Dr. Stone explain that the team is now on the top level of the facility's five levels of decontamination. The descent to the bottom level, where the capsule is located, requires the team to go through a rigorous sanitization procedure on each of the remaining four floors. The entire process takes about twenty-four hours. On a monitor, the scientist view the satellite, the baby, and Peter Jackson still quarantined on the bottom level, awaiting the scientists. Stone explains that a nuclear device has already destroyed the town of Piedmont to prevent further spread of the bacteria.
After the meeting, the team begins the decontamination process for level
two. Dr. Hall and the others are subjected to low level radiation designed
to burn off the outer layer of skin and immersion in a sanitizing bath.
Following this, the paper clothes issued to them are burned. The group
is examined by more doctors before finally going to sleep in their own
private quarters with their names on the door. In their rooms each of
the scientists ponders the bacteria in the context of their own disciplines.
While the teams sleep a man monitors all the communication outlets that
feed into the main network.
The thoughts of the various team members as they lie in their beds prove quite telling. Stone's thoughts reveal that he has information about meteors he has not yet shared with the others. Leavitt contemplates the possibility that this deadly bacterium is also highly intelligent, which would make destroying it morally questionable. Burton goes through the entire blood clotting process in his head in an effort to find out how the bacterium could speed up the progression. Hall immediately falls asleep.
In an example of dramatic irony, Stone and the others believe Piedmont
has been destroyed by a nuclear bomb, but we (the reader) know that's
not the case. The Wildfire team believes there is no possibility of further
contamination unless the bacterium escapes from the Wildfire Project.
This lack of urgency causes them to take their time with the research.
Dr. Hall awakes to the recording of a woman's voice and goes to the cafeteria where Leavitt gives him a suppository designed to decontaminate the gastro-intestinal tract. At their morning conference, Stone discusses the theories of Dr. Rudolph Karp with the group. Karp was a scientist who claimed he had isolates previously undiscovered organisms within a meteorite. Since these organisms had no detectable nucleus, their method of reproduction was unknown. The Wildfire team hypothesizes on the source of the newly discovered bacteria in a theory that became known as Vector Three. The first and most obvious origin of a bacterium is also the most unlikely - outer space. The second possibility was that this bacterium had been introduced from a remote location on earth, for instance the bottom of the ocean of the upper atmosphere. Finally, it was possible that a common household bacterium found its way aboard an American spacecraft and, while in orbit, mutated into something completely unrecognizable before returning to earth.
The team then examines the flight log for the satellite that landed
in Piedmont. They also study the track transcript to figure out what went
wrong with the orbit. The group concludes that a collision with other
satellite debris or a meteor is the most likely cause of the satellite
going out of its orbit. The meeting ends as a female voice tells the team
they can proceed to the next level.
Crichton again foreshadows the tragic ending of the story he is retelling
when summarizing the groups hypothesis on the bacterium's origin. Each
of the scientists realized that space could affect an organism's reproduction
and growth, yet no one in Wildfire paid attention to this fact, until
it was too late. (page182)
Clapsaddle, Diane. "TheBestNotes on A Long Way Gone".
TheBestNotes.com.
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