Fantastic Voyage II: Destination Brain

Chapter 11. Destination

  Going there may be most of the fun - but only if you get there in the end.

  45.

  Immediately, Morrison felt the enveloping warmth and gasped. As Konev had said - the temperature was 37 degrees Celsius. It was the heat of a sweltering summer day and there was no escape. No shade, no breeze.

  He looked around, getting his bearings. Clearly, Boranova had miniaturized the ship further while he had clumsily clambered into the suit. The tiled wall of the capillary was farther away. He could see only a bit of it, for between himself and the wall was a huge cloudy object. A red corpuscle, of course. Then a platelet went slipping between the red corpuscle and the wall, but very slowly.

  All of them - red corpuscle, platelet, himself, the ship - were moving along with the small creeping current within the capillary, if one judged by the slow drifting motion of the tilings in the wall.

  Morrison wondered why he felt the Brownian motion as little as he did. There was indeed the sensation of movement and the other objects in sight appeared to tremble. Even the tile marks of the capillary walls seemed to shift somehow, in a rather peculiar manner.

  But there was no time to be keenly analytical. He had to get things done and get back within the ship.

  He was a meter or so from the ship. (A meter? Purely subjective. How many micrometers - how many millionths of a meter was he separated from the ship in real measurements? He didn't pause to try to work out an answer to the question. ) He twiddled his flippers to get back to the ship. The plasma was distinctly more viscous than seawater - unpleasantly so.

  The heat continued, of course. It would never stop while the body he was in remained alive. Morrison's forehead was getting moist. - Come, he had to get started.

  His hand reached out to the place where he had left the ship, but it touched nothing. It was almost as though it were pushing into a soft rubbery cushion of air, although his eyes told him there was nothing between that portion of the hull of the ship and his suited hand except, at best, a film of fluid.

  A moment of thought and he saw what was happening. The outer skin of his suit carried a negative electric charge. So did that portion of the hull he was touching. It was repelling him.

  There were other portions of the hull, however. Morrison slid his hands along until he was aware of touching the plastic. That was not in itself enough, however, for his hands moved along the area as though it were infinitely slippery.

  And then, almost with a click, his left hand froze. It had passed a region of positive charge and remained in place. He tried to pull free first by a gentle backward push and then more frantically. He might as well have been riveted to the spot. He felt farther along with his right hand. Anchor that and he might be able to pull his left hand free.

  Click. Anchored now by his right hand, he pulled at his left. Nothing happened. He clung to the hull, crucified there.

  Drops of perspiration rolled down his forehead and collected in his armpits.

  He shouted uselessly, wiggling his legs in an ecstasy of effort.

  They were looking at him, but how could he gesture to his trapped hands? The red corpuscle that had been companion to the ship since he had emerged from it drifted closer and nudged him against the hull. His chest, however, did not cling. Luckily, it was not up against a positively charged region.

  Kaliinin was looking toward him. Her lips were moving, but he could not lip-read - not Russian, at any rate. She did something with her computer and his left arm pulled free. Presumably, she had weakened the intensity of the charge.

  He nodded his head in what he hoped would be interpreted as a gesture of thanks. Now it would only be necessary to work his way back, positively charged area by positively charged area, until he reached the rear of the ship.

  He began the motion and found himself more or less pinned, but not so much this time by the harsh pull of the electromagnetic interaction as by the soft, pillowy push of the red corpuscle.

  "Get back!" shouted Morrison, but the red corpuscle knew nothing of shouts. Its role was purely passive.

  Morrison thrust at it with his hands and used his leg flippers to push harder. The elastic surface film of the red cell gave and bellied inward, but resisted more strongly, the more it gave until, finally, Morrison was pushing uselessly and, as he tired, was forced back against the ship.

  He paused to catch his breath, which was difficult, hot and sweat-drenched as he was. He wondered whether he would be disabled first by dehydration or by the fever which would surely come over him if he could not get rid of the heat his own body was producing - and all the more so because of the effort he was making to free himself of the red corpuscle.

  He lifted his arm again and brought it down, the plastic flipper held edgewise. It sliced through the pellicle of the corpuscle, puncturing it like a balloon. The surface tension of the film pulled the opening wider and wider. Matter exuded - a thin cloud of granules - and the red corpuscle began to shrink.

  Morrison felt as though he had killed an inoffensive living creature and experienced a pang of guilt - then decided that there were trillions of others in the circulatory system and that a red corpuscle only had 120 days of functioning anyhow.

