The team finally arrives at level five and enters a huge room sealed
off from the bacteria infected areas where the satellite, baby, and old
man are under observation. Stone explains that the operation is one giant
glove box, any interaction with the test subjects will be done with
mechanical hands operated by the scientists. To make sure the lethal bacteria
still surrounds the satellite, Stone grabs the controls, takes a rat out
of his cage, and drops it near the satellite. The rat barely has time
to sniff the air before falling over dead. Stone tries the same procedure
using a rhesus monkey, with the same result. He then drops the rat and
monkey onto a conveyor belt, which takes them to room where Burton can
perform an autopsy on the bodies. Since Dr. Hall is the only practicing
physician in the group, he goes to another room to examine Peter Jackson
and the baby.
In this chapter we see a dichotomy of personnel and the importance of
their assignments. Stone and Leavitt, who consider themselves the most
well-read and experienced of the team, end up following dead ends in their
research. Burton takes the important task of autopsying the animals, while
Hall has the most important job of all - discovering how these two people
survived.
In the observation room a computer tech teaches Dr. Hall how to use
the computer system to diagnose and test the two patients. Hall uses the
computers to order a series of tests, but must draw the blood, urine,
and saliva samples from the patients himself. Inside the room with Peter
Jackson and the baby is a large rubber suit connected to the observatory
by a large tube. Hall crawls through the tube and situates himself within
the rubber suit to take samples from the subjects. The tunnel opening
seals off to prevent any bacteria from entering the observatory in case
the rubber suit is somehow punctured. Dr. Hall attempts to revive Peter
Jackson from his unconscious stupor, but the old man merely tells him
to go away and goes back to sleep. Hall notices that Jackson's GI tract
is bleeding and tests show that his red blood cell count is about half
of normal. Upon examining the infant, Dr. Hall concludes that the baby
is completely normal - except that it somehow survived.
Throughout the book, Crichton consistently points out how the potential
of wasting time following up bad leads or making incorrect deductions.
Hall is busy trying to figure out how the baby and the old man are the
same, when he should be trying to figure out how they are different.
In the main control room, the observatory set up to find the organism,
Leavitt and Stone scan the outside of the satellite using sophisticated
fiber optics technology. They scan the exterior twice, find nothing, and
decide to proceed to the interior of the capsule. While scanning the inside,
the 20x scan picks up a piece of jagged material with small flecks of
green in it. The two scientists scan the same spot with a 440x lens, noticing
that the spot turns purple for a brief moment, and then back to green.
This change in color corresponds with a change in shape and repeats itself
a few moments later. Stone comments that the organism must be growing.
Since they have no higher magnification than 440x, Stone decides to prepare
the sample using a variety of cultures and begins typing in the instruction
for the computer to process. He and Leavitt begin preparing a sample for
the electron microscope and send another section of the bacterium' into
morphology.
Clapsaddle, Diane. "TheBestNotes on A Long Way Gone".
TheBestNotes.com.
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