECTLY
TO
IMMUNIZATION CONTROL
Hall noticed that all the walls were red.
He mentioned this to Leavitt.
"Yes," Leavitt said. "All levels are painted
a different color. Level I is red; II, yellow;
III, white; IV, green; and V, blue."
"Any particular reason for the choice?"
"It seems," Leavitt said, "that the Navy sponsored
some studies a few years back on the psychological
effects of colored environments. Those studies
have been applied here."
They came to Immunization. A door slid back
revealing three glass booths. Leavitt said,
"Just sit down in one of them."
"I suppose this is automatic, too?"
"Of course."
Hall entered a booth and closed the door behind
him.
There was a couch, and a mass of complex equipment.
In front of the couch was a television screen,
which showed several lighted points.
"Sit down," said a flat mechanical voice.
Sit down. Sit down."
He sat on the couch.
"Observe the screen before you. Place your
body on the couch so that all points are obliterated."
He looked at the screen. He now saw that the
points were arranged in the shape of a man.
He shifted his body, and one by one the spots
disappeared. "Very good," said the voice.
"We may now proceed. State your name for the
record. Last name first, first name last."
"Mark Hall," he said.
"State your name for the record. Last name
first, first name last."
Simultaneously, on the screen appeared the
words: SUBJECT HAS GIVEN UNCODABLE RESPONSE
"Hall, Mark."
"Thank you for your cooperation, " said the
voice.
"Please recite, 'Mary had a little lamb.'
"
"You're kidding," Hall said.
There was a pause, and the faint sound of
relays and circuits clicking. The screen again
showed: SUBJECT HAS GIVEN UNCODABLE RESPONSE
"Please recite."
Feeling rather foolish, Hall said, "Mary had
a little lamb, her fleece was white as snow,
and everywhere that Mary went, the lamb was
sure to go."
Another pause. Then the voice: "Thank you
for your cooperation. " And the screen said:
ANALYZER CONFIRMS IDENTITY
HALL, MARK
"Please listen closely," said the mechanical
voice. "You will answer the following questions
with a yes or no reply.
Make no other response. Have you received
a smallpox vaccination within the last twelve
months?"
"Yes."
"Diphtheria?"
"Yes."
"Typhoid and paratyphoid A and B?"
"Yes."
"Tetanus toxoid?"
"Yes."
"Yellow fever?"
"Yes, yes, yes. I had them all."
"Just answer the question please. Uncooperative
subjects waste valuable computer time."
"Yes," Hall said, subdued. When he had joined
the Wildfire team, he had undergone immunizations
for everything imaginable, even plague and
cholera, which had to be renewed every six
months, and gamma-globulin shots for viral
infection.
"Have you ever contracted tuberculosis or
other mycobacterial disease, or had a positive
skin test for tuberculosis?
"No."
"Have you ever contracted syphilis or other
spirochetal disease, or had a positive serological
test for syphilis?"
"No."
"Have you contracted within the past year
any gram-positive bacterial infection, such
as streptococcus, staphylococcus, or pneumococcus?"
"No."
"Any gram-negative infection, such as gonococcus,
meningeococcus, proteus, pseudomonas, salmonella,
or shigella?"
"No."
"Have you contracted any recent or past fungal
infection, including blastomycosis, histoplasmosis,
or coccidiomycosis, or had a positive skin
test for any fungal disease?"
"No."
"Have you had any recent viral infection,
including poliomyelitis, hepatitis, mononucleosis,
mumps, measles, varicella, or herpes?"
"No."
"Any warts?"
"No."
"Have you any known allergies?"
"Yes, to ragweed pollen."
On the screen appeared the words:
ROGEEN PALEN
And then after a moment:
UNCODABLE RESPONSE
"Please repeat your response slowly for our
memory cells." Very distinctly, he said, "Ragweed
pollen." On the screen:
RAGWEED POLLEN
CODED
"Are you allergic to albumen?" continued the
voice.
"No."
"This ends the formal questions. Please undress
and return to the couch, obliterating the
points as before."
He did so. A moment later, an ultraviolet
lamp swung out on a long arm and moved close
to his body. Next to the lamp was some kind
of scanning eye. Watching the screen he could
see the computer print of the scan, beginning
with his feet.
[graphic of a foot]
"This is a scan for fungus," the voice announced.
After several minutes, Hall was ordered to
lie on his stomach, and the process was repeated.
He was then told to lie on his back once more
and align himself with the dots.
"Physical parameters will now be measured,"
the voice said. "You are requested to lie
quietly while the examination is conducted."
A variety of leads snaked out at him and were
attached by mechanical hands to his body.
Some he could understand the half-dozen leads
over his chest for an electrocardiogram, and
twenty-one on his head for an electroencephalogram.
But others were fixed on his stomach, his
arms, and his legs.
"Please raise your left hand," said the voice.
Hall did. From above, a mechanical hand came
down, with an electric eye fixed on either
side of it. The mechanical hand examined Hall's.
"Place your hand on the board to the left.
Do not move.
You will feel a slight prick as the intravenous
needle is inserted."
Hall looked over at the screen. It flashed
a color image of his hand, with the veins
showing in a pattern of green against a blue
background. Obviously the machine worked by
sensing heat. He was about to protest when
he felt a brief sting.
He looked back. The needle was in.
"Now then, just lie quietly. Relax."
For fifteen seconds, the machinery whirred
and clattered. Then the leads were withdrawn.
The mechanical hands placed a neat Band-Aid
over the intravenous puncture.
"This completes your physical parameters,"
the voice said.
"Can I get dressed now?"
"Please sit up with your right shoulder facing
the television screen. You will receive pneumatic
injections."
A gun with a thick cable came out of one wall,
pressed up against the skin of his shoulder,
and fired. There was a hissing sound and a
brief pain.
"Now you may dress," said the voice. "Be advised
that you may feel dizzy for a few hours. You
have received booster immunizations and gamma
G. If you feel dizzy, sit down. If you suffer
systemic effects such as nausea, vomiting,
or fever, report at once to Level Control.
Is that clear?"
"Yes."
"The exit is to your right. Thank you for
your cooperation. This recording is now ended."
*** Hall walked with Leavitt down a long red
corridor. His arm ached from the injection.
"That machine," Hall said. "You'd better not
let the AMA find out about it."
"We haven't," Leavitt said.
In fact, the electronic body analyzer had
been developed by Sandeman Industries in 1965,
under a general government contract to produce
body monitors for astronauts in space. It
was understood by the government at that time
that such a device, though expensive at a
cost of $87,000 each, would eventually replace
the human physician as a diagnostic instrument.
The difficulties, for both doctor and patient,
of adjusting to this new machine were recognized
by everyone.
The government did not plan to release the
EBA until 1971 and then only to certain large
hospital facilities.
Walking along the corridor, Hall noticed that
the walls were slightly curved.
"Where exactly are we?"
"On the perimeter of Level 1. To our left
are all the laboratories. To the right is
nothing but solid rock."
Several people were walking in the corridor.
Everyone wore pink jumpsuits. They all seemed
serious and busy.
"Where are the others on the team?" Hall said.
"Right here," Leavitt said. He opened a door
marked CONFERENCE 7, and they entered a room
with a large hardwood table. Stone was there,
standing stiffly erect and alert, as if he
had just taken a cold shower. Alongside him,
Burton, the pathologist, somehow appeared
sloppy and confused, and there was a kind
of tired fright in his eyes.
They all exchanged greetings and sat down.
Stone reached into his pocket and removed
two keys. One was silver, the other red. The
red one had a chain attached to it. He gave
it to Hall.
"Put it around your neck, " he said.
Hall looked at it. "What's this?"
Leavitt said, "I'm afraid Mark is still unclear
about the Odd Man."
"I thought that he would read it on the plane."
"His file was edited."
"I see." Stone turned to Hall. "You know nothing
about the Odd Man?"
"Nothing," Hall said, frowning at the key.
"Nobody told you that a major factor in your
selection to the team was your single status?"
"What does that have to do--"
"The fact of the matter is," Stone said, "that
you are the Odd Man. You are the key to all
this. Quite literally."
He took his own key and walked to a corner
of the room.
He pushed a hidden button and the wood paneling
slid away to reveal a burnished metal console.
He inserted his key into a lock and twisted
it. A green light on the console flashed on;
he stepped back. The paneling slid into place.
"At the lowest level of this laboratory is
an automatic atomic self-destruct device,"
Stone said. "It is controlled from within
the laboratory. I have just inserted my key
and armed the mechanism. The device is ready
for detonation. The key on this level cannot
be removed; it is now locked in place. Your
key, on the other hand, can be inserted and
removed again. There is a three-minute delay
between the time detonation locks in and the
time the bomb goes off. That period is to
provide you time to think, and perhaps call
it all off."
Hall was still frowning. "But why me?"
"Because you are single. We have to have one
unmarried man."
Stone opened a briefcase and withdrew a file.
He gave it to Hall. "Read that."
It was a Wildfire file.
"Page 255," Stone said.
Hall turned to it.
Project: Wildfire
ALTERATIONS
1. Millipore(R) Filters, insertion into ventilatory
system. Initial spec filters unilayer styrilene,
with maximal efficiency of 97.4% trapping.
Replaced in 1966 when Upjohn developed filters
capable of trapping organisms of size up to
one micron. Trapping at 90% efficiency per
leaf, causing triple-layered membrance to
give results of 99.9%. Infective ratio of
.1% remainder too low to be harmful. Cost
factor of four or five-layered membrance removing
all but .001%
considered prohibitive for added gain. Tolerance
parameter of 1/1,000 considered sufficient.
Installation completed 8/12/66.
2. Atomic Self-Destruct Device, change in
detonator close-gap timers. See AEC/Def file
77-12-0918.
3. Atomic Self-Destruct Device, revision of
core maintenance schedules for K technicians,
see AEC/Warburg file 77-14-0004.
4. Atomic Self-Destruct Device, final command
decision change. See AEC/Def file 77-14-0023.
SUMMARY APPENDED.
SUMMARY OF ODD MAN HYPOTHESIS: First tested
as null hypothesis by Wildfire advisory committee.
Grew out of tests conducted by USAF (NORAD)
to determine reliability of commanders in
making life/death decisions. Tests involved
decisions in ten scenario contexts, with prestructured
alternatives drawn up by Walter Reed Psychiatric
Division, after n-order test analysis by biostatistics
unit, NIH, Bethesda.
Test given to SAC pilots and groundcrews,
NORAD workers, and others involved in decision-making
or positive-action capacity. Ten scenarios
drawn up by Hudson Institute; subjects required--
to make YES/NO decision in each case.
Decisions always involved thermonuclear or
chem-biol destruction of enemy targets.
Data on 7420 subjects tested by H,H, program
for multifactorial analysis of variance; later
test by ANOVAR
program; final discrimination by CLASSIF program.
NIH biostat summarizes this program as follows:
It is the object of this program to determine
the effectiveness of assigning individuals
to distinct groups on the basis of scores
which can be quantified. The program produces
group contours and probability of classification
for individuals as a control of data.
Program prints: mean scores for groups, contour
confidence limits, and scores of individual
test subjects.
K.G. Borgrand, Ph.D. NIH
RESULTS OF ODD MAN STUDY: The study concluded
that married individuals performed differently
from single individuals on several parameters
of the test. Hudson Institute provided mean
answers, i.e. theoretical "right"
decisions, made by computer on basis of data
given in scenario. Conformance of study groups
to these right answers produced an index of
effectiveness, a measure of the extent to
which correct decisions were made.
Group: Index of Effectiveness
Married males: .343
Married females: .399
Single females: .402
Single males: .824
The data indicate that married men choose
the correct decision only once in three times,
while single men choose correctly four out
of five times. The group of single males was
then broken down further, in search of highly
accurate subgroups within that classification.
Results of special testing confirm the Odd
Man Hypothesis, that an unmarried male should
carry out command decisions involving thermonuclear
or chem-biol destruct contexts.
Single males, total: .824
Military:
commissioned officer: .655
noncommissioned officer: .624
Technical:
engineers: .877
ground crews: .901
Service:
maintenance and utility: .758
Professional:
Scientists: .946
These results concerning the relative skill
of decision-making individuals should not
be interpreted hastily. Although it would
appear that janitors are better decision makers
than generals, the situation is in reality
more complex. PRINTED SCORES ARE SUMMATIONS
OF TEST AND
INDIVIDUAL VARIATIONS. DATA MUST BE INTERPRETED
WITH THIS IN
MIND. Failure to do so may lead to totally
erroneous and dangerous assumptions.
Application of study to Wildfire command personnel
conducted at request of AEC at time of implantation
of self-destruct nuclear capacity. Test given
to all Wildfire personnel; results filed under
CLASSIF WILDFIRE: GENERAL
PERSONNEL (see ref. 77-14-0023). Special testing
for command group.
Name: Index of Effectiveness
Burton: .543
Leavitt: .601
Kirke: .614
Stone: .687
Hall: .899
Results of special testing confirm the Odd
Man Hypothesis, that an unmarried male should
carry out command decisions involving thermonuclear
or chem-biol destruct contexts.
When Hall had finished reading, he said, "It's
crazy."
"Nonetheless," Stone said, "it was the only
way we could get the government to put control
of the weapon in our hands.
"You really expect me to put in my key, and
fire that thing?"
"I'm afraid you don't understand," Stone said.
"The detonation mechanism is automatic. Should
breakthrough of the organism occur, with contamination
of all Level V, detonation will take place
within three minutes unless you lock in your
key, and call it off."
"Oh," Hall said, in a quiet voice.
11. Decontamination
A BELL RANG SOMEWHERE ON THE LEVEL; STONE
glanced up at the wall clock. It was late.
He began the formal briefing, talking rapidly,
pacing up and down the room, hands moving
constantly.
"As you know," he said, "we are on the top
level of a five-story underground structure.
According to protocol it will take us nearly
twenty-four hours to descend through the sterilization
and decontamination procedures to the lowest
level. Therefore we must begin immediately.
The capsule is already on its way."
He pressed a button on a console at the head
of the table, and a television screen glowed
to life, showing the coneshaped satellite
in a plastic bag, making its descent. It was
being cradled by mechanical hands.
"The central core of this circular building,"
Stone said, "contains elevators and service
units-- plumbing, wiring, that sort of thing.
That is where you see the capsule now. It
will be deposited shortly in a maximum-sterilization
assembly on the lowest level."
He went on to explain that he had brought
back two other surprises from Piedmont. The
screen shifted to show Peter Jackson, lying
on a litter, with intravenous lines running
into both arms.
"This man apparently survived the night. He
was the one walking around when the planes
flew over, and he was still alive this morning."
"What's his status now?"
"Uncertain," Stone said. "He is unconscious,
and he was vomiting blood earlier today. We've
started intravenous dextrose to keep him fed
and hydrated until we can get down to the
bottom."
Stone flicked a button and the screen showed
the baby.
It was howling, strapped down to a tiny bed.
An intravenous bottle was running into a vein
in the scalp.
"This little fellow also survived last night,"
Stone said. "So we brought him along. We couldn't
really leave him, since a Directive 7-12 was
being called. The town is now destroyed by
a nuclear blast. Besides, he and Jackson are
living clues which may help us unravel this
mess."
Then, for the benefit of Hall and Leavitt,
the two men disclosed what they had seen and
learned at Piedmont. They reviewed the findings
of rapid death, the bizarre suicides, the
clotted arteries and the lack of bleeding.
Hall listened in astonishment. Leavitt sat
shaking his head.
When they were through, Stone said, "Questions?"
"None that won't keep," Leavitt said.
"Then let's get started," Stone said.
*** They began at a door, which said in plain
white letters: TO LEVEL II It was an innocuous,
straightforward, almost mundane sign. Hall
had expected something more-- perhaps a stern
guard with a machine gun, or a sentry to check
passes.
But there was nothing, and he noticed that
no one had badges, or clearance cards of any
kind.
He mentioned this to Stone. "Yes," Stone said.
"We decided against badges early on. They
are easily contaminated and difficult to sterilize;
usually they are plastic and high-heat sterilization
melts them."
The four men passed through the door, which
clanged shut heavily and sealed with a hissing
sound. It was airtight.
Hall faced a tiled room, empty except for
a hamper marked I
'clothing." He unzipped his jumpsuit and dropped
it into the hamper; there was a brief flash
of light as it was incinerated.
Then, looking back, he saw that on the door
through which he had come was a sign: "Return
to Level I is NOT
Possible Through this Access."
He shrugged. The other men were already moving
through the second door, marked simply EXIT.
He followed them and stepped into clouds of
steam. The odor was peculiar, a faint woodsy
smell that he guessed was scented disinfectant.
He sat down on a bench and relaxed, allowing
the steam to envelop him. It was easy enough
to understand the purpose of the steam room:
the heat opened the pores, and the steam would
be inhaled into the lungs.
The four men waited, saying little, until
their bodies were coated with a sheen of moisture,
and then walked into the next room.
Leavitt said to Hall, "What do you think of
this?"
"It's like a goddam Roman bath," Hall said.
The next room contained a shallow tub ("Immerse
Feet ONLY") and a shower. ("Do not swallow
shower solution. Avoid undue exposure to eyes
and mucous membranes.") It was all very intimidating.
He tried to guess what the solutions were
by smell, but failed; the shower was slippery,
though, which meant it was alkaline. He asked
Leavitt about this, and Leavitt said the solution
was alpha chlorophin at pH 7.7.
Leavitt said that whenever possible, acidic
and alkaline solutions were alternated.
"When you think about it," Leavitt said, "we've
faced up to quite a planning problem here.
How to disinfect the human body-- one of the
dirtiest things in the known universe--
without killing the person at the same time.
Interesting.
He wandered off. Dripping wet from the shower,
Hall looked around for a towel but found none.
He entered the next room and blowers turned
on from the ceiling in a rush of hot air.
From the sides of the room, UV lights clicked
on, bathing the room in an intense purple
light. He stood there until a buzzer sounded,
and the dryers turned off. His skin tingled
slightly as he entered the last room, which
contained clothing. They were not jumpsuits,
but rather like surgical uniforms-- light-yellow,
a loose-fitting top with a V-neck and short
sleeves; elastic banded pants; low rubber-soled
shoes, quite comfortable, like ballet slippers.
The cloth was soft, some kind of synthetic.
He dressed and stepped with the others through
a door marked EXIT TO
LEVEL II. He entered the elevator and waited
as it descended.
Hall emerged to find himself in a corridor.
The was here were painted yellow, not red
as they had been on Level I. The people wore
yellow uniforms. A nurse by the elevator said,
"The time is 2:47 p.m., gentlemen. You may
continue your descent in one hour."
They went to a small room marked INTERIM CONFINEMENT.
It contained a half-dozen couches with plastic
disposable covers over them.
Stone said, "Better relax. Sleep if you can.
We'll need all the rest we can get before
Level V. " He walked over to Hall. "How did
you find the decontamination procedure?"
"Interesting," Hall said. "You could sell
it to the Swedes and make a fortune. But somehow
I expected something more rigorous."
"Just wait," Stone said. "It gets tougher
as you go.
Physicals on Levels III and IV. Afterward
there will be a brief conference."
Then Stone lay down on one of the couches
and fell instantly asleep. It was a trick
he had learned years before, when he had been
conducting experiments around the clock. He
learned to squeeze in an hour here, two hours
there. He found it useful.
*** The second decontamination procedure was
similar to the first. Hall's yellow clothing,
though he had worn it just an hour, was incinerated.
"Isn't that rather wasteful?" he asked Burton.
Burton shrugged. "It's paper."
"Paper? That cloth?"
Burton shook his head. "Not cloth. Paper.
New process."
They stepped into the first total-immersion
pool.
Instructions on the wall told Hall to keep
his eyes open under water. Total immersion,
he soon discovered, was guaranteed by the
simple device of making the connection between
the first room and the second an underwater
passage.
Swimming through, he felt a slight burning
of his eyes, but nothing bad.
The second room contained a row of six boxes,
glass-walled, looking rather like telephone
booths. Hall approached one and saw a sign
that said, "Enter and close both eyes. Hold
arms slightly away from body and stand with
feet one foot apart. Do not open eyes until
buzzer sounds.
BLINDNESS MAY RESULT FROM EXPOSURE TO LONG-WAVE
RADIATION."
He followed the directions and felt a kind
of cold heat on his body. It lasted perhaps
five minutes, and then he heard the buzzer
and opened his eyes. His body was dry. He
followed the others to a corridor, consisting
of four showers. Walking down the corridor,
he passed beneath each shower in turn. At
the end, he found blowers, which dried him,
and then clothing. This time the clothing
was white.
They dressed, and took the elevator down to
Level III.
*** There were four nurses waiting for them;
one took Hall to an examining room. It turned
out to be a two-hour physical examination,
given not by a machine but by a blank-faced,
thorough young man. Hall was annoyed, and
thought to himself that he preferred the machine.
The doctor did everything, including a complete
history birth, education, travel, family history,
past hospitalizations and illnesses. And an
equally complete physical. Hall became angry;
it was all so damned unnecessary. But the
doctor shrugged and kept saying, "It's routine."
After two hours, he rejoined the others, and
proceeded to Level IV.
*** Four total-immersion baths, three sequences
of ultraviolet and infrared light, two of
ultrasonic vibrations, and then something
quite astonishing at the end. A steel-walled
cubicle, with a helmet on a peg. The sign
said,
"This is an ultraflash apparatus. To protect
head and facial hair, place metal helmet securely
on head, then press button below."
Hall had never heard of ultraflash, and he
followed directions, not knowing what to expect.
He placed the helmet over his head, then pressed
the button.
There was a single, brief, dazzling burst
of white light, followed by a wave of heat
that filled the cubicle. He felt a moment
of pain, so swift he hardly recognized it
until it was over. Cautiously, he removed
the helmet and looked at his body. His skin
was covered with a fine, white ash-- and then
he realized that the ash was his skin, or
had been: the machine had burned away the
outer epithelial layers. He proceeded to a
shower and washed the ash off. When he finally
reached the dressing room, he found green
uniforms.
*** Another physical. This time they wanted
samples of everything: sputum, oral epithelium,
blood, urine, stool. He submitted passively
to the tests, examinations, questions. He
was tired, and was beginning to feel disoriented.
The repetitions, the new experiences, the
colors on the walls, the same bland artificial
light...
Finally, he was brought back to Stone and
the others.
Stone said, "We have six hours on this level--
that's protocol, waiting while they do the
lab tests on us-- so we might as well sleep.
Down the corridor are rooms, marked with your
names. Further down is the cafeteria. We'll
meet there in five hours for a conference.
Right?"
Hall found his room, marked with a plastic
door tag. He entered, surprised to find it
quite large. He had been expecting something
the size of a Pullman cubicle, but this was
bigger and better-furnished. There was a bed,
a chair, a small desk, and a computer console
with built-in TV set. He was curious about
the computer, but also very tired. He lay
down on the bed and fell asleep quickly.
*** Burton could not sleep. He lay in his
bed on Level IV
and stared at the ceiling, thinking. He could
not get the image of that town out of his
mind, or those bodies, lying in the street
without bleeding...
Burton was not a hematologist, but his work
had involved some blood studies. He knew that
a variety of bacteria had effects on blood.
His own research with staphylococcus, for
example, had shown that this organism produced
two enzymes that altered blood.
One was the so-called exotoxin, which destroyed
skin and dissolved red cells. Another was
a coagulase, which coated the bacteria with
protein to inhibit destruction by white cells.
So it was possible that bacteria could alter
blood. And it could do it many different ways:
strep produced an enzyme, streptokinase, that
dissolved coagulated plasma. Clostridia and
pneumococci produced a variety of hemolysins
that destroyed red cells. Malaria and amebae
also destroyed red cells, by digesting them
as food. Other parasites did the same thing.
So it was possible.
But it didn't help them in finding out how
the Scoop organism worked.
Burton tried to recall the sequence for blood
clotting.
He remembered that it operated like a kind
of waterfall: one enzyme was set off, and
activated, which acted on a second enzyme,
which acted on a third; the third on a fourth;
and so on, down through twelve or thirteen
steps, until finally blood clotted.
And vaguely he remembered the rest, the details:
all the intermediate steps, the necessary
enzymes, the metals, ions, local factors.
It was horribly complex.
He shook his head and tried to sleep.
*** Leavitt, the clinical microbiologist,
was thinking through the steps in isolation
and identification of the causative organism.
He had been over it before; he was one of
the original founders of the group, one of
the men who developed the Life Analysis Protocol.
But now, on the verge of putting that plan
into effect, he had doubts.
Two years before, sitting around after lunch,
talking speculatively, it had all seemed wonderful.
It had been an amusing intellectual game then,
a kind of abstract test of wits. But now,
faced with a real agent that caused real and
bizarre death, he wondered whether all their
plans would prove to be so effective and so
complete as they once thought.
The first steps were simple enough. They would
examine the capsule minutely and culture everything
onto growth media. They would be hoping like
hell to come up with an organism that they
could work with, experiment on, and identify.
And after that, attempt to find out how it
attacked.
There was already the suggestion that it killed
by clotting the blood; if that turned out
to be the case, they had a good start, but
if not, they might waste valuable time following
it up.
The example of cholera came to mind. For centuries,
men had known that cholera was a fatal disease,
and that it caused severe diarrhea, sometimes
producing as much as thirty quarts of fluid
a day. Men knew this, but they somehow assumed
that the lethal effects of the disease were
unrelated to the diarrhea; they searched for
something else: an antidote, a drug, a way
to kill the organism. It was not until modern
times that cholera was recognized as a disease
that killed through dehydration primarily;
if you could replace a victim's water losses
rapidly, he would survive the infection without
other drugs or treatment.
Cure the symptoms, cure the disease.
But Leavitt wondered about the Scoop organism.
Could they cure the disease by treating the
blood clotting? Or was the clotting secondary
to some more serious, disorder?
There was also another concern, a nagging
fear that had bothered him since the earliest
planning stages of Wildfire.
In those early meetings, Leavitt had argued
that the Wildfire team might be committing
extraterrestrial murder.
Leavitt had pointed out that all men, no matter
how scientifically objective, had several
built-in biases when discussing life. One
was the assumption that complex life was larger
than simple life. It was certainly true on
the earth.
As organisms became more intelligent, they
grew larger, passing from the single-celled
stage to multicellular creatures, and then
to larger animals with differentiated cells
working in groups called organs. On earth,
the trend had been toward larger and more
complex animals.
But this might not be true elsewhere in the
universe. In other places, life might progress
in the opposite direction--
toward smaller and smaller forms. Just as
modern human technology had learned to make
things smaller, perhaps highly advanced evolutionary
pressures led to smaller life forms.
There were distinct advantages to smaller
forms: less consumption of raw materials,
cheaper spaceflight, fewer feeding problems...
Perhaps the most intelligent life form on
a distant planet was no larger than a flea.
Perhaps no larger than a bacterium. In that
case, the Wildfire Project might be committed
to destroying a highly developed life form,
without ever realizing what it was doing.
This concept was not unique to Leavitt. It
had been proposed by Merton at Harvard, and
by Chalmers at Oxford.
Chalmers, a man with a keen sense of humor,
had used the example of a man looking down
on a microscope slide and see in the bacteria
formed into the words "Take us to your leader."
Everyone thought Chalmers's idea highly amusing.
Yet Leavitt could not get it out of his mind.
Because it just might turn out to be true.
*** Before he fell asleep, Stone thought about
the conference coming up. And the business
of the meteorite. He wondered what Nagy would
say, or Karp, if they knew about the meteorite.
Probably, he thought, it would drive them
insane.
Probably it will drive us all insane.
And then he slept.
***
Delta sector was the designation of three
rooms on Level I that contained all communications
facilities for the Wildfire installation.
All intercom and visual circuits between levels
were routed through there, as were cables
for telephone and teletype from the outside.
The trunk lines to the library and the central
storage unit were also regulated by delta
sector.
In essence it functioned as a giant switchboard,
fully computerized. The three rooms of delta
sector were quiet; all that could be heard
was the soft hum of spinning tape drums and
the muted clicking of relays. Only one person
worked here, a single man sitting at a console,
surrounded by the blinking lights of the computer.
There was no real reason for the man to be
there; he performed no necessary function.
The computers were self-regulating, constructed
to run check patterns through their circuits
every twelve minutes; the computers shut down
automatically if there was an abnormal reading.
According to protocol, the man was required
to monitor MCN communications, which were
signaled by the ringing of a bell on the teleprinter.
When the bell rang, he notified the five level
command centers that the transmission was
received. He was also required to report any
computer dysfunction to Level I command, should
that unlikely event occur.
DAY 3
Wildfire
12. The Conference
"TIME TO WAKE UP, SIR."
