The Andromeda Evolution

by Michael Crichton

  “Americans, bozhe moi,” he muttered, shaking his head. “And you think we are the reckless ones.”

  Moments later, Stone had maneuvered himself and the shaped-charge canister into the Quest airlock.

  With a last thumbs-up, Komarov closed the hatchway and activated the depress pump. Stone felt the odd shivering sensation of evacuating atmosphere. A coolness crept over him, and the recharged interior heaters began warming his thighs and chest. Over the last few hours, Stone had gotten used to wearing the Z-3 space suit. After his taxing ordeal with Kline, however, it had begun to feel like iron armor hanging over his already fatigued muscles.

  As Stone waited, he spoke into his collar mike.

  “Nidhi? How are the controls looking?”

  “No . . .” came a soft reply.

  “No? Nidhi? What’s wrong?”

  “Puh-roblem,” finished Vedala, words slurring despite a clear attempt to concentrate. “No problem. I have got it covered.”

  “How much morphine did they give you?”

  “A medically necessary amount. But James, here’s what I want to say. I wanted to say . . . you don’t have to do this.”

  “If I don’t, a lot of people will die. Including people I care about.”

  “That’s what I mean,” said Vedala. “Not for me. You don’t have to do this for me. I knew the risks. I don’t need saving.”

  “I am doing this for you, Nidhi. But I’m also doing it for him, you understand?”

  “Tupa,” said Vedala.

  “He’s alone down there. Andromeda took his family. It took away the only world he ever really belonged in . . .”

  Stone stopped speaking. Composing himself, he continued slowly. “I’m going back for him. Somebody did the same thing for me, once.”

  Stone felt a tremor pass through his suit as the exterior airlock unsealed. A red square of light on the wall flashed green. It was time to go.

  “Wish me luck,” said Stone.

  Vedala couldn’t bring herself to answer.

  IN THESE LAST moments, Stone’s physiological signs, monitored by the pressure suit, registered near total exhaustion. His respiration was soon labored to the point that he was unable to communicate effectively via radio, and he appeared to be fading in and out of consciousness. Moving slowly, as if underwater, he navigated across the devastated exterior of the International Space Station.

  Earth seemed so very small and far away.

  Stone carried a bulky load on his back, comprised of the flight parachute and the shaped-charge canister. Maneuvering was nearly impossible. He was forced to stop and gather his strength multiple times. At each instance, it was unclear whether he was resting or had passed out completely.

  After twenty minutes, Stone stopped moving.

  “James?” radioed Vedala. “James, you have to keep going. The infection could jump to the ribbon any second. You have to get down there before it does.”

  Twenty seconds of static played over the line.

  Finally, Stone responded between deep breaths. “Prep the climber, Nidhi. I’m securing myself. Be ready to decouple the ISS and decelerate directly after detonation. We’ll send the rest of this mess into deep space.”

  As a result of the proximity of the infected modules, the internal temperature of the ISS had risen by ten degrees. The ventilation and cooling systems were taxed well beyond their limits. Cut off from Mission Control for over twenty-four hours, myriad problems had been left unattended and unmonitored.

  Finally liberated, Hamanaka and Komarov had quickly reestablished radio connections to Moscow and Houston. With the help of hundreds of Earthside scientists in both nations, they were efficiently working their way through a triage list of life support and environmental problems. Groundside, mathematicians were feverishly working out thrust and decoupling calculations for remote execution at the proper time.

  Only Vedala had been left to visually monitor the infection outside. And from what she could see, the situation didn’t look promising.

  The twitching filaments were absorbing the Wildfire and Leonardo modules, slowly combining them into a single malleable globule of black-purple metal, its surface flickering with a skein of greenish light. Vedala couldn’t be certain it wasn’t the morphine, but she thought she had glimpsed disturbing shapes emerging from the seething mass. Sinuous limblike twists of metal. Other, more complex surfaces that reminded her of circuit boards.

  The Andromeda Evolution was progressing.

