Killer Dust Read Online Free Page A

of equipment, as it seemed that each female aboard— Each wishful drum of hair spray abuse that’s roaming this ship —seemed to find it necessary, when they thought he wasn’t looking, to rush into the bow and attempt a Kate-Winslet-aboard-the- Titanic pose. More than one of these cows had gotten upwind of the intake valve while the apparatus was collecting— Offering up her own unique mix of talcum powder, psoriasis, deodorant, dandruff, eyelash mites, and who knows what other bodily flora and effluvia —to a sample he had been hoping to keep pristine. It had been necessary to run those samples over again, a loss of precious time and opportunity.
    The ship would be putting in at its easternmost port tomorrow, and thereafter would be steaming back westward toward its proprietary island in the Bahamas and thence back to Port Canaveral, snaking its way downwind of one island or another the whole way. What a sap he’d been to think that grabbing a sample of dust blown off Africa would be a simple matter of setting up the equipment, keying the timer, and then wandering off to dinner while the little gizmo swilled the easterly breeze. He’d even bought the tuxedo required for dining at the captain’s table— I did okay there, found a tail tux auctioned for forty dollars on eBay , he reminded himself— but I’ve yet to make it to a single dinner, it being easiest to keep the stampede of fantasy artists off the bow when they’re all off chowing down their grits.
    The filter cone finally slid securely into place. With satisfaction, Calvin decided that this sampling run would be good, and had every chance of staying good, as everyone else on the ship was at dinner or hanging over the stern
toasting the setting sun with a glass of rum. And —this he barely dared acknowledge even to himself— I am a lucky man. The latest storm off Africa is just now arriving, and here’s a nice haze of red smut dusting the whole ship just to prove it. Hell, I could get this sample with a catcher’s mitt! But four years of undergraduate training in biology, two years to get a Master’s in public health, three more for a Ph.D. in microbiology and two more for post-doctorate fellowships had taught him that it was just plain essential to get his sample onto the sterile filter paper that waited deep inside the little mechanical lung he now set into action. And with these data, there’s no way in hell Chip Hiller and his band of idiots can claim that my results aren’t valid!
    The machine hissed, its metal lips offering the evening breeze a hungry kiss. Calvin hovered downwind, inhaling the wind as if it were perfume, regardless of the fungi, bacteria, and viruses he knew to be riding it. The ship was now completely upwind of the Windward Islands. The air his canister was sucking had not passed over any land mass—no dalliances over islands, no sojourns over South America—since leaving mother Africa. Life was sweet.
    He allowed himself a smug grin. If this sample doesn’t win funding for the rest of the research, I’ll eat my tuxedo … . No, it looks too good on me. Okay, I’ll kiss the next would-be Winslet who comes near me. Fuck Chip Hiller and his attempts to block this project, because with adequate funding I, Calvin Wheat, will be the man of the hour in microbiological circles, the smart little cracker who will prove beyond the last foolish shreds of malingering doubt that the dust blowing off Africa is carrying live pathogens that threaten every organism on which it lands. Germs. Bacteria and fungi, not to mention the odd virus, all tucked tenderly into the crevices of the mineral dust that spall off that godforsaken continent like rats off a sinking environmental ship!
    Finding live germs in the samples collected in Africa itself had been a slam dunk; those little nasties had barely
left the dung heaps they’d blown from. Testing the air over the Caribbean islands and Florida had turned up plenty as well, but the naysayers