Mark Hall opened his eyes. The room was lit
with a steady, pale fluorescent light. He
blinked and rolled over on his stomach.
"Time to wake up, Sir."
It was a beautiful female voice, soft and
seductive. He sat up in bed and looked around
the room: he was alone.
"Hello?"
"Time to wake up, Sir."
"Who are you?"
"Time to wake up, Sir."
He reached over and pushed a button on the
nightstand by his bed. A light went off. He
waited for the voice again, but it did not
speak.
It was, he thought, a hell of an effective
way to wake a man up. As he slipped into his
clothes, he wondered how it worked. It was
not a simple tape, because it worked as a
response of some sort. The message was repeated
only when Hall spoke.
To test his theory, he pushed the nightstand
button again. The voice said softly, "Do you
wish something, Sir?"
"I'd like to know your name, please."
"Will that be all, Sir?"
"Yes, I believe so."
"Will that be all, Sir?"
He waited. The light clicked off. He slipped
into his shoes and was about to leave when
a male voice said, "This is the answering-service
supervisor, Dr. Hall. I wish you would treat
the project more seriously."
Hall laughed. So the voice responded to comments,
and taped his replies. It was a clever system.
"Sorry," he said, "I wasn't sure how the thing
worked.
The voice is quite luscious."
"The voice," said the supervisor heavily,
"belongs to Miss Gladys Stevens, who is sixty-three
years old. She lives in Omaha and makes her
living taping messages for SAC crews and other
voice-reminder systems."
"Oh," Hall said.
He left the room and walked down the corridor
to the cafeteria. As he walked, he began to
understand why submarine designers had been
called in to plan Wildfire. Without his wristwatch,
he had no idea of the time, or even whether
it was night or day. He found himself wondering
whether the cafeteria would be crowded, wondering
whether it was dinner time or breakfast time.
As it turned out, the cafeteria was almost
deserted.
Leavitt was there; he said the others were
in the conference room. He pushed a glass
of dark-brown liquid over to Hall and suggested
he have breakfast.
"What's this?" Hall said.
"Forty-two-five nutrient. It has everything
needed to sustain the average seventy-kilogram
man for eighteen hours."
Hall drank the liquid, which was syrupy and
artificially flavored to taste like orange
juice. It was a strange sensation, drinking
brown orange juice, but not bad after the
initial shock. Leavitt explained that it had
been developed for the astronauts, and that
it contained everything except air-soluble
vitamins.
"For that, you need this pill," he said.
Hall swallowed the pill, then got himself
a cup of coffee from a dispenser in the corner.
"Any sugar?"
Leavitt shook his head. "No sugar anywhere
here. Nothing that might provide a bacterial
growth medium. From now on, we're all on high-protein
diets. We'll make all the sugar we need from
the protein breakdown. But we won't be getting
any sugar into the gut. Quite the opposite."
He reached into his pocket.
"Oh, no."
"Yes," Leavitt said. He gave him a small capsule,
sealed in aluminum foil.
"No," Hall said.
"Everyone else has them. Broad-spectrum. Stop
by your room and insert it before you go into
the final decontamination procedures."
"I don't mind dunking myself in all those
foul baths,"
Hall said. "I don't mind being irradiated.
But I'll be goddammed--"
"The idea," Leavitt said, "is that you be
as nearly sterile as possible on Level V.
We have sterilized your skin and mucous membranes
of the respiratory tract as best we can.
But we haven't done a thing about the GI tract
yet."
"Yes," Hall said, "but suppositories?"
"You'll get used to it. We're all taking them
for the first four days. Not, of course, that
they'll do any good,"
he said, with the familiar wry, pessimistic
look on his face.
He stood. "Let's go to the conference room.
Stone wants to talk about Karp."
"Who?"
"Rudolph Karp."
*** Rudolph Karp was a Hungarian-born biochemist
who came to the United States from England
in 1951. He obtained a position at the University
of Michigan and worked steadily and quietly
for five years. Then, at the suggestion of
colleagues at the Ann Arbor observatory, Karp
began to investigate meteorites with the intent
of determining whether they harbored life,
or showed evidence of having done so in the
past. He took the proposal quite seriously
and worked with diligence, writing no papers
on the subject until the early 1960's, when
Calvin and Vaughn and Nagy and others were
writing explosive papers on similar subjects.
The arguments and counter-arguments were complex,
but boiled down to a simple substrate: whenever
a worker would announce that he had found
a fossil, or a proteinaceous hydrocarbon,
or other indication of life within a meteorite,
the critics would claim sloppy lab technique
and contamination with earth-origin matter
and organisms.
Karp, with his careful, slow techniques, was
determined to end the arguments once and for
all. He announced that he had taken great
pains to avoid contamination: each meteorite
he examined had been washed in twelve solutions,
including peroxide, iodine, hypertonic saline
and dilute acids. It was then exposed to intense
ultraviolet light for a period of two days.
Finally, it was submerged in a germicidal
solution and placed in a germ-free, sterile
isolation chamber; further work was done within
the chamber.
Karp, upon breaking open his meteorites, was
able to isolate bacteria. He found that they
were ring-shaped organisms, rather like a
tiny undulating inner tube, and he found they
could grow and multiply. He claimed that,
while they were essentially similar to earthly
bacteria in structure, being based upon proteins,
carbohydrates, and lipids, they had no cell
nucleus and therefore their manner of propagation
was a mystery.
Karp presented his information in his usual
quiet, unsensational manner, and hoped for
a good reception. He did not receive one;
instead, he was laughed down by the Seventh
Conference of Astrophysics and Geophysics,
meeting in London in 1961. He became discouraged
and set his work with meteorites aside; the
organisms were later destroyed in an accidental
laboratory explosion on the night of June
27, 1963.
Karp's experience was almost identical to
that of Nagy and the others. Scientists in
the 1960's were not willing to entertain notions
of life existing in meteorites; all evidence
presented was discounted, dismissed, and ignored.
A handful of people in a dozen countries remained
intrigued, however. One of them was Jeremy
Stone; another was Peter Leavitt. It was Leavitt
who, some years before, had formulated the
Rule of 48. The Rule of 48 was intended as
a humorous reminder to scientists, and referred
to the massive literature collected in the
late 1940's and the 1950's concerning the
human chromosome number.
For years it was stated that men had forty-eight
chromosomes in their cells; there were pictures
to prove it, and any number of careful studies.
In 1953, a group of American researchers announced
to the world that the human chromosome number
was forty-six. Once more, there were pictures
to prove it, and studies to confirm it. But
these researchers also went back to reexamine
the old pictures, and the old studies-- and
found only forty-six chromosomes, not forty-eight.
Leavitt's Rule of 48 said simply, "All Scientists
Are Blind." And Leavitt had invoked his rule
when he saw the reception Karp and others
received. Leavitt went over the reports and
the papers and found no reason to reject the
meteorite studies out of hand; many of the
experiments were careful, well-reasoned, and
compelling.
He remembered this when he and the other Wildfire
planners drew up the study known as the Vector
Three. Along with the Toxic Five, it formed
one of the firm theoretical bases for Wildfire.
The Vector Three was a report that considered
a crucial question: If a bacterium invaded
the earth, causing a new disease, where would
that bacterium come from?
After consultation with astronomers and evolutionary
theories, the Wildfire group concluded that
bacteria could come from three sources.
The first was the most obvious-- an organism,
from another planet or galaxy, which had the
protection to survive the extremes of temperature
and vacuum that existed in space.
There was no doubt that organisms could survive--
there was, for instance, a class of bacteria
known as thermophilic that thrived on extreme
heat, multiplying enthusiastically in temperatures
as high as 70deg C. Further, it was known
that bacteria had been recovered from Egyptian
tombs, where they had been sealed for thousands
of years. These bacteria were still viable.
The secret lay in the bacteria's ability to
form spores, molding a hard calcific shell
around themselves. This shell enabled the
organism to survive freezing or boiling, and,
if necessary, thousands of years without food.
It combined all the advantages of a space
suit with those of suspended animation.
There was no doubt that a spore could travel
through space. But was another planet or galaxy
the most likely source of contamination for
the earth?
Here, the answer was no. The most likely source
was the closest source-- the earth itself.
The report suggested that bacteria could have
left the surface of the earth eons ago, when
life was just beginning to emerge from the
oceans and the hot, baked continents. Such
bacteria would depart before the fishes, before
the primitive mammals, long before the first
ape-man. The bacteria would head up into the
air, and slowly ascend until they were literally
in space. Once there, they might evolve into
unusual forms, perhaps even learning to derive
energy for life directly from the sun, instead
of requiring food as an energy source. These
organisms might also be capable of direct
conversion of energy to matter.
Leavitt himself suggested the analogy of the
upper atmosphere and the depths of the sea
as equally inhospitable environments, but
equally viable. In the deepest, blackest regions
of the oceans, where oxygenation was poor,
and where light never reached, life forms
were known to exist in abundance. Why not
also in the far reaches of the atmosphere?
True, oxygen was scarce. True, food hardly
existed. But if creatures could live miles
beneath the surface, why could they not also
live five miles above it?
And if there were organisms out there, and
if they had departed from the baking crust
of the earth long before the first men appeared,
then they would be foreign to man. No immunity,
no adaptation, no antibodies would have been
developed. They would be primitive aliens
to modern man, in the same way that the shark,
a primitive fish unchanged for a hundred million
years, was alien and dangerous to modern man,
invading the oceans for the first time.
The third source of contamination, the third
of the vectors, was at the same time the most
likely and the most troublesome. This was
contemporary earth organisms, taken into space
by inadequately sterilized spacecraft. Once
in space, the organisms would be exposed to
harsh radiation, weightlessness, and other
environmental forces that might exert a mutagenic
effect, altering the organisms.
So that when they came down, they would be
different.
Take up a harmless bacteria-- such as the
organism that causes pimples, or sore throats--
and bring it back in a new form, virulent
and unexpected. It might do anything. It might
show a preference for the aqueous humor of
the inner eye, and invade the eyeball. It
might thrive on the acid secretions of the
stomach. It might multiply on the small currents
of electricity afforded by the human brain
itself, drive men mad.
This whole idea of mutated bacteria seemed
farfetched and unlikely to the Wildfire people.
It is ironic that this should be the case,
particularly in view of what happened to the
Andromeda Strain. But the Wildfire team staunchly
ignored both the evidence of their own experience--
that bacteria mutate rapidly and radically--
and the evidence of the Biosatellite tests,
in which a series of earth forms were sent
into space and later recovered.
Biosatellite II contained, among other things,
several species of bacteria. It was later
reported that the bacteria had reproduced
at a rate twenty to thirty times normal. The
reasons were still unclear, but the results
unequivocal: space could affect reproduction
and growth.
And yet no one in Wildfire paid attention
to this fact, until it was too late.
*** Stone reviewed the information quickly,
then handed each of them a cardboard file.
"These files," he said, "contain a transcript
of autoclock records of the entire flight
of Scoop VII. Our purpose in reviewing the
transcript is to determine, if possible, what
happened to the satellite while it was in
orbit."
Hall said, "Something happened to it?"
Leavitt explained. "The satellite was scheduled
for a six-day orbit, since the probability
of collecting organisms is proportional to
time in orbit. After launch, it was in stable
orbit. Then, on the second day, it went out
of orbit.
Hall nodded.
"Start," Stone said, "with the first page."
Hall opened his file.
AUTOCLOCK TRANSCRIPT
PROJECT: SCOOP VII
LAUNCHDATE:
ABRIDGED VERSION. FULL TRANSCRIPT
STORED VAULTS 179-99,
VDBG COMPLEX EPSILON.
HOURS MIN SEC PROCEDURE
T MINUS TIME
0002 01 05 Vandenberg Launch pad Block 9,
Scoop Mission Control, reports systems check
on schedule.
0001 39 52 Scoop MC holds for fuel check reported
from Ground Control.
STOP CLOCK STOP CLOCK. REALTIME LOSS 12 MINUTES.
0001 39 52 Count resumed. Clock corrected.
0000 41 12 Scoop MC holds 20 seconds for Launch
pad Block 9 check. Clock not stopped for built-in
hold.
000030 00 Gantry removed.
000024 00 Final craft systems check.
000019 00 Final capsule systems check.
000013 00 Final systems checks read as negative.
000007 12 Cable decoupling.
000001 07 Stat-link decoupling.
000000 05 Ignition.
000000 04 Launch pad Block 9 clears all systems.
000000 00 Core clamps released. Launch.
T PLUS TIME
000000 06 Stable. Speed 6 fps. Smooth EV approach.
000000 09 Tracking reported.
000000 11 Tracking confirmed.
000000 27 Capsule monitors at g 1.9. Equipment
check clear.
0000 01 00 Launch pad Block 9 clears rocket
and capsule systems for orbit.
"No point in dwelling on this," Stone said.
"It is the record of a perfect launch. There
is nothing here, in fact, nothing for the
next ninety-six hours of flight, to indicate
any difficulty on board the spacecraft. Now
turn to page 10."
They all turned.
TRACK TRANSCRIPT CONT'D
SCOOP VII
LAUNCHDATE:
ABRIDGED VERSION
HOURS MIN SEC PROCEDURE
10 12 Orbital check stable as reported by
Grand Bahama Station.
009634 19 Orbital check stable as reported
by Sydney.
009647 34 Orbital check stable as reported
by Vdbg.
0097 04 12 Orbital check stable but system
malfunction reported by Kennedy Station.
0097 05 18 Malfunction confirmed.
0097 07 22 Malfunction confirmed by Grand
Bahama.
Computer reports orbital instability.
0097 34 54 Sydney reports orbital instability.
0097 39 02 Vandenberg computations indicate
orbital decay.
0098 27 14 Vandenberg Scoop Mission Control
orders radio reentry.
009912 56 Reentry code transmitted.
0099 13 13 Houston reports initiation of reentry.
Stabilized flight path.
"What about voice communication during the
critical period?"
"There were linkups between Sydney, Kennedy,
and Grand Bahama, all routed through Houston.
Houston had the big computer as well. But
in this instance, Houston was just helping
out; all decisions came from Scoop Mission
Control in Vandenberg. We have the voice communication
at the back of the file. It's quite revealing."
TRANSCRIPT OF VOICE COMMUNICATIONS SCOOP MISSION
CONTROL
VANDENBERG AFB HOURS 0096:59 TO 0097:39
THIS IS A CLASSIFIED TRANSCRIPT.
IT HAS NOT BEEN ABRIDGED OR EDITED.
HOURS MIN SEC COMMUNICATION
0096 59 00 HELLO KENNEDY THIS IS SCOOP MISSION
CONTROL.
AT THE END OF 96 HOURS OF FLIGHT TIME WE HAVE
STABLE ORBITS
FROM ALL STATIONS. DO YOU CONFIRM.
0097 00 00 1 think we do, Scoop. Our check
is going through now. Hold this line open
for a few minutes, fellows.
0097 03 31 Hello, Scoop MC. This is Kennedy.
We have a stable orbit confirmation for you
on the last passby. Sorry about the delay
but there is an instrument snag somewhere
here.
0097 03 34 KENNEDY PLEASE CLARIFY. IS YOUR
SNAG ON THE
GROUND OR ALOFT.
0097 03 39 I am sorry we have no tracer yet.
We think it is on the ground.
0097 04 12 Hello, Scoop MC. This is Kennedy.
We have a preliminary report of system malfunction
aboard your spacecraft. Repeat we have a preliminary
report of malfunction in the air. Awaiting
confirmation.
0097 04 15 KENNEDY PLEASE CLARIFY SYSTEM INVOLVED.
0097 04 18 I'm sorry they haven't given me
that. I assume they are waiting for final
confirmation of the malfunction.
0097 04 21 DOES YOUR ORBITAL CHECK AS STABLE
STILL-HOLD.
0097 04 22 Vandenberg, we have confirmed your
orbital check as stable. Repeat the orbit
is stable.
0097 05 18 Ah, Vandenberg, I am afraid we
also confirm readings consistent with system
malfunction on board your spacecraft. These
include the stationary rotor elements and
spanner units going to mark twelve. I repeat
mark twelve.
0097 05 30 HAVE YOU RUN CONSISTENCY CHECK
ON YOUR
COMPUTERS.
0097 05 35 Sorry fellows but our computers
check out. We read it as a real malfunction.
0097 05 45 HELLO, HOUSTON. OPEN THE LINE TO
SYDNEY, WILL
YOU. WE WANT CONFIRMATION OF DATA.
0097 05 51 Scoop Mission Control, This is
Sydney Station. We confirm our last reading.
There was nothing wrong with the spacecraft
on its last passby here.
0097 06 12 OUR COMPUTER CHECK INDICATES NO
SYSTEMS
MALFUNCTION AND GOOD ORBITAL STABILITY ON
SUMMATED DATA. WE
QUESTION KENNEDY GROUND INSTRUMENT FAILURE.
0097 06 18 This is Kennedy, Scoop MC. We have
run repeat checkouts at this end. Our reading
of system malfunction remains. Have you got
something from Bahama.
0097 06 23 NEGATIVE, KENNEDY. STANDING BY.
0097 06 36 HOUSTON, THIS IS SCOOP MC. CAN
YOUR
PROJECTION GROUP GIVE US ANYTHING.
0097 06 46 Scoop, at this time we cannot.
Our computers have insufficient data. They
still read stable orbit with all systems going.
0097 07 22 Scoop MC, this is Grand Bahama
Station. We report passby of your craft Scoop
Seven according to schedule. Preliminary radar
fixes were normal with question of increased
transit times. Please hold for systems telemetry.
0097 07 25 HOLDING, GRAND BAHAMA.
0097 07 29 Scoop MC, we are sorry to say we
confirm Kennedy observations, Repeat, we confirm
Kennedy observations of systems malfunction.
Our data are on the trunk to Houston.
Can they be routed to you as well. station.
0097 07 34 NO, WE WILL WAIT FOR HOUSTON'S
PRINTOUT. THEY
HAVE LARGER PREDICTIVE BANKING UNITS.
0097 07 36 Scoop MC, Houston has the Bahama
Data. It is going through the Dispar Program.
Give us ten seconds.
0097 07 47 Scoop MC, this is Houston. The
Dispar Program confirms systems malfunction.
Your vehicle is now in unstable orbit with
increased transit time of zero point three
seconds per unit of arc. We are analyzing
orbital parameters at this time. Is there
anything further you wish as interpreted data.
0097 07 59 NO, HOUSTON. SOUNDS LIKE YOU'RE
DOING
BEAUTIFULLY.
0097 08 10 Sorry, Scoop. Bad break.
0097 08 18 GET US THE DECAY RATIOS AS SOON
AS POSSIBLE.
COMMAND WISHES TO MAKE A DECISION ON INSTRUMENTATION
TAKEDOWN WITHIN THE NEXT TWO ORBITS.
0097 08 32 Understand, Scoop. Our condolences
here.
0097 11 35 Scoop, Houston Projection Group
has confirmed orbital instability and decay
ratios are now being passed by the data trunk
to your station.
0097 11 44 HOW DO THEY LOOK, HOUSTON.
0097 11 51 Bad.
0097 11 59 NOT UNDERSTOOD. PLEASE REPEAT.
0097 12 07 Bad: B as in broken, A as in awful,
D as in dropping.
0097 12 15 HOUSTON, DO YOU HAVE A CAUSATION.
THAT
SATELLITE HAS BEEN IN EXCELLENT ORBIT FOR
NEARLY ONE HUNDRED
HOURS. WHAT HAPPENED TO IT.
0097 12 29 Beats us. We wonder about collision.
There is a good wobble component to the new
orbit.
0097 12 44 HOUSTON, OUR COMPUTERS ARE WORKING
THROUGH
THE TRANSMITTED DATA. WE AGREE A COLLISION.
HAVE YOU GUYS GOT
SOMETHING IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD.
0097 13 01 Air Force Skywatch confirms our
report that we have nothing around your baby,
Scoop.
0097 13 50 HOUSTON, OUR COMPUTERS ARE READING
THIS AS A RANDOM EVENT. PROBABILITIES GREATER
THAN ZERO POINT SEVEN
NINE.
0097 15 00 We can add nothing. Looks reasonable.
Are you going to bring it down.
0097 15 15 WE ARE HOLDING ON THAT DECISION,
HOUSTON. WE
WILL NOTIFY AS SOON AS IT IS MADE.
0097 17 54 HOUSTON, OUR COMMAND GROUP HAS
RAISED THE
QUESTION OF WHETHER*************************.
0097 17 59 [reply from Houston deleted]
0097 18 43 [Scoop query to Houston deleted]
0097 19 03 [reply from Houston deleted]
0097 19 11 AGREE, HOUSTON. WE WILL MAKE OUR
DECISION AS
SOON AS WE HAVE FINAL CONFIRMATION OF ORBITAL
SHUTDOWN FROM
SYDNEY. IS THIS ACCEPTABLE.
0097 19 50 Perfectly, Scoop. We are standing
by.
0097 24 32 HOUSTON, WE ARE REWORKING OUR DATA
AND NO
LONGER CONSIDER THAT********IS LIKELY.
0097 24 39 Roger, Scoop.
0097 29 13 HOUSTON, WE ARE STANDING BY FOR
SYDNEY.
0097 34 54 Scoop Mission Control, this is
Sydney Station. We have just followed the
passby of your vehicle.
Our initial readings confirm a prolonged transit
time. It is quite striking at this time.
0097 35 12 THANK YOU, SYDNEY.
0097 35 22 Bit of nasty luck, Scoop. Sorry.
0097 39 02 THIS IS SCOOP MISSION CONTROL TO
ALL
STATIONS. OUR COMPUTERS HAVE JUST CALCULATED
THE ORBITAL
DECAY FOR THE VEHICLE AND WE FIND IT TO BE
COMING DOWN AS A PLUS FOUR. STANDBY FOR THE
FINAL DECISION AS TO WHEN WE WILL
BRING IT DOWN.
Hall said, "What about the deleted passages?"
"Major Manchek at Vandenberg told me," Stone
said, "that they had to do with the Russian
craft in the area. The two stations eventually
concluded that the Russians had not, either
accidentally or purposely, brought down the
Scoop satellite. No one has since suggested
differently."
They nodded.
"It's tempting," Stone said. "The Air Force
maintains a watchdog facility in Kentucky
that tracks all satellites in earth orbit.
It has a dual function, both to follow old
satellites known to be in orbit and to track
new ones. There are twelve satellites in orbit
at this time that cannot be accounted for;
in other words, they are not ours, and are
not the result of announced Soviet launches.
It is thought that some of these represent
navigation satellites for Soviet submarines.
Others are presumed to be spy satellites.
But the important thing is that Russian or
not, there are a hell of a lot of satellites
up there. As of last Friday, the Air Force
reported five hundred and eighty-seven orbiting
bodies around the earth. This includes some
old, nonfunctioning satellites from the American
Explorer series and the Russian Sputnik series.
It also includes boosters and final stages--
anything in stable orbit large enough to reflect
back a radar beam."
"That's a lot of satellites."
"Yes, and there are probably many more. The
Air Force thinks there is a lot of junk out
there-- nuts, bolts, scraps of metal-- all
in more or less stable orbit. No orbit, as
you know, is completely stable. Without frequent
corrections, any satellite will eventually
decay out and spiral down to earth, burning
up in the atmosphere. But that may be years,
even decades, after the launch. In any event,
the Air Force estimates that the total number
of individual orbiting objects could be anything
up to seventy-five thousand."
"So a collision with a piece of junk is possible."
"Yes. Possible."
"How about a meteor?"
"That is the other possibility, and the one
Vandenberg favors. A random event, most likely
a meteor."
"Any showers these days?"
"None, apparently. But that does not rule
out a meteor collision."
Leavitt cleared his throat. "There is still
another possibility."
Stone frowned. He knew that Leavitt was imaginative,
and that this trait was both a strength and
a defect. At times, Leavitt could be startling
and exciting; at others, merely irritating.
"It's rather farfetched," Stone said, "to
postulate debris from some extragalactic source
other than--"
"I agree," Leavitt said. "Hopelessly farfetched.
No evidence for it whatever. But I don't think
we can afford to ignore the possibility."
A gong sounded softly. A lush female voice,
which Hall now recognized as that of Gladys
Stevens of Omaha, said softly, "You may proceed
to the next level, gentlemen."
13. Level V
LEVEL V WAS PAINTED A QUIET SHADE OF BLUE,
AND they all wore blue uniforms. Burton showed
Hall around.
"This floor," he said, "is like all the others.
It's circular. Arranged in a series of concentric
circles, actually. We're on the outer perimeter
now; this is where we live and work. Cafeteria,
sleeping rooms, everything is out here. Just
inside is a ring of laboratories. And inside
that, sealed off from us, is the central core.
That's where the satellite and the two people
are now."
"But they're sealed off from us?"
"Yes."
"Then how do we get to them?"
"Have you ever used a glove box?" Burton asked.
Hall shook his head.
Burton explained that glove boxes were large
clear plastic boxes used to handle sterile
materials. The boxes had holes cut in the
sides, and gloves attached with an airtight
seal. To handle the contents, you slipped
your hands into the gloves and reached into
the box. But your fingers never touched the
material, only the gloves.
"We've gone one step further," Burton said.
"We have whole rooms that are nothing more
than glorified glove boxes.
Instead of a glove for your hand, there's
a whole plastic suit, for your entire body.
You'll see what I mean."
They walked down the curved corridor to a
room marked CENTRAL CONTROL. Leavitt and Stone
were there, working quietly. Central Control
was a cramped room, stuffed with electronic
equipment. One wall was glass, allowing the
tails, were considered particularly trying.
Many a scientist workers to look into the
adjacent room.
Through the glass, Hall saw mechanical hands
moving the capsule to a table and setting
it down. Hall, who had never seen a capsule
before, watched with interest. It was smaller
than he had imagined, no more than a yard
long; one end was seared and blackened from
the heat of reentry.
The mechanical hands, under Stone's direction,
opened the little scoop-shaped trough in the
side of the capsule to expose the interior.
"There," Stone said, taking his hands from
the controls.
The controls looked like a pair of brass knuckles;
the operator slipped his own hands into them
and moved his hands as he wanted the mechanical
hands to move.
"Our next step," he said, "is to determine
whether there is still anything in the capsule
which is biologically active. Suggestions?"
"A rat," Leavitt said. "Use a black Norway."
The black Norway rat was not black at all;
the name simply designated a strain of laboratory
animal, perhaps the most famous strain in
all science. Once, of course, it had been
both black and Norwegian; but years of breeding
and countless generations had made it white,
small, and docile.
The biological explosion had created a demand
for genetically uniform animals. In the last
thirty years more than a thousand strains
of "pure" animals had been evolved artificially.
In the case of the black Norwegian, it was
now possible for a scientist anywhere in the
world to conduct experiments using this animal
and be assured that other scientists elsewhere
could repeat or enlarge upon his work using
virtually identical organisms.
"Follow with a rhesus," Burton said. "We will
want to get onto primates sooner or later.
The others nodded.
Wildfire was prepared to conduct experiments
with monkeys and apes, as well as smaller,
cheaper animals. A monkey was exceedingly
difficult to work with: the little primates
were hostile, quick, intelligent. Among scientists,
the New World monkeys, with their prehensile
tails, were considered particularly trying.
Many scientists had engaged three or four
lab assistants to hold down a monkey while
he administered an injection-- only to have
the prehensile tail whip up, grasp the syringe,
and fling it across the room.
The theory behind primate experimentation
was that these animals were closer biologically
to man. In the 1950's, several laboratories
even attempted experiments on gorillas, going
to great trouble and expense to work with
these seemingly most human of animals. However,
by 1960 it had been demonstrated that of the
apes, the chimpanzee was biochemically more
like man than the gorilla. (On the basis of
similarity to man, the choice of laboratory
animals is often surprising. For example,
the hamster is preferred for immunological
and cancer studies, since his responses are
so similar to man's, while for studies of
the heart and circulation, the pig is considered
most like man.) Stone put his hands back on
the controls, moving them gently. Through
the glass, they saw the black metal fingers
move to the far wall of the adjoining room,
where several caged lab animals were kept,
separated from the room by hinged airtight
doors. The wall reminded Hall oddly of an
automat.
The mechanical hands opened one door and removed
a rat in its cage, brought it into the room,
and set it down next to the capsule. The rat
looked around the room, sniffed the air, and
made some stretching movements with its neck.
A moment later it flopped over onto its side,
kicked once, and was still.
It had happened with astonishing speed. Hall
could hardly believe it had happened at all.
"My God," Stone said. "What a time course."
"That will make it difficult," Leavitt said.
Burton said, "We can try tracers..."
