The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton Read Free Book Online Page A

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 west-to-east orbits, as opposed to Cape Kennedy, which launches east-to-west; 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