MICHAEL CRICHTON

The camera continued to pan. She could imagine it sitting on its tripod in thejungle, motor whirring as the lens head swung around. Then suddenly the imagetilted and fell sideways.“He knocked it over.”“Damn!”The video image crackled, shifting lines of static. It became very difficult tosee.“Resolve it! Resolve it!”They had a final glimpse of a large face and a dark hand as the silver dishantenna was smashed. The image from the Congo shrank to a spot, and wasgone.2. Interference SignatureDURING JUNE OF 1979, EARTH RESOURCES TECHNOLOGY had fieldteams studying uranium deposits in Bolivia, copper deposits in Pakistan,agricultural field utilization in Kashmir, glacier advance in Iceland, timberresources in Malaysia, and diamond deposits in the Congo. This was not unusualfor ERTS; they generally had between six and eight groups in the field at anytime.Since their teams were often in hazardous or politically unstable regions, theywere vigilant in watching for the first signs of “interference signatures.” (Inremote-sensing terminology, a “signature” is the characteristic appearance of anobject or geological feature in a photograph or video image.) Most interferencesignatures were political. In 1977, ERTS had airlifted a team out of Borneo duringa local Communist uprising, and again from Nigeria in 1978 during a militarycoup. Occasionally the signatures were geological; they had pulled a team fromGuatemala in 1976 after the earthquake there.In the opinion of R. B. Travis, called out of bed in the late hours of June 13,1979, the videotapes from the Congo were “the worst interference signatureever,” but the problem remained mysterious. All they knew was that the camphad been destroyed in a mere six minutes—the time between the signal initiationfrom Houston and the reception in the Congo. The rapidity was frightening;13