"Yes. We'll have to use tracers on it," Stone
said. "How fast are our scans?"
"Milliseconds, if necessary."
"It will be necessary."
"Try the rhesus, " Burton said. "You'll want
a post on it, anyway."
Stone directed the mechanical hands back to
the wall, opening another door and withdrawing
a cage containing a large brown adult rhesus
monkey. The monkey screeched as it was lifted
and banged against the bars of its cage.
Then it died, after flinging one hand to its
chest with a look of startled surprise.
Stone shook his head. "Well, at least we know
it's still biologically active. Whatever killed
everyone in Piedmont is still there, and still
as potent as ever. " He sighed. "If potent
is the word."
Leavitt said, "We'd better start a scan of
the capsule."
"I'll take these dead animals," Burton said,
"and run the initial vector studies. Then
I'll autopsy them."
Stone worked the mechanical hands once more.
He picked up the cages that held the rat and
monkey and set them on a rubber conveyor belt
at the rear of the room. Then he pressed a
button on a control console marked AUTOPSY.
The conveyor belt began to move.
Burton left the room, walking down the corridor
to the autopsy room, knowing that the conveyor
belt, made to carry materials from one lab
to another, would have automatically delivered
the cages.
Stone said to Hall, "You're the practicing
physician among us. I'm afraid you've got
a rather tough job right now."
"Pediatrician and geriatrist?"
"Exactly. See what you can do about them.
They're both in our miscellaneous room, the
room we built precisely for unusual circumstances
like this. There's a computer linkup there
that should help you. The technician will
show you how it works."
14. Miscellaneous
HALL OPENED THE DOOR MARKED MISCELLANEOUS,
thinking to himself that his job was indeed
miscellaneous-- keeping alive an old man and
a tiny infant. Both of them vital to the project,
and both of them, no doubt, difficult to manage.
He found himself in another small room similar
to the control room he had just left. This
one also had a glass window, looking inward
to a central room. In the room were two beds,
and on the beds, Peter Jackson and the infant.
But the incredible thing was the suits: standing
upright in the room were four clear plastic
inflated suits in the shape of men. From each
suit, a tunnel ran back to the wall.
Obviously, one would have to crawl down the
tunnel and then stand up inside the suit.
Then one could work with the patients inside
the room.
The girl who was to be his assistant was working
in the room, bent over the computer console.
She introduced herself as Karen Anson, and
explained the working of the computer.
"This is just one substation of the Wildfire
computer on the first level," she said. "There
are thirty substations throughout the laboratory,
all plugging into the computer.
Thirty different people can work at once."
Hall nodded. Time-sharing was a concept he
understood.
He knew that as many as two hundred people
had been able to use the same computer at
once; the principle was that computers operated
very swiftly-- in fractions of a second while
people operated slowly, in seconds or minutes.
One person using a computer was inefficient,
because it took several minutes to punch in
instructions, while the computer sat around
idle, waiting. Once instructions were fed
in, the computer answered almost instantaneously.
This meant that a computer was rarely "working,"
and by permitting a number of people to ask
questions of the computer simultaneously,
you could keep the machine more continuously
in operation.
"If the computer is really backed up, " the
technician said, "there may be a delay of
one or two seconds before you get your answer.
But usually it's immediate. What we are using
here is the MEDCOM program. Do you know it?"
Hall shook his head.
"It's a medical-data analyzer," she said.
"You feed in information and it will diagnose
the patient and tell you what to do next for
therapy, or to confirm the diagnosis."
"Sounds very convenient."
"It's fast," she said. "All our lab studies
are done by automated machines. So we can
have complex diagnoses in a matter of minutes."
Hall looked through the glass at the two patients.
"What's been done on them so far?"
"Nothing. At Level I, they were started on
intravenous infusions. Plasma for Peter Jackson,
dextrose and water for the baby. They both
seem well hydrated now, and in no distress.
Jackson is still unconscious. He has no pupillary
signs but is unresponsive and looks anemic."
Hall nodded. "The labs here can do everything?"
"Everything. Even assays for adrenal hormones
and things like partial thromboplastin times.
Every known medical test is possible."
"All right. We'd better get started."
She turned on the computer. "This is how you
order laboratory tests," she said. "Use this
light pen here, and check off the tests you
want. Just touch the pen to the screen."
She handed him a small penlight, and pushed
the START
button.
The screen glowed.
MEDCOM PROGRAM
LAB/ANALYS
CK/JGG/1223098
BLOOD:
COUNTS RBC
RETIC
PLATES
WBC
DIFF
HEMATOCRIT
HEMOGLOBIN
INDICES MCV
MCHC:
PROTIME
PTT
SED RATE
CHEMISTRY:
BRO
CA
CL
MG
PO4
K
NA
CO2
ENZYMES:
AMYLASE
CHOLINESTERASE
LIPASE
PHOSPHATASE,ACID
ALKALINE
LDH
SGOT
SGPT
PROTEIN:
ALB
GLOB
FIBRIN
TOTAL FRACTION
DIAGNOSTICS:
CHOLEST
CREAT
GLUCOSE
PBI
BEI
I
IBC
NPN
BUN
BILIRU, DIFF
CEPH/FLOC
THYMOL/TURB
BSP
PULMONARY:
TVC
TV
IC
IRV
ERV
MBC
STERIOD:
ALDO
L7-OH
17-KS
ACTH
VITS
A
ALL
B
C
E
K
URINE:
SP
GR
PH
PROT
GLUC
KETONE
ALL ELECTROLYTES
ALL STERIODS
ALL INORGANICS
CATECHOLS
PORPHYRINS
UROBIL
5-HIAA
Hall stared at the list. He touched the tests
he wanted with the penlight; they disappeared
from the screen. He ordered fifteen or twenty,
then stepped back.
The screen went blank for a moment, and then
the following appeared:
TESTS ORDERED WILL REQUIRE FOR EACH SUBJECT
20 CC WHOLE BLOOD
LO CC OXALATED BLOOD
L2 CC CITRATED BLOOD
15 CC URINE
The technician said, "I'll draw the bloods
if you want to do physicals. Have you been
in one of these rooms before?"
Hall shook his head.
"It's quite simple, really. We crawl through
the tunnels into the suits. The tunnel is
then sealed off behind us."
"Oh? Why?"
"In case something happens to one of us. In
case the covering of the suit is broken--
the integrity of the surface is ruptured,
as the protocol says. In that case, bacteria
could spread back through the tunnel to the
outside."
"So we're sealed off."
"Yes. We get air from a separate system--
you can see the thin lines coming in over
there. But essentially you're isolated from
everything, when you're in that suit. I don't
think you need worry, though. The only way
you might possibly break your suit is to cut
it with a scalpel, and the gloves are triple-thickness
to prevent just such an occurrence."
She showed him how to crawl through, and then,
imitating her, he stood up inside the plastic
suit. He felt like some kind of giant reptile,
moving cumbersomely about, dragging his tunnel
like a thick tail behind him.
After a moment, there was a hiss: his suit
was being sealed off. Then another hiss, and
the air turned cold as the special line began
to feed air in to him.
The technician gave him his examining instruments.
While she drew blood from the child, taking
it from a scalp vein, Hall turned his attention
to Peter Jackson.
*** An old man, and pale: anemia. Also thin:
first thought, cancer. Second thought, tuberculosis,
alcoholism, some other chronic process. And
unconscious: he ran through the differential
in his mind, from epilepsy to hypoglycernic
shock to stroke.
Hall later stated that he felt foolish when
the computer provided him with a differential,
complete with probabilities of diagnosis.
He was not at that time aware of the skill
of the computer, the quality of its program.
He checked Jackson's blood pressure. It was
low, 85/50.
Pulse fast at 110. Temperature 97.8. Respiration's
30 and deep.
He went over the body systematically, beginning
with the head and working down. When he produced
pain-- by pressing on the nerve through the
supra-orbital notch, just below the eyebrow--
the man grimaced and moved his arms to push
Hall away.
Perhaps he was not unconscious after all.
Perhaps just stuporous. Hall shook him.
"Mr. Jackson. Mr. Jackson."
The man made no response. And then, slowly,
he seemed to revive. Hall shouted his name
in his ear and shook him hard.
Peter Jackson opened his eyes, just for a
moment, and said, "Go...away..."
Hall continued to shake him, but Jackson relaxed,
going limp, his body slipping back to its
unresponsive state. Hall gave up, returning
to his physical examination. The lungs were
clear and the heart seemed normal. There was
sm., tenseness of the abdomen, and Jackson
retched once, bringing up some bloody drooling
material. Quickly, Hall did a basolyte test
for blood: it was positive. He did a rectal
exam and tested the stool. It was also positive
for blood.
He turned to the technician, who had drawn
all the bloods and was feeding the tubes into
the computer analysis apparatus in one corner.
"We've got a GI bleeder here," he said. "How
soon will the results be back?"
She pointed to a TV screen mounted near the
ceiling.
"The lab reports are flashed back as soon
as they come in.
They are displayed there, and on the console
in the other room. The easy ones come back
first. We should have hematocrit in two minutes."
Hall waited. The screen glowed, the letters
printing out:
JACKSON, PETER LABORATORY ANALYSES
TEST: NORMAL: VALUE
HEMATOCRIT: 38-54: 21
"Half normal," Hall said. He slapped an oxygen
mask on Jackson's face, fixed the straps,
and said, "We'll need at least four units.
Plus two of plasma."
"I'll order them."
"To start as soon as possible."
She went to phone the blood bank on Level
II and asked them to hurry on the requisition.
Meantime, Hall turned his attention to the
child.
It had been a long time since he had examined
an infant, and he had forgotten how difficult
it could be. Every time he tried to look at
the eyes, the child shut them tightly. Every
time he looked down the throat, the child
closed his mouth.
Every time he tried to listen to the heart,
the child shrieked, obscuring all heart sounds.
Yet he persisted, remembering what Stone had
said. These two people, dissimilar though
they were, nonetheless represented the only
survivors of Piedmont. Somehow they had managed
to beat the disease. That was a link between
the two, between the shriveled old man vomiting
blood and the pink young child, howling and
screaming.
At first glance, they were as different as
possible; they were at opposite ends of the
spectrum, sharing nothing in common.
And yet there must be something in common.
It took Hall half an hour to finish his examination
of the child. At the end of that time he was
forced to conclude that the infant was, to
his exam, perfectly normal. Totally normal.
Nothing the least bit unusual about him.
Except that, somehow, he had survived.
15. Main Control
STONE SAT WITH LEAVITT IN THE MAIN CONTROL
room, looking into the inner room with the
capsule. Though cramped, main control was
complex and expensive: it had cost $2,000,000,
the most costly single room in the Wildfire
installation. But it was vital to the functioning
of the entire laboratory.
Main control served as the first step in scientific
examination of the capsule. Its chief function
was detection-the room was geared to detect
and isolate microorganisms. According to the
Life Analysis Protocol, there were three main
steps in the Wildfire program: detection,
characterization, and control. First the organism
had to be found. Then it had to be studied
and understood.
Only then could ways be sought to control
it.
Main control was set up to find the organism.
Leavitt and Stone sat side by side in front
of the banks of controls and dials. Stone
operated the mechanical hands, while Leavitt
manipulated the microscopic apparatus.
Naturally it was impossible to enter the room
with the capsule and examine it directly.
Robot-controlled microscopes, with viewing
screens in the control room, would accomplish
this for them.
An early question had been whether to utilize
television or some kind of direct visual linkup.
Television was cheaper and more easily set
up; TV image-intensifiers were already in
use for electron microscopes, X-ray machines,
and other devices. However, the Wildfire group
finally decided that a TV screen was too imprecise
for their needs; even a double-scan camera,
which transmitted twice as many lines as the
usual TV and gave better image resolution,
would be insufficient. In the end, the group
chose a fiber optics system in which a light
image was transmitted directly through a snakelike
bundle of glass fibers and then displayed
on the viewers. This gave a clear, sharp image.
Stone positioned the capsule and pressed the
appropriate controls. A black box moved down
from the ceiling and began to scan the capsule
surface. The two men watched the viewer screens:
"Start with five power," Stone said. Leavitt
set the controls. They watched as the viewer
automatically moved around the capsule, focusing
on the surface of the metal.
They watched one complete scan, then shifted
up to twenty-power magnification. A twenty-power
scan took much longer, since the field of
view was smaller. They still saw nothing on
the surface: no punctures, no indentations,
nothing that looked like a small growth of
any kind.
"Let's go to one hundred," Stone said. Leavitt
adjusted the controls and sat back. They were
beginning what they knew would be a long and
tedious search. Probably they would find nothing.
Soon they would examine the interior of the
capsule; they might find something there.
Or they might not. In either case, they would
take samples for analysis, plating out the
scrapings and swabs onto growth media.
Leavitt glanced from the viewing screens to
look into the room. The viewer, suspended
from the ceiling by a complex arrangement
of rods and wires, was automatically moving
in slow circles around the capsule. He looked
back to the screens.
There were three screens in main control,
and all showed exactly the same field of view.
In theory, they could use three viewers projecting
onto three screens, and cover the capsule
in one third the time. But they did not want
to do that-- at least not now. Both, men knew
that their interest and attention would fatigue
as the day wore on. No matter how hard they
tried, they could not remain alert all the
time.
But if two men watched the same image, there
was less chance of missing something.
The surface area of the cone-shaped capsule,
thirty-seven inches long and a foot in diameter
at the base, was just over 650 square inches.
Three scans, at five, twenty, and one hundred
power, took them slightly more than two hours.
At the end of the third scan, Stone said,
"I suppose we ought to proceed with the 440
scan as well."
"But?"
"I am tempted to go directly to a scan of
the interior.
If we find nothing, we can come back outside
and do a 440."
"I agree."
"All right," Stone said. "Start with five.
On the inside."
Leavitt worked the controls. This time, it
could not be done automatically; the viewer
was programmed to follow the contours of any
regularly shaped object, such as a cube, a
sphere, or a cone. But it could not probe
the interior of the capsule without direction.
Leavitt set the lenses at five diameters and
switched the remote viewer to manual control.
Then he directed it down into the scoop opening
of the capsule.
Stone, watching the screen, said, "More light."
Leavitt made adjustments. Five additional
remote lights came down from the ceiling and
clicked on, shining into the scoop.
"Better?"
"Fine."
Watching his own screen, Leavitt began to
move the remote viewer. It took several minutes
before he could do it smoothly; it was difficult
to coordinate, rather like trying to write
while you watched in a mirror. But soon he
was scanning smoothly.
The five-power scan took twenty minutes. They
found nothing except a small indentation the
size of a pencil point. At Stone's suggestion,
when they began the twenty-power scan they
started with the indentation.
Immediately, they saw it: a tiny black fleck
of jagged material no larger than a grain
of sand. There seemed to be bits of green
mixed in with the black.
Neither man reacted, though Leavitt later
recalled that he was "trembling with excitement.
I kept thinking, if this is it, if it's really
something new, some brand new form of life..."
However, all he said was, "Interesting."
"We'd better complete the scan at twenty power,"
Stone said. He was working to keep his voice
calm, but it was clear that he was excited
too.
Leavitt wanted to examine the fleck at higher
power immediately, but he understood what
Stone was saying. They could not afford to
jump to conclusions-- any conclusions.
Their only hope was to be grindingly, interminably
thorough.
They had to proceed methodically, to assure
themselves at every point that they had overlooked
nothing.
Otherwise, they could pursue a course of investigation
for hours or days, only to find it ended nowhere,
that they had made a mistake, misjudged the
evidence, and wasted time.
So Leavitt did a complete scan of the interior
at twenty power. He paused, once or twice,
when they thought they saw other patches of
green, and marked down the coordinates so
they could find the areas later, under higher
magnification.
Half an hour passed before Stone announced
he was satisfied with the twenty-power scan.
They took a break for caffeine, swallowing
two pills with water. The team had agreed
earlier that amphetamines should not be used
except in times of serious emergency; they
were stocked in the Level V pharmacy, but
for routine purposes caffeine was preferred.
The aftertaste of the caffeine pill was sour
in his mouth as Leavitt clicked in the hundred-power
lenses, and began the third scan. As before,
they started with the indentation, and the
small black fleck they had noted earlier.
It was disappointing: at higher magnification
it appeared no different from their earlier
views, only larger.
They could see, however, that it was an irregular
piece of material, dull, looking like rock.
And they could see there were definitely flecks
of green mined on the jagged surface of the
material.
"What do you make of it?" Stone said.
"If that's the object the capsule collided
with,"
Leavitt said, "it was either moving with great
speed, or else it is very heavy. Because it's
not big enough--"
"To knock the satellite out of orbit otherwise.
I agree.
And yet it did not make a very deep indentation."
"Suggesting?"
Stone shrugged. "Suggesting that it was either
not responsible for the orbital change, or
that it has some elastic properties we don't
yet know about."
"What do you think of the green?"
Stone grinned. "You won't trap me yet. I am
curious, nothing more."
Leavitt chuckled and continued the scan. Both
men now felt elated and inwardly certain of
their discovery. They checked the other areas
where they had noted green, and confirmed
the presence of the patches at higher magnification.
But the other patches looked different from
the green on the rock. For one thing, they
were larger, and seemed somehow more luminous.
For another, the borders of the patches seemed
quite regular, and rounded.
"Like small drops of green paint, spattered
on the inside of the capsule," Stone said.
"I hope that's not what it is."
"We could probe," Stone said.
"Let's wait for 440."
Stone agreed. By now they had been scanning
the capsule for nearly four hours, but neither
man felt tired. They watched closely as the
viewing screens blurred for a moment, the
lenses shifting. When the screens came back
into focus, they were looking at the indentation,
and the black fleck with the green areas.
At this magnification, the surface irregularities
of the rock were striking-- it was like a
miniature planet, with jagged peaks and sharp
valleys. It occurred to Leavitt that this
was exactly what they were looking at: a minute,
complete planet, with its life forms intact.
But he shook his head, dismissing the thought
from his mind. Impossible.
Stone said, "If that's a meteor, it's damned
funny-looking."
"What bothers you?"
"That left border, over there." Stone pointed
to the screen. "The surface of the stone--
if it is stone-- is rough everywhere except
on that left border, where it is smooth and
rather straight."
"Like an artificial surface?"
Stone sighed. "If I keep looking at it," he
said, "I might start to think so. Let's see
those other patches of green."
Leavitt set the coordinates and focused the
viewer. A new image appeared on the screens.
This time, it was a close-up of one of the
green patches. Under high magnification the
borders could be seen clearly. They were not
smooth, but slightly notched: they looked
almost like a gear from the inside of a watch.
"I'll be damned," Leavitt said.
"It's not paint. That notching is too regular."
As they watched, it happened: the green spot
turned purple for a fraction of a second,
less than the blink of an eye. Then it turned
green once more.
"Did you see that?"
"I saw it. You didn't change the lighting?"
"No. Didn't touch it."
A moment later, it happened again: green,
a flash of purple, green again.
"Amazing."
"This may be--"
And then, as they watched, the spot turned
purple and remained purple. The notches disappeared;
the spot had enlarged slightly, filling in
the V-shaped gaps. It was now a complete circle.
It became green once more.
"It's growing," Stone said.
*** They worked swiftly. The movie cameras
were brought down, recording from five angles
at ninety-six frames per second. Another time-lapse
camera clicked off frames at half-second intervals.
Leavitt also brought down two more remote
cameras, and set them at different angles
from the original camera.
In main control, all three screens displayed
different views of the green spot.
"Can we get more power? More magnification?"
Stone said.
"No. You remember we decided 440 was the top."
Stone swore. To obtain higher magnification,
they would have to go to a separate room,
or else use the electron microscopes. In either
case, it would take time.
Leavitt said, "Shall we start culture and
isolation?"
"Yes. Might as well."
Leavitt turned the viewers back down to twenty
power.
They could now see that there were four areas
of interest, three isolated green patches,
and the rock with its indentation. On the
control console, he pressed a button marked
CULTURE, and a tray from the side of the room
slid out, revealing stacks of circular, plastic-covered
petri dishes. Inside each dish was a thin
layer of growth medium.
The Wildfire project employed almost every
known growth medium. The media were jellied
compounds containing various nutrients on
which bacteria would feed and multiply. Along
with the usual laboratory standbys-- horse
and sheep blood agar, chocolate agar, simplex,
Sabourad's medium-- there were thirty diagnostic
media, containing various sugars and minerals.
Then there were forty-three specialized culture
media, including those for growth of tubercule
bacilli and unusual fungi, as well as the
highly experimental media, designated by numbers:
ME-997, ME-423, ME-A12, and so on.
With the tray of media was a batch of sterile
swabs.
Using the mechanical hands, Stone picked up
the swabs singly and touched them to the capsule
surface, then to the media.
Leavitt punched data into the computer, so
that they would know later where each swab
had been taken. In this manner, they swabbed
the outer surface of the entire capsule, and
went to the interior. Very carefully, using
high viewer magnification, Stone took scrapings
from the green spots and transferred them
to the different media.
Finally, he used fine forceps to pick up the
rock and move it intact to a clean glass dish.
The whole process took better than two hours.
At the end of that time, Leavitt punched through
the MAXCULT computer program. This program
automatically instructed the machine in the
handling of the hundreds of petri dishes they
had collected. Some would be stored at room
temperature and pressure, with normal earth
atmosphere. Others would be subjected to heat
and cold; high pressure and vacuum; low oxygen
and high oxygen; light and dark. Assigning
the plates to the various culture boxes was
a job that would take a man days to work out.
The computer could do it in seconds.
When the program was running, Stone placed
the stacks of petri dishes on the conveyor
belt. They watched as the dishes moved off
to the culture boxes.
There was nothing further they could do, except
wait twenty-four to forty-eight hours, to
see what grew out.
"Meantime," Stone said, "we can begin analysis
of this piece of rock-- if it actually is
rock. How are you with an EM?"
"Rusty," Leavitt said. He had not used an
electron microscope for nearly a year.
"Then I'll prepare the specimen. We'll also
want mass spectrometry done. That's all computerized.
But before we do that, we ought to go to higher
power. What's the highest light magnification
we can get in Morphology?"
"A thousand diameters."
"Then let's do that first. Punch the rock
through to Morphology."
Leavitt looked down at the console and pressed
MORPHOLOGY. Stone's mechanical hands placed
the glass dish with the rock onto the conveyor
belt.
They looked at the wall clock behind them.
It showed 1100 hours; they had been working
for eleven straight hours.
"So far," Stone said, "so good."
Leavitt grinned, and crossed his fingers.
16. Autopsy
BURTON WAS WORKING IN THE AUTOPSY room. He
was nervous and tense, still bothered by his
memories of Piedmont. Weeks later, in reviewing
his work and his thoughts on Level V, he regretted
his inability to concentrate.
Because in his initial series of experiments,
Burton made several mistakes.
According to the protocol, he was required
to carry out autopsies on dead animals, but
he was also in charge of preliminary vector
experiments. In all fairness, Burton was not
the man to do this work; Leavitt would have
been better suited to it. But it was felt
that Leavitt was more useful working on preliminary
isolation and identification.
So the vector experiments fell to Burton.
They were reasonably simple and straightforward,
designed to answer the question of how the
disease was transmitted. Burton began with
a series of cages, lined up in a row. Each
had a separate air supply; the air supplies
could be interconnected in a variety of ways.
Burton placed the corpse of the dead Norway
rat, which was contained in an airtight cage,
alongside another cage containing a living
rat. He punched buttons; air was allowed to
pass freely from one cage to the other.
The living rat flopped over and died.
Interesting, he thought. Airborne transmission.
He hooked up a second cage with a live rat,
but inserted a Millipore filter between the
living and dead rat cages. This filter had
perforations 100 angstroms in diameter-- the
size of a small virus.
He opened the passage between the two cages.
The rat remained alive.
He watched for several moments, until he was
satisfied.
Whatever it was that transmitted the disease,
it was larger than a virus. He changed the
filter, replacing it with a larger one, and
then another still larger. He continued in
this way until the rat died.
The filter had allowed the agent to pass.
He checked it: two microns in diameter, roughly
the size of a small cell. He thought to himself
that he had just learned something very valuable
indeed: the size of the infectious agent.
This was important, for in a single simple
experiment he had ruled out the possibility
that a protein or a chemical molecule of some
kind was doing the damage. At Piedmont, he
and Stone had been concerned about a gas,
perhaps a gas released as waste from the living
organism.
Yet, clearly, no gas was responsible. The
disease was transmitted by something the size
of a cell that was very much bigger than a
molecule, or gas droplet.
The next step was equally simple-- to determine
whether dead animals were potentially infectious.
He took one of the dead rats and pumped the
air out of its cage. He waited until the air
was fully evacuated. In the pressure fall,
the rat ruptured, bursting open. Burton ignored
this.
When he was sure all air was removed, he replaced
the air with fresh, clean, filtered air. Then
he connected the cage to the cage of a living
animal.
Nothing happened.
Interesting, he thought. Using a remotely
controlled scalpel, he sliced open the dead
animal further, to make sure any organisms
contained inside the carcass would be released
into the atmosphere.
Nothing happened. The live rat scampered about
its cage happily.
The results were quite clear: dead animals
were not infectious. That was why, he thought,
the buzzards could chew at the Piedmont victims
and not die. Corpses could not transmit the
disease; only the bugs themselves, carried
in the air, could do so.
Bugs in the air were deadly.
Bugs in the corpse were harmless.
In a sense, this was predictable. It had to
do with theories of accommodation and mutual
adaptation between bacteria and man. Burton
had long been interested in this problem,
and had lectured on it at the Baylor Medical
School.
Most people, when they thought of bacteria,
thought of diseases. Yet the fact was that
only 3 percent of them produced human disease;
the rest were either harmless or beneficial.
In the human gut, for instance, there were
a variety of bacteria that were helpful to
the digestive process. Man needed them, and
relied upon them.
In fact, man lived in a sea of bacteria. They
were everywhere-- on his skin, in his ears
and mouth, down his lungs, in his stomach.
Everything he owned, anything he touched,
every breath he breathed, was drenched in
bacteria.
Bacteria were ubiquitous. Most of the time
you weren't aware of it.
And there was a reason. Both man and bacteria
had gotten used to each other, had developed
a kind of mutual immunity.
Each adapted to the other.
And this, in turn, for a very good reason.
It was a principle of biology that evolution
was directed toward increased reproductive
potential. A man easily killed by bacteria
was poorly adapted; he didn't live long enough
to reproduce.
A bacteria that killed its host was also poorly
adapted.
Because any parasite that kills its host is
a failure. It must die when the host dies.
The successful parasites were those that could
live off the host without killing him.
And the most successful hosts were those that
could tolerate the parasite, or even turn
it to advantage, to make it work for the host.
"The best adapted bacteria," Burton used to
say, "are the ones that cause minor diseases,
or none at all. You may carry the same single
cell of Strep. viridians on your body for
sixty or seventy years. During that time,
you are growing and reproducing happily; so
is the Strep. You can carry Staph. aureus
around, and pay only the price of some acne
and pimples. You can carry tuberculosis for
many decades; you can carry syphilis for a
lifetime. These last are not minor diseases,
but they are much less severe than they once
were, because both man and organism have adapted."
It was known, for instance, that syphilis
had been a virulent disease four hundred years
before, producing huge festering sores all
over the body, often killing in weeks.
But over the centuries, man and the spirochete
had learned to tolerate each other.
Such considerations were not so abstract and
academic as they seemed at first. In the early
planning of Wildfire, Stone had observed that
40 per cent of all human disease was caused
by microorganisms. Burton had countered by
noting that only 3 per cent of all microorganisms
caused disease.
Obviously, while much human misery was attributable
to bacteria, the chances of any particular
bacteria being dangerous to man were very
small. This was because the process of adaptation--
of fitting man to bacteria-- was complex.
"Most bacteria," Burton observed, "simply
can't live within a man long enough to harm
him. Conditions are, one way or another, unfavorable.
The body is too hot or too cold, too acid
or too alkaline, there is too much oxygen
or not enough.
Man's body is as hostile as Antarctica to
most bacteria."
This meant that the chances of an organism
from outer space being suited to harm man
were very slim. Everyone recognized this,
but felt that Wildfire had to be constructed
in any event. Burton certainly agreed, but
felt in an odd way that his prophecy had come
true.
Clearly, the bug they had found could kill
men. But it was not really adapted to men,
because it killed and died within the organism.
It could not be transmitted from corpse to
corpse. It existed for a second or two in
its host, and then died with it.
Satisfying intellectually, he thought.
But practically speaking they still had to
isolate it, understand it, and find a cure.
*** Burton already knew something about transmission,
and something about the mechanism of death:
clotting of the blood. The question remained--
How did the organisms get into the body?
