The Andromeda Strain

Members of the Wildfire team are sent to Piedmont by helicopter. Onboard are Stone, Burton, and a pilot. All three are dressed in “plastic inflatable suits, making them look like obese men from Mars” (45). Burton is an experienced and respected pathologist whose sloppy dress displeases Stone. They discuss how the crashed satellite could have killed 50 people in Piedmont. The town is isolated, but several nearby cities have luckily avoided contamination. The men hope the wind remains calm to limit the possibility of airborne spread.

The suddenness of the deaths in Piedmont puzzles the scientists. The helicopter circles the town, and they can see the bodies lining the streets. The buzzards eating the dead present a “vector for infectious spread” and will need to be killed (48). They fire gas grenades into the streets, and the birds die almost instantly. Stone watches the birds die and worries that he has forgotten something. The pilot drops the men on the main street. He is well aware of the risk and is being well paid. Even the slightest threat of contamination will mean that he and his helicopter will be deliberately incinerated by the authorities. A jet is waiting by to shoot him down should he lose his nerve and try to break the rules.

Burton and Stone arrive on the ground in Piedmont 12 hours after the first contact between humans and the Andromeda Strain. After a moment of silent consideration, the men wonder why all the bodies are out in the street while dressed in their pajamas. Some of the dead are still clutching at their chests; their expressions are peaceful and “almost astonished” (50). They find the bodies of Shawn and Crane near the van full of scientific instruments. Shawn has a strange wound on his face.

Burton and Stone use the van to track down the satellite. They find it in the house of Dr. Alan Benedict, on the edge of town. The scientists enter through the open door and find Benedict dead at his desk, surrounded by open books with the satellite nearby. The satellite has been forcibly opened with a set of tools. The scientists curse and pack it into a plastic container. Burton performs an autopsy on Benedict and discovers that all the doctor’s blood has clotted.

The scientists search the other houses. While most people seem to have died quickly, others committed suicide. One suicide victim has left a note claiming that “the day of judgement is at hand” (55). Other messages suggest that some people were driven insane before they killed themselves. The investigation is interrupted by the sound of crying, and the scientists find a baby in a deserted house. They take the baby and the satellite back to the helicopter. Before they can board, an old man appears in the street dressed in a robe. He identifies himself as Peter Jackson and insists that he is “not like the others” who lay dead in the street (58). Jackson vomits blood, writhes in pain, and collapses. The scientists load him on to the helicopter and return to the Wildfire base. Stone radios ahead and asks for the implementation of Directive 7-12.

Directive 7-12 calls for the detonation of a limited nuclear bomb at “the site of exposure of terrestrial life to exogenous organisms” like the Andromeda Strain (60). The plan is designed to wipe out any possible alien infections. The order to launch Directive 7-12 follows a complicated chain of command that goes all the way to the president of the United States. On this occasion, the president delays the order to bomb Piedmont for 24 to 48 hours. Instead, he orders the area to be cordoned off for a radius of 100 miles. No one is sure why he makes this decision.

Hall reads through the Wildfire files while flying to the base in Flatrock, Nevada. The complicated bureaucratic language is difficult to understand, but he develops a vague understanding of the Wildfire Project. The underground base is structured in five levels, each deeper underground and each increasingly sterilized and secure. Each level is fitted with a lab and living quarters. Some of the pages referencing the Odd Man Hypothesis have been deliberately, mysteriously removed.

Hall arrives on a deserted airbase just after noon. Leavitt drives him to an even more secretive base. The secret base is labelled as the property of the Department of Agriculture and is located in a wooden structure below a corn field. Leavitt leads Hall through the stark corridors to an elevator hidden in a storage closet. They pass through strict, high-tech security measures and change into pink, sterilized, one-piece suits. Hall forgets to remove his watch and sets off an alarm.

They descend into the base and pass through increasingly complicated security and sterilization checkpoints. Hall cooperates with the measures and lists the various immunizations and vaccines he has received in the past year. He is scanned for funguses, subjected to a physical examination, and injected with booster immunizations.

Leavitt then takes Hall to meet the rest of the team. They sit in a meeting room and discuss the crisis. Stone gives Hall a red key and tells him about the Odd Man Hypothesis. Hall is the Odd Man because he is not married. Single men have been proven to make the “theoretical ‘right’ decisions” more often than married people or single women (75). In the case of an infectious alien organism escaping containment, Hall is the only person able to halt the automatic self-destruction sequence that triggers the nuclear bomb below the facility. The realization stuns him.

Stone leads a formal briefing for the Wildfire team that includes himself, Leavitt, Hall, and Burton. They will all descend to the facility’s final, most secure level, a process that will take nearly 24 hours, as they need to pause in the intermediary levels to be monitored for contamination. The satellite capsule is already descending to the bottom level. Peter Jackson and the baby are also in the facility. The four men talk about the strange deaths in Piedmont as they descend to Level II.

The descent involves more sterilization procedures. They must wait one hour before moving to Level III. At the next step, their temporary clothing is burned, and the men must swim through a decontamination pool. They then receive a thorough physical examination before waiting two hours and descending to Level IV. The sterilization and decontamination procedures become increasingly complex, invasive, and difficult. At one point, all of Hall’s body hair is incinerated. The men provide samples of all their body fluids. An exhausted Hall is told they must wait six hours before the final descent to Level V. They arrange to sleep for five hours and then hold a conference in the final hour.

Hall sleeps, but Burton struggles to deal with his memories of the dead people in Piedmont. Leavitt plans ahead and thinks about what must be done to identify and deal with the Andromeda Strain. He also wonders about the morality of “extraterrestrial murder” (81). Leavitt raised the issue with the team earlier, suggesting that simple extraterrestrial lifeforms might be advanced, intelligent, and developed. He falls asleep thinking about the issue. All the while, a security guard monitors them for any errors “should that unlikely event ever occur” (82).