  It took another twenty minutes for Stone to secure himself and the explosive charge to the climbing platform. He first used tether hooks to attach himself once again to the narrow ledge of metal gridwork that encircled the climber. Next, he strapped the explosive canister to the base with a handful of Russian cable ties—extremely strong solid copper wires, looped on both ends.

  Last, Stone used a tether hook to snap a short primary leash to the grated floor of the climber. Then he placed a much longer, secondary leash around the golden pin at the rear of the shaped-charge explosive. Both tethers were connected securely to anchor points on his waist.

  Sweating and nearly delirious in his pressurized suit, Stone sat down on the lip of metal. In the distance below, he could see the round curve of the entire Earth—frighteningly far away. The ribbon itself was barely visible, just a glimmer. Even so, he could feel it singing through the bones of the climbing platform.

  Dr. James Stone gave a final thumbs-up.

  “Ready,” he reported, “as I’ll ever be.”

  “James,” said Vedala, letting the moment stretch out. “I want you to live through this. Okay?”

  “It’s just an overgrown roller coaster, Nidhi. Let’s start the ride.”

  Vedala reluctantly punched the release button.

  The climber lurched, sending a shudder through the entire ISS. Then the rolling pins at the top of the climber began revolving in reverse. The stripped-down, barely functional climbing platform began accelerating downward. Within seconds it had reached a cruising speed of 7,500 miles per hour.

  The bottom dropped out of Stone’s world.

  On board the ISS, the solar panels began to tremble as the mass transferred down the tether. Otherwise all was still, save for an eerie humming as vibrations traveled through the ribbon.

  STONE CLUNG TO the base of the shaking metal platform, aching fingers pushed through the gridwork. Staring out the mirrored visor of his helmet, he watched breathlessly as Earth slowly began to grow larger.

  He was moving at over 7,500 miles per hour. On Earth’s surface this speed would have been astounding, but it was less than half the normal orbital speed of the International Space Station. In microgravity and without air friction, it was hard to notice any movement at all.

  Every few minutes, Stone checked the canister at its attachment point, making sure it was still secure. If he was unable to detonate the charge, or if it failed to sever the tether, then whatever alien mind was behind the creation of the Andromeda Strain would very likely wipe out the planet.

  But all Stone could really think of was Tupa, alone and abandoned in a quarantine zone, and the promise he had made to the boy. To distract himself, he focused on walking through the mental steps necessary to complete his task. And in that way, over two hours elapsed.

  “How’s it going down there?” asked Vedala, her voice nearly drowned out over the thrumming in Stone’s helmet.

  “Hell of a view. Status?” he radioed back.

  “Less than two thousand miles to go. Once you hit atmosphere at around a hundred miles, we’ll slow you down.”

  “Good, that’s—”

  At UTC 21:11:20, the climber was hit by a severe tremor. The origin was from somewhere above, and it sent the platform wobbling side to side with multiple g-forces. The unexpected jolt threw Stone from his perch. The short primary leash held, and he was left dangling from the edge of the falling platform. The soaring length of ribbon sliced past, only inches from his wildly kicking boots.

&
nbsp; Dust particles shaken off the platform impacted the ribbon above and below, igniting into a blazing shower of sparks. Stone prayed his suit integrity would hold as the fan of light coursed over his dangling feet.

  For nearly three minutes, the climber swung and rocked. Legs pedaling over nothingness, Stone swung by his tether like a rag doll. Then, with a final shout of utter exhaustion, he managed to lunge onto the metal gridwork and pull himself back up. For several minutes, Stone simply recovered his strength.

  “What—what was that?” he finally radioed, panting.

  “The infection has spread to the ribbon,” said Vedala. “It’s traveling down toward you, and it’s moving fast.”

  “How fast? Is it moving faster than I am?”

  “I can’t tell. Just hold on, and I’ll advise. You only need ten more minutes.”

