The Andromeda Strain

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 it9"

"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.