  Now he could pull back toward the rear.

  No fog collected on the inner surface of his suit. Why should it? The surface was as warm as he was and nothing would cling to the plastic anyway. What would have been fog was probably collecting as little pools of sweat in this corner and that of the suit, rolling around as he did.

  He was back at the rear now, back where the ship's streamlining failed because the jets of each of the three microfusion engines broke the smooth lines. Here he was as far from the center of gravity of the ship as possible. (With luck, the other four would move as close to the front of the ship as they could. - He wished he had thought to make that explicit before getting into the suit. ) What he had to do was to find positively charged areas that would hold his hands back and then - push!

  He was feeling a little dizzy. Physical? Psychological? The effect was the same, either way.

  He took another deep breath and blinked his eyes as perspiration leaked into them (there was no way he could brush it away and again he felt a spasm of fury against the fools who had designed a suit only microscopically better than none at all).

  He found the handholds against the hull and paddled his feet. Would this work? The mass he was trying to turn was only micrograms in quantity, but he had at his disposal - what? Microergs? He knew that the square-cube law gave him a tremendous advantage, but how much efficiency could he put into his push?

  But the ship moved. He could tell that by the motions of the tiling on the capillary wall. He could now reach that wall with his feet, so the ship must be lying across the capillary. He had turned it 90 degrees.

  When his feet touched the capillary wall, he pushed with perhaps injudicious savagery. If he were to punch a hole in the wall, the results might be incalculably bad, but he was aware he had little time left and he could not think beyond that. Fortunately, his feet rebounded as though they had sunk into spongy rubber and the ship turned a bit faster.

  Then stuck.

  Morrison looked up blearily, squinting and willing himself to see. (He was almost past the ability to breathe in the squalid damp heat of the suit's interior. ) It was another red corpuscle. Surely it was another red corpuscle. They were as closely spaced in capillaries as - as cars on a busy city street.

  This time he did not wait. The flipper on his right hand came down at once, carving open a vast swath, and this time he did not spend a microsecond of worry over the murder of an innocent object. His legs worked again and the ship moved.

  He hoped it was shifting in the same direction as before. What if he had managed to twist himself upside down in his mad attack on the red corpuscle and he was simply pushing the ship back into the wrong direction? He was almost beyond caring.


  The ship was now parallel to the long axis of the capillary. Gasping, he tried to study the tiles. If they were moving forward toward the prow of the ship, then the ship was moving backward with the current and it was facing the junction of the arteriole.

  He decided it was. No, he didn't care. Right way, wrong way, he had to get back into the ship.

  He was not ready to sell his life for success.

  Where? Where?

  His hands were sliding along the walls of the ship. Sticking here. Sticking there.

  Vaguely he saw the dim figures on the other side of the wall. Motioning. He tried to follow the gestures.

  They were fading out.

  Up? Signaling up? How could he clamber up? He had no strength.

  His last truly sane thought, for a while, was that he needed no strength. Up meant no more than down for a weightless, massless body.

  He wriggled upward, forgetting why, and a fog of darkness came down upon him.

  46.

  The first thing Morrison sensed was cold.

  A wave of cold. Then a touch of cold.

  Then light.

  He was staring at a face. For an interval of time, he did not grasp the fact that it was a face. It was just a pattern of light and shade at first. Then a face. Then the face of Sophia Kaliinin.

  She said softly, "Do you know me?"

  Slowly, creakily, Morrison nodded.

  "Say my name. "

  "Sophia," he croaked.

  "And to your left?"

  His eyes turned, and difficulty focusing, then he turned his head. "Natalya," he said.

  "How do you feel?"

  "Headache. " His voice sounded small and far away.

  "It will go away. "

  Morrison closed his eyes and surrendered to the peace of nonstruggle. Just to do nothing was the highest good. To feel nothing.

  Then he felt a cool stroke over his groin and his eyes opened again. He discovered that the suit had been removed and he was naked.

  He felt arms holding him down and heard a voice say, "Don't worry. We can't give you a shower. There's no water for that. But we can use a damp towel. You need to be cooled - and cleaned. "

  ". . . undignified," he managed, struggling over the syllables.

  "Foolish. We'll dry you now. A little deodorant. Then back into your one-piece. " Morrison tried to relax. It was only when he felt cotton against his body that he spoke again. He asked, "Did I turn the ship properly?"

