CHAPTER 23

Summary

In Topeka, Kansas, in a whitewashed room the size of a football field, Mancek and a group of army technicians are repositioning the pieces of wreckage from the plane crash. A bio-technician shows Mancek a piece of polymer plastic that has somehow been de-polymerized. As Mancek listens, he explains that this could only occur through a chemical reaction, intense heat, acid, or possibly a microorganism that eats plastic.

At the wildfire lab, Hall goes from conversing with Peter Jackson to the autopsy room to talk with Burton. Hall mentions Jackson's comments about the people in Piedmont who went insane and held their heads as they died. Hall asks Burton if he's noticed anything unusual about the cerebral vessels of the victims. Burton examines slides of the brain tissue from several autopsies and notices deposits of green material in the cerebral vessels. Suddenly he remembers the anti-coagulated rats and autopsies their bodies. He discovers these rats died, not from clotting of the blood, but from hemorrhaging of the brain vessels. The two men hypothesize that if the organism doesn't get to the brain, or to the lungs, it can't do any damage.

Notes

The autopsy of the rats helps explain the erratic behavior of the people who died in Piedmont. Those people who didn't immediately die of clotting would have experienced a brain hemorrhage that would have driven them mad.

CHAPTER 24

Summary

In examining the virus, the team had already made many errors. As Stone and Leavitt analyzed the data from the cultures they began to compound those errors. Remarkably, they find that the organism can grow without a growth medium, only requiring carbon dioxide, oxygen, or sunlight. This is an organism that can convert pure energy into growth, an organism that produces no waste. Upon this realization, Leavitt picks up the phone to ensure that the President does not decides to use a nuclear device on Piedmont in the future. The atomic blast would only provide more energy for the bacteria to consume without destroying it.

After Leavitt warns the President's scientific liaison, Robertson informs the two scientists that the hoses, which disintegrated in the cockpit, were not rubber, but a certain kind of polymer plastic. He also mentions that hundreds of national guardsmen are still stationed around Piedmont, yet none of them have died from the bacteria. Since Stone and Leavitt think they already know how Andromeda causes death (by coagulation), they pay little attention to the strange scenario of the Phantom plane crash.

As Leavitt and Stone return to their cultures the image of a lab technician flashes up on the television monitor. He notifies Dr. Leavitt that his electroencephalogram results were read as a ‘grade four' and that they would like to do another test to confirm the results. Leavitt assures the technician it must be a mistake and that he will come by for a retest as soon as he is finished.

Notes

Remarkably, Crichton questions that ultimate value of research and science in the formation of policy. Dr. Stone, with his many degrees and years of experience, was wrong about what would destroy that Andromeda strain. The President, who was basing his decision on his political instincts, happened to be right. Crichton is perhaps saying that survival sometimes requires a little bit of luck.