Because transmission appeared to be airborne,
contact with skin and lungs seemed likely.
Possibly the organisms burrowed right through
the skin surface. Or they might be inhaled.
Or both.
How to determine it?
He considered putting protective suitings
around an experimental animal to cover all
but the mouth. That was possible, but it would
take a long time. He sat and worried about
the problem for an hour.
Then he hit upon a more likely approach.
He knew that the organism killed by clotting
blood. Very likely it would initiate clotting
at the point of entrance into the body. If
skin, clotting would start near the surface.
If lungs, it would begin in the chest, radiating
outward.
This was something he could test. By using
radioactively tagged blood proteins, and then
following his animals with scintillometer
scans, he could determine where in the body
the blood first clotted.
He prepared a suitable animal, choosing a
rhesus monkey because its anatomy was more
human than a rat's. He infused the radioactive
tagging substance, a magnesium isotope, into
the monkey and calibrated the scanner. After
allowing equilibration, he tied the monkey
down and positioned the scanner overhead.
He was now ready to begin.
The scanner would print out its results on
a series of human block outlines. He set the
computer printing program and then exposed
the rhesus to air containing the lethal microorganism.
Immediately, the printout began to clatter
out from the computer:
[graphic of disease spread in human body]
It was all over in three seconds. The graphic
printout told him what he needed to know,
that clotting began in the lungs and spread
outward through the rest of the body.
But there was an additional piece of information
gained.
Burton later said, "I had been concerned that
perhaps death and clotting did not coincide--
or at least did not coincide exactly. It seemed
impossible to me that death could occur in
three seconds, but it seemed even more unlikely
that the total blood volume of the body-five
quarts-could solidify in so short a period.
I was curious to know whether a single crucial
clot might form, in the brain, perhaps, and
the rest of the body clot at a slower pace."
Burton was thinking of the brain even at this
early stage of his investigation. In retrospect,
it is frustrating that he did not follow this
line of inquiry to its logical conclusion.
He was prevented from doing this by the evidence
of the scans, which told him that clotting
began in the lungs and progressed up the carotid
arteries to the brain one or two seconds later.
So Burton lost immediate interest in the brain.
And his mistake was compounded by his next
experiment.
***
It was a simple test, not part of the regular
Wildfire Protocol. Burton knew that death
coincided with blood clotting. If clotting
could be prevented, could death be avoided?
He took several rats and injected them with
heparin, an anticoagulating drug-- preventing
blood-clot formation.
Heparin was a rapid-acting drug widely used
in medicine; its actions were thoroughly understood.
Burton injected the drug intravenously in
varying amounts, ranging from a low-normal
dose to a massively excessive dose.
Then he exposed the rats to air containing
the lethal organism.
The first rat, with a low dose, died in five
seconds.
The others followed within a minute. A single
rat with a massive dose lived nearly three
minutes, but he also succumbed in the end.
Burton was depressed by the results. Although
death was delayed, it was not prevented. The
method of symptomatic treatment did not work.
He put the dead rats to one side, and then
made his crucial mistake.
Burton did not autopsy the anticoagulated
rats.
Instead, he turned his attention to the original
autopsy specimens, the first black Norway
rat and the first rhesus monkey to be exposed
to the capsule. He performed a complete autopsy
on these animals, but discarded the anticoagulated
animals.
It would be forty-eight hours before he realized
his error.
The autopsies he performed were careful and
good; he did them slowly, reminding himself
that he must overlook nothing.
He removed the internal organs from the rat
and monkey and examined each, removing samples
for both the light and electron microscopes.
To gross inspection, the animals had died
of total, intravascular coagulation. The arteries,
the heart, lungs, kidneys, liver and spleen--
all the blood-containing organs--
were rock-hard, solid. This was what he had
expected.
He carried his tissue slices across the room
to prepare frozen sections for microscopic
examination. As each section was completed
by his technician, he slipped it under the
microscope, examined it, and photographed
it.
The tissues were normal. Except for the clotted
blood, there was nothing unusual about them
at all. He knew that these same pieces of
tissue would now be sent to the microscopy
lab, where another technician would prepare
stained sections, using hematoxylin-eosin,
periodic acid-Schiff, and Zenker-formalin
stains. Sections of nerve would be stained
with Nissl and Cajal gold preparations. This
process would take an additional twelve to
fifteen hours. He could hope, of course, that
the stained sections would reveal something
more, but he had no reason to believe they
would.
Similarly, he was unenthusiastic about the
prospects for electron microscopy. The electron
microscope was a valuable tool, but occasionally
it made things more difficult, not easier.
The electron microscope could provide great
magnification and clear detail-but only if
you knew where to look. It was excellent for
examining a single cell, or part of a cell.
But first you had to know which cell to examine.
And there were billions of cells in a human
body.
At the end of ten hours of work, he sat back
to consider what he had learned. He drew up
a short list: 1. The lethal agent is approximately
1 micron in size.
Therefore it is not a gas or molecule, or
even a large protein or virus. It is the size
of a cell, and may actually be a cell of some
sort.
2. The lethal agent is transmitted by air.
Dead organisms are not infectious.
3. The lethal agent is inspired by the victim,
entering the lungs. There it presumably crosses
over into the bloodstream and starts coagulation.
4. The lethal agent causes death through coagulation.
This occurs within seconds, and coincides
with total coagulation of the entire body
vascular system.
5. Anticoagulant drugs do not prevent this
process.
6. No other pathologic abnormalities are known
to occur in the dying animal.
Burton looked at his list and shook his head.
Anticoagulants might not work, but the fact
was that something stopped the process. There
was a way that it could be done. He knew that.
Because two people had survived.
17. Recovery
AT 1147 HOURS, MARK HALL WAS BENT OVER THE
computer, staring at the console that showed
the laboratory results from Peter Jackson
and the infant. The computer was giving results
as they were finished by the automated laboratory
equipment; by now, nearly all results were
in.
The infant, Hall observed, was normal. The
computer did not mince words:
SUBJECT CODED-- INFANT-- SHOWS ALL LABORATORY
VALUES
WITHIN NORMAL LIMITS
However, Peter Jackson was another problem
entirely. His results were abnormal in several
respects.
SUBJECT CODED JACKSON, PETER
LABORATORY VALUES NOT WITHIN NORMAL LIMITS
FOLLOW
TEST : NORMAL : VALUE
HEMATOC : 38-54 : 21 INITIAL
25 REPEAT
29 REPEAT
33 REPEAT
37 REPEAT
BUN : 10-20 : 50
COUNTS RETIC : 1 : 6
BLOOD SMEAR SHOWS MANY IMMATURE ERYTHROCYTE
FORMS
TEST : NORMAL : VALUE
PRO TIME : L2 : 12
BLOOD PH : 7.40 : 7.31
SGOT : 40 : 75
SED RATE : 9 : 29
AMYLASE : 70-200 : 450
Some of the results were easy to understand,
others were not. The hematocrit, for example,
was rising because Jackson was receiving transfusions
of whole blood and packed red cells. The BUN,
or blood urea nitrogen, was a test of kidney
function and was mildly elevated, probably
because of decreased blood flow.
Other analyses were consistent with blood
loss. The reticulocyte count was up from 1
to 6 per cent. Jackson had been anemic for
some time. He showed immature red-cell forms,
which meant that his body was struggling to
replace lost blood, and so had to put young,
immature red cells into circulation.
The prothrombin time indicated that while
Jackson was bleeding from somewhere in his
gastrointestinal tract, he had no primary
bleeding problem: his blood clotted normally.
The sedimentation rate and SGOT were indices
of tissue destruction. Somewhere in Jackson's
body, tissues were dying off.
But the pH of the blood was a bit of a puzzle.
At 7.31, it was too acid, though not strikingly
so. Hall was at a loss to explain this. So
was the computer.
SUBJECT CODED JACKSON, PETER
DIAGNOSTIC PROBABILITIES
1. ACUTE AND CHRONIC BLOOD LOSS ETIOLOGY
GASTROINTESTINAL .884 NO OTHER STATISTICALLY
SIGNIFICANT
SOURCES.
2. ACIDOSIS ETIOLOGY UNEXPLAINED FURTHER DATA
REQUIRED
SUGGEST HISTORY
Hall read the printout and shrugged. The computer
might suggest he talk to the patient, but
that was easier said than done. Jackson was
comatose, and if he had ingested anything
to make his blood acid, they would not find
out until he revived.
On the other hand, perhaps he could test blood
gases. He turned to the computer and punched
in a request for blood gases.
The computer responded stubbornly.
PATIENT HISTORY PREFERABLE TO LABORATORY ANALYSES
Hall typed in: "Patient comatose."
The computer seemed to consider this, and
then flashed back:
PATIENT MONITORS NOT COMPATIBLE WITH COMA
-- EEG SHOWS
ALPHA WAVES DIAGNOSTIC OF SLEEP
"I'll be damned," Hall said. He looked through
the window and saw that Jackson was, indeed,
stirring sleepily.
He crawled down through the tunnel to his
plastic suit and leaned over the patient.
"Mr. Jackson, wake up..."
Slowly, he opened his eyes and stared at Hall.
He blinked, not believing.
"Don't be frightened," Hall said quietly.
"You're sick, and we have been taking care
of you. Do you feel better?"
Jackson swallowed, and nodded. He seemed afraid
to speak. But the pallor of his skin was gone;
his cheeks had a slight pinkish tinge; his
fingernails were no longer gray.
"How do you feel now?"
"Okay... Who are you?
"I am Dr. Hall. I have been taking care of
you. You were bleeding very badly. We had
to give you a transfusion."
He nodded, accepting this quite calmly. Somehow,
his manner rung a bell for Hall, who said,
"Has this happened to you before?"
"Yes," he said. "Twice."
"How did it happen before?"
"I don't know where I am," he said, looking
around the room. "Is this a hospital? Why
are you wearing that thing?"
"No, this isn't a hospital. It is a special
laboratory in Nevada."
"Nevada?" He closed his eyes and shook his
head. "But I'm in Arizona..."
"Not now. We brought you here, so we could
help you."
"How come that suit?"
"We brought you from Piedmont. There was a
disease in Piedmont. You are now in an isolation
chamber."
"You mean I'm contagious?"
"Well, we don't know for sure. But we must--"
"Listen," he said, suddenly trying to get
up, "this place gives me the creeps. I'm getting
out of here. I don't like it here."
He struggled in the bed, trying to move against
the straps. Hall pushed him back gently.
"Just relax, Mr. Jackson. Everything will
be all right, but you must relax. You've been
a sick man."
Slowly, Jackson lay back. Then: "I want a
cigarette."
"I'm afraid you can't have one."
"What the hell, I want one."
"I'm sorry, smoking is not allowed."
"Look here, young fella, when you've lived
as long as I have you'll know what you can
do and what you can't do. They told me before.
None of that Mexican food, no liquor, no butts.
I tried it for a spell. You know how that
makes a body feel? Terrible, just terrible."
"Who told you?"
"The doctors."
"What doctors?"
"Those doctors in Phoenix. Big fancy hospital,
all that shiny equipment and all those shiny
white uniforms. Real fancy hospital. I wouldn't
have gone there, except for my sister. She
insisted. She lives in Phoenix, you know,
with that husband of hers, George. Stupid
ninny. I didn't want no fancy hospital, I
just wanted to rest up, is all. But she insisted,
so I went."
"When was this?"
"Last year. June it was, or July."
"Why did you go to the hospital?"
"Why does anybody go to the hospital? I was
sick, dammit."
"What was your problem?"
"This damn stomach of mine, same as always."
"Bleeding?"
"Hell, bleeding. Every time I hiccoughed I
came up with blood. Never knew a body had
so much blood in it."
"Bleeding in your stomach?"
"Yeah. Like I said, I had it before. All these
needles stuck in you--" he nodded to the intravenous
lines-- "and all the blood going into you.
Phoenix last year, and then Tucson the year
before that. Now, Tucson was a right nice
place.
Right nice. Had me a pretty little nurse and
all." Abruptly, he closed his mouth. "How
old are you, son, anyhow? You don't seem old
enough to be a doctor.
"I'm a surgeon," Hall said.
"Surgeon! Oh no you don't. They kept trying
to get me to do it, and I kept saying, Not
on your sweet life. No indeedy.
Not taking it out of me."
"You've had an ulcer for two years?"
"A bit more. The pains started out of the
clear blue.
Thought I had a touch of indigestion, you
know, until the bleeding started up."
A two-year history, Hall thought. Definitely
ulcer, not cancer.
"And you went to the hospital?"
"Yep. Fixed me up fine. Warned me off spicy
foods and hard stuff and cigarettes. And I
tried, sonny, I sure did.
But it wasn't no good. A man gets used to
his pleasures.
"So in a year, you were back in the hospital."
"Yeah. Big old place in Phoenix, with that
stupid ninny George and my sister visiting
me every day. He's a book-learning fool, you
know. Lawyer. Talks real big, but he hasn't
got the sense God gave a grasshopper's behind."
"And they wanted to operate in Phoenix?"
"Sure they did. No offense, sonny, but any
doctor'll operate on you, give him half a
chance. It's the way they think. I just told
them I'd gone this far with my old stomach,
and I reckoned Id finish the stretch with
it."
"When did you leave the hospital?"
"Must have been early August sometime. First
week, or thereabouts."
"And when did you start smoking and drinking
and eating the wrong foods?"
"Now don't lecture me, sonny," Jackson said.
"I've been living for sixty-nine years, eating
all the wrong foods and doing all the wrong
things. I like it that way, and if I can't
keep it up, well then the hell with it."
"But you must have had pain," Hall said, frowning.
"Oh, sure, it kicked up some. Specially if
I didn't eat.
But I found a way to fix that.
"Yes?"
"Sure. They gave me this milk stuff at the
hospital, and wanted me to keep on with it.
Hundred times a day, in little sips. Milk
stuff. Tasted like chalk. But I found a better
thing."
"What was that?"
"Aspirin," Jackson said.
"Aspirin?"
"Sure. Works real nice."
"How much aspirin did you take?"
"Fair bit, toward the end. I was doing a bottle
a day.
You know them bottles it comes in?"
Hall nodded. No wonder the man was acid. Aspirin
was acetylsalicylic acid, and if it was taken
in sufficient quantities, it would acidify
you. Aspirin was a gastric irritant, and it
could exacerbate bleeding.
"Didn't anybody tell you aspirin would make
the bleeding worse?" he asked.
"Sure," Jackson said. "They told me. But I
didn't mind none. Because it stopped the pains,
see. That, plus a little squeeze."
"Squeeze?"
"Red-eye. You know."
Hall shook his head. He didn't know.
"Sterno. Pink lady. You take it, see, and
put it in cloth, and squeeze it out..."
Hall sighed. "You were drinking Sterno," he
said.
"Well, only when I couldn't get nothing else.
Aspirin and squeeze, see, really kills that
pain."
"Sterno isn't only alcohol. It's methanol,
too."
"Doesn't hurt you, does it?" Jackson asked,
in a voice suddenly concerned.
"As a matter of fact, it does. It can make
you go blind, and it can even kill you."
"Well, hell, it made me feel better, so I
took it,"
Jackson said.
"Did this aspirin and squeeze have any effect
on you? On your breathing?"
"Well, now you mention it, I was a tad short
of breath.
But what the hell, I don't need much breath
at my age."
Jackson yawned and closed his eyes.
"You're awful full of questions, boy. I want
to sleep now."
Hall looked at him, and decided the man was
right. It would be best to proceed slowly,
at least for a time. He crawled back down
the tunnel and out to the main room. He turned
to his assistant:
"Our friend Mr. Jackson has a two-year history
of ulcer.
We'd better keep the blood going in for another
couple of units, then we can stop and see
what's happening. Drop an NG
tube and start icewater lavage."
A gong rang, echoing softly through the room.
"What's that?"
"The twelve-hour mark. It means we have to
change our clothing. And it means you have
a conference."
"I do? Where?"
"The CR off the dining room."
Hall nodded, and left.
*** In delta sector, the computers hummed
and clicked softly, as Captain Arthur Morris
punched through a new program on the console.
Captain Morris was a programmer; he had been
sent to delta sector by the command on Level
I because no MCN messages had been received
for nine hours. It was possible, of course,
that there had been no priority transmissions;
but it was also unlikely.
And if there had been unreceived MCN messages,
then the computers were not functioning properly.
Captain Morris watched as the computer ran
its usual internal check program, which read
out as all circuits functioning.
Unsatisfied, he punched in the CHECKLIM program,
a more rigorous testing of the circuit banks.
It required 0.03
seconds for the machine to come back with
its answer: a row of five green lights blinked
on the console. He walked over to the teleprinter
and watched as it typed: MACHINE FUNCTION
ON ALL CIRCUITS WITHIN RATIONAL INDICES
He looked and nodded, satisfied. He could
not have known, as he stood before the teleprinter,
that there was indeed a fault, but that it
was purely mechanical, not electronic, and
hence could not be tested on the check programs.
The fault lay within the teleprinter box itself.
There, a sliver of paper from the edge of
the roll had peeled away and, curling upward,
had lodged between the bell and striker, preventing
the bell from ringing. It was for this reason
that no MCN transmissions had been recorded.
Neither machine nor man was able to catch
the error.
18. The Noon Conference
ACCORDING TO PROTOCOL, THE TEAM MET EVERY
twelve hours for a brief conference, at which
results were summarized and new directions
planned. In order to save time the conferences
were held in a small room off the cafeteria;
they could eat and talk at the same time.
Hall was the last to arrive. He slipped into
a chair behind his lunch-- two glasses of
liquid and three pills of different colors--
just as Stone said, "We'll hear from Burton
first."
Burton shuffled to his feet and in a slow,
hesitant voice outlined his experiments and
his results. He noted first that he had determined
the size of the lethal agent to be one micron.
Stone and Leavitt looked at each other. The
green flecks they had seen were much larger
than that; clearly, infection could be spread
by a mere fraction of the green fleck.
Burton next explained his experiments concerning
airborne transmission, and coagulation beginning
at the lungs. He finished with his attempts
at anticoagulation therapy.
"What about the autopsies?" Stone said. "What
did they show?"
"Nothing we don't already know. The blood
is clotted throughout. No other demonstrable
abnormalities at the light microscope level."
"And clotting is initiated at the lungs?"
"Yes. Presumably the organisms cross over
to the bloodstream there-- or they may release
a toxic substance, which crosses over. We
may have an answer when the stained sections
are finished. In particular, we will be looking
for damage to blood vessels, since this releases
tissue thromboplastin, and stimulates clotting
at the site of the damage."
Stone nodded and turned to Hall, who told
of the tests carried out on his two patients.
He explained that the infant was normal to
all tests and that Jackson had a bleeding
ulcer, for which he was receiving transfusions.
"He's revived," Hall said. "I talked with
him briefly."
Everyone sat up.
"Mr. Jackson is a cranky old goat of sixty-nine
who has a two-year history of ulcer. He's
bled out twice before: two years ago, and
again last year. Each time he was warned to
change his habits; each time he went back
to his old ways, and began bleeding again.
At the time of the Piedmont contact, he was
treating his problems with his own regimen:
a bottle of aspirin a day and some Sterno
on top of it. He says this left him a little
short of breath."
"And made him acidotic as hell," Burton said.
"Exactly."
Methanol, when broken down by the body, was
converted to formaldehyde and formic acid.
In combination with aspirin, it meant Jackson
was consuming great quantities of acid. The
body had to maintain its acid-base balance
within fairly narrow limits or death would
occur. One way to keep the balance was to
breathe rapidly, and blow off carbon dioxide,
decreasing carbonic acid in the body.
Stone said, "Could this acid have protected
him from the organism?"
Hall shrugged. "Impossible to say."
Leavitt said, "What about the infant? Was
it anemic?"
"No," Hall said. "But on the other hand, we
don't know for sure that it was protected
by the same mechanism. It might have something
entirely different."
"How about the acid-base balance of the child?"
"Normal," Hall said. "Perfectly normal. At
least it is now."
There was a moment of silence. Finally Stone
said,
"Well, you have some good leads here. The
problem remains to discover what, if anything,
that child and that old man have in common.
Perhaps, as you suggest, there is nothing
in common. But for a start, we have to assume
that they were protected in the same way,
by the same mechanism."
Hall nodded.
Burton said to Stone, "And what have you found
in the capsule?"
"We'd better show you," Stone said.
"Show us what?"
"Something we believe may represent the organism,"
Stone said.
*** The door said MORPHOLOGY. Inside, the
room was partitioned into a place for the
experimenters to stand, and a glass-walled
isolation chamber further in. Gloves were
provided so the men could reach into the chamber
and move instruments about.
Stone pointed to the glass dish, and the small
fleck of black inside it.
"We think this is our 'meteor,' " he said.
"We have found something apparently alive
on its surface. There were also other areas
within the capsule that may represent life.
We've brought the meteor in here to have a
look at it under the light microscope."
Reaching through with the gloves, Stone set
the glass dish into an opening in a large
chrome box, then withdrew his hands.
"The box," he said, "is simply a light microscope
fitted with the usual image intensifiers and
resolution scanners. We can go up to a thousand
diameters with it, projected on the screen
here."
Leavitt adjusted dials while Hall and the
others stared at the viewer screen.
"Ten power," Leavitt said.
On the screen, Hall saw that the rock was
jagged, blackish, dull. Stone pointed out
green flecks.
"One hundred power."
The green flecks were larger now, very clear.
"We think that's our organism. We have observed
it growing; it turns purple, apparently at
the point of mitotic division."
"Spectrum shift?"
"Of some kind."
"One thousand power," Leavitt said.
The screen was filled with a single green
spot, nestled down in the jagged hollows of
the rock. Hall noticed the surface of the
green, which was smooth and glistening, almost
oily.
"You think that's a single bacterial colony?"
"We can't be sure it's a colony in the conventional
sense," Stone said. "Until we heard Burton's
experiments, we didn't think it was a colony
at all. We thought it might be a single organism.
But obviously the single units have to be
a micron or less in size; this is much too
big. Therefore it is probably a larger structure--
perhaps a colony, perhaps something else."
As they watched, the spot turned purple, and
green again. "It's dividing now," Stone said.
"Excellent."
Leavitt switched on the cameras.
"Now watch closely."
The spot turned purple and held the color.
It seemed to expand slightly, and for a moment,
the surface broke into fragments, hexagonal
in shape, like a tile floor.
"Did you see that?"
"It seemed to break up."
"Into six-sided figures."
"I wonder," Stone said, "whether those figures
represent single units."
"Or whether they are regular geometric shapes
all the time, or just during division?"
"We'll know more," Stone said, "after the
EM." He turned to Burton. "Have you finished
your autopsies?"
"Yes."
"Can you work the spectrometer?"
"I think so."
"Then do that. It's computerized, anyway.
We'll want an analysis of samples of both
the rock and the green organism."
"You'll get me a piece?"
"Yes." Stone said to Leavitt: "Can you handle
the AA analyzer? "
"Yes."
"Same tests on that."
"And a fractionation?"
"I think so," Stone said. "But you'll have
to do that by hand."
Leavitt nodded; Stone turned back to the isolation
chamber and removed a glass dish from the
light microscope.
He set it to one side, beneath a small device
that looked like a miniature scaffolding.
This was the microsurgical unit.
Microsurgery was a relatively new skill in
biology-- the ability to perform delicate
operations on a single cell.
Using microsurgical techniques, it was possible
to remove the nucleus from a cell, or part
of the cytoplasm, as neatly and cleanly as
a surgeon performed an amputation.
The device was constructed to scale down human
hand movements into fine, precise miniature
motions. A series of gears and servomechanisms
carried out the reduction; the movement of
a thumb was translated into a shift of a knife
blade millionths of an inch.
Using a high magnification viewer, Stone began
to chip away delicately at the black rock,
until he had two tiny fragments. He set them
aside in separate glass dishes and proceeded
to scrape away two small fragments from the
green area.
Immediately, the green turned purple, and
expanded.
"It doesn't like you," Leavitt said, and laughed.
Stone frowned. "Interesting. Do you suppose
that's a nonspecific growth response, or a
trophic response to injury and irradiation?
"
"I think," Leavitt said, "that it doesn't
like to be poked at."
"We must investigate further," Stone said.
19. Crash
FOR ARTHUR MANCHEK, THERE WAS A CERTAIN kind
of horror in the telephone conversation. He
received it at home, having just finished
dinner and sat down in the living room to
read the newspapers. He hadn't seen a newspaper
in the last two days, he had been so busy
with the Piedmont business.
When the phone rang, he assumed that it must
be for his wife, but a moment later she came
in and said, "It's for you.
The base."
He had an uneasy feeling as he picked up the
receiver.
"Major Manchek speaking."
"Major, this is Colonel Burns at Unit Eight."
Unit Eight was the processing and clearing
unit of the base. Personnel checked in and
out through Unit Eight, and calls were transmitted
through it.
"Yes, Colonel?"
"Sir, we have you down for notification of
certain contingencies. " His voice was guarded;
he was choosing his words carefully on the
open line. "I'm informing you now of an RTM
crash forty-two minutes ago in Big Head, Utah."
Manchek frowned. Why was he being informed
of a routine training-mission crash? It was
hardly his province.
"What was it?"
"Phantom, Sir. En route San Francisco to Topeka."
"I see," Manchek said, though he did not see
at all.
"Sir, Goddard wanted you to be informed in
this instance so that you could join the post
team."
"Goddard? Why Goddard?" For a moment, as he
sat there in the living room, staring at the
newspaper headline absently--
NEW BERLIN CRISIS FEARED-- he thought that
the colonel meant Lewis Goddard, chief of
the codes section of Vandenberg. Then he realized
he meant Goddard Spaceflight Center, outside
Washington. Among other things, Goddard acted
as collating center for certain special projects
that fell between the province of Houston
and the governmental agencies in Washington.
"Sir," Colonel Burns said, "the Phantom drifted
off its flight plan forty minutes out of San
Francisco and passed through Area WF."
Manchek felt himself slowing down. A kind
of sleepiness came over him. "Area WF?"
"That is correct, Sir.
"When?"
"Twenty minutes before the crash."
"At what altitude?"
"Twenty-three thousand feet, Sir."
"When does the post team leave?"
"Half an hour, Sir, from the base."
"All right," Manchek said. "I'll be there."
He hung up and stared at the phone lazily.
He felt tired; he wished he could go to bed.
Area WF was the designation for the cordoned-off
radius around Piedmont, Arizona.
They should have dropped the bomb, he thought.
They should have dropped it two days ago.
At the time of the decision to delay Directive
7-12, Manchek had been uneasy. But officially
he could not express an opinion, and he had
waited in vain for the Wildfire team, now
located in the underground laboratory, to
complain to Washington. He knew Wildfire had
been notified; he had seen the cable that
went to all security units; it was quite explicit.
Yet for some reason Wildfire had not complained.
Indeed, they had paid no attention to it whatever.
Very odd.
And now there was a crash. He lit his pipe
and sucked on it, considering the possibilities.
Overwhelming was the likelihood that some
green trainee had daydreamed, gone off his
flight plan, panicked, and lost control of
the plane. It had happened before, hundreds
of times. The post team, a group of specialists
who went out to the site of the wreckage to
investigate all crashes, usually returned
a verdict of
"Agnogenic Systems Failure." It was military
doubletalk for crash of unknown cause; it
did not distinguish between mechanical failure
and pilot failure, but it was known that most
systems failures were pilot failures. A man
could not afford to daydream when he was running
a complex machine at two thousand miles an
hour. The proof lay in the statistics: though
only 9 per cent of flights occurred after
the pilot had taken a leave or weekend pass,
these flights accounted for 27 per cent of
casualties.
Manchek's pipe went out. He stood, dropping
the newspaper, and went into the kitchen to
tell his wife he was leaving.
*** "This is movie country," somebody said,
looking at the sandstone cliffs, the brilliant
reddish hues, against the deepening blue of
the sky. And it was true, many movies had
been filmed in this area of Utah. But Manchek
could not think of movies now. As he sat in
the back of the limousine moving away from
the Utah airport, he considered what he had
been told.
During the flight from Vandenberg to southern
Utah, the post team had heard transcripts
of the flight transmission between the Phantom
and Topeka Central. For the most part it was
dull, except for the final moments before
the pilot crashed.
The pilot had said: "Something is wrong."
And then, a moment later, "My rubber air hose
is dissolving. It must be the vibration. It's
just disintegrating to dust."
Perhaps ten seconds after that, a weak, fading
voice said, "Everything made of rubber in
the cockpit is dissolving."
There were no further transmissions.
Manchek kept hearing that brief communication,
in his mind, over and over. Each time, it
sounded more bizarre and terrifying.