  "Yes," said Kaliinin, nodding her head vigorously, "and fought off two red corpuscles most savagely. You were heroic. "

  Morrison said hoarsely, "Help me up. " He pushed down with his elbows against his seat and, of course, drifted into the air.

  He was brought down.

  "I forgot," he muttered. "Well, strap me in. Let me sit and recover. "

  He fought down the dizzy feeling, then said, "That plastic suit is worthless. A suit for use in the bloodstream of a warm-blooded animal must be cooled. "

  "We know," said Dezhnev from his seat at the controls. "The next one will be. "

  "The next one," spat Morrison bitterly.

  "At least," said Dezhnev, "you did what was necessary and the suit made that possible. "

  "At a cost," said Morrison, who then slipped into English in order to express his feelings more accurately.

  "I understood that," said Konev. "I lived in the United States, you know. If it will make you feel better, I'll teach you how to say every one of those words in Russian. "

  "Thanks," said Morrison, "but they taste better in English. " He licked his dry lips with a dry tongue and said, "Water would taste still better. I'm thirsty. "

  "Of course," said Kaliinin. She held a bottle to his lips. "Suck at it gently. It won't pour when it has no mass to speak of. - Slowly, slowly. Don't waterlog yourself. "

  Morrison drew his head away from the bottle. "Do we have enough water?"

  "You must replace what you lost. We'll have enough. "

  Morrison drank more, then sighed. "That's much better. - There was something I thought of when I was out in the capillary. Just a flash. I wasn't sufficiently myself to understand my own thought. " He bent his head and,covered his eyes with his hands. "I'm not sufficiently myself to remember it now. Let me think. "

  There was silence in the ship.

  And then Morrison said with a sigh and a rather massive clearing of his throat. "Yes, I remember it. "

  Boranova sighed also. "Good, then you have your memory. "

  "Of course I have," said Morrison pettishly. "What did you think?"

  Konev said coldly, "That a loss of memory might be an early sign of brain damage. "

  Morrison's teeth clicked as his mouth snapped shut. Then he said, feeling a chill in the pit of his stomach. "Is that what you thought?"

  "It was possible," said Konev. "As in Shapirov's case. "

  "Never mind," said Kaliinin insinuatingly. "It didn't happen. What was your thought, Albert? You still remember. " It was half-confident statement, half-hopeful question.

  "Yes, I do remember. We're pushing upstream now, aren't we? So to speak?"

  "Yes," said Dezhnev. "I'm using the motors - expending energy. "

  "When you reach the arteriole, you'll still be heading upstream and you can't turn. You'll be heading back the way you came. The ship will have to be turned again from outside. It can't be me. Do you understand? It can't be me!"

  Kaliinin put her arm around his shoulder. "Shh! It's all right. It won't be you.

  "It won't be anyone, Albert, my friend," said Dezhnev jovially. "Look ahead. We're coming to the arteriole now. "

  Morrison looked up and felt a twinge of pain. He must have grimaced, for Kaliinin put a cool hand on his forehead and said, "How is your headache?"

  "Getting better," said Morrison, shaking her hand off rather querulously. He was peering forward and relieved to find that his vision seemed normal. The cylindrical tunnel up ahead was widening somewhat and beyond an elliptical lip he could see a distant wall in which the tiling was much less pronounced.

  Morrison said, "The capillary comes off the arteriole like the branch of a tree at an oblique angle. We go through that opening up ahead and we'll be pointed three quarters of the way upstream - and once we nudge the far wall, we'll bounce off and be moving fully upstream. "

  Dezhnev chuckled. "My old father used to say: 'Half an imagination is worse than none at all. ' Watch, little Albert. See, I will wait until we are almost at the opening and I will throttle down the motor so that we make our way up the current very slowly. Now our ship sticks its snout out of the capillary - a little more - a little more - and now the main stream of arteriole blood catches us and pushes against the nose and turns us - and I push out a little more - and it turns us a bit more - and I come out the whole way - and behold I've been turned, I am heading downstream once more, and I cut the motors. "

  He grinned triumphantly. "Wasn't that well-done?"

  "Well-done," said Boranova, "but impossible without what Albert had done first. "

  "True enough," said Dezhnev, waving his hand. "I give him full credit and the Order of Lenin - if he will take it. "

  Morrison felt infinite relief. He would not have to go out again. He said, "Thank you, Arkady. " Then, rather bashfully, he added, "You know, Sophia, I'm still thirsty. "

  At once she handed him the bottle, but he hesitated. "Are you sure I'm not drinking more than my share, Sophia?"

