Michael Crichton - The Andromeda Strain

Main control was set up to find the organism.

Leavitt and Stone sat side by side in front of the banks of controls and dials. Stone operated the mechanical hands, while Leavitt manipulated the microscopic apparatus. Naturally it was impossible to enter the room with the capsule and examine it directly. Robot-controlled microscopes, with viewing screens in the control room, would accomplish this for them.

An early question had been whether to utilize television or some kind of direct visual linkup. Television was cheaper and more easily set up; TV image-intensifiers were already in use for electron microscopes, X-ray machines, and other devices. However, the Wildfire group finally decided that a TV screen was too imprecise for their needs; even a double-scan camera, which transmitted twice as many lines as the usual TV and gave better image resolution, would be insufficient. In the end, the group chose a fiber optics system in which a light image was transmitted directly through a snakelike bundle of glass fibers and then displayed on the viewers. This gave a clear, sharp image.

Stone positioned the capsule and pressed the appropriate controls. A black box moved down from the ceiling and began to scan the capsule surface. The two men watched the viewer screens:

"Start with five power," Stone said. Leavitt set the controls. They watched as the viewer automatically moved around the capsule, focusing on the surface of the metal. They watched one complete scan, then shifted up to twenty-power magnification. A twenty-power scan took much longer, since the field of view was smaller. They still saw nothing on the surface: no punctures, no indentations, nothing that looked like a small growth of any kind.

"Let's go to one hundred," Stone said. Leavitt adjusted the controls and sat back. They were beginning what they knew would be a long and tedious search. Probably they would find nothing. Soon they would examine the interior of the capsule; they might find something there. Or they might not. In either case, they would take samples for analysis, plating out the scrapings and swabs onto growth media.

Leavitt glanced from the viewing screens to look into the room. The viewer, suspended from the ceiling by a complex arrangement of rods and wires, was automatically moving in slow circles around the capsule. He looked back to the screens.

There were three screens in main control, and all showed exactly the same field of view. In theory, they could use three viewers projecting onto three screens, and cover the capsule in one third the time. But they did not want to do that- at least not now. Both, men knew that their interest and attention would fatigue as the day wore on. No matter how hard they tried, they could not remain alert all the time. But if two men watched the same image, there was less chance of missing something.

The surface area of the cone-shaped capsule, thirty-seven inches long and a foot in diameter at the base, was just over 650 square inches. Three scans, at five, twenty, and one hundred power, took them slightly more than two hours. At the end of the third scan, Stone said, "I suppose we ought to proceed with the 440 scan as well."

"But?"

"I am tempted to go directly to a scan of the interior. If we find nothing, we can come back outside and do a 440."

"I agree."

"All right," Stone said. "Start with five. On the inside."

Leavitt worked the controls. This time, it could not be done automatically; the viewer was programmed to follow the contours of any regularly shaped object, such as a cube, a sphere, or a cone. But it could not probe the interior of the capsule without direction. Leavitt set the lenses at five diameters and switched the remote viewer to manual control. Then he directed it down into the scoop opening of the capsule.

Stone, watching the screen, said, "More light."

Leavitt made adjustments. Five additional remote lights came down from the ceiling and clicked on, shining into the scoop.

"Better?"

"Fine."

Watching his own screen, Leavitt began to move the remote viewer. It took several minutes before he could do it smoothly; it was difficult to coordinate, rather like trying to write while you watched in a mirror. But soon he was scanning smoothly.

The five-power scan took twenty minutes. They found nothing except a small indentation the size of a pencil point. At Stone's suggestion, when they began the twenty-power scan they started with the indentation.

Immediately, they saw it: a tiny black fleck of jagged material no larger than a grain of sand. There seemed to be bits of green mixed in with the black.

Neither man reacted, though Leavitt later recalled that he was "trembling with excitement. I kept thinking, if this is it, if it's really something new, some brand new form of life…"

However, all he said was, "Interesting."

"We'd better complete the scan at twenty power," Stone said. He was working to keep his voice calm, but it was clear that he was excited too.

Leavitt wanted to examine the fleck at higher power immediately, but he understood what Stone was saying. They could not afford to jump to conclusions- any conclusions. Their only hope was to be grindingly, interminably thorough. They had to proceed methodically, to assure themselves at every point that they had overlooked nothing.

Otherwise, they could pursue a course of investigation for hours or days, only to find it ended nowhere, that they had made a mistake, misjudged the evidence, and wasted time.

So Leavitt did a complete scan of the interior at twenty power. He paused, once or twice, when they thought they saw other patches of green, and marked down the coordinates so they could find the areas later, under higher magnification. Half an hour passed before Stone announced he was satisfied with the twenty-power scan.

They took a break for caffeine, swallowing two pills with water. The team had agreed earlier that amphetamines should not be used except in times of serious emergency; they were stocked in the Level V pharmacy, but for routine purposes caffeine was preferred.

The aftertaste of the caffeine pill was sour in his mouth as Leavitt clicked in the hundred-power lenses, and began the third scan. As before, they started with the indentation, and the small black fleck they had noted earlier.

It was disappointing: at higher magnification it appeared no different from their earlier views, only larger. They could see, however, that it was an irregular piece of material, dull, looking like rock. And they could see there were definitely flecks of green mined on the jagged surface of the material.

"What do you make of it?" Stone said.

"If that's the object the capsule collided with," Leavitt said, "it was either moving with great speed, or else it is very heavy. Because it's not big enough-"

"To knock the satellite out of orbit otherwise. I agree. And yet it did not make a very deep indentation."

"Suggesting?"

Stone shrugged. "Suggesting that it was either not responsible for the orbital change, or that it has some elastic properties we don't yet know about."

"What do you think of the green?"

Stone grinned. "You won't trap me yet. I am curious, nothing more."

Leavitt chuckled and continued the scan. Both men now felt elated and inwardly certain of their discovery. They checked the other areas where they had noted green, and confirmed the presence of the patches at higher magnification.

But the other patches looked different from the green on the rock. For one thing, they were larger, and seemed somehow more luminous. For another, the borders of the patches seemed quite regular, and rounded.

"Like small drops of green paint, spattered on the inside of the capsule," Stone said.

"I hope that's not what it is."

"We could probe," Stone said.