Michael Crichton - The Andromeda Strain

"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.

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.