Gravity. Part 34

"So they're infectious at this early stage in their life cycle?"

"They're infectious at any stage of their life cycle. They only have to be released into the air. Usually it happens around the time of the victim's death, or when the corpse bursts open several days post mortem. Once Chimera's infected you, once it's multiplied inside your body, each individual copy begins to grow. Begins to develop intoa" He paused. "We don't really know what to them. Egg sacs, I suppose. Because they contain a larval life-form inside them." Jack's gaze moved on, to the Day 3 enclosure. All the mice were twitching, limbs thrashing as though repeatedly jolted by electric shocks.

"By the third day," said Roman, "the larvae are growing rapidly. Displacing the victim's brain matter by sheer ma.s.s effect. Wreaking havoc with the host's neurologic functions. And by day foura"

They looked at the fourth enclosure. All but one were dead.

The corpses had not been removed, they lay stiff-legged, mouths gaping open. There were still three cages to go, the process of decomposition had been allowed to continue.

By day five, the corpses were beginning to bloat.

On day six, the bellies had grown even larger, the skin stretched drum-taut. viscous fluid seeped from the open eyes and glistened on the nostrils.

And on day seven a Jack halted beside the window, staring into the seventh enclosure.

Ruptured corpses littered the bottom like deflated balloons, the skin torn open to reveal a black stew of dissolved organs. And adhering to one rat's face was a gelatinous ma.s.s of opaque globes.

They were quivering.

"The egg sacs," said Roman. "By this stage, the corpse's body cavities are packed with them. They grow at an astonishing rate, feeding on host tissues. Digesting muscles and organs." He looked at Jack. "Are you familiar with the life cycle of parasitic wasps?

Jack shook his head.

"The adult wasp injects its eggs into a living caterpillar. The larvae grow, ingesting their host's hemolymph fluid. All this time, caterpillar is alive. Incubating a foreign life-form that's eating from the inside, until the larvae finally burst out of their dying host." Roman looked at the dead rats. "These larvae, too, and develop inside a living victim. And that's what finally kills host. All those larvae, packing into the cranium. Nibbling away the surface of the gray matter. Damaging capillaries, causing intracranial bleeding. The pressure builds. Vessels in the eyes engorge, burst. The host experiences blinding headaches, confusion. He stumbles around as though drunk. In three or four days, he is dead. And still the life-form continues to feed on the corpse. Raiding its DNA. Using that DNA to speed its own evolution."

"Into what?" Roman looked at Jack. "We don't know the end point. With every generation, Chimera acquires DNA from its host. The Chimera we're working with now is not the same one we started out with. Its genome has become more complex. The life-form more advanced." More and more human, thought Jack.

"This is the reason for absolute secrecy," said Roman. "Any terrorist, any hostile country, could mine the Galapagos Rift for of these things. This organism, in the wrong handsa" His trailed off.

"So nothing about this thing is manmade." Roman shook his head. "It was found by chance in the rift. Brought up to the surface by Gabriella. At first Dr. Koenig thought she'd discovered a new species of Archaeons. Instead, what she found was this." He looked at the wriggling ma.s.s of eggs. "A thousand years, they've been trapped in the remains of that asteroid. At a depth of nineteen thousand feet. That's what has kept it in check this time. The fact it came to rest in the deep sea, and not on land."

"Now I understand why you tested the hyperbaric chamber."

"All this time Chimera has existed benignly in the rift. We thought, if we reproduced those pressures, we could make it benign again."

"And can you?"

Roman shook his head. "Only temporarily. This life-form has been permanently altered by exposure to microgravity. Somehow, when it was brought to ISS, its reproductive switch was turned on. It's as if it was preprogrammed to be lethal. But it needed the absence of gravity to start that program running again."

"How temporary is hyperbaric treatment?"

"Infected mice stay healthy as long as they're in the chamber. We've kept them alive ten days now. But as soon as we take any of them out, the disease continues its progression."

