Michael Crichton: The Andromeda Strain

Yet there was no denying the radio-directional equipment, which located the satellite beeper directly in the center of town. Shawn suggested that someone from the town might have seen it coming down- it would be glowing with the heat- and might have retrieved it, bringing it into Piedmont.

This was reasonable, except that a native of Piedmont who happened upon an American satellite fresh from space would have told someone- reporters, police, NASA, the Army, someone.

But they had heard nothing.

Shawn climbed back down from the van, with Crane scrambling after him, shivering as the cold air struck him. Together, the two men looked out over the town.

It was peaceful, but completely dark. Shawn noticed that the gas station and the motel both had their lights doused. Yet they represented the only gas station and motel for miles.

And then Shawn noticed the birds.

In the light of the full moon he could see them, big birds, gliding in slow circles over the buildings, passing like black shadows across the face of the moon. He wondered why he hadn't noticed them before, and asked Crane what he made of them.

Crane said he didn't make anything of them. As a joke, he added, "Maybe they're buzzards."

"That's what they look like, all right," Shawn said.

Crane laughed nervously, his breath hissing out into the night." But why should there be buzzards here? They only come when something is dead."

Shawn lit a cigarette, cupping his hands around the lighter, protecting the flame from the wind. He said nothing, but looked down at the buildings, the outline of the little town. Then he scanned the town once more with binoculars, but saw no signs of life or movement.

At length, he lowered the binoculars and dropped his cigarette onto the crisp snow, where it sputtered and died.

He turned to Crane and said, "We'd better go down and have a look."

THREE HUNDRED MILES AWAY, IN THE LARGE, square, windowless room that served as Mission Control for Project Scoop, Lieutenant Edgar Comroe sat with his feet on his desk and a stack of scientific-journal articles before him. Comroe was serving as control officer for the night; it was a duty he filled once a month, directing the evening operations of the skeleton crew of twelve. Tonight, the crew was monitoring the progress and reports of the van coded Caper One, now making its way across the Arizona desert.

Comroe disliked this job. The room was gray and lighted with fluorescent lights; the tone was sparsely utilitarian and Comroe found it unpleasant. He never came to Mission Control except during a launch, when the atmosphere was different. Then the room was filled with busy technicians, each at work on a single complex task, each tense with the peculiar cold anticipation that precedes any spacecraft launch.

But nights were dull. Nothing ever happened at night. Comroe took advantage of the time and used it to catch up on reading. By profession he was a cardiovascular physiologist, with special interest in stresses induced at high-G accelerations.

Tonight, Comroe was reviewing a journal article titled "Stoichiometrics of Oxygen-Carrying Capacity and Diffusion Gradients with Increased Arterial Gas Tensions." He found it slow reading, and only moderately interesting. Thus he was willing to be interrupted when the overhead loudspeaker, which carried the voice transmission from the van of Shawn and Crane, clicked on.

Shawn said, "This is Caper One to Vandal Deca. Caper One to Vandal Deca. Are you reading. Over."

Comroe, feeling amused, replied that he was indeed reading.

"We are about to enter the town of Piedmont and recover the satellite."

"Very good, Caper One. Leave your radio open.

"Roger."

This was a regulation of the recovery technique, as outlined in the Systems Rules Manual of Project Scoop. The SRM was a thick gray paperback that sat at one corner of Comroe's desk, where he could refer to it easily. Comroe knew that conversation between van and base was taped, and later became part of the permanent project file, but he had never understood any good reason for this. In fact, it had always seemed to him a straightforward proposition: the van went out, got the capsule, and came back.

He shrugged and returned to his paper on gas tensions, only half listening to Shawn's voice as it said, "We are now inside the town. We have just passed a gas station and a motel. All quiet here. There is no sign of life. The signals from the satellite are stronger. There is a church half a block ahead. There are no lights or activity of any kind."

Comroe put his journal down. The strained quality of Shawn's voice was unmistakable. Normally Comroe would have been amused at the thought of two grown men made jittery by entering a small, sleepy desert town. But he knew Shawn personally, and he knew that Shawn, whatever other virtues he might have, utterly lacked an imagination. Shawn could fall asleep in a horror movie. He was that kind of man.

Comroe began to listen.

Over the crackling static, he heard the rumbling of the van engine. And he heard the two men in the van talking quietly.

Shawn: "Pretty quiet around here."

Crane: "Yes sir."

There was a pause.

Crane:. "Sir?"

Shawn: "Yes?"

Crane: "Did you see that?"

Shawn: "See what?"

Crane: "Back there, on the sidewalk. It looked like a body."

Shawn: "You're imagining things."

Another pause, and then Comroe heard the van come to a halt, brakes squealing.

Shawn: "Judas."

Crane: "It's another one, sir.

Shawn: "Looks dead."

Crane: "Shall I-"

Shawn: "No. Stay in the van."

His voice became louder, more formal, as he ran through the call. "This is Caper One to Vandal Deca. Over."

Comroe picked up the microphone. "Reading you. What's happened?"

Shawn, his voice tight, said, "Sir, we see bodies. Lots of them. They appear to be dead."

"Are you certain, Caper One?"

"For pete's sake," Shawn said. "Of course we're certain."

Comroe said mildly, "Proceed to the capsule, Caper One."

As he did so, he looked around the room. The twelve other men in the skeleton crew were staring at him, their eyes blank, unseeing. They were listening to the transmission.

The van rumbled to life again.

Comroe swung his feet off the desk and punched the red "Security" button on his console. That button automatically isolated the Mission Control room. No one would be allowed in or out without Comroe's permission.

Then he picked up the telephone and said, "Get me Major Manchek. M-A-N-C-H-E-K. This is a stat call. I'll hold."

Manchek was the chief duty officer for the month, the man directly responsible for all Scoop activities during February.

While he waited, he cradled the phone in his shoulder and lit a cigarette. Over the loudspeaker, Shawn could be heard to say, "Do they look dead to you, Crane?"

Crane: "Yes Sir. Kind of peaceful, but dead.'

Shawn: "Somehow they don't really look dead. There's something missing. Something funny… But they're all over. Must be dozens of them."

Crane: "Like they dropped in their trucks. Stumbled and fallen down dead."

Shawn: "All over the streets, on the sidewalks…"

Another silence, then Crane: "Sir!"

Shawn: "Judas."

Crane: "You see him? The man in the white robe, walking across the street-"

Shawn: "I see him."

Crane: "He's just stepping over them like-"

Shawn: "He's coming toward us."

Crane: "Sir, look, I think we should get out of here, if you don't mind my-"

The next sound was a high-pitched scream, and a crunching noise. Transmission ended at this point, and Vandenberg Scoop Mission Control was not able to raise the two men again.

GLADSTONE, UPON HEAIUNG OF THE DEATH OF "Chinese" Gordon in Egypt, was reported to have muttered irritably that his general might have chosen a more propitious time to die: Gordon's death threw the Gladstone government into turmoil and crisis. An aide suggested that the circumstances were unique and unpredictable, to which Gladstone crossly answered: "All crises are the same."