Their belief might never have been altered had not Leavitt suggested that they file for a code name. Leavitt stated that they had an organism and that it required a code. The others agreed.
In a corner of the room stood the scrambler typewriter. It had been clattering all day long, typing out material sent in from the outside. It was a two-way machine; material transmitted had to be typed in lowercase letters, while received material was printed out in capitals.
No one had really bothered to look at the input since their arrival on Level V. They were all too busy; besides, most of the input had been routine military dispatches that were sent to Wildfire but did not concern it. This was because Wildfire was one of the Cooler Circuit substations, known facetiously as the Top Twenty. These substations were linked to the basement of the White House and were the twenty most important strategic locations in the country. Other substations included Vandenberg, Kennedy, NORAD, Patterson, Detrick, and Virginia Key.
Stone went to the typewriter and printed out his message. The message was directed by computer to Central Codes, a station that handled the coding of all projects subsumed under the system of Cooler.
The transmission was as follows: open line to transmit
UNDERSTAND TRANSMIT STATE ORIGIN
stone project wildfire
STATE DESTINATION
central codes
UNDERSTAND CENTRAL CODES
message follows
SEND
have isolated extraterrestrial organism secondary to return of scoop seven wish coding for organism end message
TRANSMITTED
There followed a long pause. The scrambler teleprinter hummed and clicked, but printed nothing. Then the typewriter began to spit out a message on a long roll of paper.
MESSAGE FROM CENTRAL CODES FOLLOWS
UNDERSTAND ISOLATION OF NEW ORGANISM PLEASE CHARACTERIZE
END MESSAGE
Stone frowned. "But we don't know enough." However, the teleprinter was impatient:
TRANSMIT REPLY TO CENTRAL CODES
After a moment, Stone typed back: message to central codes follows cannot characterize at this time but suggest tentative classification as bacterial strain end message
MESSAGE FROM CENTRAL CODES FOLLOWS
UNDERSTAND REQUEST FOR BACTERIAL CLASSIFICATION
OPENING NEW CATEGORY CLASSIFICATION ACCORDING TO ICDA STANDARD REFERENCE CODE FOR YOUR ORGANISM WILL BE ANDROMEDA CODE WILL READ OUT ANDROMEDA
FILED UNDER ICDA LISTINGS AS 053.9 [UNSPECIFIED ORGANISM]
FURTHER FILING AS E866 [AIRCRAFT ACCIDENT] THIS FILING REPRESENTS CLOSEST FIT TO ESTABLISHED CATEGORIES
Stone smiled. "It seems we don't fit the established categories."
He typed back: understand coding as andromeda strain accepted end message
TRANSMITTED
"Well," Stone said, "that's that."
Burton had been looking over the sheaves of paper behind the teleprinter. The teleprinter-wrote its messages out on a long roll of paper, which fell into a box. There were dozens of yards of paper that no one had looked at.
Silently, he read a single message, tore it from the rest of the strip, and handed it to Stone.
1134/443/KK/Y-U/9
INFORMATION STATUS
TRANSMIT TO ALL STATIONS
CLASSIFICATION TOP SECRET
REQUEST FOR DIRECTIVE 7-12 RECEIVED TODAY BY EXEC AND NBC-COBRA
ORIGIN VANDENBERG/WILDFIRE CORROBORATION NASA/AMC
AUTHORITY PRIMARY MANCHEK, ARTHUR, MAJOR USA
IN CLOSED SESSION THIS DIRECTIVE HAS NOT BEEN ACTED UPON FINAL DECISION HAS BEEN POSTPONED TWENTY FOUR TO FORTY EIGHT HOURS RECONSIDERATION AT THAT TIME ALTERNATIVE TROOP DEPLOYMENT ACCORDING TO DIRECTIVE 7-11 NOW IN EFFECT
NO NOTIFICATION
END MESSAGE
TRANSMIT ALL STATIONS
CLASSIFICATION TOP SECRET
END TRANSMISSION
The team stared at the message in disbelief. No one said anything for a long time. Finally, Stone ran his fingers along the upper corner of the sheet and said in a low voice, "This was a 443. That makes it an MCN transmission. It should have rung the bell down here."
"There's no bell on this teleprinter," Leavitt said. "Only on Level I, at sector five. But they're supposed to notify us whenever-"
"Get sector five on the intercom," Stone said.
Ten minutes later, the horrified Captain Mortis had connected Stone to Robertson, the head of the President's Science Advisory Committee, who was in Houston.
Stone spoke for several minutes with Robertson, pressed initial surprise that he hadn't heard from earlier. There then followed a heated discussion of the President's decision not to call a Directive 7-12.
"The President doesn't trust scientists," Roberts("He doesn't feel comfortable with them."
"It's your job to make him comfortable," Stone said, "and you haven't been doing it."
"Jeremy-"
"There are only two sources of contamination," Stone said. "Piedmont, and this installation. We're adequately protected here, but Piedmont-"
"Jeremy, I agree the bomb should have been dropped."
"Then work on him. Stay on his back. Get him 7-12 as soon as possible. It may already be too late."
Robertson said he would, and would call back. Before he hung up, he said, "By the way, any thoughts about the Phantom?"
"The what?"
"The Phantom that crashed in Utah."
There was a moment of confusion before the Wildfire group understood that they had missed still another important teleprinter message.
"Routine training mission. The jet strayed over the closed zone, though. That's the puzzle."
"Any other information?"
"The pilot said something about his air hose dissolving. Vibration, or something. His last communication was bizarre."
"Like he was crazy?" Stone asked.
"Like that," Robertson said.
"Is there a team at the wreck site now?"
"Yes, we're waiting for information from them. It could come at any time."
"Pass it along," Stone said. And then he stopped. "If a 7-11 was ordered, instead of a 7-12," he said, "then you have troops in the area around Piedmont."
"National Guard, yes."
"That's pretty damned stupid," Stone said.
"Look, Jeremy, I agree-"
"When the first one dies," Stone said, "I want to know when, and how. And most especially, where. The wind there is from the east predominantly. If you start losing men west of Piedmont-"
"I'll call, Jeremy," Robertson said.
The conversation ended, and the team shuffled out of the conference room. Hall remained behind a moment, going through some of the rolls in the box, noting the messages. The majority were unintelligible to him, a weird set of nonsense messages and codes. After a time he gave up; he did so before he came upon the reprinted news item concerning the peculiar death of Officer Martin Willis, of the Arizona highway patrol.