andromeda strain

A military satellite returns to Earth, and a military recovery team, in an client van, are dispatched to retrieve it; while on live radio communication with their base, those in the recovery team die. Aerial surveillance later shows everyone in Piedmont, Arizona, the town near the satellite's landing site, is thought to have died. The base commander suspects the satellite returned with an extraterrestrial organism, and recommends the Wildfire team be activated.
The government-sponsored Wildfire team counters extraterrestrial biological infestation, its five members are (i) Dr. Jeremy Stone, molecular biology specialist; (ii) Dr. Peter Leavitt, disease pathology; (iii) Dr. Charles Burton, infection vectors specialist; and (iv) Dr. Mark Hall, M.D., Surgeon, biochemistry and pH specialist. The fifth member scientist, Dr. Christian Kirke, electrolytes specialist, was unavailable for duty because of appendicitis.
The scientists think the satellite, designed to capture upper-atmosphere microorganisms for bio-weapon exploitation, returned with a microorganism that kills by disseminated intra-vascular coagulation. On investigating the town, the team discover residents either die in mid-stride or go "quietly nuts" and commit bizarre suicide. Piedmont's survivors, the sick, Sterno-addicted, geriatric Peter Jackson, and the crying infant, Jamie Ritter, are biologic opposites who survived Andromeda.
The man, infant, and satellite are taken to the secret Wildfire laboratory, in Flatrock, Nevada, sixty miles from Las Vegas. More investigation determines that the bizarre deaths were caused by a sulfur-based, crystal-structured, extraterrestrial microbe on a meteor that crashed with the satellite, then knocked it from orbit. The microbe is composed of the chemical elements of terrestrial life, but not of DNA, RNA, proteins, and amino acids, yet it directly transforms matter to energy and vice versa.
The microbe, named Andromeda, mutates with each growth cycle, changing its biologic properties. The scientists discover that Andromeda grows only in a narrow pH range; in a too-acid or too-basic growth medium, it will not multiply — Andromeda's pH range is 7.39–7.43, like that of human blood. Thus, why Jackson and Ritter survived, both had abnormal bl...