  "Of course you are, Albert," said Kaliinin, "but more than your share is your share. Come, water is easily recycled. Besides, we have a small additional supply. You did not fit into the air lock neatly. An elbow stuck well out and we had to crack the inner layer and pull it in - which meant the entry of some plasma. Not much, thanks to its viscosity. It's been miniaturized of course and is being recycled now. "

  "Once miniaturized, it can't amount to more than a droplet. "


  "That's all it does amount to," said Kaliinin, smiling, "but even a droplet is an extra supply and since you brought it in, you deserve an extra supply. Logic is logic. "

  Morrison laughed and sucked up additional water greedily, squeezing it out of the flexible container astronaut-style. He was beginning to feel comparatively normal - more than that. He was feeling the kind of dreamy contentment that comes from being freed from the intolerable.

  He tried to concentrate, to gain some sense of reality, He was still in the ship. He was still the size of a bacterium, more or less. He was still in the bloodstream of a man in a coma. His chance of living another few hours was still problematical. - And yet, even as he told himself all this, he nevertheless couldn't flog himself out of the feeling that the mere absence of unbearable heat, the mere being with others, the mere existence of a woman's care was, in itself, a touch of heaven.

  He said, "I thank not only Arkady but all of you for pulling me in and caring for me. "

  "Don't bother," said Konev indifferently. "We need you and your computer program. If we had left you out there, the project would be a failure, even if we found the right cell. "

  "That may be so, Yuri," said Boranova, clearly indignant, "but at the time we were bringing Albert in, I did not think of that, but only of saving his life. I cannot believe that even you were cold-blooded enough to feel no anxiety for a human being who was risking his life to help us, except insofar as we needed him. "

  "Obviously," muttered Konev, "plain reason is not wanted. "

  Plain reason was certainly what Morrison wanted. Since the mention of brain damage, he had been testing himself, thinking, trying to come to conclusions. He said, "Arkady, when the microfusion engines are working, you are converting miniaturized hydrogen into miniaturized helium, and some of the helium escapes along with miniaturized water vapor or other materials designed to produce thrust. "

  "Yes," said Arkady warily. "And if that is so, what follows?"

  "And the miniaturized particles - atoms and less - simply escape through Shapirov and through the Grotto and through the Earth and end in outer space, as you told me. "

  "Again - what follows?"

  "Surely," said Morrison, "they do not stay miniaturized. We are not initiating a process, are we, in which the Universe will gradually be filled with miniaturized particles as humanity proceeds to make use of miniaturization more and more?"

  "If we did, what harm? All human activity for billions of years could not add a significant quantity of miniaturized particles to the Universe. But it is not so. Miniaturization is a metastable condition, which means that there is always a chance that a miniaturized particle will snap out, spontaneously, to true stability, that is, to the unminiaturized state. " (Out of the corner of his eye, Morrison saw Boranova raise a warning hand, but Dezhnev was always hard to stop when in oral flood. )

  "Naturally," he went on, "there is no predicting when a particular miniaturized particle will snap out of it, but it is a good wager that almost all will be beyond the moon when it happens. As for the few - there are always a few - who snap out of miniaturization almost at once, Shapirov's body can absorb them -"

  He then seemed to see Boranova's gesture, which had grown peremptory, and he said, "But I'm boring you. As my old father said on his deathbed: 'My proverbs may have bored you, but now you can look forward to hearing them no more, so that you will mourn me less and, therefore, suffer less. ' The old man would have been surprised - and disappointed, perhaps - to know how much we children mourned him, even so - but I think I won't risk it with my companions in this ship -"

  "Exactly," snapped Konev, "so please stop, especially since we are now approaching the capillary that we should be entering. Albert, lean over and study the cerebrograph. Do you agree?"

  Kaliinin, carefully addressing Boranova, said, "Albert is in no condition to be badgered with cerebrographs. "

  "Let me try," said Morrison, struggling with his seat belt.

  "No," said Boranova with authority. "Yuri can make this decision his own responsibility. "

  "Then I so make it," said Konev, looking sullen. "Arkady, can you get near the wall on our right and catch the current that turns into the capillary?"

  Arkady said, "I've been racing the red corpuscles and I have caught one that is drifting toward the right wall. It will push us - or the small eddy that is pushing it will also push us. - Ah, you see, it is taking place, just as it did in the previous cases where we had to branch off. Each time I managed to use the natural current correctly. " A broad grin creased his happy face as he said, "Applause, everybody. Say, 'Well-done, Arkady. '"

  Morrison obligingly said, "Well-done, Arkady," and into the capillary the ship went.

