Paul Luciw was alone in his lab at Chiron Corporation in Emeryville, California, on an August evening in 1984 when the call came from his closest colleague at the company, Kathy Steimer. "Paul, I've got a problem," she said. "The ultracentrifuge has stopped."

He could picture exactly where she was, all alone in a spooky, P3 containment facility--a place where dangerous microbes could be handled in an isolated, specially ventilated room. This lab was a part of the Navy Biosciences Laboratory, less than two miles from Chiron. All summer, Paul and Kathy had been loading the huge, heavy ultracentrifuge with samples of AIDS virus. Like other teams of scientists in the United States and France, they were racing to unravel the genetic code of the virus and figure out how this tiny killer is organized. The information could open the door to diagnostic tests, treatments, or even a vaccine.

Paul's first thought was that the ultracentrifuge had bumped itself off balance like an overloaded washing machine, wreaking havoc with its contents while whirling at up to 20,000 revolutions per minute. If this had happened, whoever lifted the lid would find a jumble of metal racks and broken glassware coated with deadly viral goo.

Fortunately, Kathy reassured him, the situation wasn't so serious as that. The ultracentrifuge had simply ground to a halt. What troubled her was the prospect of filing an incident report--required any time something goes awry in a lab--with the central NBL office. Kathy and Paul had been cleared to work in the lab only because a Navy researcher, an old friend of Chiron's CEO, had lent them surplus lab space. This made it possible for the fledgling biotech to work on the AIDS virus, since they hadn't finished building their own containment facility. As guests, working on a virus that terrified most people, the Chiron scientists had kept their heads down.

Paul agreed they had no choice but to reveal what microbe was in the broken centrifuge, so Kathy called the duty officer for the Biosciences Lab. He immediately notified the commanding officer of the Oakland Naval Depot, where the laboratory was located, to report that there had been an accident with the AIDS virus on the base. The irate commander demanded to see Kathy in his office ASAP.

If the base commander was so bent out of shape, what would happen to the viral cultures that she had spent all summer cajoling into lush growth? A hazardous waste disposal team might already be hurtling in her direction, with instructions to confiscate the flasks. In a second quick phone consult, Kathy and Paul agreed that it made no sense to wait and see. Within minutes Paul was on his bike, pedaling furiously to the Navy base. In the entry chamber to the P3 building he stripped off his jeans and tee shirt and tossed them into a locker, pulling on a cotton scrub suit, gown, mask, booties and latex gloves.

As soon as Paul stepped into the ill-lit hallway, lined with derelict freezers and obsolete lab equipment, he began to sweat. His reaction was the same every time he saw the labels on the closed doors of individual labs. The hallway was a rogues gallery of pestilence: plague, anthrax, slow viruses that eat the brain. God knows what scourges had been handled in this old building and by whom. The only room in use now, however, was the one where he and Kathy had labored 14 hours a day, six or seven days a week, since May.

Kathy had already lined up a row of T-150 flasks on the bench, each containing about one cup of cloudy viral broth, and was tightening the tops and wrapping them in tape. Working swiftly, the two scientists put each flask into a plastic bag, sealed it, then bagged it again. Finally they loaded the flasks into some of the thick styrofoam shipping boxes that accumulate in biology labs like coat hangers in a closet. These they sealed with broad strips of plastic shipping tape. The goal was to move the cultures to the small biosafety level 3 room that Chiron had completed only a few weeks earlier. Clearly they'd have to transport the boxes of virus in Kathy's car, but leaving through the front gate would be too risky: the guards would surely suspect them of stealing government property.