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

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