He looked out the window at the cliffs. The
sun was setting now, and only the tops of
the cliffs were lighted by fading reddish
sunlight; the valleys lay in darkness. He
looked ahead at the other limousine, raising
a small dust cloud as it carried the rest
of the team to the crash site.
"I used to love westerns," somebody said.
"They were all shot out here. Beautiful country."
Manchek frowned. It was astonishing to him
how people could spend so much time on irrelevancies.
Or perhaps it was just denial, the unwillingness
to face reality.
The reality was cold enough: the Phantom had
strayed into Area WF, going quite deep for
a matter of six minutes before the pilot realized
the error and pulled north again.
However, once in WF, the plane had begun to
lose stability.
And it had finally crashed.
He said, "Has Wildfire been informed?"
A member of the group, a psychiatrist with
a crew cut--
all post teams had at least one psychiatrist--
said, "You mean the germ people?"
"Yes."
"They've been told," somebody else said. "It
went out on the scrambler an hour ago."
Then, thought Manchek, there would certainly
be a reaction from Wildfire. They could not
afford to ignore this.
Unless they weren't reading their cables.
It had never occurred to him before, but perhaps
it was possible-- they weren't reading the
cables. They were so absorbed in their work,
they just weren't bothering.
"There's the wreck," somebody said. "Up ahead."
*** Each time Manchek saw a wreck, he was
astonished.
Somehow, one never got used to the idea of
the sprawl, the mess, the destructive force
of a large metal object striking the earth
at thousands of miles an hour. He always expected
a neat, tight little clump of metal, but it
was never that way.
The wreckage of the Phantom was scattered
over two square miles of desert. Standing
next to the charred remnants of the left wing,
he could barely see the others, on the horizon,
near the right wing. Everywhere he looked,
there were bits of twisted metal, blackened,
paint peeling. He saw one with a small portion
of a sign still intact, the stenciled letters
clear: DO NOT. The rest was gone.
It was impossible to make anything of the
remnants. The fuselage, the cockpit, the canopy
were all shattered into a million fragments,
and the fires had disfigured everything.
As the sun faded, he found himself standing
near the remains of the tail section, where
the metal still radiated heat from the smoldering
fire. Half-buried in the sand he saw a bit
of bone; he picked it up and realized with
horror that it was human. Long, and broken,
and charred at one end, it had obviously come
from an arm or a leg. But it was oddly clean--
there was no flesh remaining, only smooth
bone.
Darkness descended, and the post team took
out their flashlights, the half-dozen men
moving among, smoking metal, flashing their
yellow beams of light about.
It was late in the evening when a biochemist
whose name he did not know came up to talk
with him.
"You know," the biochemist said, "it's funny.
That transcript about the rubber in the cockpit
dissolving."
"How do you mean?"
"Well, no rubber was used in this airplane.
It was all a synthetic plastic compound. Newly
developed by Ancro; they're quite proud of
it. It's a polymer that has some of the same
characteristics as human tissue. Very flexible,
lots of applications. "
Manchek said, "Do you think vibrations could
have caused the disintegration."
"No," the man said. "There are thousands of
Phantoms flying around the world. They all
have this plastic. None of them has ever had
this trouble."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning that I don't know what the hell is
going on,"
the biochemist said.
20. Routine
SLOWLY, THE WILDFIRE INSTALLATION SETTLED
into a routine, a rhythm of work in the underground
chambers of a laboratory where there was no
night or day, morning or afternoon. The men
slept when they were tired, awoke when they
were refreshed, and carried on their work
in a number of different areas.
Most of this work was to lead nowhere. They
knew that, and accepted it in advance. As
Stone was fond of saying, scientific research
was much like prospecting: you went out and
you hunted, armed with your maps and your
instruments, but in the end your preparations
did not matter, or even your intuition. You
needed your luck, and whatever benefits accrued
to the diligent, through sheer, grinding hard
work.
Burton stood in the room that housed the spectrometer
along with several other pieces of equipment
for radioactivity assays, ratio-density photometry,
thermocoupling analysis, and preparation for
X-ray crystallography.
The spectrometer employed in Level V was the
standard Whittington model K-5. Essentially
it consisted of a vaporizer, a prism, and
a recording screen. The material to be tested
was set in the vaporizer and burned. The light
from its burning then passed through the prism,
where it was broken down to a spectrum that
was projected onto a recording screen. Since
different elements gave off different wavelengths
of light as they burned, it was possible to
analyze the chemical makeup of a substance
by analyzing the spectrum of light produced.
In theory it was simple, but in practice the
reading of spectrometrograms was complex and
difficult. No one in this Wildfire laboratory
was trained to do it well. Thus results were
fed directly into a computer, which performed
the analysis. Because of the sensitivity of
the computer, rough percentage compositions
could also be determined.
Burton placed the first chip, from the black
rock, onto the vaporizer and pressed the button.
There was a single bright burst of intensely
hot light; he turned away, avoiding the brightness,
and then put the second chip onto the lamp.
Already, he knew, the computer was analyzing
the light from the first chip.
He repeated the process with the green fleck,
and then checked the time. The computer was
now scanning the self-developing photographic
plates, which were ready for viewing in seconds.
But the scan itself would take two hours--
the electric eye was very slow.
Once the scan was completed, the computer
would analyze results and print the data within
five seconds.
The wall clock told him it was now 1500 hours--
three in the afternoon. He suddenly realized
he was tired. He punched in instructions to
the computer to wake him when analysis was
finished. Then he went off to bed.
*** In another room, Leavitt was carefully
feeding similar chips into a different machine,
an amino-acid analyzer. As he did so, he smiled
slightly to himself, for he could remember
how it had been in the old days, before AA
analysis was automatic.
In the early fifties, the analysis of amino
acids in a protein might take weeks, or even
months. Sometimes it took years. Now it took
hours-- or at the very most, a day-- and it
was fully automatic.
Amino acids were the building blocks of proteins.
There were twenty-four known amino acids,
each composed of a half-dozen molecules of
carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen. Proteins
were made by stringing these amino acids together
in a line, like a freight train. The order
of stringing determined the nature of the
protein-- whether it was insulin, hemoglobin,
or growth hormone. All proteins were composed
of the same freight cars, the same units.
Some proteins had more of one kind of car
than another, or in a different order. But
that was the only difference. The same amino
acids, the same freight cars, existed in human
proteins and flea proteins.
That fact had taken approximately twenty years
to discover.
But what controlled the order of amino acids
in the protein? The answer turned out to be
DNA, the genetic-coding substance, which acted
like a switching manager in a freightyard.
That particular fact had taken another twenty
years to discover.
But then once the amino acids were strung
together, they began to twist and coil upon
themselves; the analogy became closer to a
snake than a train. The manner of coiling
was determined by the order of acids, and
was quite specific: a protein had to be coiled
in a certain way, and no other, or it failed
to function.
Another ten years.
Rather odd, Leavitt thought. Hundreds of laboratories,
thousands of workers throughout the world,
all bent on discovering such essentially simple
facts. It had all taken years and years, decades
of patient effort.
And now there was this machine. The machine
would not, of course, give the precise order
of amino acids. But it would give a rough
percentage composition: so much valine, so
much arginine, so much cystine and proline
and leucine. And that, in turn, would give
a great deal of information.
Yet it was a shot in the dark, this machine.
Because they had no reason to believe that
either the rock or the green organism was
composed even partially of proteins. True,
every living thing on earth had at least some
proteins-- but that didn't mean life elsewhere
had to have it.
For a moment, he tried to imagine life without
proteins.
It was almost impossible: on earth, proteins
were part of the cell wall, and comprised
all the enzymes known to man. And life without
enzymes? Was that possible?
He recalled the remark of George Thompson,
the British biochemist, who had called enzymes
"the matchmakers of life."
It was true; enzymes acted as catalysts for
all chemical reactions, by providing a surface
for two molecules to come together and react
upon. There were hundreds of thousands, perhaps
millions, of enzymes, each existing solely
to aid a single chemical reaction. Without
enzymes, there could be no chemical reactions.
Without chemical reactions, there could be
no life.
Or could there?
It was a long-standing problem. Early in planning
Wildfire, the question had been posed: How
do you study a form of life totally unlike
any you know? How would you even know it was
alive?
This was not an academic matter. Biology,
as George Wald had said, was a unique science
because it could not define its subject matter.
Nobody had a definition for life. Nobody knew
what it was, really. The old definitions--
an organism that showed ingestion, excretion,
metabolism, reproduction, and so on-- were
worthless. One could always find exceptions.
The group had finally concluded that energy
conversion was the hallmark of life. All living
organisms in some way took in energy-- as
food, or sunlight-- and converted it to another
form of energy, and put it to use. (Viruses
were the exception to this rule, but the group
was prepared to define viruses as nonliving.)
For the next meeting, Leavitt was asked to
prepare a rebuttal to the definition. He pondered
it for a week, and returned with three objects:
a swatch of black cloth, a watch, and a piece
of granite. He set them down before the group
and said, "Gentleman, I give you three living
things."
He then challenged the team to prove that
they were not living. He placed the black
cloth in the sunlight; it became warm. This,
he announced, was an example of energy conversion-radiant
energy to heat.
It was objected that this was merely passive
energy absorption, not conversion. It was
also objected that the conversion, if it could
be called that, was not purposeful.
It served no function.
"How do you know it is not purposeful?" Leavitt
had demanded.
They then turned to the watch. Leavitt pointed
to the radium dial, which glowed in the dark.
Decay was taking place, and light was being
produced.
The men argued that this was merely release
of potential energy held in unstable electron
levels. But there was growing confusion; Leavitt
was making his point.
Finally, they came to the granite. "This is
alive,"
Leavitt said. "It is living, breathing, walking,
and talking.
Only we cannot see it, because it is happening
too slowly.
Rock has a lifespan of three billion years.
We have a lifespan of sixty or seventy years.
We cannot see what is happening to this rock
for the same reason that we cannot make out
the tune on a record being played at the rate
of one revolution every century. And the rock,
for its part, is not even aware of our existence
because we are alive for only a brief instant
of its lifespan. To it, we are like flashes
in the dark."
He held up his watch.
His point was clear enough, and they revised
their thinking in one important respect. They
conceded that it was possible that they might
not be able to analyze certain life forms.
It was possible that they might not be able
to make the slightest headway, the least beginning,
in such an analysis.
But Leavitt's concerns extended beyond this,
to the general problem of action in uncertainty.
He recalled reading Talbert Gregson's "Planning
the Unplanned" with close attention, poring
over the complex mathematical models the author
had devised to analyze the problem. It was
Gregson's conviction that:
All decisions involving uncertainty fall within
two distinct categories-- those with contingencies,
and those without. The latter are distinctly
more difficult to deal with.
Most decisions, and nearly all human interaction,
can be incorporated into a contingencies model.
For example, a President may start a war,
a man may sell his business, or divorce his
wife. Such an action will produce a reaction;
the number of reactions is infinite but the
number of probable reactions is manageably
small. Before making a decision, an individual
can predict various reactions, and he can
assess his original, or primary-mode, decision
more effectively.
But there is also a category which cannot
be analyzed by contingencies. This category
involves events and situations which are absolutely
unpredictable, not merely disasters of all
sorts, but those also including rare moments
Of discovery and insight, such as those which
produced the laser, or penicillin. Because
these moments are unpredictable, they cannot
be planned for in any logical manner. The
mathematics are wholly unsatisfactory.
We may only take comfort in the fact that
such situations, for ill or for good, are
exceedingly rare.
*** Jeremy Stone, working with infinite patience,
took a flake of the green material and dropped
it into molten plastic. The plastic was the
size and shape of a medicine capsule. He waited
until the flake was firmly imbedded, and poured
more plastic over it. He then transferred
the plastic pill to the curing room.
Stone envied the others their mechanized routines.
The preparation of samples for electron microscopy
was still a delicate task requiring skilled
human hands; the preparation of a good sample
was as demanding a, craft as that ever practiced
by an artisan-- and took almost as long to
learn.
Stone had worked for five years before he
became proficient at it.
The plastic was cured in a special high-speed
processing unit, but it would still take five
hours to harden to proper consistency. The
curing room would maintain a constant temperature
of 61 deg C. with a relative humidity of 10
per cent.
Once the plastic was hardened, he would scrape
it away, and then flake off a small bit of
green with a microtome.
This would go into the electron microscope.
The flake would have to be of the right thickness
and size, a small round shaving 1,500 angstroms
in depth, no more.
Only then could he look at the green stuff,
whatever it was, at sixty thousand diameters
magnification.
That, he thought, would be interesting.
In general, Stone believed the work was going
well. They were making fine progress, moving
forward in several promising lines of inquiry.
But most important, they had time. There was
no rush, no panic, no need to fear.
The bomb had been dropped on Piedmont. That
would destroy airborne organisms, and neutralize
the source of infection. Wildfire was the
only place that any further infection could
spread from, and Wildfire was specifically
designed to prevent that. Should isolation
be broken in the lab, the areas that were
contaminated would automatically seal off.
Within a half-second, sliding airtight doors
would close, producing a new configuration
for the lab.
This was necessary because past experience
in other laboratories working in so-called
axenic, or germ-free, atmospheres indicated
that contamination occurred in 15 per cent
of cases. The reasons were usually structural--
a seal burst, a glove tore, a seam split--
but the contamination occurred, nonetheless.
At Wildfire, they were prepared for that eventuality.
But if it did not happen, and the odds were
it would not, then they could work safely
here for an indefinite period.
They could spend a month, even a year, working
on the organism. There was no problem, no
problem at all.
*** Hall walked through the corridor, looking
at the atomic-detonator substations. He was
trying to memorize their positions. There
were five on the floor, positioned at intervals
along the central corridor. Each was the same:
small silver boxes no larger than a cigarette
packet. Each had a lock for the key, a green
light that was burning, and a dark-red light.
Burton had explained the mechanism earlier.
"There are sensors in all the duct systems
and in all the labs. They monitor the air
in the rooms by a variety of chemical, electronic,
and straight bioassay devices. The bioassay
is just a mouse whose heartbeat is being monitored.
If anything goes wrong with the sensors, the
lab automatically seals off.
If the whole floor is contaminated, it will
seal off, and the atomic device will cut in.
When that happens, the green light will go
out, and the red light will begin to blink.
That signals the start of the three-minute
interval. Unless you lock in your key, the
bomb will go off at the end of three minutes."
"And I have to do it myself?"
Burton nodded. "The key is steel. It is conductive.
The lock has a system which measures the capacitance
of the person holding the key. It responds
to general body size, particularly weight,
and also the salt content of sweat. It's quite
specific, actually, for you."
"So I'm really the only one?"
"You really are. And you only have one key.
But there's a complicating problem. The blueprints
weren't followed exactly; we only discovered
the error after the lab was finished and the
device was installed. But there is an error:
we are short three detonator substations.
There are only five, instead of eight."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning that if the floor starts to contaminate,
you must rush to locate yourself at a substation.
Otherwise there is a chance you could be sealed
off in a sector without a substation. And
then, in the event of a malfunction of the
bacteriologic sensors, a false positive malfunction,
the laboratory could be destroyed needlessly."
"That seems a rather serious error in planning."
"It turns out," Burton said, "that three new
substations were going to be added next month.
But that won't help us now. Just keep the
problem in mind, and everything'll be all
right."
*** Leavitt awoke quickly, rolling out of
bed and starting to dress. He was excited:
he had just had an idea. A fascinating thing,
wild, crazy, but fascinating as hell.
It had come from his dream.
He had been dreaming of a house, and then
of a city-- a huge, complex, interconnecting
city around the house. A man lived in the
house, with his family; the man lived and
worked and commuted within the city, moving
about, acting, reacting.
And then, in the dream, the city was suddenly
eliminated, leaving only the house. How different
things were then! A single house, standing
alone, without the things it needed-- water,
plumbing, electricity, streets. And a family,
cut off from the supermarkets, schools, drugstores.
And the husband, whose work was in the city,
interrelated to others in the city, suddenly
stranded.
The house became a different organism altogether.
And from that to the Wildfire organism was
but a single step, a single leap of the imagination...
He would have to discuss it with Stone. Stone
would laugh, as usual-- Stone always laughed--
but he would also pay attention. Leavitt knew
that, in a sense, he operated as the idea
man for the team. The man who would always
provide the most improbable, mind-stretching
theories.
Well, Stone would at least be interested.
He glanced at the clock. 2200 hours. Getting
on toward midnight. He hurried to dress.
He took out a new paper suit and slipped his
feet in.
The paper was cool against his bare flesh.
And then suddenly it was warm. A strange sensation.
He finished dressing, stood, and zipped up
the one-piece suit.
As he left, he looked once again at the clock.
2210.
Oh, geez, he thought.
It had happened again. And this time, for
ten minutes.
What had gone on? He couldn't remember. But
it was ten minutes gone, disappeared, while
he had dressed-- an action that shouldn't
have taken more than thirty seconds.
He sat down again on the bed, trying to remember,
but he could not.
Ten minutes gone.
It was terrifying. Because it was happening
again, though he had hoped it would not. It
hadn't happened for months, but now, with
the excitement, the odd hours, the break in
his normal hospital schedule, it was starting
once more.
For a moment, he considered telling the others,
then shook his head. He'd be all right. It
wouldn't happen again.
He was going to be just fine.
He stood. He had been on his way to see Stone,
to talk to Stone about something. Something
important and exciting.
He paused.
He couldn't remember.
The idea, the image, the excitement was gone.
Vanished, erased from his mind.
He knew then that he should tell Stone, admit
the whole thing. But he knew what Stone would
say and do if he found out. And he knew what
it would mean to his future, to the rest of
his life, once the Wildfire Project was finished.
Everything would change, if people knew. He
couldn't ever be normal again-- he would have
to quit his job, do other things, make endless
adjustments. He couldn't even drive a car.
No, he thought. He would not say anything.
And he would be all right: as long as he didn't
look at blinking lights.
*** Jeremy Stone was tired, but knew he was
not ready for sleep. He paced up and down
the corridors of the laboratory, thinking
about the birds at Piedmont. He ran over everything
they had done: how they had seen the birds,
how they had gassed them with chlorazine,
and how the birds had died. He went over it
in his mind, again and again.
Because he was missing something. And that
something was bothering him.
At the time, while he had been inside Piedmont
itself, it had bothered him. Then he had forgotten,
but his nagging doubts had been revived at
the noon conference, while Hall was discussing
the patients.
Something Hall had said, some fact he had
mentioned, was related, in some off way, to
the birds. But what was it? What was the exact
thought, the precise words, that had triggered
the association?
Stone shook his head. He simply couldn't dig
it out. The clues, the connection, the keys
were all there, but he couldn't bring them
to the surface.
He pressed his hands to his head, squeezing
against the bones, and he damned his brain
for being so stubborn.
Like many intelligent men, Stone took a rather
suspicious attitude toward his own brain,
which he saw as a precise and skilled but
temperamental machine. He was never surprised
when the machine failed to perform, though
he feared those moments, and hated them. In
his blackest hours, Stone doubted the utility
of all thought, and all intelligence. There
were times when he envied the laboratory rats
he worked with; their brains were so simple.
Certainly they did not have the intelligence
to destroy themselves; that was a peculiar
invention of man.
He often argued that human intelligence was
more trouble than it was worth. It was more
destructive than creative, more confusing
than revealing, more discouraging than satisfying,
more spiteful than charitable.
There were times when he saw man, with his
giant brain, as equivalent to the dinosaurs.
Every schoolboy knew that dinosaurs had outgrown
themselves, had become too large and ponderous
to be viable. No one ever thought to consider
whether the human brain, the most complex
structure in the known universe, making fantastic
demands on the human body in terms of nourishment
and blood, was not analogous. Perhaps the
human brain had become a kind of dinosaur
for man and perhaps, in the end, would prove
his downfall.
Already, the brain consumed one quarter of
the body's blood supply. A fourth of all blood
pumped from the heart went to the brain, an
organ accounting for only a small percentage
of body mass. If brains grew larger, and better,
then perhaps they would consume more-- perhaps
so much that, like an infection, they would
overrun their hosts and kill the bodies that
transported them.
Or perhaps, in their infinite cleverness,
they would find a way to destroy themselves
and each other. There were times when, as
he sat at State Department or Defense Department
meetings, and looked around the table, he
saw nothing more than a dozen gray, convoluted
brains sitting on the table. No flesh and
blood, no hands, no eyes, no fingers.
No mouths, no sex organs-- all these were
superfluous.
Just brains. Sitting around, trying to decide
how to outwit other brains, at other conference
tables.
Idiotic.
He shook his head, thinking that he was becoming
like Leavitt, conjuring up wild and improbable
schemes.
Yet, there was a sort of logical consequence
to Stone's ideas. If you really feared and
hated your brain, you would attempt to destroy
it. Destroy your own, and destroy others.
"I'm tired," he said aloud, and looked at
the wall clock. It was 2340 hours-- almost
time for the midnight conference.
21. The Midnight Conference
THEY MET AGAIN, IN THE SAME ROOM, IN THE SAME
way. Stone glanced at the others and saw they
were tired; no one, including himself, was
getting enough sleep.
"We're going at this too hard," he said. "We
don't need to work around the clock, and we
shouldn't do so. Tired men will make mistakes,
mistakes in thinking and mistakes in action.
We'll start to drop things, to screw things
up, to work sloppily. And we'll make wrong
assumptions, draw incorrect inferences. That
mustn't happen."
The team agreed to get at least six hours
sleep in each twenty-four-hour period. That
seemed reasonable, Since there was no problem
on the surface; the infection at Piedmont
had been halted by the atomic bomb.
Their belief might never have been altered
had not Leavitt suggested that they file for
a code name. Leavitt stated that they had
an organism and that it required a code.
The others agreed.
In a corner of the room stood the scrambler
typewriter.
It had been clattering all day long, typing
out material sent in from the outside. It
was a two-way machine; material transmitted
had to be typed in lowercase letters, while
received material was printed out in capitals.
No one had really bothered to look at the
input since their arrival on Level V. They
were all too busy; besides, most of the input
had been routine military dispatches that
were sent to Wildfire but did not concern
it. This was because Wildfire was one of the
Cooler Circuit substations, known facetiously
as the Top Twenty. These substations were
linked to the basement of the White House
and were the twenty most important strategic
locations in the country. Other substations
included Vandenberg, Kennedy, NORAD, Patterson,
Detrick, and Virginia Key.
Stone went to the typewriter and printed out
his message. The message was directed by computer
to Central Codes, a station that handled the
coding of all projects subsumed under the
system of Cooler.
The transmission was as follows:
open line to transmit
UNDERSTAND TRANSMIT STATE ORIGIN
stone project wildfire
STATE DESTINATION
central codes
UNDERSTAND CENTRAL CODES
message follows
SEND
have isolated extraterrestrial organism secondary
to return of scoop seven wish coding for organism
end message TRANSMITTED
There followed a long pause. The scrambler
teleprinter hummed and clicked, but printed
nothing. Then the typewriter began to spit
out a message on a long roll of paper.
MESSAGE FROM CENTRAL CODES FOLLOWS
UNDERSTAND ISOLATION OF NEW ORGANISM PLEASE
CHARACTERIZE
END MESSAGE
Stone frowned. "But we don't know enough."
However, the teleprinter was impatient:
TRANSMIT REPLY TO CENTRAL CODES
After a moment, Stone typed back:
message to central codes follows
cannot characterize at this time but suggest
tentative classification as bacterial strain
end message
MESSAGE FROM CENTRAL CODES FOLLOWS
UNDERSTAND REQUEST FOR BACTERIAL CLASSIFICATION
OPENING NEW CATEGORY CLASSIFICATION ACCORDING
TO ICDA STANDARD REFERENCE CODE FOR YOUR ORGANISM
WILL BE ANDROMEDA CODE WILL READ OUT ANDROMEDA
FILED UNDER ICDA LISTINGS AS 053.9 [UNSPECIFIED
ORGANISM]
FURTHER FILING AS E866 [AIRCRAFT ACCIDENT]
THIS FILING
REPRESENTS CLOSEST FIT TO ESTABLISHED CATEGORIES
Stone smiled. "It seems we don't fit the established
categories."
He typed back:
understand coding as andromeda strain
accepted
end message
TRANSMITTED
"Well," Stone said, "that's that."
Burton had been looking over the sheaves of
paper behind the teleprinter. The teleprinter-wrote
its messages out on a long roll of paper,
which fell into a box. There were dozens of
yards of paper that no one had looked at.
Silently, he read a single message, tore it
from the rest of the strip, and handed it
to Stone.
1134/443/KK/Y-U/9
INFORMATION STATUS
TRANSMIT TO ALL STATIONS
CLASSIFICATION TOP SECRET
REQUEST FOR DIRECTIVE 7-12 RECEIVED TODAY
BY EXEC AND
NBC-COBRA
ORIGIN VANDENBERG/WILDFIRE CORROBORATION NASA/AMC
AUTHORITY PRIMARY MANCHEK, ARTHUR, MAJOR USA
IN CLOSED SESSION THIS DIRECTIVE HAS NOT BEEN
ACTED UPON
FINAL DECISION HAS BEEN POSTPONED TWENTY FOUR
TO FORTY EIGHT
HOURS RECONSIDERATION AT THAT TIME ALTERNATIVE
TROOP
DEPLOYMENT ACCORDING TO DIRECTIVE 7-11 NOW
IN EFFECT
NO NOTIFICATION
END MESSAGE
TRANSMIT ALL STATIONS
CLASSIFICATION TOP SECRET
END TRANSMISSION
The team stared at the message in disbelief.
No one said anything for a long time. Finally,
Stone ran his fingers along the upper corner
of the sheet and said in a low voice,
"This was a 443. That makes it an MCN transmission.
It should have rung the bell down here."
"There's no bell on this teleprinter," Leavitt
said.
"Only on Level I, at sector five. But they're
supposed to notify us whenever--"
"Get sector five on the intercom," Stone said.
***
Ten minutes later, the horrified Captain Mortis
had connected Stone to Robertson, the head
of the President's Science Advisory Committee,
who was in Houston.
Stone spoke for several minutes with Robertson,
pressed initial surprise that he hadn't heard
from earlier. There then followed a heated
discussion of the President's decision not
to call a Directive 7-12.
"The President doesn't trust scientists,"
Roberts( "He doesn't feel comfortable with
them."
"It's your job to make him comfortable," Stone
said,
"and you haven't been doing it."
"Jeremy--"
"There are only two sources of contamination,"
Stone said. "Piedmont, and this installation.
We're adequately protected here, but Piedmont--"
"Jeremy, I agree the bomb should have been
dropped."
"Then work on him. Stay on his back. Get him
7-12 as soon as possible. It may already be
too late."
Robertson said he would, and would call back.
Before he hung up, he said, "By the way, any
thoughts about the Phantom?"
"The what?"
"The Phantom that crashed in Utah."
There was a moment of confusion before the
Wildfire group understood that they had missed
still another important teleprinter message.
"Routine training mission. The jet strayed
over the closed zone, though. That's the puzzle."
"Any other information?"
"The pilot said something about his air hose
dissolving.
Vibration, or something. His last communication
was bizarre."
"Like he was crazy?" Stone asked.
"Like that," Robertson said.
"Is there a team at the wreck site now?"
"Yes, we're waiting for information from them.
It could come at any time."
"Pass it along," Stone said. And then he stopped.
"If a 7-11 was ordered, instead of a 7-12,"
he said, "then you have troops in the area
around Piedmont."
"National Guard, yes."
"That's pretty damned stupid," Stone said.
"Look, Jeremy, I agree--"
"When the first one dies," Stone said, "I
want to know when, and how. And most especially,
where. The wind there is from the east predominantly.
If you start losing men west of Piedmont--"
"I'll call, Jeremy," Robertson said.
The conversation ended, and the team shuffled
out of the conference room. Hall remained
behind a moment, going through some of the
rolls in the box, noting the messages. The
majority were unintelligible to him, a weird
set of nonsense messages and codes. After
a time he gave up; he did so before he came
upon the reprinted news item concerning the
peculiar death of Officer Martin Willis, of
the Arizona highway patrol.
DAY 4
Spread
22. The Analysis
WITH THE NEW PRESSURES OF TIME, THE RESULTS
of spectrometry and amino-acid analysis, previously
of peripheral interest, suddenly became matters
of major concern. It was hoped that these
analyses would tell, in a rough way, how foreign
the Andromeda organism was to earth life forms.
