Andromeda Breakthrough

Fred Hoyle & John Elliot
Andromeda Breakthrough (1965)

Andromeda Breakthrough, a sequela de A For Andromeda, nasceu da série televisiva de 1962, com o argumento adaptado para novela, publicada em 1965 nos EUA e em 1966 no Reino Unido. Enquanto A For Andromeda é uma narração completa, apesar do final aberto, Andromeda Breakthrough é nitidamente um “volume II”, que se inicia praticamente no mesmo ponto em que tinha terminado o livro anterior – o incêndio da base de Thorness.
A história prossegue com as mesmas personagens e são inúmeras as referências aos factos passados no livro anterior. A trama de espionagem, que estava anteriormente em segundo plano, emerge neste livro. Uma poderosa multinacional, com métodos obscuros e o curioso nome de Intel, que tentava apropriar-se do segredo de Andrómeda, entra agora em força, e ficamos a saber que toda a informação que permitira construir o super-computador, e se acreditava estar irremediavelmente destruída, fora, afinal, clandestinamente duplicada. Um novo super-computador tinha sido construído secretamente em Azaran, um pequeno Estado do Golfo Pérsico, e algumas pessoas determinantes do projecto de Thorness foram levadas para lá, coagidas a finalizar o trabalho e pôr o super-computador em acção – entre elas John Fleming e Andre –, sob supervisão da Intel.
Daqui poder-se-ia supor que o pesadelo tecnológico entraria, uma vez mais, em marcha, mas Andromeda Breakthrough, não cai na armadilha de voltar à mesma história de A For Andromeda.
Os 12 capítulos deste livro têm terminologia meteorológica; ficamos a saber que em Thorness fora acidentalmente libertada uma bactéria, que, chegada aos oceanos, reproduzia-se prodigiosamente e retirava nitrogénio da atmosfera, provocando baixas pressões e tempestades, antes de acabar por tornar a atmosfera irrespirável. É contra esta ameaça que os protagonistas recorrem ao super-computador, para a síntese de um antídoto, antes que o tempo se esgote. E, deste modo, a tecnologia hostil que se vislumbrava no livro anterior, é aqui de certo modo dissipada e torna-se na aliada indispensável para a resolução do problema. Este livro foi publicado em tradução portuguesa, sob o título Nova Ameaça de Andrómeda, que li em 1982.

"Found anything?" Fleming asked.
"Not much. I now know what it does." She removed a test tube clamped vertically with its mouth over one of the tubes from the tank. "It absorbs nitrogen. You'd find less than 3 per cent in this sample from the air just above water surface. It also takes up some oxygen, not much—but see for yourself."
She turned to a filing cabinet and withdrew an untidy sheaf of papers. "Just glance over those formulae, will you, John? Tell me if you've seen anything like them before."
He studied the data in silence. "I said it looked familiar. It still does." He handed the papers back.
"It's another synthesis," she murmured.
He was really alarmed. "Not another one starting?" he exclaimed.
"No," she reassured him. "We worked back to this a long way. Yesterday evening I was on familiar stuff. It came out of the computer at Thorness—oh, it must have been more than a year ago, when I began the D.N.A. synthesis."
"It's part of that?" he asked in a low voice. "Part of the programme which constructed the girl?"
"No. It came up quite separately." Dawnay was firm about it. "I based an experiment on it; one had to at that stage when we were still groping in the dark, really." She moved to the tank and looked with despair down at the opaque, sullen fluid at the bottom. "I actually made some of these bacteria."
"What happened to them?"
She answered with an obvious effort. "They seemed harmless, pointless. Another failure. I kept them in a whole range of cultures for a week. They did not die, but they did not develop. Just multiplied. So the tubes were washed out and sterilised."
He started towards her. "Don't you realise...?"
"Of course I do," she said sharply. "The bacteria went down the sink, into the drain, from the drain to the sewer, and into the sea."
"Which is precisely what that bloody machine intended should happen! But an ounce or so is the most it can have been. It can't have spread the way it has."
"Not impossible," she said. "I've tried to fix the date more or less exactly when I abandoned that line of research. It's an academic point really. But I'm certain it is a year ago at least. With this tank fixed up I have been able to calculate the rate of growth. It's fantastic. No virus or bacteria so far known has a rate even comparable to it. And now the buildup's greater. You can envisage the sort of progression now that it's invaded all the main oceans."
"How long," he asked, "will it take...?"
She looked up at him. "Possibly another year. Probably less. All sea water will then reach maximum saturation."
Fleming studied the wall-graph which recorded hour by hour the nitrogen content in the air of the tank. "It does nothing but absorb nitrogen and some oxygen?" he asked.
"Not so far as I've discovered," she replied. "But the sea normally absorbs nitrogen very, very slowly. Plankton and so on. Any artificial fertiliser manufacturing plant takes out in a week as much as the sea absorbs in a year. It hasn't mattered. There's plenty. But this bacteria could easily absorb all the nitrogen in the world's atmosphere. That's what's happening now. It's bringing down air pressure. In the end there'll be no nitrogen and therefore no plants. When the pressure really drops off the scale there won't be any way for us to absorb oxygen, and then there'll be no more animals."
"Unless—" Fleming began.
"There's no unless."

Li anteriormente:
A For Andromeda (1962)
Nova Ameaça de Andrómeda (1966)