MICHAEL CRICHTON

On October 1, 1979, R. B. Travis formally canceled the Blue Contract,reporting that no natural source of Type IIb diamonds could be anticipated in theforeseeable future. The Japanese electronics firm of Monkawa revived interest inthe Nagaura artificial boron-doping process. American firms had also begun workon doping; it was expected that the process would be perfected by 1984.On October 23, Karen Ross resigned from ERTS to work for the U.S.Geological Survey EDC in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, where no military work wasconducted, and no fieldwork was possible. She has since married JohnBellingham, a scientist at EDC.Peter Elliot took an indefinite leave of absence from the Berkeley Departmentof Zoology on October 30. A press release cited “Amy’s increasing maturity andsize. . . making further laboratory research difficult. . .“ Project Amy was formallydisbanded, although most of the staff accompanied Elliot and Amy to the Institutd’Etudes Ethnologiques at Bukama, Zaire. Here Amy’s interaction with wildgorillas continued to be studied in the fold. In November, 1979, she was thoughtto be pregnant; by then she was spending most of her time with a local gorillatroop, so it was difficult to be sure. She disappeared in May l980.*The institute conducted a census of mountain gorillas from March to August1980. The estimate was five thousand animals in all, approximately half theestimate of George Schaller, field biologist, twenty years before. These dataconfirm that the mountain gorilla is disappearing rapidly.Zoo reproduction rates have increased, and gorillas are unlikely to becometechnically extinct, but their habitats are shrinking under the press of mankind,and researchers suspect that the gorilla will vanish as a wild, free-roaming animalin the next few years.Kabega returned to Nairobi in 1979, working in a Chinese restaurant whichwent bankrupt in 1980. He then joined the National Geographic Societyexpedition to Botswana to study hippos.Aid Ubara, the eldest son of the porter Marawani and a radio astronomer atCambridge, England, won the Herskovita Prize in 1980 for research on X-rayemissions from the galactic source M322.At a handsome profit, Charles Munro sold 31 karats of blue Type IIb diamondson the Amsterdam bourse in late 1979; the diamonds were purchased by Intel,Inc., an American micronics company. Subsequently he was stabbed by aRussian agent in Antwerp in January 1980; the agent’s body was later recoveredin Brussels. Munro was arrested by an armed border patrol in Zambia in March257