It was thus with interest that Leavitt and
Burton looked over the computer printout,
a column of figures written on green paper:
MASS SPECTROMETRY DATA OUTPUT PRINT
PERCENTAGE OUTPUT SAMPLE 1 - BLACK OBJECT
UNIDENTIFIED
ORIGIN
[Diagram of chemistry of the rock from H to
Br]
ALL HEAVIER METALS SHOW ZERO CONTENT
SAMPLE 2 - GREEN OBJECT UNIDENTIFIED ORIGIN
[Diagram of chemistry of green object]
ALL HEAVIER METALS SHOW ZERO CONTENT
END PRINT
END PROGRAM
-STOP-
What all this meant was simple enough. The
black rock contained hydrogen, carbon, and
oxygen, with significant amounts of sulfur,
silicon, and selenium, and with trace quantities
of several other elements.
The green spot, on the other hand, contained
hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen. Nothing
else at all. The two men found it peculiar
that the rock and the green spot should be
so similar in chemical makeup. And it was
peculiar that the green spot should contain
nitrogen, while the rock contained none at
all.
The conclusion was obvious: the "black rock"
was not rock at all, but some kind of material
similar to earthly organic life. It was something
akin to plastic.
And the green spot, presumably alive, was
composed of elements in roughly the same proportion
as earth life On earth, these same four elements--
hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen-- accounted
for 99 per cent of all the elements in life
organisms.
The men were encouraged by these results,
which suggested similarity between the green
spot and life on earth. Their hopes were,
however, short-lived as they turned to the
amino-acid analysis:
AMINO ACID ANALYSIS
[graphic of amino acid analysis-- all zeroes]
TOTAL AMINO ACID CONTENT
00.00 00.00
END PRINT
END PROGRAM
- STOP -
"Damn," Leavitt said, staring at the printed
sheet.
"Will you look at that."
"No amino acids," Burton said. "No proteins."
"Life without proteins," Leavitt said. He
shook his head; it seemed as if his worst
fears were realized.
On earth, organisms had evolved by learning
to carry out biochemical reactions in a small
space, with the help of protein enzymes. Biochemists
were now learning to duplicate these reactions,
but only by isolating a single reaction from
all others.
Living cells were different. There, within
a small area, reactions were carried out that
provided energy, growth, and movement. There
was no separation, and man could not duplicate
this any more than a man could prepare a complete
dinner from appetizers to dessert by mixing
together the ingredients for everything into
a single large dish, cooking it, and hoping
to separate the apple pie from the cheese
dip later on.
Cells could keep the hundreds of separate
reactions straight, using enzymes. Each enzyme
was like a single worker in a kitchen, doing
just one thing. Thus a baker could not make
a steak, any more than a steak griller could
use his equipment to prepare appetizers.
But enzymes had a further use. They made possible
chemical reactions that otherwise would not
occur. A biochemist could duplicate the reactions
by using great heat, or great pressure, or
strong acids. But the human body, or the individual
cell, could not tolerate such extremes of
environment. Enzymes, the matchmakers of life,
helped chemical reactions to go forward at
body temperature and atmospheric pressure.
Enzymes were essential to life on earth. But
if another form of life had learned to do
without them, it must have evolved in a wholly
different way.
Therefore, they were dealing with an entirely
alien organism.
And this in turn meant that analysis and neutralization
would take much, much longer.
*** In the room marked MORPHOLOGY, Jeremy
Stone removed the small plastic capsule in
which the green fleck had been imbedded. He
set the now-hard capsule into a vise, fixing
it firmly, and then took a dental drill to
it, shaving away the plastic until he exposed
bare green material.
This was a delicate process, requiring many
minutes of concentrated work. At the end of
that time, he had shaved the plastic in such
a way that he had a pyramid of plastic, with
the green fleck at the peak of the pyramid.
He unscrewed the vise and lifted the plastic
out. He took it to the microtome, a knife
with a revolving blade that cut very thin
slices of plastic and imbedded green tissue.
These slices were round; they fell from the
plastic block into a dish of water. The thickness
of the slice could be measured by looking
the light as it reflected off the slices--
if the light was faint silver, the slice was
too thick. If, on the other hand, it was a
rainbow of colors, then it was the right thickness,
just a few molecules in depth.
That was how thick they wanted a slice of
tissue to be for the electron microscope.
When Stone had a suitable piece of tissue,
he lifted it carefully with forceps and set
it onto a small round copper grid. This in
turn was inserted into a metal button. Finally,
the button was set into the electron microscope,
and the microscope sealed shut.
The electron microscope used by Wildfire was
the BVJ
model JJ-42. It was a high-intensity model
with an image resolution attachment. In principle,
the electron microscope was simple enough:
it worked exactly like a light microscope,
but instead of focusing light rays, it focused
an electron beam. Light is focused by lenses
of curved glass. Electrons are focused by
magnetic fields.
In many respects, the EM was not a great deal
different from television, and in fact, the
image was displayed on a television screen,
a coated surface that glowed when electrons
struck it. The great advantage of the electron
microscope was that it could magnify objects
far more than the light microscope. The reason
for this had to do with quantum mechanics
and the waveform theory of radiation. The
best simple explanation had come from the
electron microscopist Sidney Polton, also
a racing enthusiast.
"Assume," Polton said, "that you have a road,
with a sharp corner. Now assume that you have
two automobiles, a sports car and a large
truck. When the truck tries to go around the
corner, it slips off the road; but the sports
car manages it easily. Why? The sports car
is lighter, and smaller, and faster; it is
better suited to tight, sharp curves. On large,
gentle curves, the automobiles will perform
equally well, but on sharp curves, the sports
car will do better.
"In the same way, an electron microscope will
'hold the road' better than a light microscope.
All objects are made of corners, and edges.
The electron wavelength is smaller than the
quantum of light. It cuts the corners closer,
follows the road better, and outlines it more
precisely. With a light microscope-- like
a truck-- you can follow only a large road.
In microscopic terms this means only a large
object, with large edges and gentle curves:
cells, and nuclei. But an electron microscope
can follow all the minor routes, the byroads,
and can outline very small structures within
the cell-- mitochondria, ribosomes, membranes,
reticula."
In actual practice there were several drawbacks
to the electron microscope, which counterbalanced
its great powers of magnification. For one
thing, because it used electrons instead of
light, the inside of the microscope had to
be a vacuum. This meant it was impossible
to examine living creatures.
But the most serious drawback had to do with
the sections of specimen. These were extremely
thin, making it difficult to get a good three-dimensional
concept of the object under study.
Again, Polton had a simple analogy. "Let us
say you cut an automobile in half down the
middle. In that case, you could guess the
complete, 'whole' structure. But if you cut
a very thin slice from the automobile, and
if you cut it on a strange angle, it could
be more difficult. In your slice, you might
have only a bit of bumper, and rubber tire,
and glass.
From such a slice, it would be hard to guess
the shape and function of the full structure."
Stone was aware of all the drawbacks as he
fitted the metal button into the EM, sealed
it shut, and started the vacuum pump. He knew
the drawbacks and he ignored them, because
he had no choice. Limited as it was, the electron
microscope was their only available high-power
tool.
He turned down the room lights and clicked
on the beam.
He adjusted several dials to focus the beam.
In a moment, the image came into focus, green
and black on the screen.
It was incredible.
Jeremy Stone found himself staring at a single
unit of the organism. It was a perfect, six-sided
hexagon, and it interlocked with other hexagons
on each side. The interior of the hexagon
was divided into wedges, each meeting at the
precise center of the structure. The overall
appearance was accurate, with a kind of mathematical
precision he did not associate with life on
earth.
It looked like a crystal.
He smiled: Leavitt would be pleased. Leavitt
liked spectacular, mind-stretching things.
Leavitt had also frequently considered the
possibility that life might be based upon
crystals of some kind, that it might be ordered
in some regular pattern.
He decided to call Leavitt in.
*** [graphic of EM crystal pattern] Caption:
(Early sketch by Jeremy Stone of hexagonal
Andromeda configuration. Photo courtesy Project
Wildfire.)
As soon as he arrived, Leavitt said, "Well,
there's our answer."
"Answer to what?"
"To how this organism functions. I've seen
the results of spectrometry and amino-acid
analysis."
"And?"
"The organism is made of hydrogen, carbon,
oxygen, and nitrogen. But it has no amino
acids at all. None. Which means that it has
no proteins as we know them, and no enzymes.
I was wondering how it could survive without
protein-based organization. Now I know."
"The crystalline structure."
"Looks like it," Leavitt said, peering at
the screen.
"In three dimensions, it's probably a hexagonal
slab, like a piece of tile. Eight-sided, with
each face a hexagon. And on the inside, those
wedge-shaped compartments leading to the center."
"They would serve to separate biochemical
functions quite well."
"Yes," Leavitt said. He frowned.
"Something the matter?"
Leavitt was thinking, remembering something
he had forgotten. A dream, about a house and
a city. He thought for a moment and it began
to come back to him. A house and a city. The
way the house worked alone, and the way it
worked in a city.
It all came back.
"You know," he said, "it's interesting, the
way this one unit interlocks with the others
around it."
"You're wondering if we're seeing part of
a higher organism?"
"Exactly. Is this unit self-sufficient, like
a bacterium, or is it just a block from a
larger organ, or a larger organism? After
all, if you saw a single liver cell, could
you guess what kind of an organ it came from?
No. And what good would one brain cell be
without the rest of the brain?"
Stone stared at the screen for a long time.
"A rather unusual pair of analogies. Because
the liver can regenerate, can grow back, but
the brain cannot."
Leavitt smiled. "The Messenger Theory."
"One wonders," Stone said.
The Messenger Theory had come from John R.
Samuels, a communications engineer. Speaking
before the Fifth Annual Conference on Astronautics
and Communication, he had reviewed some theories
about the way in which an alien culture might
choose to contact other cultures. He argued
that the most advanced concepts in communications
in earth technology were inadequate, and that
advanced cultures would find better methods.
"Let us say a culture wishes to scan the universe,"
he said. "Let us say they wish to have a sort
of 'coming-out party' on a galactic scale--
to formally announce their existence. They
wish to spew out information, clues to their
existence, in every direction. What is the
best way to do this? Radio? Hardly-- radio
is too slow, too expensive, and it decays
too rapidly. Strong signals weaken within
a few billion miles. TV is even worse. Light
rays are fantastically expensive to generate.
Even if one learned a way to detonate whole
stars, to explode a sun as a kind of signal,
it would be costly.
"Besides expense, all these methods suffer
the traditional drawback to any radiation,
namely decreasing strength with distance.
A light bulb may be unbearably bright at ten
feet; it may be powerful at a thousand feet;
it may be visible at ten miles. But at a million
miles, it is completely obscure, because radiant
energy decreases according to the fourth power
of the radius. A simple, unbeatable law of
physics.
"So you do not use physics to carry your signal.
You use biology. You create a communications
system that does not diminish with distance,
but rather remains as powerful a million miles
away as it was at the source.
"In short, you devise an organism to carry
your message.
The organism would be self-replicating, cheap,
and could be produced in fantastic numbers.
For a few dollars, you could produce trillions
of them, and send them off in all directions
into space. They would be tough, hardy bugs,
able to withstand the rigors of space, and
they would grow and duplicate and divide.
Within a few years, there would be countless
numbers of these in the galaxy, speeding in
all directions, waiting to contact life.
"And when they did? Each single organism would
carry the potential to develop into a full
organ, or a full organism.
"They would, upon contacting life, begin to
grow into a complete communicating mechanism.
It is like spewing out a billion brain cells,
each capable of regrowing a complete brain
under the proper circumstances. The newly
grown brain would then speak to the new culture'
informing it of the presence of the other,
and announcing ways in which contact might
be made."
Samuels's theory of the Messenger Bug was
considered amusing by practical scientists,
but it could not be discounted now.
"Do you suppose," Stone said, "that it is
already developing into some kind of organ
of communication?"
"Perhaps the cultures will tell us more,"
Leavitt said.
"Or X-ray crystallography," Stone said. "I'll
order it now."
*** Level V had facilities for X-ray crystallography,
though there had been much heated discussion
during Wildfire planning as to whether such
facilities were necessary. X-ray crystallography
represented the most advanced, complex, and
expensive method of structural analysis in
modern biology. It was a little like electron
microscopy, but one step further along the
line. It was more sensitive, and could probe
deeper-- but only at great cost in terms of
time, equipment, and personnel.
The biologist R. A. Janek has said that increasing
vision is "increasingly expensive." He meant
by this that any machine to enable men to
see finer or fainter details increased in
cost faster than it increased in resolving
power. This hard fact of research was discovered
first by the astronomers, who learned painfully
that construction of a two-hundred-inch telescope
mirror was far more difficult and expensive
than construction of a one-hundred-inch mirror.
In biology this was equally true. A light
microscope, for example, was a small device
easily carried by a technician in one hand.
It could outline a cell, and for this ability
a scientist paid about $1,000.
An electron microscope could outline small
structures within the cell. The EM was a large
console and cost up to $100,000.
In contrast, X-ray crystallography could outline
individual molecules. It came as close to
photographing atoms as science could manage.
But the device was the size of a large automobile,
filled an entire room, required specially
trained operators, and demanded a computer
for interpretation of results.
This was because X-ray crystallography did
not produce a direct visual picture of the
object being studied.. It was not, in this
sense, a microscope, and it operated differently
from either the light or electron microscope.
It produced a diffraction pattern instead
of an image.
This appeared as a pattern of geometric dots,
in itself rather mysterious, on a photographic
plate. By using a computer, the pattern of
dots could be analyzed and the structure deduced.
It was a relatively new science, retaining
an old-fashioned name. Crystals were seldom
used any more; the term "X ray crystallography"
dated from the days when crystals were chosen
as test objects. Crystals had regular structures
and thus the pattern of dots resulting from
a beam of X rays shot at a crystal were easier
to analyze. But in recent years the X rays
had been shot at irregular objects of varying
sorts. The X rays were bounced off at different
angles. A computer could "read" the photographic
plate and measure the angles, and from this
work back to the shape of the object that
had caused such a reflection.
The computer at Wildfire performed the endless
and tedious calculations. All this, if done
by manual human calculation, would take years,
perhaps centuries. But the computer could
do it in seconds.
*** "How are you feeling, Mr. Jackson?" Hall
asked.
The old man blinked his eyes and looked at
Hall, in his plastic suit.
"All right. Not the best, but all right."
He gave a wry grin.
"Up to talking a little?"
"About what?
"Piedmont."
"What about it?"
"That night," Hall said. "The night it all
happened."
"Well, I tell you. I've lived in Piedmont
all my life.
Traveled a bit-- been to LA, and even up to
Frisco. Went as far east as St. Louis, which
was far enough for me. But Piedmont, that's
where I've lived. And I have to tell you--"
"The night it all happened," Hall repeated.
He stopped, and turned his head away. "I don't
want to think about it," he said.
"You have to think about it."
"No."
He continued to look away for a moment, and
then turned back to Hall. "They all died,
did they?"
"Not all. One other survived. " He nodded
to the crib next to Jackson.
Jackson peered over at the bundle of blankets.
"Who's that? "
"A baby."
"Baby? Must be the Ritter child. Jamie Ritter.
Real young, is it?"
"About two months."
"Yep. That's him. A real little heller. Just
like the old man. Old Ritter likes to kick
up a storm, and his kid's the same way. Squalling
morning, noon, and night. Family couldn't
keep the windas open, on account of the squalling.
"Is there anything else unusual about Jamie?"
"Nope. Healthy as a water buffalo, except
he squalls. I remember he was squalling like
the dickens that night.
Hall said, "What night?"
"The night Charley Thomas brought the damned
thing in.
We all seen it, of course. It came down like
one of them shooting stars, all glowing, and
landed just to the north.
Everybody was excited, and Charley Thomas
went off to get it.
Came back about twenty minutes later with
the thing in the back of his Ford station
wagon. Brand-new wagon. He's real proud of
it."
"Then what happened?"
"Well, we all gathered around, looking at
it. Reckoned it must be one of those space
things. Annie figured it was from Mars, but
you know how Annie is. Lets her mind carry
her off, at times. The rest of us, we didn't
feel it was no Martian thing, we just figured
it was something sent up from Cape Canaveral.
You know, that place in Florida where they
shoot the rockets?"
"Yes. Go on."
"So, once we figured that out good and proper,
we didn't know what to do. Nothing like that
ever happened in Piedmont, you know. I mean,
once we had that tourist with the gun, shot
up the Comanche Chief motel, but that was
back in '48 and besides, he was just a GI
had a little too much to drink, and there
were exterminating circumstances. His gal
run out on him while he was in Germany or
some damn place. Nobody gave him a bad time;
we understood how it was. But nothing happened
since, really. Quiet town. That's why we like
it, I reckon."
"What did you do with the capsule?"
"Well, we didn't know what to do with it.
Al, he said open 'er up, but we didn't figure
that was right, especially since it might
have some scientific stuff inside, so we thought
awhile. And then Charley, who got it in the
first place, Charley says, let's give it to
Doc. That's Doc Benedict. He's the town doctor.
Actually, he takes care of everybody around,
even the Indians. But he's a good fella anyhow,
and he's been to lots of schools. Got these
degrees on the walls? Well, we figured Doc
Benedict would know what to do with the thing.
So we brought it to him.
"And then?"
"Old Doc Benedict, he's not so old actually,
he looks
'er over real careful, like it was his patient,
and then he allows as how it might be a thing
from space, and it might be one of ours, or
it might be one of theirs. And he says he'll
take care of it, and maybe make a few phone
calls, and let everybody know in a few hours.
See, Doc always played poker Monday nights
with Charley and Al and Herb Johnstone, over
at Herb's place, and we figured that he'd
spread the word around then. Besides, it was
getting on suppertime and most of us were
a bit hungry, so we all kind of left it with
Doc."
"When was that?"
"Bout seven-thirty or so."
"What did Benedict do with the satellite?"
"Took it inside his house. None of us saw
it again. It was about eight, eight-thirty
that it all started up, you see. I was over
at the gas station, having a chat with Al,
who was working the pump that night. Chilly
night, but I wanted a chat to take my mind
off the pain. And to get some soda from the
machine, to wash down the aspirin with. Also,
I was thirsty, squeeze makes you right thirsty,
you know."
"You'd been drinking Sterno that day?"
"Bout six o'clock I had some, yes."
"How did you feel?"
"Well, when I was with Al, I felt good. Little
dizzy, and my stomach was paining me, but
I felt good. And Al and me were sitting inside
the office, you know, talking, and suddenly
he shouts, 'Oh God, my head!' He ups and runs
outside, and falls down. Right there in the
street, not a word from him.
"Well, I didn't know what to make of it. I
figured he had a heart attack or a shock,
but he was pretty young for that, so I went
after him. Only he was dead. Then ... they
all started coming out. I believe Mrs. Langdon,
the Widow Langdon, was next. After that, I
don't recall, there was so many of them. Just
pouring outside, it seemed like. And they
just grab their chests and fall, like they
slipped. Only they wouldn't get up afterward.
And never a word from any of them."
"What did you think?"
"I didn't know what to think, it was so damned
peculiar.
I was scared, I don't mind telling you, but
I tried to stay calm. I couldn't, naturally.
My old heart was thumping, and I was wheezin'
and gaspin'. I was scared. I thought everybody
was dead. Then I heard the baby crying, so
I knew not everybody could be dead. And then
I saw the General."
"The General?"
"Oh, we just called him that. He wasn't no
general, just been in the war, and liked to
be remembered. Older'n me, he is. Nice fella,
Peter Arnold. Steady as a rock all his life
and he's standing by the porch, all got up
in his military clothes. It's dark, but there's
a moon, and he sees me in the street and he
says, 'That you, Peter?' We both got the same
name, see. And I says, 'Yes it is.' And he
says, 'What the hell's happening? Japs coming
in? And I think that's a mighty peculiar thing,
for him to be saying. And he says, 'I think
it must be the Japs, come to kill us all.'
And I say, 'Peter, you gone loco?' And he
says he don't feel too good and he goes inside.
Course, he must have gone loco, 'cause he
shot himself. But others went loco, too. It
was the disease."
"How do you know?"
"People don't burn themselves, or drown themselves,
if they got sense, do they? All them in that
town were good, normal folks until that night.
Then they just seemed to go crazy."
"What did you do?"
"I thought to myself, Peter, you're dreaming.
You had too much to drink. So I went home
and got into bed, and figured I'd be better
in the morning. Only about ten o'clock, I
hear a noise, and it's a car, so I go outside
to see who it is. It's some kind of car, you
know, one of those vans. Two fellers inside.
I go up to them, and damn but they don't fall
over dead. Scariest thing you ever saw. But
it's funny."
"What's funny?"
"That was the only other car to come through
all night.
Normally, there's lots of cars."
"There was another car?"
"Yep. Willis, the highway patrol. He came
through about fifteen, thirty seconds before
it all started. Didn't stop, though; sometimes
he doesn't. Depends if he's late on his schedule;
he's got a regular patrol, you know, he has
to stick to."
Jackson sighed and let his head fall back
against the pillow. "Now," he said, "if you
don't mind, I'm going to get me some sleep.
I'm all talked out."
He closed his eyes. Hall crawled back down
the tunnel, out of the unit, and sat in the
room looking through the glass at Jackson,
and the baby in the crib alongside. He stayed
there, just looking, for a long time.
23. Topeka
THE ROOM WAS HUGE, THE SIZE OF A FOOTBALL
field. It was furnished sparsely, just a few
tables scattered about. Inside the room, voices
echoed as the technicians called to each other,
positioning the pieces of wreckage. The post
team was reconstructing the wreck in this
room, placing the clumps of twisted metal
from the Phantom in the same positions as
they had been found on the sand.
Only then would the intensive examination
begin.
Major Manchek, tired, bleary-eyed, clutching
his coffee cup, stood in a corner and watched.
To him, there was something surrealistic about
the scene: a dozen men in a long, white-washed
room in Topeka, rebuilding a crash.
One of the biophysicists came up to him, holding
a clear plastic bag. He waved the contents
under Manchek's nose.
"Just got it back from the lab," he said.
"What is it?"
"You'll never guess." The man's eyes gleamed
in excitement.
All right, Manchek thought irritably, I'll
never guess.
"What is it?"
"A depolymerized polymer," the biochemist
said, smacking his lips with satisfaction.
"Just back from the lab."
"What kind of polymer?"
A polymer was a repeating molecule, built
up from thousands of the same units, like
a stack of dominos. Most plastics, nylon,
rayon, plant cellulose, and even glycogen
in the human body were polymers.
"A polymer of the plastic used on the air
hose of the Phantom jet. The face mask to
the pilot. We thought as much."
Manchek frowned. He looked slowly at the crumbly
black powder in the bag. "Plastic?"
"Yes. A polymer, depolymerized. It was broken
down. Now that's no vibration effect. It's
a biochemical effect, purely organic."
Slowly, Manchek began to understand. "You
mean something tore the plastic apart?"
"Yes, you could say that," the biochemist
replied. "It's a simplification, of course,
but--"
"What tore it apart?"
The biochemist shrugged. "Chemical reaction
of some sort. Acid could do it, or intense
heat, or..."
"Or?"
"A microorganism, I suppose. If one existed
that could eat plastic. If you know what I
mean."
"I think," Manchek said, "that I know what
you mean."
He left the room and went to the cable transmitter,
located in another part of the building. He
wrote out his message to the Wildfire group,
and gave it to the technician to transmit.
While he waited, he said, "Has there been
any reply yet?"
"Reply, Sir?" the technician asked.
"From Wildfire," Manchek said. It was incredible
to him that no one had acted upon the news
of the Phantom crash. It was so obviously
linked...
"Wildfire, Sir?" the technician asked.
Manchek rubbed his eyes. He was tired: he
would have to remember to keep his big mouth
shut.
"Forget it," he said.
*** After his conversation with Peter Jackson,
Hall went to see Burton. Burton was in the
autopsy room, going over his slides from the
day before.
Hall said, "Find anything?"
Burton stepped away from the microscope and
sighed. "No.
Nothing."
"I keep wondering," Hall said, "about the
insanity.
Talking with Jackson reminded me of it. A
large number of people in that town went insane--
or at least became bizarre and suicidal--
during the evening. Many of those people were
old."
Burton frowned. "So?"
"Old people," Hall said, "are like Jackson.
They have lots wrong with them. Their bodies
are breaking down in a variety of ways. The
lungs are bad. The hearts are bad. The livers
are shot. The vessels are sclerotic."
"And this alters the disease process?"
"Perhaps. I keep wondering. What makes a person
become rapidly insane?"
Burton shook his head.
"And there's something else," Hall said. "Jackson
recalls hearing one victim say, just before
he died, 'Oh, God, my head.' "
Burton stared away into space. "Just before
death?"
"Just before."
"You're thinking of hemorrhage?"
Hall nodded. "It makes sense," he said. "At
least to check."
If the Andromeda Strain produced hemorrhage
inside the brain for any reason, then it might
produce rapid, unusual mental aberrations.
"But we already know the organism acts by
clotting."
"Yes," Hall said, "in most people. Not all.
Some survive, and some go mad."
Burton nodded. He suddenly became excited.
Suppose that the organism acted by causing
damage to blood vessels. This damage would
initiate clotting. Anytime the wall of a blood
vessel was torn, or cut, or burned, then the
clotting sequence would begin. First platelets
would clump around the injury, protecting
it, preventing blood loss. Then red cells
would accumulate. Then a fibrin mesh would
bind all the elements together. And finally,
the clot would become hard and firm.
That was the normal sequence.
But if the damage was extensive, if it began
at the lungs and worked its way...
"I'm wondering," Hall said, "if our organism
attacks vessel walls. If so, it would initiate
clotting. But if clotting were prevented in
certain persons, then the organism might eat
away and cause hemorrhage in those persons."
"And insanity," Burton said, hunting through
his slides.
He found three of the brain, and checked them.
No question.
The pathology was striking. Within the internal
layer of cerebral vessels were small deposits
of green. Burton had no doubt that, under
higher magnification, they would turn out
to be hexagonal in shape.
Quickly, he checked the other slides, for
vessels in lung, liver, and spleen. In several
instances he found green spots in the vessel
walls, but never in the profusion he found
for cerebral vessels.
Obviously the Andromeda Strain showed a predilection
for cerebral vasculature. It was impossible
to say why, but it was known that the cerebral
vessels are peculiar in several respects.
For instance, under circumstances in which
normal body vessels dilate or contract-- such
as extreme cold, or exercise-- the brain vasculature
does not change, but maintains a steady, constant
blood supply to the brain.
In exercise, the blood supply to muscle might
increase five to twenty times. But the brain
always has a steady flow: whether its owner
is taking an exam or a nap, chopping wood
or watching TV. The brain receives the same
amount of blood every minute, hour, day.
The scientists did not know why this should
be, or how, precisely, the cerebral vessels
regulate themselves. But the phenomenon is
known to exist, and cerebral vessels are regarded
as a special case among the body's arteries
and veins. Clearly, something is different
about them.
And now there was an example of an organism
that destroyed them preferentially.
But as Burton thought about it, the action
of Andromeda did not seem so unusual. For
example, syphilis causes an inflammation of
the aorta, a very specific, peculiar reaction.
Schistosomiasis, a parasitic infection, shows
a preference for bladder, intestine, or colonic
vessels--
depending on the species. So such specificity
was not impossible.
"But there's another problem," he said. "In
most people, the organism begins clotting
at the lungs. We know that.
Presumably vessel destruction begins there
as well. What is different about--"
He stopped.
He remembered the rats he had anticoagulated.
The ones who had died anyway, but had had
no autopsies.
"My God," he said.
He drew out one of the rats from cold storage
and cut it open. It bled. Quickly he incised
the head, exposing the brain. There he found
a large hemorrhage over the gray surface of
the brain.
"You've got it," Hall said.
"If the animal is normal, it dies from coagulation,
beginning at the lungs. But if coagulation
is prevented, then the organism erodes through
the vessels of the brain, and hemorrhage occurs."
"And insanity."
"Yes." Burton was now very excited. "And coagulation
could be prevented by any blood disorder.
Or too little vitamin K. Malabsorption syndrome.
Poor liver function.
Impaired protein synthesis. Any of a dozen
things."
"All more likely to be found in an old person,"
Hall said.
"Did Jackson have any of those things?"
Hall took a long time to answer, then finally
said, "No.
He has liver disease, but not significantly."
Burton sighed. "Then we're back where we started.
"Not quite. Because Jackson and the baby both
survived.
They didn't hemorrhage-- as far as we know--
they survived untouched. Completely untouched."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning that they somehow prevented the primary
process, which is invasion of the organism
into the vessel walls of the body. The Andromeda
organism didn't get to the lungs, or the brain.
It didn't get anywhere."
"But why?"
"We'11 know that," Hall said, "when we know
why a sixty-nine-year-old Sterno drinker with
an ulcer is like a two-month-old baby."