"What about Ranavirus?" Only an hour ago, Dr. w.a.n.g from NASA Life Sciences had briefed Jack by phone. At that very moment, a supply of the amphibian virus was winging its way by Air Force jet to Dr. Roman's lab. "Our scientists believe it could work."

"Theoretically. But it's too early to launch a rescue shuttle. We have to prove Ranavirus works, or you'd risk the lives of another shuttle crew. We need time to test the virus. Several weeks, at least." Emma doesn't have weeks, thought Jack. She has only three days' worth of HCG. In silence he gazed down at the cage of rat corpses. At the eggs, glistening in their nest of slime.

Time. A thought suddenly occurred to him. The memory of something Roman had just said.

"You said the hyperbaric chamber has kept mice alive for ten days so far."

"That's correct."

"But it was only ten days ago that Discovery crashed." Roman avoided his gaze.

"You planned the chamber tests right from the start. Which means you already knew what you were dealing with. Even before you performed the autopsies." Roman turned and started to walk back to the elevator. He gave a gasp of surprise when Jack caught him by the collar and spun him around.

"That wasn't a commercial payload," said Jack. "Was it?" Roman pushed away and stumbled backward, against the wall.

"Defense used SeaScience as a cover," said Jack. "You paid them to send up the experiment for you. To hide the fact that this life-form is of military interest." Roman sidled toward the elevator. Toward escape.

Jack grabbed the man's lab coat and tightened his grip on the collar.

"This wasn't bioterrorism. This was your own f.u.c.king mistake!"

Roman's face had turned purple. "I can'ta"can't breathe!" Jack released him, and Roman slid down the wall, his legs collapsing beneath him. For a moment he didn't speak, but sat slumped on the floor, struggling to catch his breath. When at last he did talk, all he could manage was a whisper.

"We had no way of knowing what it would do. How it would change without gravitya"

"But you knew it was alien."

"Yes."

"And you knew it was a chimera. That it already had amphibian DNA.

"No. No, we didn't know that."

"Don't bulls.h.i.t me."

"We don't know how the frog DNA got onto the genome! It must have happened in Dr. Koenig's lab. A mistake of some kind. She was the one who found the organism in the rift, the one who finally realized what it was. SeaScience knew we'd be interested. An extraterrestrial organisma"of course we were! Defense paid for their KC-135 experiments. We funded the payload s.p.a.ce on ISS. It couldn't go up as a military payload. There'd be too many questions asked, too many review committees. NASA would wonder why the Army cared about harmless sea microbes. But no one questions the private sector. So it went up as a commercial payload, with SeaScience as sponsor. And Dr. Koenig as princ.i.p.al investigator.

"Where is Dr. Koenig?"

Slowly Roman rose to his feet. "She's dead."

That information took Jack by surprise. "How?" he asked.

"It was an accident."

"You think I believe that?"

"It's the truth." Jack studied the man for a moment and decided Roman was not lying.

"It happened over two weeks ago in Mexico," said Roman.

"Just after she resigned from SeaScience. The taxi she was riding was completely destroyed."

"And USAMRIID's raid on her lab? You weren't there to investigate, were you? You were there to see that all her files were destroyed."

"We are talking about an alien life-form. An organism more dangerous than we realized. Yes, the experiment was a mistake, catastrophe. Just imagine what could happen if this information leaked out to the world's terrorists?" This was why NASA had been kept in the dark. Why the truth could never be revealed.

"And you haven't seen the worst of it yet, Dr. McCallum," said Roman.

"What do you mean?"

"There's one more thing I want to show you." They rode the elevator down to the next level, to subbas.e.m.e.nt three. Deeper into Hades, thought Jack. Once again they stepped out to face a wall of gla.s.s, and beyond it, another lab with more s.p.a.ce-suited workers.

Roman pressed the intercom b.u.t.ton and said, "Could you bring out the specimen?" One of the lab workers nodded. She crossed to a walk-in steel vault, spun the ma.s.sive combination lock, and disappeared inside.