  47.

  Morrison had recovered sufficiently to be tired of invalidism. Outside the transparent hull of the ship, the wall of the capillary was strongly tiled and seemed fairly close on all sides. It looked very much like the other capillary, the one in which he had turned the ship around.

  He said, "I want to see the cerebrograph. "

  He flung open his seat belt, the first really decisive movement he had made since returning to the ship, and stared rebelliously at the perturbed Kaliinin as he did so.

  He pushed himself gently upward into a float, holding himself in position to look over Konev's shoulders by repeated corrections - first up, then down. He said, "How do you know you are in the right one, Yuri?"

  Konev looked up and said, "Counting and dead reckoning. See here. If we cut down the scale of the cerebrograph, this is the arteriole we've been following off the carotid. We took this branch and that one, and then it's a matter of counting the capillaries as they branch off on the right.

  "We had our run-in with the white cell right here and in the time the white cell had at its disposal, this capillary was the only one it could reasonably have reached. Once we were turned around and got back to the arteriole, we followed its narrowing structure and matched what we saw against the cerebrograpb. The pattern of branch points outside matched almost exactly the pattern described by the cerebrograph and that alone assures me we were following the right path. Now we have gone into this capillary. "

  Morrison's left hand slipped off the smooth texture of the back of Konev's seat and his attempt to make up for that twisted him into a comic handstand on the outspread fingers of his right hand. He labored to right himself even as he thought, savagely, that another improvement that must be introduced in later versions of the ship would be handholds on the seats and in other strategic areas.

  He said, panting, "And where will this capillary take us?"

  Konev said, "Directly to one of the centers which you believe to be a crossroad for the processes of abstract thought. - Let's cut down the scale of the cerebrograph again. Right here. "

  Morrison nodded. "Please remember that I've located them in human beings only indirectly, judging from my findings in animal brains. Still, if I'm correct, that should be the superior external skeptic node. "

  Konev said, "According to you, there should be eight such nodes, four on each side. This one, however, is the largest and most intricate on the left side and therefore stands the best chance of giving us the data we need. Am I right?"

  "I think so," said Morrison cautiously, "but please remember that my reasoning has not been accepted by the scientific community. "

  "And do you begin to doubt it now, too, Albert?"

  "Caution is a reasonable scientific attitude, Yuri. My concept of the skeptic node makes sense in the light of my observations, but I have never been able to test the matter directly - that's all - and I do not wish it said later that I misled you. "

  Dezhnev snickered. "Skeptic node! No wonder your countrymen are skeptical of the whole notion, Albert. My father used to say: 'People are ready enough to laugh at you. Don't make funny faces in order to encourage them. ' - Why didn't you call it 'thought node' in simple Russian? It would have sounded much bett
er. "

  "Or 'thought node' in simple English," said Morrison patiently. "But science is international and one uses Greek or Latin when possible. The Greek word for 'thought' is 'skeptis. ' It has given us 'skeptical' both in English and in Russian to indicate a habitual doubting attitude. That's because the very act of doubt implies thought. Surely you all know that the most efficient way of accepting the foolish dogmas foisted on us by social orthodoxy is to refrain from thinking. "

  There was an uncomfortable silence at that, whereupon Morrison (having left it there for just long enough, out of a faint malice - he owed them that much) said, "As human beings in all nations know. "

  The atmosphere lightened perceptibly at once and Dezhnev said, "In that case, we will see how skeptical we need be of the skeptic node, when we reach it. "

  "I hope," said Konev with a scowl, "that you don't think this is something to joke about, you clown. That node is where we can hope to detect Pyotr Shapirov's thoughts. Without that, this venture will come to nothing. "

  Dezhnev said, "To each his own job. I will take you there, with my expert handling of the ship. Once there, you will get the thoughts - or Albert will, if you cannot. And if you do as well with the thoughts as I do with the ship, you will have nothing to be unhappy about. My father used to say -"

  "Your father is better off where he is," said Konev. "Don't dig him up again. "

  "Yuri," said Boranova sharply, "that was an unbearably rude remark to make. You must apologize. "

  "That's all right," said Dezhnev. "My father used to say: 'The time for offense is when a man, once he has cooled down, repeats an insult he has offered in his rage. ' I am not sure that I can always follow that advice, but in honor of my father, I will pass over Yuri's stupid remark this time. " He bent over his controls, his face grim.