"They seem pretty much opposites," Burton
said.
"They do, don't they?" Hall said. It would
be hours before, he realized Burton had given
him the answer to the puzzle-- but an answer
that was worthless.
24. Evaluation
SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL ONCE SAID THAT TRUE
genius resides in the capacity for evaluation
of uncertain, hazardous, and conflicting information."
Yet it is a peculiarity of the Wildfire team
that, despite the individual brilliance of
team members, the group grossly misjudged
their information at several points.
One is reminded of Montaigne's acerbic comment:
"Men under stress are fools, and fool themselves."
Certainly the Wildfire team was under severe
stress, but they were also prepared to make
mistakes. They had even predicted that this
would occur.
What they did not anticipate was the magnitude,
the staggering dimensions of their error.
They did not expect that their ultimate error
would be a compound of a dozen small clues
that were missed, a handful of crucial facts
that were dismissed.
The team had a blind spot, which Stone later
expressed this way: "We were problem-oriented.
Everything we did and thought was directed
toward finding a solution, a cure to Andromeda.
And, of course, we were fixed on the events
that had occurred at Piedmont. We felt that
if we did not find a solution, no solution
would be forthcoming, and the whole world
would ultimately wind up like Piedmont. We
were very slow to think otherwise."
The error began to take on major proportions
with the cultures.
Stone and Leavitt had taken thousands of cultures
from the original capsule. These had been
incubated in a wide variety of atmospheric,
temperature, and pressure conditions.
The results of this could only be analyzed
by computer.
Using the GROWTH/TRANSMATRIX program, the
computer did not print out results from all
possible growth combinations.
Instead, it printed out only significant positive
and negative results. It did this after first
weighing each petri dish, and examining any
growth with its photoelectric eye.
When Stone and Leavitt went to examine the
results, they found several striking trends.
Their first conclusion was that growth media
did not matter at all-- the organism grew
equally well on sugar, blood, chocolate, plain
agar, or sheer glass.
However, the gases in which the plates were
incubated were crucial, as was the light.
Ultraviolet light stimulated growth under
all circumstances. Total darkness, and to
a lesser extent infrared light, inhibited
growth.
Oxygen inhibited growth in all circumstances,
but carbon dioxide stimulated growth. Nitrogen
had no effect.
Thus, best growth was achieved in 100-per
cent carbon dioxide, lighted by ultraviolet
radiation. Poorest growth occurred in pure
oxygen, incubated in total darkness.
"What do you make of it?" Stone said. ,
"It looks like a pure conversion system,"
Leavitt said.
"I wonder," Stone said.
He punched through the coordinates of a closed-growth
system. Closed-growth systems studied bacterial
metabolism by measuring intake of gases and
nutrients, and output of waste products. They
were completely sealed and self-contained.
A plant in such a system, for example, would
consume carbon dioxide and give off water
and oxygen.
[GRAPHIC: An example of a scanner printout
from the photoelectric eye that examined all
growth media. Within the circular petri dish
the computer has noted the presence of two
separate colonies. The colonies are "read"
in two-millimeter-square segments, and graded
by density on a scale from one to nine.]
But when they looked at the Andromeda Strain,
they found something remarkable. The organism
had no excretions. If incubated with carbon
dioxide and ultraviolet light, it grew steadily
until all carbon dioxide had been consumed.
Then growth stopped. There was no excretion
of any kind of gas or waste product at all.
No waste.
"Clearly efficient," Stone said.
"You'd expect that," Leavitt said.
This was an organism highly suited to its
environment.
It consumed everything, wasted nothing. It
was perfect for the barren existence of space.
He thought about this for a moment, and then
it hit him.
It hit Leavitt at the same time.
"Oh my hell."
Leavitt was already reaching for the phone.
"Get Robertson," he said. "Get him immediately."
"Incredible," Stone said softly. "No waste.
It doesn't require growth media. It can grow
in the presence of carbon, oxygen, and sunlight.
Period."
"I hope we're not too late," Leavitt said,
watching the computer console screen impatiently.
Stone nodded. "If this organism is really
converting matter to energy, and energy to
matter-- directly-- then it's functioning
like a little reactor."
"And an atomic detonation."
"Incredible," Stone said. "Just incredible."
The screen came to life; they saw Robertson,
looking tired, smoking a cigarette.
"Jeremy, you've got to give me time. I haven't
been able to get through to--"
Listen," Stone said, "I want you to make sure
Directive 7-12 is not carried out. It is imperative:
no atomic device must be detonated around
the organisms. That's the last thing in the
world, literally, that we want to do."
He explained. briefly what he had found.
Robertson whistled. "We'd just provide a fantastically
rich growth medium.
"That's right," Stone said.
The problem of a rich growth medium was a
peculiarly distressing one to the Wildfire
team. It was known, for example, that checks
and balances exist in the normal environment.
These manage to dampen the exuberant growth
of bacteria.
The mathematics of uncontrolled growth are
frightening.
A single cell of the bacterium E. coli would,
under ideal circumstances, divide every twenty
minutes. That is not particularly disturbing
until you think about it, but the fact is
that bacteria multiply geometrically: one
becomes two, two become four, four become
eight, and so on. In this way, it can be shown
that in a single day, one cell of E.
coli could
produce a super-colony equal in size and weight
to the entire planet earth.
This never happens, for a perfectly simple
reason: growth cannot continue indefinitely
under "ideal circumstances." Food runs out.
Oxygen runs out. Local conditions within the
colony change, and check the growth of organisms.
On the other hand, if you had an organism
that was capable of directly converting energy
to matter, and if you provided it with a huge
rich source of energy, like an atomic blast...
"I'll pass along your recommendation to the
President,"
Robertson said. "He'll be pleased to know
he made the right decision on the 7-12."
"You can congratulate him on his scientific
insight, "
Stone said, "for me."
Robertson was scratching his head. "I've got
some more data on the Phantom crash. It was
over the area west of Piedmont at twenty-three
thousand feet. The post team has found evidence
of the disintegration the pilot spoke of,
but the material that was destroyed was a
plastic of some kind.
It was depolymerized."
"What does the post team make of that?"
"They don't know what the hell to make of
it," Robertson admitted. "And there's something
else. They found a few pieces of bone that
have been identified as human. A bit of humerus
and tibia. Notable because they are clean--
almost polished."
"Flesh burned away?"
"Doesn't look that way, " Robertson said.
Stone frowned at Leavitt.
"What does it look like?"
"It looks like clean, polished bone," Robertson
said.
"They say it's weird as hell. And there's
something else. We checked into the National
Guard around Piedmont. The 112th is stationed
in a hundred-mile radius, and it turns out
they've been running patrols into the area
for a distance of fifty miles. They've had
as many as one hundred men west of Piedmont.
No deaths."
"None? You're quite sure?"
"Absolutely."
"Were there men on the ground in the area
the Phantom flew over?"
"Yes. Twelve men. They reported the plane
to the base, in fact."
Leavitt said, "Sounds like the plane crash
is a fluke."
Stone nodded. To Robertson: "I'm inclined
to agree with Peter. In the absence of fatalities
on the ground..."
"Maybe it's only in the upper air."
"Maybe. But we know at least this much: we
know how Andromeda kills. It does so by coagulation.
Not disintegration, or bone-cleaning, or any
other damned thing.
By coagulation."
"All right," Robertson said, "let's forget
the plane for the time being."
It was on that note that the meeting ended.
*** Stone said, "I think we'd better check
our cultured organisms for biologic potency."
"Run some of them against a rat?"
Stone nodded. "Make sure it's still virulent.
Still the same."
Leavitt agreed. They had to be careful the
organism didn't mutate, didn't change to something
radically different in its effects.
As they were about to start, the Level V monitor
clicked on and said, "Dr. Leavitt. Dr. Leavitt."
Leavitt answered. On the computer screen was
a pleasant young man in a white lab coat.
"Yes?"
"Dr. Leavitt, we have gotten our electroencephalograms
back from the computer center. I'm sure it's
all a mistake, but..."
His voice trailed off.
"Yes?" Leavitt said. "Is something wrong?"
"Well, sir, yours were read as grade four,
atypical, probably benign. But we would like
to run another set."
Stone said, "It must be a mistake."
"Yes," Leavitt said. "It must be."
"Undoubtedly, Sir," the man said. "But we
would like another set of waves to be certain."
"I'm rather busy now," Leavitt said.
Stone broke in, talking directly to the technician.
"Dr.
Leavitt will get a repeat EEG when he has
the chance."
"Very good, Sir," the technician said.
When the screen was blank, Stone said, "There
are times when this damned routine gets on
anybody's nerves."
Leavitt said, "Yes."
They were about to begin biologic testing
of the various culture media when the computer
flashed that preliminary reports from X-ray
crystallography were prepared. Stone and Leavitt
left the room to check the results, delaying
the biologic tests of media. This was a most
unfortunate decision, for had they examined
the media, they would have seen that their
thinking had already gone astray, and that
they were on the wrong track.
25. Willis
X-RAY CRYSTALLOGRAPHY ANALYSIS SHOWED THAT
the Andromeda organism was not composed of
component parts, as a normal cell was composed
of nucleus, mitochondria, and ribosomes.
Andromeda had no subunits, no smaller particules.
Instead, a single substance seemed to form
the walls and interior. This substance produced
a characteristic precession photograph, or
scatter pattern of X rays.
Looking at the results, Stone said, "A series
of six-sided rings."
"And nothing else," Leavitt said. "How the
hell does it operate? "
The two men were at a loss to explain how
so simple an organism could utilize energy
for growth.
"A rather common ring structure," Leavitt
said. "A phenolic group, nothing more. It
should be reasonably inert."
"Yet it can convert energy to matter."
Leavitt scratched his head. He thought back
to the city analogy, and the brain-cell analogy.
The molecule was simple in its building blocks.
It possessed no remarkable powers, taken as
single units. Yet collectively, it had great
powers.
"Perhaps there is a critical level," he suggested.
"A structural complexity that makes possible
what is not possible in a similar but simple
structure."
"The old chimp-brain argument," Stone said.
[GRAPHIC] (Caption: Electron-density mapping
of Andromeda structure as derived from micrographic
studies. It was this mapping which disclosed
activity variations within an otherwise uniform
structure. Photo courtesy Project Wildfire)
Leavitt nodded. As nearly as anyone could
determine, the chimp brain was as complex
as the human brain. There were minor differences
in structure, but the major difference was
size-- the human brain was larger, with more
cells, more interconnections.
And that, in some subtle way, made the human
brain different. (Thomas Waldren, the neurophysiologist,
once jokingly noted that the major difference
between the chimp and human brain was that
"we can use the chimp as an experimental animal,
and not the reverse.") Stone and Leavitt puzzled
over the problem for several minutes until
they came to the Fourier electron-density
scans. Here, the probability of finding electrons
was mapped for the structure on a chart that
resembled a topological map.
They noticed something odd. The structure
was present but the Fourier mapping was inconstant.
"It almost looks," Stone said, "as if part
of the structure is switched off in some way."
"It's not uniform after all," Leavitt said.
Stone sighed, looking at the map. "I wish
to hell," he said, "that we'd brought a physical
chemist along on the team."
Unspoken was the added comment, "instead of
Hall."
*** Tired, Hall rubbed his eyes and sipped
the coffee, wishing he could have sugar. He
was alone in the cafeteria, which was silent
except for the muted ticking of the teleprinter
in the corner.
After a time he got up and went over to the
teleprinter, examining the rolls of paper
that had come from it. Most of the information
was meaningless to him.
But then he saw one item which had come from
the DEATHMATCH Program. DEATHMATCH was a news-scanning
computer program that recorded all significant
deaths according to whatever criterion the
computer was fed. In this case, the computer
was alerted to pick up all deaths in the Arizona-Nevada-California
area, and to print them back.
The item he read might have gone unnoticed,
were it not for Hall's conversation with Jackson.
At the time, it had seemed like a pointless
conversation to Hall, productive of little
and consuming a great deal of time.
But now, he wondered.
PRINT PROGRAM
DEATHWATCH DEATHMATCH/998
SCALE 7,Y,O. X,4,0 PRINT AS
ITEM FROM ASSOCIATED PRESS VERBATIM 778778
BRUSH RIDGE, ARIZ.-- An Arizona highway patrol
officer was allegedly involved in the death
today of five persons in a highway diner.
Miss Sally Conover, waitress at the Dine-eze
diner on Route 15, ten miles south of Flagstaff,
was the sole survivor of the incident.
Miss Conover told investigators that at 2:40
a.m., Officer Martin Willis entered the diner
and ordered coffee and donut. Officer Willis
had frequently visited the diner in the past.
After eating, he stated that he had a severe
headache and that "his ulcer was acting up."
Miss Conover gave him two aspirin and a tablespoon
of bicarbonate of soda.
According to her statement, Officer Willis
then looked suspiciously at the other people
in the diner and whispered,
"They're after me."
Before the waitress could reply, Willis took
out his revolver and shot the other customers
in the diner, moving methodically from one
to the next, shooting each in the forehead.
Then, he allegedly turned to Miss Conover
and, smiling, said "I love you, Shirley Temple,"
placed the barrel in his mouth, and fired
the last bullet.
Miss Conover was released by police after
questioning.
The names of the deceased customers are not
known at this time.
END ITEM VERBATIM END PRINT END PROGRAM
TERMINATE
Hall remembered that Officer Willis had gone
through Piedmont earlier in the evening--
just a few minutes before the disease broke
out. He had gone through without stopping.
And had gone mad later on.
Connection?
He wondered. There might be. Certainly, he
could see many similarities: Willis had an
ulcer, had taken aspirin, and had, eventually,
committed suicide.
That didn't prove anything, of course. It
might be a wholly unrelated series of events.
But it was certainly worth checking.
He punched a button on the computer console.
The TV
screen lighted and a girl at a switchboard,
with a headset pressing down her hair, smiled
at him.
"I want the chief medical officer for the
Arizona highway patrol. The western sector,
if there is one."
"Yes, sir," she said briskly.
A few moments later, the screen came back
on. It was the operator. "We have a Dr. Smithson
who is the medical officer for the Arizona
highway patrol west of Flagstaff. He has no
television monitor but you can speak to him
on audio."
"Fine," Hall said.
There was a crackling, and a mechanical hum.
Hall watched the screen, but the girl had
shut down her own audio and was busy answering
another call from elsewhere in the Wildfire
station. While he watched her, he heard a
deep, drawling voice ask tentatively, "Anyone
there?"
"Hello, Doctor," Hall said. "This is Dr. Mark
Hall, in...Phoenix. I'm calling for some information
about one of your patrolmen, Officer Willis."
"The girl said it was some government thing,"
Smithson drawled. "That right?"
"That is correct. We require--"
"Dr. Hall," Smithson said, still drawling,
"perhaps you'd identify yourself and your
agency."
It occurred to Hall that there was probably
a legal problem involved in Officer Willis'
death. Smithson might be worried about that.
Hall said, "I am not at liberty to tell you
exactly what it is--"
"Well, look here, Doctor. I don't give out
information over the phone, and especially
I don't when the feller at the other end won't
tell me what it's all about."
Hall took a deep breath. "Dr. Smithson, I
must ask you--"
"Ask all you want. I'm sorry, I simply won't--"
At that moment, a bell sounded on the line,
and a flat mechanical voice said:
"Attention please. This is a recording. Computer
monitors have analyzed cable properties of
this communication and have determined that
the communication is being recorded by the
outside party. All parties should be informed
that the penalty for outside recording of
a classified government communication is a
minimum of five years' prison sentence. If
the recording is continued this connection
will automatically be broken. This is a recording.
Thank you."
There was a long silence. Hall could imagine
the surprise Smithson was feeling; he felt
it himself.
"What the hell kind of a place are you calling
from, anyhow?" Smithson said finally.
"Turn it off," Hall said.
There was a pause, a click, then: "All right.
It's off."
"I am calling from a classified government
installation," Hall said.
"Well, look here, mister--"
"Let me be perfectly plain," Hall said. "This
is a matter of considerable importance and
it concerns Officer Willis. No doubt there's
a court inquiry pending on him, and no doubt
You'll be involved. We may be able to demonstrate
that Officer Willis was not responsible for
his actions, that he was suffering from a
purely medical problem. But we can't do that
unless you tell us what you know about his
medical status. And if you don't tell us,
Dr. Smithson, and tell us damned fast, we
can have you locked away for twelve years
for obstructing an official, government inquiry.
I don't care whether you believe that or not.
I'm telling you, and you'd better believe
it."
There was a very long pause, and finally the
drawl: "No need to get excited, Doctor. Naturally,
now that I understand the situation."
"Did Willis have an ulcer?"
"Ulcer? No. That was just what he said, or
was reported to have said. He never had an
ulcer that I know of."
"Did he have any medical problem?"
"Diabetes," Smithson said.
"Diabetes? "
"Yeah. And he was pretty casual about it.
We diagnosed him five, six years ago, at the
age of thirty. Had a pretty severe case. We
put him on insulin, fifty units a day, but
he was casual, like I said. Showed up in the
hospital once or twice in coma, because he
wouldn't take his insulin. Said he hated the
needles. We almost put him off the force,
because we were afraid to let him drive a
car-- thought he'd go into acidosis at the
wheel and conk out. We scared him plenty and
he promised to go straight. That was three
years ago, and as far as I know, he took his
insulin regularly from then on."
"You're sure of that?"
"Well, I think so. But the waitress at that
restaurant, Sally Conover, told one of our
investigators that she figured Willis had
been drinking, because she could smell liquor
on his breath. And I know for a fact that
Willis never touched a drop in his life. He
was one of these real religious fellows.
Never smoked and never drank. Always led a
clean life. That was why his diabetes bothered
him so: he felt he didn't deserve it."
Hall relaxed in his chair. He was getting
near now, coming closer. The answer was within
reach; the final answer, the key to it all.
"One last question," Hall said. "Did Willis
go through Piedmont on the night of his death?"
"Yes. He radioed in. He was a little behind
schedule, but he passed through. Why? Is it
something about the government tests being
held there?"
"No," Hall said, but he was sure Smithson
didn't believe him.
"Well, listen, we're stuck here with a bad
case, and if you have any information which
would--"
"We will be in touch," Hall promised him,
and clicked off.
The girl at the switchboard came back on.
"Is your call completed, Dr. Hall?"
"Yes. But I need information."
"What kind of information?"
"I want to know if I have the authority to
arrest someone."
"I will check, Sir. What is the charge?"
"No charge. Just to hold someone."
There was a moment while she looked over at
her computer console.
"Dr. Hall, you may authorize an official Army
interview with anyone involved in project
business. This interview may last up to forty-eight
hours."
"All right, " Hall said. "Arrange it."
"Yes sir. Who is the person?"
"Dr. Smithson," Hall said.
The girl nodded and the screen went blank.
Hall felt sorry for Smithson, but not very
sorry; the man would have a few hours of sweating,
but nothing more serious than that.
And it was essential to halt rumors about
Piedmont.
He sat back in his chair and thought about
what he had learned. He was excited, and felt
on the verge of an important discovery.
Three people:
A diabetic in acidosis, from failure to take
insulin.
An old man who drank Sterno and took aspirin,
also in acidosis.
A young infant.
One had survived for hours, the other two
had survived longer, apparently permanently.
One had gone mad, the other two had not. Somehow
they were all interrelated.
In a very simple way.
Acidosis. Rapid breathing. Carbon-dioxide
content.
Oxygen saturation. Dizziness. Fatigue. Somehow
they were all logically coordinated. And they
held the key to beating Andromeda.
At that moment, the emergency bell sounded,
ringing in a high pitched, urgent way as the
bright-yellow light began to flash.
He jumped up and left the room.
26. The Seal
IN THE CORRIDOR, HE SAW THE FLASHING SIGN
that indicated the source of the trouble:
AUTOPSY. Hall could guess the problem-- somehow
the seals had been broken, and contamination
had occurred. That would sound the alarm.
As he ran down the corridor, a quiet, soothing
voice on the loudspeakers said, "Seal has
been broken in Autopsy. Seal has been broken
in Autopsy. This is an emergency."
His lab technician came out of the lab and
saw him.
"What is it?"
"Burton, I think. Infection spread."
"Is he all right?"
"Doubt it," Hall said, running. She ran with
him.
Leavitt came out of the MORPHOLOGY room and
joined them, sprinting down the corridor,
around the gentle curves. Hall thought to
himself that Leavitt was moving quite well,
for an older man, when suddenly Leavitt stopped.
He stood riveted to the ground. And stared
straight forward at the flashing sign, and
the light above it, blinking on and off.
Hall looked back. "Come on," he said.
Then the technician: "Dr. Hall, he's in trouble."
Leavitt was not moving. He stood, eyes open,
but otherwise he might have been asleep. His
arms hung loosely at his sides.
"Dr. Hall."
Hall stopped, and went back.
"Peter, boy, come on, we need your--"
He said nothing more, for Leavitt was not
listening. He was staring straight forward
at the blinking light. When Hall passed his
hand in front of his face, he did not react.
And then Hall remembered the other blinking
lights, the lights Leavitt had turned away
from, had joked off with stories.
"The son of a bitch," Hall said. "Now, of
all times."
"What is it?" the technician said.
A small dribble of spittle was coming from
the corner of Leavitt's mouth. Hall quickly
stepped behind him and said to the technician,
"Get in front of him and cover his eyes.
Don't let him look at the blinking light."
"Why?"
"Because it's blinking three times a second,"
Hall said.
"You mean--"
"He'll go any minute now."
Leavitt went.
With frightening speed, his knees gave way
and he collapsed to the floor. He lay on his
back and his whole body began to vibrate.
It began with his hands and feet, then involved
his entire arms and legs, and finally his
whole body. He clenched his teeth and gave
a gasping, loud cry. His head hammered against
the floor; Hall slipped his foot beneath the
back of Leavitt's head and let him bang against
his toes. It was better than having him hit
the hard floor.
"Don't try to open his mouth," Hall said.
"You can't do it. He's clenched tight."
As they watched, a yellow stain began to spread
at Leavitt's waist.
"He may go into status," Hall said. "Go to
the pharmacy and get me a hundred milligrams
of phenobarb. Now. In a syringe. We'll get
him onto Dilantin later, if we have to."
Leavitt was crying, through his clenched teeth,
like an animal. His body tapped like a tense
rod against the floor.
A few moments later, the technician came back
with the syringe. Hall waited until Leavitt
relaxed, until his body stopped its seizures,
and then he injected the barbiturate.
"Stay with him," he said to the girl. "If
he has another seizure, just do what I did--
put your foot under his head. I think he'll
be all right. Don't try to move him."
And Hall ran down to the autopsy lab.
For several seconds, he tried to open the
door to the lab, and then he realized it had
been sealed off. The lab was contaminated.
He went on to main control, and found Stone
looking at Burton through the closed-circuit
TV monitors.
Burton was terrified. His face was white and
he was breathing in rapid, shallow gasps,
and he could not speak. He looked exactly
like what he was: a man waiting for death
to strike him.
Stone was trying to reassure him. "Just take
it easy, boy. Take it easy. You'll be okay.
Just take it easy."
"I'm scared," Burton said. "Damn, I'm scared."
"Just take it easy," Stone said in a soft
voice. "We know that Andromeda doesn't do
well in oxygen. We're pumping pure oxygen
through your lab now. For the moment, that
should hold you."
Stone turned to Hall. "You took your time
getting here.
Where's Leavitt?"
"He fitted," Hall said.
"What?"
"Your lights flash at three per second, and
he had a seizure."
"What?"
"Petit mal. It went on to a grand-mal attack;
tonic clonic seizure, urinary incontinence,
the whole bit. I got him onto phenobarb and
came as soon as I could."
"Leavitt has epilepsy?"
"That's right."
Stone said, "He must not have known. He must
not have realized."
And then Stone remembered the request for
a repeat electroencephalogram.
"Oh," Hall said, "he knew, all right. He was
avoiding flashing lights, which will bring
on an attack. I'm sure he knew. I'm sure he
has attacks where he suddenly doesn't know
what happened to him, where he just loses
a few minutes from his life and can't remember
what went on."
"Is he all right?"
"We'll keep him sedated."
Stone said, "We've got pure oxygen running
into Burton.
That should help him, until we know something
more. " Stone flicked off the microphone button
connecting voice transmission to Burton. "Actually,
it will take several minutes to hook in, but
I've told him we've already started.
He's sealed off in there, so the infection
is stopped at that point. The rest of the
base is okay, at least."
Hall said, "How did it happen? The contamination."
"Seal must have broken," Stone said. In a
lower voice, he added, "We knew it would,
sooner or later. All isolation units break
down after a certain time."
Hall said, "You think it was just a random
event?"
"Yes," Stone said. "Just an accident. So many
seals, so much rubber, of such-and-such a
thickness. They'd all break, given time. Burton
happened to be there when one went."
Hall didn't see it so simply. He looked in
at Burton, who was breathing rapidly, his
chest heaving in terror.
Hall said, "How long has it been?"
Stone looked up at the stop-clocks. The stop-clocks
were special timing clocks that automatically
cut in during emergencies. The stop-clocks
were now timing the period since the seal
broke.
"Four minutes."
Hall said, "Burton's still alive."
"Yes, thank God." And then Stone frowned.
He realized the point.
"Why, " Hall said, "is he still alive?"
"The oxygen..."
"You said yourself the oxygen isn't running
yet. What's protecting Burton?"
At that moment, Burton said over the intercom,
"Listen.
I want you to try something for me."
Stone flicked on the microphone. "What?"
"Kalocin," Burton said.
"No." Stone's reaction was immediate.
"Dammit, it's my life."
"No," Stone said.
Hall said, "Maybe we should try--"
"Absolutely not. We don't dare. Not even once."
*** Kalocin was perhaps the best-kept American
secret of the last decade. Kalocin was a drug
developed by Jensen Pharmaceuticals in the
spring of 1965, an experimental chemical designated
UJ44759W, or K-9 in the short abbreviation.
It had been found as a result of routine screening
tests employed by Jensen for all new compounds.
Like most pharmaceutical companies, Jensen
tested all new drugs with a scatter approach,
running the compounds through a standard battery
of tests designed to pick up any significant
biologic activity. These tests were run on
laboratory animals-- rats, dogs, and monkeys.
There were twenty-four tests in all.
Jensen found something rather peculiar about
K-9. It inhibited growth. An infant animal
given the drug never attained full adult size.
This discovery prompted further tests, which
produced even more intriguing results. The
drug, Jensen learned, inhibited metaplasia,
the shift of normal body cells to a new and
bizarre form, a precursor to cancer. Jensen
became excited, and put the drug through intensive
programs of study.
By September 1965, there could be no doubt:
Kalocin stopped cancer. Through an unknown
mechanism, it inhibited the reproduction of
the virus responsible for myelogenous leukemia.
Animals taking the drug did not develop the
disease, and animals already demonstrating
the disease showed a marked regression as
a result of the drug.
The excitement at Jensen could not be contained.
It was soon recognized that the drug was a
broad-spectrum antiviral agent. It killed
the virus of polio, rabies, leukemia, and
the common wart. And, oddly enough, Kalocin
also killed bacteria.
And fungi.
And parasites.
Somehow, the drug acted to destroy all organisms,
built on a unicellular structure, or less.
It had no effect on organ systems-- groups
of cells organized into larger units.
The drug was perfectly selective in this respect.
In fact, Kalocin was the universal antibiotic.
It killed everything, even the minor germs
that caused the common cold.
Naturally, there were side effects-- the normal
bacteria in the intestines were destroyed,
so that all users of the drug experienced
massive diarrhea-- but that seemed a small
price to pay for a cancer cure.
In December 1965, knowledge of the drug was
privately circulated among government agencies
and important health officials. And then for
the first time, opposition to the drug arose.
Many men, including Jeremy Stone, argued that
the drug should be suppressed.
But the arguments for suppression seemed theoretical,
and Jensen, sensing billions of dollars at
hand, fought hard for a clinical test. Eventually
the government, the HEW, the FDA, and others
agreed with Jensen and sanctioned further
clinical testing over the protests of Stone
and others.
In February 1966, a pilot clinical trial was
undertaken.
It involved twenty patients with incurable
cancer, and twenty normal volunteers from
the Alabama state penitentiary. All forty
subjects took the drug daily for one month.
Results were as expected: normal subjects
experienced unpleasant side effects, but nothing
serious. Cancer patients showed striking remission
of symptoms consistent with cure.
On March 1, 1966, the forty men were taken
off the drug.
Within six hours, they were all dead.
It was what Stone had predicted from the start.
He had pointed out that mankind had, over
centuries of exposure, developed a carefully
regulated immunity to most organisms.