  Stone waited, but he could feel the lie in Vedala’s shaking voice. The smooth descent had been replaced by a gritty constant tremor, like a car passing from paved highway to cobblestone. Stone imagined that the tensile strength of the ribbon had shifted slightly. The nanoscale conversion process was turning the atoms of the tether into the new evolution of Andromeda material.

  Similar, but not the same.

  Stone’s stomach lurched as the platform decelerated upon reaching the extreme upper atmosphere. To avoid being torn apart by air friction, he was slowing to a still punishing speed of five hundred miles per hour. The planet had once again grown to encompass nearly his whole field of vision. Looking upward, he saw that the upper portion of the silvery tether had turned deathly black.

  “Will I have enough time, Nidhi?” he radioed. “Tell me the truth.”

  “You only have fifty miles left—”

  “The truth!”

  “The ribbon is thin, James. It’s going dark so fast. Ballpark . . . it’ll overtake you in minutes. Two, maybe three.”

  Stone quickly did the calculation in his head. Moving at five hundred miles per hour, he would need six minutes to cover the final fifty miles. It was a simple math problem with a terrible answer—he needed to travel fifty miles in two minutes.

  “I have to accelerate,” said Stone. “It’s simple, Nidhi. Fifty miles in two minutes. Three times faster.”

  “That’s Mach 2. You’ll experience reentry burn,” said Vedala. “It’ll kill you.”

  “We have to try,” said Stone. “Nidhi. We have to try.”

  Vedala registered the desperation in Stone’s voice.

  Any other person might have paused; might have waited until it was too late. Despite feeling the rapidly fading effects of her morphine dose, Dr. Nidhi Vedala clearly understood every variable in this equation, including her own emotions.

  She punched the button.

  “Hold on tight,” she said.

  Stone couldn’t respond—his breath was caught in his chest as the climber instantly accelerated downward with the full force of its electric motors.

  “I’ll radio when it’s time to detonate and jump,” said Vedala. “Get ready. This is going to hurt.”

  On the last point, it wasn’t clear whether Vedala was talking to James or to herself. Everyone involved understood that Stone’s probability of survival was now essentially nil.

  Stone could hear and feel the piercing vibration of metal on metal; it seemed to scream through his bones. His vision shook along with the quaking platform.

  “Maximum acceleration—”

  Vedala’s voice was drowned out by a chaos of shaking. Stone felt blood rushing into his head as the downward acceleration pulled him up off his seat. It was just as well, as the metal undercarriage was already heating up as it collided with particles of the upper mesosphere. Staggering, he pushed up to a standing position.

  He looked like a man on a ledge to infinity.

  “Fifty seconds,” said Vedala, though Stone could no longer recognize the voice he was hearing. Around him, a corona of flame flared like a waterfall of light falling upward.

  For several seconds, Stone considered it beautiful.

  “Friend, be careful,” urged Komarov over the radio. “You are going to burn yourself to a cinder. From here you already look like a fireball.”

  Stone felt a new vibration. Looking up, he saw that microscopic pieces of the rolling mechanism were disintegrating. The speed and friction were too much. As the invisible particles collided with the ribbon above, they burst into a soaring rooster tail of flame.

  “I’m okay, I’m okay,” radioed Stone. His voice was barely discernible in the roaring static. He was now moving well over a thousand miles per hour.

  This would be his last discernible radio communication.

  Images of the catastrophic final descent were collected from low-angle telephoto shots on board a trio of B-150 long-range bombers operating at their maximum service height. The spy aircraft captured a surreal sight—a cone of bluish flame cascading up the curving thread of white light. Barely visible inside the inferno was the solitary figure of a man, standing silhouetted in wavering lines of flame. Beyond the cone of fire, the cold empty blackness of space draped itself over a blue-white horizon.

  The sound was not transmitted over radio, but Stone screamed into his suit as his forehead accidentally touched the glass of his visor. He was scalded instantly. The fabric exterior of his suit was charring, and the bottoms of his boots had begun to melt.

  “Thirty seconds,” said the voice in his helmet.