When she emerged again, she was wheeling a cart with a steel container on a tray. She rolled it to the viewing window.

Roman nodded.

She unlatched the steel container, lifted out a Plexiglas cylinder, and set it on the tray. The contents bobbed gently in a clear bath formalin.

"We found this burrowed inside the spinal column of Kenichi Hirai," said Roman. "His spine protected it from the force of when Discovery crashed. When we removed it, it was still alivea"but only barely."

Jack tried to speak, but could not produce a single word. He heard only the hiss of the ventilation fans and the roar of his own pulse as he stared in horror at the contents of the cylinder.

"This is what the larvae grow into," said Roman. "This is the next stage."

He understood, now. The reason for secrecy. What he had seen preserved in formalin, coiled up in that Plexiglas cylinder, had explained everything. Though it had been mangled during extraction, its essential features had been apparent. The glossy skin. The larval tail. And the fetal curl of the spinea"not amphibian, but something far more horrifying, because its genetic cla.s.s was recognizable. Mammalian, he thought. Maybe even human. It was already beginning to look like its host.

Allowed to infect a different species, it would change its appearance yet again. It could raid the DNA of any organism on earth, a.s.sume any shape. Eventually it could evolve to the point where it needed no host at all in which to grow and reproduce. It would be independent and self-sufficient. Perhaps even intelligent.

And Emma was now a living nursery for these things, her body a nourishing coc.o.o.n in which they were growing.

Jack shivered as he stood on the tarmac and stared across the barren airstrip. The Army jeep that had brought him and Gordon back to White Sands Air Force Base had receded to barely a glint now, trailing a fantail of dust into the horizon. The sun's white-hot brilliance brought tears to his eyes, and for a moment, the shimmered out of focus, as though underwater.

He turned to look at Gordon. "There's no other way. We have to do it."

"There are a thousand things that can go wrong."

"There always are. That's true for every launch, every mission. Why should this one be any different?"

"There'll be no contingencies. No safety backups. I know what we're dealing with, and it's a cowboy operation."

"Which makes it possible. What's their motto? Smaller, faster, cheaper."

"Okay," said Gordon, "let's say you don't blow up on the launchpad. Say the Air Force doesn't blast you out of the sky. When you get up there, you're still faced with the biggest gamble of all, whether the Ranavirus will work."

"From the very beginning, Gordon, there was one thing I couldn't figure out, Why was amphibian DNA on that genome? How did Chimera get frog genes? Roman thinks it was an accident. A mistake that happened in Koenig's lab." Jack shook his head. "I don't think it was an accident at all. I think Koenig put those there. As a fail-safe."

"I don't understand."

"Maybe she was thinking ahead, to the possible dangers. To what could happen if this new life-form changed while in microgravity. If Chimera ever got out of control, she wanted a way to it. A back door through its defenses. And this is it."

"A frog virus."

"It will work, Gordon. It has to work. I'll bet my life on it."

A whorl of dust spun between them, kicking up sand and stray sc.r.a.ps of paper. Gordon turned and gazed across the tarmac at the T-38 they had flown from Houston. And he sighed. "I was afraid you'd say that."

August 22

Casper Mulholland was gobbling down his third package of Turns, and his stomach still felt like a bubbling cauldron of acid. In the distance, Apogee II glinted like a bullet casing planted point up the desert sand. She was not a particularly impressive sight, especially to this audience.

Most of them had heard the earth-shaking roar of a NASA launch, had been awed by the majesty of the shuttle's giant columns of fire streaking into the sky. Apogee was nothing like the shuttle. She was more like a child's toy rocket, and Casper could see disappointment in the eyes of the dozen or so visitors as they climbed the newly erected viewing stand and gazed across the bleak desert terrain, toward the launchpad. Every one wanted big. Every one was in love with size and power. The small, the elegantly simple, did not interest them.

Another van pulled up at the site, and a fresh group of visitors began piling out, hands lifting at once to shield their eyes from the morning sun.

