Book detail for A for Andromeda

Cover tagline

"A science-fiction thriller that says: Be Careful, Earth"
— Christian Science Monitor

Back cover text

Message from an Unknown Planet

The faint crackling noises from the loudspeaker in the control room of the big observatory were definitely signals. Someone ... or something ... far out in space was trying to make contact.

Young Dr. Fleming and his colleagues were not superstitious. They were scientists. But none of them could deny the chill of fear that suddenly swept over them.

Still there was nothing really to warn them of the danger — the hideous nightmare that was about to envelop them all.

They has no way of knowing that a monstrous intelligence from outer space had already reached into their minds ... that they were already victims ... helpless conspirators in a silent, invisible conquest of earth.

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Interior text

Miracle or Monster?

They were in the laboratory huddled around the oxygen tent staring at the tiny thing wrapped in a blanket. Its face was hidden by a mask.

"Is it living?"

"Yes," answered Professor Dawnay. "It's a baby."

"A human baby?"

"I would say so, though I doubt if Dr. Fleming would."

The creature in the tent seemed to thrive on intravenous feeding. It grew half an inch a day and it was clear it was not going to go through the usual childhood. It would, in fact, reach full adult stature within a few months.

"Kill it!" cried Fleming.

They glared at him icily.

"Listen to me," said Fleming. "It may look like a human being, but it isn't one. It's an extension of the machine, like the other creature, only more sophisticated. The other was just a first shot at an attempt to produce an organism like us, acceptable to us. But this is a better shot, based on more information. I've worked on that information. I know how deliberate it is."

"Are you suggesting," asked Dr. Geers, "That having achieved this miracle of life, we kill it?"

"If you don't do it now," warned Fleming, "you'll never be able to. People will come to think of it as human. They'll say we're murdering it. And then it will have us ... the machine will have us — where it wants us!"