  The gridwork around Stone’s feet had begun to glow red, and flecks of molten metal were dribbling up and streaking past like meteors. Moaning, gritting his teeth, Stone reached down and found the leash around his waist. Following it with both hands, he focused on the golden pin mounted at the rear of the shaped-charge canister.

  Amazingly, it was still secure.

  On the backs of his eyelids, Stone could see a white-hot desert. A woman was there, lying on her back. She had been hurt badly. Blood had spilled from her wrists in a tide over the grains of sand. The image was from a classified black-and-white photograph that had become a memory that had become a nightmare.

  “Fifteen seconds,” said a voice. “Hold on, James.”

  With a gloved hand blackened by flame, Stone disconnected his primary tether hook. That left only the secondary tether, attached to the golden pin. In nuclear strategy circles, this detonation method was known as a “fail-deadly.” As opposed to a fail-safe, the explosive was sure to trigger if there was no human operator present to stop it.

  “Stay with me.”

  Eyes closed, teeth bared in agony, Stone clung to his tether and cried evaporating tears as the inferno rose up around him. Against the glare of pure blazing light, he forced his eyes open and glimpsed the green bulk of the South American continent. The sight made no logical sense to him. It was simply a swirl of colors—an impossibly beautiful rendering of green, teal, and brown.

  It had nothing to do with his current life of pain.

  He’d found the image in the Andromeda materials. His birth mother, lying dead in the Arizona sand. Her blood had turned to dust, and it was rising in a swirl on the hot wind. It was his only photograph of her, his only memory of her face.

  Millisecond by millisecond, Stone felt his consciousness stripped away into the roaring chaos. He could feel the desert heat, swallowing him up, carrying his blood away on its oven-hot breath—just as it had done for a mother and father he would never know, for a world he had never had the chance to grow up in, an entire life that had been stolen.

  James heard a far-off voice whispering in his ear. It was a gentle voice. He struggled to hear what it was telling him.

  “Mama?” he asked.

  “Now,” the voice said. “Now, now, now.”

  James Stone felt his knees buckle. He turned and fell backward from the burning platform. He felt the secondary tether snap and trigger the shaped-charge explosive. With a concussive thump, the canister detonated in a pale puff of smoke.

  There was no visible effect for fifteen seco
nds.

  The subsequent wink of flame occurred at a height of thirty-seven miles above the surface of the earth, well beyond the troposphere. It was a peculiar sight for those who observed it firsthand. And of those few witnesses, none observed the speck falling below the blast.

  It was a speck in the shape of a man.

  Resolution

  . . . we understand what’s happening now . . .

  That’s the important thing. That we understand.

  —MICHAEL CRICHTON

  Out of Eden

  THE EXPLOSION WAS VISIBLE FROM OVER TWO HUNDRED miles away in every direction. It occurred at the epicenter of a constantly evolving patchwork of international quarantines, ordered by various government agencies with differing levels of enforcement capability, including the United States, Russia, China, Brazil, Peru, and nearly every other equatorial nation. The airspace above the canopy was under patrol by multiple squads of American, Russian, and Chinese fighter jets.

  Yet there was only a single ground-based observer—the boy called Tupa.

  After the climber had ascended, the boy had managed to squeeze out of the half-finished tunnel in the spire wall. Dropping thirty feet into the lake, he swam to shore. He found nobody there, so he waited.

  And he watched.

  According to the boy’s eyewitness account, the silver tether in the sky began to swing. A dark dot fell down along it, followed by a blackness. From the top down, the silver tether was darkening. Then an orange spot flashed in the sky, leaving pale smoke on the wind. The black upper ribbon rose into the heavens. The bottom portion fell slowly, draping itself harmlessly over miles and miles of tropical wilderness.

  Tupa watched this in awe.

  And then, by his own account, he put his face in his hands and he cried.

  The boy was ten years old. He was utterly alone. And he had just witnessed what was surely the death of the only person he had grown to trust.