He recognized Mark Lucas and Hashemi Rashad, the two businessmen who had visited Apogee over three weeks ago. He saw the same disappointment play across their faces as they squinted toward the launchpad.

"This is as close to the pad as we can get?" said Lucas.

"I'm afraid so," said Casper. "It's for your own safety. We're dealing with explosive propellants out there."

"But I thought we were going to get an in-depth look at your launch operations."

"You'll have full access to our ground-control facilitya"our equivalent of Houston's Mission Control. As soon as she's off the pad, we'll drive over to the building and show you how we guide her into low earth orbit. That's the real test of our system, Mr. Lucas. Any engineering grad can launch a rocket. But getting one safely into orbit, and then guiding her to a flyby of the station, is a far more complicated matter. That's why we moved up this demonstration four daysa"to hit just the right launch window for ISS. To show you our system is already rendezvous-capable. Apogee II is just the kind of bird NASA's looking to buy."

"You're not actually going to dock, are you?" said Rashad. "I heard the station is in quarantine."

"No, we're not going to dock. Apogee II's just a prototype. She can't physically hook up with ISS because she doesn't have an orbital docking system. But we'll fly her close enough to the ISS to demonstrate we can do it. You know, just the fact we're able to change our launch schedule on short notice is a selling point. When it comes to s.p.a.ceflight, flexibility is key. Unexpected things pop up. My partner's recent accident, for example. Even though Mr. Obie's laid up in bed with a broken pelvis, you'll notice we didn't cancel the launch. We'll control the entire mission from ground. Gentlemen, that's flexibility."

"I can understand why you might delay a launch," said Lucas. "Say, for bad weather. By why did you have to move it up four days? Some of our partners weren't able to make it here in time."

Casper could feel the last Turns tablet bubble away in a fresh spurt of stomach acid. "It's simple, really." He paused to take handkerchief and wipe the sweat from his forehead. "It has to do with that launch window I mentioned. The s.p.a.ce station's...o...b..t is an inclination of fifty-one point six degrees. If you look at a of its...o...b..tal path on a map, it makes a sine wave varying between fifty-one point six degrees north and fifty-one point six degrees south. And since the earth rotates, the station pa.s.ses over a place on the map with each orbit. Also, the earth isn't entirely spherical, which adds another complication. When that orbital pa.s.ses over your launch site, that's the most efficient time to lift off. Adding up all those factors, we came up with various launch options. Then there's the question of daytime versus nighttime launches. Allowable launch angles. The most current weather forecastsa" Their eyes had begun to glaze over. He'd already lost them.

"Anyway," Casper finished with a profound sense of relief, "today at seven-ten A.M. turns out to be the best choice. That makes perfect sense to you, right?"

Lucas seemed to give himself a shake, like a startled dog coming out of a nap. "Yes. Of course."

"I'd still like to get closer," said Mr. Rashad on a wistful note.

He gazed at the rocket, a snub-nosed blip on the horizon. "From this far away, she's not much to look at, is she? So small." Casper smiled, even as he felt his own stomach digest itself in nervous acid. "Well, you know what they say, Mr. Rashad. It's not the size that matters. It's what you do with it." This is the last option, thought Jack as a bead of perspiration dripped down his temple and soaked into the lining of his flight helmet. He tried to calm his racing pulse, but his heart was like a frantic animal trying to batter its way out of his chest. For so many years, this was the moment he had dreamed of, strapped into the flight seat, helmet closed, oxygen flowing. The countdown ticking toward zero. In those dreams, fear had not been part of the equation, excitement. Antic.i.p.ation. He had not expected to be terrified.

"You are at T minus five minutes. The time to back out is now." It was Gordon Obie's voice over the hardline comm. At every step of the way, Gordon had offered Jack chances to change his mind.

During the flight from White Sands to Nevada. In the early morning hours, as Jack suited up in the Apogee Engineering hangar. And finally, on the drive across the pitch-black desert to the launchpad.

This was Jack's last opportunity.

"We can stop the countdown now," said Gordon. "Nix the whole mission."