Free The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton Page A

several moments trying to decide how it worked. When they had the gas, they returned to the van, filled the tank, and Stone tried again.
    The engine caught and held. Stone grinned. “Let’s go.”
    Burton scrambled into the back, turned on the electronic equipment, and started the antenna rotating. He heard the faint beeping of the satellite.
    “The signal’s weak, but still there. Sounds over to the left somewhere.”
    Stone put the van in gear. They rumbled off, swerving around the bodies in the street. The beeping grew louder. They continued down the main street, past the gas station and the general store. The beeping suddenly grew faint.
    “We’ve gone too far. Turn around.”
    It took a while for Stone to find reverse on the gearshift, and then they doubled back, tracing the intensity of the sound. It was another fifteen minutes before they were able to locate the origin of the beeps to the north, on the outskirts of the town.
    Finally, they pulled up before a plain single-story woodframe house. A sign creaked in the wind: Dr. Alan Benedict.
    “Might have known,” Stone said. “They’d take it to the doctor.”
    The two men climbed out of the van and went up to the house. The front door was open, banging in the breeze. They entered the living room and found it empty. Turning right, they came to the doctor’s office.
    Benedict was there, a pudgy, white-haired man. He was seated before his desk, with several textbooks laid open. Along one wall were bottles, syringes, pictures of his family and several others showing men in combat uniforms. One showed a group of grinning soldiers; the scrawled words: “For Benny, from the boys of 87, Anzio.”
    Benedict himself was staring blankly toward a corner of the room, his eyes wide, his face peaceful.
    “Well,” Burton said, “Benedict certainly didn’t make it outside—”
    And then they saw the satellite.
    It was upright, a sleek polished cone three feet high, and its edges had been cracked and seared from the heat of reentry. It had been opened crudely, apparently with the help of a pair of pliers and chisel that lay on the floor next to the capsule.
    “The bastard opened it,” Stone said. “Stupid son of a bitch.”
    “How was he to know?”
    “He might have asked somebody,” Stone said. He sighed. “Anyway, he knows now. And so do forty-nine other people.” He bent over the satellite and closed the gaping, triangular hatch. “You have the container?”
    Burton produced the folded plastic bag and opened it out. Together they slipped it over the satellite, then sealed it shut.
    “I hope to hell there’s something left,” Burton said.
    “In a way,” Stone said softly, “I hope there isn’t.”
    They turned their attention to Benedict. Stone went over to him and shook him. The man fell rigidly from his chair onto the floor.
    Burton noticed the elbows, and suddenly became excited. He leaned over the body. “Come on,” he said to Stone. “Help me.”
    “Do what?”
    “Strip him down.”
    “Why?”
    “I want to check the lividity.”
    “But why?”
    “Just wait,” Burton said. He began unbuttoning Benedict’s shirt and loosening his trousers. The two men worked silently for some moments, until the doctor’s body was naked on the floor.
    “There,” Burton said, standing back.
    “I’ll be damned,” Stone said.
    There was no dependent lividity. Normally, after a person died, blood seeped to the lowest points, drawn down by gravity. A person who died in bed had a purple back from accumulated blood. But Benedict, who had died sitting up, had no blood in the tissue of his buttocks or thighs.
    Or in his elbows, which had rested on the arms of the chair.
    “Quite a peculiar finding,” Burton said. He glanced around the room and found a small autoclave for sterilizing instruments. Opening it, he removed a scalpel. He fitted it with a blade—carefully, so as not to puncture his airtight suit—and then turned back to the body.
    “We’ll take