On his skin, in the air, in his lungs, gut,
and even bloodstream were hundreds of different
viruses and bacteria.
They were potentially deadly, but man had
adapted to them over the years, and only a
few could still cause disease.
All this represented a carefully balanced
state of affairs. If you introduced a new
drug that killed all bacteria, you upset the
balance and undid the evolutionary work of
centuries. And you opened the way to superinfection,
the problem of new organisms, bearing new
diseases.
Stone was right: the forty volunteers each
had died of obscure and horrible diseases
no one had ever seen before.
One man experienced swelling of his body,
from head to foot, a hot, bloated swelling
until he suffocated from pulmonary edema.
Another man fell prey to an organism that
ate away his stomach in a matter of hours.
A third was hit by a virus that dissolved
his brain to a jelly.
And so it went.
Jensen reluctantly took the drug out of further
study.
The government, sensing that Stone had somehow
understood what was happening, agreed to his
earlier proposals, and viciously suppressed
all knowledge and experimentation with the
drug Kalocin.
And that was where the matter had rested for
two years.
Now Burton wanted to be given the drug.
"No," Stone said. "Not a chance. It might
cure you for a while, but you'd never survive
later, when you were taken off."
"That's easy for you to say, from where you
are."
"It's not easy for me to say. Believe me,
it's not. He put his hand over the microphone
again. To Hall: "We know that oxygen inhibits
growth of the Andromeda Strain. That's what
we'll give Burton. It will be good for him--
make him a little giddy, a little relaxed,
and slow his breathing down.
Poor fellow is scared to death."
Hall nodded. Somehow, Stone's phrase stuck
in his mind: scared to death. He thought about
it, and then began to see that Stone had hit
upon something important. That phrase was
a clue. It was the answer.
He started to walk away.
"Where are you going?"
"I've got some thinking to do."
"About what?"
"About being scared to death."
27. Scared to Death
HALL WALKED BACK TO HIS LAB AND STARED through
the glass at the old man and the infant. He
looked at the two of them and tried to think,
but his brain was running in frantic circles.
He found it difficult to think logically,
and his earlier sensation of being on the
verge of a discovery was lost.
For several minutes, he stared at the old
man while brief images passed before him:
Burton dying, his hand clutched to his chest.
Los Angeles in panic, bodies everywhere, cars
going haywire, out of control...
It was then that he realized that he, too,
was Scared.
Scared to death. The words came back to him.
Scared to death.
Somehow, that was the answer.
Slowly, forcing his brain to be methodical,
he went over it again.
A cop with diabetes. A cop who didn't take
his insulin and had a habit of going into
ketoacidosis.
An old man who drank Sterno, which gave him
methanolism, and acidosis.
A baby, who did ... what? What gave him acidosis?
Hall shook his head. Always, he came back
to the baby, who was normal, not acidotic.
He sighed.
Take it from the beginning, he told himself.
Be logical.
If a man has metabolic acidosis-- any kind
of acidosis-- what does he do?
He has too much acid in his body. He can die
from too much acid, just as if he had injected
hydrochloric acid into his veins.
Too much acid meant death.
But the body could compensate. By breathing
rapidly.
Because in that manner, the lungs blew off
carbon dioxide, and the body's supply of carbonic
acid, which was what carbon dioxide formed
in the blood, decreased.
A way to get rid of acid.
Rapid breathing.
And Andromeda? What happened to the organism,
when you were acidotic and breathing fast?
Perhaps fast breathing kept the organism from
getting into your lungs long enough to penetrate
to blood vessels.
Maybe that was the answer. But as soon as
he thought of it, he shook his head. No: something
else. Some simple, direct fact. Something
they had always known, but somehow never recognized.
The organism attacked through the lungs.
It entered the bloodstream.
It localized in the walls of arteries and
veins, particularly of the brain.
It produced damage.
This led to coagulation. Which was dispersed
throughout the body, or else led to bleeding,
insanity, and death.
But in order to produce such rapid, severe
damage, it would take many organisms. Millions
upon millions, collecting in the arteries
and veins. Probably you did not breathe in
so many.
So they must multiply in the bloodstream.
At a great rate. A fantastic rate.
And if you were acidotic? Did that halt multiplication?
Perhaps.
Again, he shook his head. Because a person
with acidosis like Willis or Jackson was one
thing. But what about the baby?
The baby was normal. If it breathed rapidly,
it would become alkalotic-basic, too little
acid-- not acidotic. The baby would go to
the opposite extreme.
Hall looked through the glass, and as he did,
the baby awoke. Almost immediately it began
to scream, its face turning purple, the little
eyes wrinkling, the mouth, toothless and smooth-gummed,
shrieking.
Scared to death.
And then the birds, with the fast metabolic
rate, the fast heart rates, the fast breathing
rates. The birds, who did everything fast.
They, too, survived.
Breathing fast?
Was it as simple as that?
He shook his head. It couldn't be.
He sat down and rubbed his eyes. He had a
headache, and he felt tired. He kept thinking
of Burton, who might die at any minute. Burton,
sitting there in the sealed room.
Hall felt the tension was unbearable. He suddenly
felt an overwhelming urge to escape it, to
get away from everything.
The TV screen clicked on. His technician appeared
and said, "Dr. Hall, we have Dr. Leavitt in
the infirmary."
And Hall found himself saying, "I'll be right
there."
*** He knew he was acting strangely. There
was no reason to see Leavitt. Leavitt was
all right, perfectly fine, in no danger. In
going to see him, Hall knew that he was trying
to forget the other, more immediate problems.
As he entered the infirmary, he felt guilty.
His technician said, "He's sleeping."
"Post-ictal," Hall said. Persons after a seizure
usually slept.
"Shall we start Dilantin?"
"No. Wait and see. Perhaps we can hold him
on phenobarb."
He began a slow and meticulous examination
of Leavitt.
His technician watched him and said, "You're
tired."
"Yes," said Hall. "It's past my bedtime."
On a normal day, he would now be driving home
on the expressway. So would Leavitt: going
home to his family in Pacific Palisades. The
Santa Monica Expressway.
He saw it vividly for a moment, the long lines
of cars creeping slowly forward.
And the signs by the side of the road. Speed
limit 65
maximum, 40 minimum. They always seemed like
a cruel joke at rush hour.
Maximum and minimum.
Cars that drove slowly were a menace. You
had to keep traffic moving at a fairly constant
rate, little difference between the fastest
and the slowest, and you had to...
He stopped.
"I've been an idiot," he said.
And he turned to the computer.
*** In later weeks, Hall referred to it as
his "highway diagnosis. " The principle of
it was so simple, so clear and obvious, he
was surprised none of them had thought of
it before.
He was excited as he punched in instructions
for the GROWTH program into the computer;
he had to punch in the directions three times;
his fingers kept making mistakes.
At last the program was set. On the display
screen, he saw what he wanted: growth of Andromeda
as a function of pH, of acidity-alkalinity.
The results were quite clear:
[GRAPHIC: colony growth versus pH, bell shaped
curve centered at pH 7.41 and dying at 7.39/7.43]
The Andromeda Strain grew within a narrow
range. If the medium for growth was too acid,
the organism would not multiply. If it was
too basic, it would not multiply. Only within
the range of pH 7.39 to 7.43 would it grow
well.
He stared at the graph for a moment, then
ran for the door. On his way out he grinned
at his assistant and said,
"It's all over. Our troubles are finished."
He could not have been more wrong.
28. The Test
IN THE MAIN CONTROL ROOM, STONE WAS WATCHING
the television screen that showed Burton in
the sealed lab.
"The oxygen's going in," Stone said.
"Stop it," Hall said.
"What?"
"Stop it now. Put him on room air."
Hall was looking at Burton. On the screen,
it was clear that the oxygen was beginning
to affect him. He was no longer breathing
so rapidly; his chest moved slowly.
He picked up the microphone.
"Burton," he said, "this is Hall. I've got
the answer.
The Andromeda Strain grows within a narrow
range of pH. Do you understand? A very narrow
range. If you're either acidotic or alkalotic,
you'll be all right. I want you to go into
respiratory alkalosis. I want you to breathe
as fast as you can."
Burton said, "But this is pure oxygen. I'll
hyperventilate and pass out. I'm a little
dizzy now."
"No. We're switching back to air. Now start
breathing as fast as you can."
Hall turned back to Stone. "Give him a higher
carbon dioxide atmosphere."
"But the organism flourishes in carbon dioxide!"
"I know, but not at an unfavorable pH of the
blood. You see, that's the problem: air doesn't
matter, but blood does.
We have to establish an unfavorable acid balance
for Burton's blood."
Stone suddenly understood. "The child," he
said. "It screamed.
"Yes."
"And the old fellow with the aspirin hyperventilated."
"Yes. And drank Sterno besides."
"And both of them shot their acid-base balance
to hell,"
Stone said.
"Yes," Hall said. "My trouble was, I was hung
up on the acidosis. I didn't understand how
the baby could become acidotic. The answer,
of course, was that it didn't. It became basic--
too little acid. But that was all right--
you could go either way, too much acid or
too little-- as long as you got out of the
growth range of Andromeda."
He turned back to Burton. "All right now,"
he said.
"Keep breathing rapidly. Don't stop. Keep
your lungs going and blow off your carbon
dioxide. How do you feel?"
"Okay," Burton panted. "Scared...but...okay."
"Good."
"Listen," Stone said, "we can't keep Burton
that way forever. Sooner or later..."
"Yes," Hall said. "We'll alkalinize his blood."
To Burton: "Look around the lab. Do you see
anything we could use to raise your blood
pH?
Burton looked. "No, not really."
"Bicarbonate of soda? Ascorbic acid? Vinegar?"
Burton searched frantically among the bottles
and reagents on the lab shelf, and finally
shook his head.
"Nothing here that will work."
Hall hardly heard him. He had been counting
Burton's respirations; they were up to thirty-five
a minute, deep and full. That would hold him
for a time, but sooner or later he would become
exhausted-- breathing was hard work-- or pass
out.
He looked around the lab from his vantage
point. And it was while doing this that he
noticed the rat. A black Norway, sitting calmly
in its cage in a corner of the room, watching
Burton.
He stopped.
"That rat..."
It was breathing slowly and easily. Stone
saw the rat and said, "What the hell..."
And then, as they watched, the lights began
to flash again, and the computer console blinked
on: EARLY DEGENERATIVE CHANGE IN GASKET V-1
12-6886
"Damn," Stone said.
"Where does that gasket lead?"
"It's one of the core gaskets; it connects
all the labs.
The main seal is--"
The computer came back on.
DEGENERATIVE CHANGE IN GASKETS
A-009-5478
V-430-0030
N-966-6656
They looked at the screen in astonishment.
"Something is wrong," Stone said. "Very wrong."
In rapid succession the computer flashed the
number of nine more gaskets that were breaking
down.
"I don't understand..."
And then Hall said, "The child. Of course!"
"The child?"
"And that damned airplane. It all fits."
"What are you talking about?" Stone said.
"The child was normal," Hall said. "It could
cry, and disrupt it's acid-base balance. Well
and good. That would prevent the Andromeda
Strain from getting into its bloodstream,
and multiplying, and killing it."
"Yes, yes," Stone said. "You've told me all
that."
"But what happens when the child stops crying?
Stone stared at him. He said nothing.
"I mean," Hall said, "that sooner or later,
that kid had to stop crying. It couldn't cry
forever. Sooner or later, it would stop, and
its acid-base balance would return to normal.
Then it would be vulnerable to Andromeda."
"True."
"But it didn't die."
"Perhaps some rapid form of immunity."
"No. Impossible. There are only two explanations.
When the child stopped crying, either the
organism was no longer there-had been blown
away, cleared from the air-or else the organism-"
"Changed," Stone said. "Mutated."
"Yes. Mutated to a noninfectious form. And
perhaps it is still mutating. Now it is no
longer directly harmful to man, but it eats
rubber gaskets."
"The airplane."
Hall nodded. "National guardsmen could be
on the ground, and not be harmed. But the
pilot had his aircraft destroyed because the
plastic was dissolved before his eyes."
"So Burton is now exposed to a harmless organism.
That's why the rat is alive."
"That's why Burton is alive," Hall said. "The
rapid breathing isn't necessary. He's only
alive because Andromeda changed."
"It may change again," Stone said. "And if
most mutations occur at times of multiplication,
when the organism is growing most rapidly..."
The sirens went off, and the computer flashed
a message in red.
GASKET INTEGRITY ZERO. LEVEL V CONTAMINATED
AND SEALED.
Stone turned to Hall. "Quick," he said, "get
out of here. There's no substation in this
lab. You have to go to the next sector."
For a moment, Hall did not understand. He
continued to sit in his seat, and then, when
the realization hit him, he scrambled for
the door and hurried outside to the corridor.
As he did so he heard a hissing sound, and
a thump as a massive steel plate slid out
from a wall and closed off the corridor.
Stone saw it and swore. "That does it," he
said. "We're trapped here. And if that bomb
goes off, it'll spread the organism all over
the surface. There will be a thousand mutations,
each killing in a different way. We'll never
be rid of it."
Over the loudspeaker, a flat mechanical voice
was saying, "The level is closed. The level
is closed. This is an emergency. The level
is closed."
There was a moment of silence, and then a
scratching sound as a new recording came on,
and Miss Gladys Stevens of Omaha, Nebraska,
said quietly, "There are now three minutes
to atomic self-destruct."
29. Three Minutes
A NEW RISING AND FALLING SIREN CAME ON, AND
all the clocks snapped their hands back to
1200 hours, and the second hands began to
sweep out the time. The stop-clocks all glowed
red, with a green line on the dial to indicate
when detonation would occur.
And the mechanical voice repeated calmly,
"There are now three minutes to self-destruct."
"Automatic," Stone said quietly. "The system
cuts in when the level is contaminated. We
can't let it happen."
Hall was holding the key in his hand. "There's
no way to get to a substation?"
"Not on this level. Each sector is sealed
from every other.
"But there are substations, on the other levels?"
"Yes..."
"How do I get up?"
"You can't. All the conventional routes are
sealed.
"What about the central core?" The central
core communicated with all levels.
Stone shrugged. "The safeguards .
Hall remembered talking to Burton earlier
about the central-core safeguards. In theory,
once inside the central core you could go
straight to the top. But in practice, them
were ligamine sensors located around the core
to prevent this. Originally intended to prevent
escape of lab animals that might break free
into the core, the sensors released ligamine,
a curare derivative that was water-soluble,
in the form of a gas. There were also automatic
guns that fired ligamine darts.
The mechanical voice said, "There are now
two minutes forty-five seconds to self-destruct."
Hall was already moving back into the lab
and staring through the glass into the inner
work area; beyond that was the central core.
Hall said, "What are my chances?"
"They don't exist," Stone explained.
Hall bent over and crawled through a tunnel
into a plastic suit. He waited until it had
sealed behind him, and then he picked up a
knife and cut away the tunnel, like a tail.
He breathed in the air of the lab, which was
cool and fresh, and laced with Andromeda organisms.
Nothing happened.
Back in the lab, Stone watched him through
the glass.
Hall saw his lips move, but heard nothing;
then a moment later the speakers cut in and
he heard Stone say, "-- best that we could
devise."
"What was?"
"The defense system."
"Thanks very much," Hall said, moving toward
the rubber gasket. It was circular and rather
small, leading into the central core.
"There's only one chance," Stone. said. "The
doses are low. They're calculated for a ten-kilogram
animal, like a large monkey, and you weigh
seventy kilograms or so. You can stand a fairly
heavy dose before--"
"Before I stop breathing," Hall said. The
victims of curare suffocate to death, their
chest muscles and diaphragms paralyzed. Hall
was certain it was an unpleasant way to die.
"Wish me luck," he said.
"There are now two minutes thirty seconds
to self-destruct," Gladys Stevens said.
Hall slammed the gasket with his fist, and
it crumbled in a dusty cloud. He moved out
into the central core.
*** It was silent. He was away from the sirens
and flashing lights of the level, and into
a cold, metallic, echoing space. The central
core was perhaps thirty feet wide, painted
a utilitarian gray; the core itself, a cylindrical
shaft of cables and machinery, lay before
him. On the walls he could see the rungs of
a ladder leading upward to Level IV.
"I have you on the TV monitor, " Stone's voice
said.
"Start up the ladder. The gas will begin any
moment."
A new recorded voice broke in. "The central
core has been contaminated," it said. "Authorized
maintenance personnel are advised to clear
the area immediately."
"Go!" Stone said.
Hall climbed. As he went up the circular wall,
he looked back and saw pale clouds of white
smoke blanketing the floor.
"That's the gas," Stone said. "Keep going."
Hall climbed quickly, hand over hand, moving
up the rungs. He was breathing hard, partly
from the exertion, partly from emotion.
"The sensors have you," Stone said. His voice
was dull.
Stone was sitting in the Level V laboratory,
watching on the consoles as the computer electric
eyes picked up Hall and outlined his body
moving up the wall. To Stone he seemed painfully
vulnerable. Stone glanced over at a third
screen, which showed the ligamine ejectors
pivoting on their wall brackets, the slim
barrels coming around to take aim.
"Go!"
On the screen, Hall's body was outlined in
red on a vivid green background. As Stone
watched, a crosshair was superimposed over
the body, centering on the neck. The computer
was programmed to choose a region of high
blood flow; for most animals, the neck was
better than the back.
Hall, climbing up the core wall, was aware
only of the distance and his fatigue. He felt
strangely and totally exhausted, as if he
had been climbing for hours. Then he realized
that the gas was beginning to affect him.
"The sensors have picked you up," Stone said.
"But you have only ten more yards."
Hall glanced back and saw one of the sensor
units. It was aimed directly at him. As he
watched, it fired, a small puff of bluish
smoke spurting from the barrel. There was
a whistling sound, and then something struck
the wall next to him, and fell to the ground.
"Missed that time. Keep going."
Another dart slammed into the wall near his
neck. He tried to hurry, tried to move faster.
Above, he could see the door with the plain
white markings LEVEL IV. Stone was right;
less than ten yards to go.
A third dart, and then a fourth. He still
was untouched.
For an ironic moment he felt irritation: the
damned computers weren't worth anything, they
couldn't even hit a simple target...
The next dart caught him in the shoulder,
stinging as it entered his flesh, and then
there was a second wave of burning pain as
the liquid was injected. Hall swore.
Stone watched it all on the monitor. The screen
blandly recorded STRIKE and then proceeded
to rerun a tape of the sequence, showing the
dart moving through the air, and hitting Hall's
shoulder. It showed it three times in succession.
The voice said, "There are now two minutes
to self-destruct.
"It's a low dose," Stone said to Hall. "Keep
going."
Hall continued to climb. He felt sluggish,
like a four-hundred pound man, but he continued
to climb. He reached the next door just as
a dart slammed into the wall near his cheekbone.
"Nasty."
"Go! Go!"
The door had a seal and handle. He tugged
at the handle while still another dart struck
the wall.
"That's it, that's it, you're going to make
it," Stone said.
"There are now ninety seconds to self-destruct,"
the voice said.
The handle spun. With a hiss of air the door
came open.
He moved into an inner chamber just as a dart
struck his leg with a brief, searing wave
of heat. And suddenly, instantly, he was a
thousand pounds heavier. He moved in slow
motion as he reached for the door and pulled
it shut behind him.
"You're in an airlock," Stone said. "Turn
the next door handle."
Hall moved toward the inner door. It was several
miles away, an infinite trip, a distance beyond
hope. His feet were encased in lead; his legs
were granite. He felt sleepy and achingly
tired as he took one step, and then another,
and another.
"There are now sixty seconds to self-destruct."
Time was passing swiftly. He could not understand
it; everything was so fast, and he was so
slow.
The handle. He closed his fingers around it,
as if in a dream. He turned the handle.
"Fight the drug. You can do it," Stone said.
What happened next was difficult to recall.
He saw the handle turn, and the door open;
he was dimly aware of a girl, a technician,
standing in the hallway as he staggered through.
She watched him with frightened eyes as he
took a single clumsy step forward.
"Help me," he said.
She hesitated; her eyes got wider, and then
she ran down the corridor away from him.
He watched her stupidly, and fell to the ground.
The substation was only a few feet away, a
glittering, polished metal plate on the wall.
"Forty-five seconds to self-destruct," the
voice said, and then he was angry because
the voice was female, and seductive, and recorded,
because someone had planned it this way, had
written out a series of inexorable statements,
like a script, which was now being followed
by the computers, together with all the polished,
perfect machinery of the laboratory. It was
as if this was his fate, planned from the
beginning.
And he was angry.
Later, Hall could not remember how he managed
to crawl the final distance; nor could he
remember how he was able to get to his knees
and reach up with the key. He did remember
twisting it in the lock, and watching as the
green light came on again.
"Self-destruct has been canceled," the voice
announced, as if it were quite normal.
Hall slid to the floor, heavy, exhausted,
and watched as blackness closed in around
him.
DAY 5
Resolution
30. The Last Day
AVOICE FROM VERY FAR AWAY SAID, "He's fighting
it."
"Is he?"
"Yes. Look."
And then, a moment later, Hall coughed as
something was pulled from his throat, and
he coughed again, gasped for air, and opened
his eyes.
A concerned female face looked down at him.
"You okay?
It wears off quickly."
Hall tried to answer her but could not. He
lay very still on his back, and felt himself
breathe. It was a little stiff at first, but
soon became much easier, his ribs going in
and out without effort. He turned his head
and said, "How long?"
"About forty seconds," the girl said, "as
nearly as we can figure. Forty seconds without
breathing. You were a little blue when we
found you, but we got you intubated right
away and onto a respirator."
"When was that?"
"Twelve, fifteen minutes ago. Ligamine is
short-acting, but even so, we were worried
about you... How are you feeling?"
"Okay."
He looked around the room. He was in the infirmary
on Level IV. On the far wall was a television
monitor, which showed Stone's face.
"Hello," Hall said.
Stone grinned. "Congratulations."
"I take it the bomb didn't?"
"The bomb didn't," Stone said.
"That's good," Hall said, and closed his eyes.
He slept for more than an hour, and when he
awoke the television screen was blank. A nurse
told him that Dr. Stone was talking to Vandenburg.
"What's happening?"
"According to predictions, the organism is
over Los Angeles now."
"And?"
The nurse shrugged. "Nothing. It seems to
have no effect at all."
*** "None whatsoever," Stone said, much later.
"It has apparently mutated to a benign form.
We're still waiting for a bizarre report of
death or disease, but it's been six hours
now, and it gets less likely with every minute.
We suspect that ultimately it will migrate
back out of the atmosphere, since there's
too much oxygen down here. But of course if
the bomb had gone off in Wildfire..."
Hall said, "How much time was left?"
"When you turned the key? About thirty-four
seconds."
Hall smiled. "Plenty of time. Hardly even
exciting."
"Perhaps from where you were," Stone said.
"But down on Level V, it was very exciting
indeed. I neglected to tell you that in order
to improve the subterranean detonation characteristics
of the atomic device, all air is evacuated
from Level V, beginning thirty seconds before
explosion."
"Oh," Hall said.
"But things are now under control," Stone
said. "We have the organism, and can continue
to study it. We've already begun to characterize
a variety of mutant forms. It's a rather astonishing
organism in its versatility. " He smiled.
"I think we can be fairly confident that the
organism will move into the upper atmosphere
without causing further difficulty on the
surface, so there's no problem there. And
as for us down here, we understand what's
happening now, in terms of the mutations.
That's the important thing. That we understand."
"Understand," Hall repeated.
"Yes," Stone said. "We have to understand."
*** EPILOGUE
OFFICIALLY, THE LOSS OF ANDROS V, THE MANNED
spacecraft that burned up as it reentered
the atmosphere, was explained on the basis
of mechanical failure. The tungsten-and-plastic-laminate
heat shield was said to have eroded away under
the thermal stress of returning to the atmosphere,
and an investigation was ordered by NASA into
production methods for the heat shield.
In Congress, and in the press, there was clamor
for safer spacecraft. As a result of governmental
and public pressure, NASA elected to postpone
future manned flights for an indefinite period.
This decision was announced by Jack Marriott,
"the voice of Andros," in a press conference
at the Manned Spaceflight Center in Houston.
A partial transcript of the conference follows:
Q: Jack, when does this postponement go into
effect?
A: Immediately. Right as I talk to you, we
are shutting down. Q: How long do you anticipate
this delay will last?
A: I'm afraid that's impossible to say. Q:
Could it be a matter of months? A: It could.
Q: Jack, could it be as long as a year?
A: It's just impossible for me to say. We
must wait for the findings of the investigative
committee.
Q: Does this postponement have anything to
do with the Russian decision to curtail their
space program after the crash of Zond 19?
A: You'd have to ask the Russians about that.
Q: I see that Jeremy Stone is on the list
of the investigative committee. How did you
happen to include a bacteriologist?
A: Professor Stone has served on many scientific
advisory councils in the past. We value his
opinion on a broad range of subjects.
Q: What will this delay do to the Mars-landing
target date?
A: It will certainly set the scheduling back.
Q: Jack, how far?
A: I'll tell you frankly, it's something that
all of us here would like to know. We regard
the failure of Andros V as a scientific error,
a breakdown in systems technology, and not
as a specifically human error. The scientists
are going over the problem now, and we'll
have to wait for their findings. The decision
is really out of our hands.
Q: Jack, would you repeat that?
A: The decision is out of our hands.
http://www.esnips.com/web/eb00ks
FOREWORD
This book recounts the five-day history of
a major American scientific crisis.
As in most crises, the events surrounding
the Andromeda Strain were a compound of foresight
and foolishness, innocence and ignorance.
Nearly everyone involved had moments of great
brilliance, and moments of unaccountable stupidity.
It is therefore impossible to write about
the events without offending some of the participants.
However, I think it is important that the
story be told.
This country supports the largest scientific
establishment in the history of mankind. New
discoveries are constantly being made, and
many of these discoveries have important political
or social overtones. In the near future, we
can expect more crises on the pattern of Andromeda.
Thus I believe it is useful for the public
to be made aware of the way in which scientific
crises arise, and are dealt with.
In researching and recounting the history
of the Andromeda Strain, I received the generous
help of many people who felt as I did, and
who encouraged me to tell the story accurately
and in detail.
My particular thanks must go to Major General
Willis A.
Haverford, United States Army; Lieutenant
Everett J. Sloane, United States Navy (Ret.);
Captain L. S. Waterhouse, United States Air
Force (Vandenberg Special Projects Division);
Colonel Henley Jackson and Colonel Stanley
Friedrich, both of Wright Patterson; and Murray
Charles of the Pentagon Press Division.
For their help in elucidating the background
of the Wildfire Project, I must thank Roger
White, National Aeronautics and Space Administration
(Houston MSQ; John Roble, NASA Kennedy Complex
13; Peter J. Mason, NASA Intelligence (Arlington
Hall); Dr. Francis Martin, University of California
(Berkeley) and the President's Science Advisory
Council; Dr. Max Byrd, USIA; Kenneth Vorhees,
White House Press Corps; and Professor Jonathan
Percy of the University of Chicago (Genetics
Department).
For their review of relevant chapters of the
manuscript, and for their technical corrections
and suggestions, I wish to thank Christian
P. Lewis, Goddard Space Flight Center; Herbert
Stanch, Avco, Inc.; James P. Baker, Jet Propulsion
Laboratory; Carlos N. Sandos, California Institute
of Technology; Dr. Brian Stack, University
of Michigan; Edgar Blalock, Hudson Institute;
Professor Linus Kjelling, the RAND
Corporation; Dr. Eldredge Benson, National
Institutes of Health.
Lastly, I wish to thank the participants in
the Wildfire Project and the investigation
of the -so-called Andromeda Strain. All agreed
to see me and, with many, my interviews lasted
over a period of days. Furthermore, I was
able to draw upon the transcripts of their
debriefing, which are stored in Arlington
Hall (Substation Seven) and which amounted
to more than fifteen thousand pages of typewritten
manuscript. This material, stored in twenty
volumes, represents the full story of the
events at Flatrock, Nevada, as told by each
of the participants, and I was thus able to
utilize their separate viewpoints in preparing
a composite account.
This is a rather technical narrative, centering
on complex issues of science. Wherever possible,
I have explained the scientific questions,
problems, and techniques.
I have avoided the temptation to simplify
both the issues and the answers, and if the
reader must occasionally struggle through
an and passage of technical detail, I apologize.
I have also tried to retain the tension and
excitement o events in these five days, for
there is an inherent drama in the story of
Andromeda, and if it is a chronicle of stupid,
deadly blunders, it is also a chronicle of
heroism and intelligence.
M.C.
Cambridge, Massachusetts
