Stone envied the others their mechanized routines. The preparation of samples for electron microscopy was still a delicate task requiring skilled human hands; the preparation of a good sample was as demanding a, craft as that ever practiced by an artisan-- and took almost as long to learn. Stone had worked for five years before he became proficient at it.
The plastic was cured in a special high-speed processing unit, but it would still take five hours to harden to proper consistency. The curing room would maintain a constant temperature of 61 deg C. with a relative humidity of 10 per cent.
Once the plastic was hardened, he would scrape it away, and then flake off a small bit of green with a microtome. This would go into the electron microscope. The flake would have to be of the right thickness and size, a small round shaving 1,500 angstroms in depth, no more.
Only then could he look at the green stuff, whatever it was, at sixty thousand diameters magnification.
That, he thought, would be interesting.
In general, Stone believed the work was going well. They were making fine progress, moving forward in several promising lines of inquiry. But most important, they had time. There was no rush, no panic, no need to fear.
The bomb had been dropped on Piedmont. That would destroy airborne organisms, and neutralize the source of infection. Wildfire was the only place that any further infection could spread from, and Wildfire was specifically designed to prevent that. Should isolation be broken in the lab, the areas that were contaminated would automatically seal off. Within a half-second, sliding airtight doors would close, producing a new configuration for the lab.
This was necessary because past experience in other laboratories working in so-called axenic, or germ-free, atmospheres indicated that contamination occurred in 15 per cent of cases. The reasons were usually structural-- a seal burst, a glove tore, a seam split-- but the contamination occurred, nonetheless.
At Wildfire, they were prepared for that eventuality. But if it did not happen, and the odds were it would not, then they could work safely here for an indefinite period. They could spend a month, even a year, working on the organism. There was no problem, no problem at all.
***
Hall walked through the corridor, looking at the atomic-detonator substations. He was trying to memorize their positions. There were five on the floor, positioned at intervals along the central corridor. Each was the same: small silver boxes no larger than a cigarette packet. Each had a lock for the key, a green light that was burning, and a dark-red light.
Burton had explained the mechanism earlier. "There are sensors in all the duct systems and in all the labs. They monitor the air in the rooms by a variety of chemical, electronic, and straight bioassay devices. The bioassay is just a mouse whose heartbeat is being monitored. If anything goes wrong with the sensors, the lab automatically seals off. If the whole floor is contaminated, it will seal off, and the atomic device will cut in. When that happens, the green light will go out, and the red light will begin to blink. That signals the start of the three-minute interval. Unless you lock in your key, the bomb will go off at the end of three minutes."
"And I have to do it myself?"
Burton nodded. "The key is steel. It is conductive. The lock has a system which measures the capacitance of the person holding the key. It responds to general body size, particularly weight, and also the salt content of sweat. It's quite specific, actually, for you."
"So I'm really the only one?"
"You really are. And you only have one key. But there's a complicating problem. The blueprints weren't followed exactly; we only discovered the error after the lab was finished and the device was installed. But there is an error: we are short three detonator substations. There are only five, instead of eight."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning that if the floor starts to contaminate, you must rush to locate yourself at a substation. Otherwise there is a chance you could be sealed off in a sector without a substation. And then, in the event of a malfunction of the bacteriologic sensors, a false positive malfunction, the laboratory could be destroyed needlessly."
"That seems a rather serious error in planning."
"It turns out," Burton said, "that three new substations were going to be added next month. But that won't help us now. Just keep the problem in mind, and everything'll be all right."
***
Leavitt awoke quickly, rolling out of bed and starting to dress. He was excited: he had just had an idea. A fascinating thing, wild, crazy, but fascinating as hell.
It had come from his dream.
He had been dreaming of a house, and then of a city-- a huge, complex, interconnecting city around the house. A man lived in the house, with his family; the man lived and worked and commuted within the city, moving about, acting, reacting.
And then, in the dream, the city was suddenly eliminated, leaving only the house. How different things were then! A single house, standing alone, without the things it needed-- water, plumbing, electricity, streets. And a family, cut off from the supermarkets, schools, drugstores. And the husband, whose work was in the city, interrelated to others in the city, suddenly stranded.
The house became a different organism altogether. And from that to the Wildfire organism was but a single step, a single leap of the imagination...
He would have to discuss it with Stone. Stone would laugh, as usual-- Stone always laughed-- but he would also pay attention. Leavitt knew that, in a sense, he operated as the idea man for the team. The man who would always provide the most improbable, mind-stretching theories.
Well, Stone would at least be interested.
He glanced at the clock. 2200 hours. Getting on toward midnight. He hurried to dress.