The Andromeda Strain (Andromeda, #1) opens Goodreads in a new tab

This book recounts the five-day history of a major American scientific crisis. As in most crises, the events were a compound of foresight and foolishness, innocence and ignorance. It describes Project Wildfire, the crash mobilization of the nation's highest scientific and medical resources when an unmanned research satellite returns to earth mysteriously and lethally contaminated. In the town of Piedmont, bodies lie heaped across the ground, faces locked in frozen surprise, as scientists race to unravel the puzzle of the Andromeda Strain.