Micro

Micro
Michael Crichton

Richard Preston

An instant classic in the vein of Jurassic Park, this boundary-pushing novel has all the hallmarks of Michael Crichton’s greatest adventures with its combination of pulse-pounding thrills, cutting-edge technology, and extraordinary researchThree men are found dead in a locked second-floor office in Honolulu. There is no sign of struggle, though their bodies are covered in ultra-fine, razor-sharp cuts. With no evidence, the police dismiss it as a bizarre suicide pact. But the murder weapon is still in the room, almost invisible to the human eye.In Cambridge, Massachusetts, seven graduate students at the forefront of their fields are recruited by a pioneering microbiology start-up company. Nanigen MicroTechnologies sends them to a mysterious laboratory in Hawaii, where they are promised access to tools that will open up a whole new scientific frontier.But this opportunity of a lifetime will teach them the true cost of existing at the cutting-edge…The group becomes prey to a technology of radical, unimaginable power and is thrust out into the teeming rainforest. Armed only with their knowledge of the natural world, the young scientists face a hostile wilderness that threatens danger at every turn.To survive, they must harness the awe-inspiring creative – and destructive – forces of nature itself.

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Copyright (#ulink_44fcaf0f-0a01-53fd-9a01-a7c7bc5d65f3)

This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the authors’ imaginations and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk/)

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2011

Copyright © 2011 by The John Michael Crichton Trust.

Cover design by Richard Augustus

Front Cover Image © Shutterstock (http://www.shutterstock.com) Book Design by Lucy Albanese Illustrated Maps © 2011 by Rodica Prato

Michael Crichton and Richard Preston assert the moral right to be identified as the authors of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks

Source ISBN: 9780007350032

Ebook Edition © NOVEMBER 2011 ISBN: 9780007384358

Version: 2017-05-10

Dedication (#ulink_9e45e4d1-57a1-5a1e-ac91-6fac900badb7)

Epigraph (#ulink_8c6e0efc-9272-5a82-9998-faa443cec530)

MINUTE CREATURES swarm around us…objects of potentially endless study and admiration, if we are willing to sweep our vision down from the world lined by the horizon to include the world an arm’s length away. A lifetime can be spent in a Magellanic voyage around the trunk of a tree.

—E. O. WILSON

Contents

Title Page (#u14e0a013-a72c-51e2-baf3-46613711ace0)

Copyright (#ue855c2d2-395b-55a6-9123-efc463e2e0f8)

Dedication (#ulink_ceaa4928-68c3-504f-a5e1-6905eb086ddf)

Epigraph (#u8bad789a-bb90-5d65-8c96-2e937f0b3329)

Introduction (#u7a914ef0-7de7-53c3-8e15-21c34eb4b3d0)

Map of Oahu (#ulink_f840ffbd-9bd6-566c-a092-57f37abf73f3)

Map of The Pali (#ulink_b3feb19f-9f3c-5ec4-8c80-4a000548aaca)

The Seven Graduate Students (#u21668b62-4068-5589-8264-69c6aa936164)

PART I: TENSOR (#uef1cd9d4-1eeb-57ef-bbb3-a7205d6e9adb)

Prologue (#u7e96ef59-e482-5250-9c3b-fb9e6405d399)

Chapter 1 (#ulink_efc5814d-4f6d-58e2-95cb-86ed96a00173)

Chapter 2 (#ulink_2fdae03d-41f9-5d09-b25e-9b1422ebbc12)

Chapter 3 (#u6a207761-21fb-597c-9ae6-4f12a7784073)

Chapter 4 (#u7e414a14-7fc1-5bdd-b800-613fbab755d7)

Chapter 5 (#uffd402ac-2603-5bc0-9a1f-c6212fbd0157)

Chapter 6 (#u84b3ac59-5c7a-511c-b6af-a1b9b556a49c)

Chapter 7 (#ud11e05a4-f059-5054-9a96-449b49cc0569)

Chapter 8 (#u50b756b2-4e7a-58bf-9e19-07f404198fed)

Chapter 9 (#ubd73c886-732f-58ca-957a-b80c82eeb7b6)

Chapter 10 (#u28504acf-2785-58c9-8b10-54c89f70df9b)

Chapter 11 (#u7d0d755b-7b56-52f5-aa0a-d2cf67e71428)

Chapter 12 (#u860b0835-a7b6-5d6f-a7a8-9e0893ab3542)

Chapter 13 (#uce961943-859d-5dc4-a19e-db78f17f1b8e)

PART II: A BAND OF HUMANS (#u4312d955-3de3-509d-a7a6-d3e479736a85)

Chapter 14 (#u2ad2abe7-3fb4-5a68-b388-6056a942a538)

Chapter 15 (#u104b79dd-75ff-52d0-a179-1334d79a0bcb)

Chapter 16 (#u5c8e55e4-ef10-5edf-9ad4-b5d58bd34376)

Chapter 17 (#u47d64129-044a-559a-9731-83c7856eb0b4)

Chapter 18 (#u49799de6-a2f6-5788-80cd-2a36361342cd)

Chapter 19 (#u42ddb05f-b82b-5a1a-83de-6f9b21f37b00)

Chapter 20 (#ud2515fc4-27bf-5df4-91c1-c086f3094438)

Chapter 21 (#u28484c1b-0cdc-5e8c-b3f6-d892a012db6c)

Chapter 22 (#u62db1783-8469-5359-bbad-50381c8bea25)

Chapter 23 (#ue2e74544-09ff-54b2-b98b-000ab2c9c1fe)

Chapter 24 (#ua84fd1df-cbcf-510d-839f-029689b9a417)