  Morrison had listened to the altercation (just Konev being nasty - obviously because he was under a great strain) with only half an ear. His mind slipped back to something else, to Dezhnev's carefree chatter and Boranova's warning hand.

  He lowered himself into his seat, clasping himself in for stability, and turned his head toward Boranova. "Natalya! A question!"

  "Yes, Albert?"

  "Those miniaturized particles released into the normal, unminiaturized Universe -"

  "Yes, Albert?"

  "Eventually, they deminiaturize. "

  Boranova hesitated. "As Arkady told you, they do. "

  "When?"

  She shrugged. "Unpredictably. Like the radioactive breakdown of a single atom. "

  "How do you know?"

  "Because it's so. "

  "I mean, what experiments have been conducted? Nothing has ever been miniaturized to the extent that we are now miniaturized, so surely you can't know what happens to such miniaturized particles by direct observation. "

  Boranova said, "We've observed events at miniaturizations we have reached and in that way determined what seem to be the laws of behavior of miniaturized objects. We extrapolate -"

  "Extrapolations aren't always trustworthy when they go well outside the realm of direct study. "

  "Granted. "

  "You compared spontaneous deminiaturization to radioactive breakdown. Is there a half-life of deminiaturization? Even if you can't tell when a particular miniaturized particle will deminiaturize, can you tell when half of a particular large quantity of them will?"

  "We have half-life figures and we think they are expressions of first-order kinetics, as radioactive half-lives are. "

  Morrison said, "Can you generalize from one type of particle to another?"

  Boranova pursed her lips and, for a moment, seemed lost in thought. Then she said, "It would seem that the half-life of a miniaturized object varies inversely with the intensity of miniaturization and also with the normal mass of the object. "

  "So that as we are miniaturized to smaller and smaller sizes, the less time we are likely to remain miniaturized, and the smaller we are to begin with, the less time we are likely to remain miniaturized. "

  "That's right," replied Boranova stiffly.

  Morrison looked at her gravely. "I admire your integrity, Natalya. You're not anxious to tell me things. You don't volunteer information. Still, you draw the line at misinforming me. "

  Boranova said, "I am a human being and I tell lies on occasion out of necessity or out of defects in my emotions or personality. But I am also a scientist and I would not twist scientific fact for any but the most compelling reasons. "

  "Then what it amounts to is this. Even this ship, although it is much more massive than a helium nucleus, has a half-life. "

  "A very long one," put in Boranova quickly.

  "But the fact that we are so intensely miniaturized has curtailed this very long half-life. "

  "Still leaving it long. "

  "And what about the individual components of the ship? The molecules of water that we drink, the molecules of air we breathe, the individual atoms that make up our body? They could have - must have - very short -"

  "No!" said Boranova forcefully, seeming to find relief in being able to deny something. "The miniaturization field overlaps where it deals with particles sufficiently close together, and that are at rest, or nearly at rest, relative to each other. An extended body - such as the ship and everything it contains - is treated as a large but single particle and has a half-life of deminiaturization to match. There miniaturization differs from radioactivity. "

  "Ah," said Morrison, "but when I was out of the ship and out of contact with it, could it be that I was then a separate particle with a much smaller mass than the ship and its contents and that I had a miniaturization half-life much smaller than we have now?"

  "I'm not sure," said Boranova, "whether the distance between yourself and the ship was great enough to make you a separate body. Possibly it did, for the time you were not in contact. "

  "And I then had a shorter half-life - much shorter. "

  "Possibly - but then you were out of contact only a matter of minutes. "

  "Well, then, what is the half-life of this ship at the present level of miniaturization?"

  "We can't really speak of the half-life of a single object. "

  "Yes, because half-lives are statistical. For any particle, deminiaturization can come, spontaneously, at any time, even after a very short time and even though the half-life of a large number of similar particles would be quite long. "

  "For spontaneous deminiaturization to come after a very short time when the statistical half-life is long is extremely improbable. "

  "But not impossible, is it?"

  "No," said Boranova. "It is not impossible. "

  "So we can suddenly deminiaturize in five minutes, or even in one minute, or even as I take my next breath. "

  "In theory. "

  "Did you all know?" His eyes darted around the ship. "Of course you all knew. Why was I not told?"

  Boranova said, "We are volunteers, Albert, working for science and for our nation. We know all the dangers and accept them. You have been forced into this and you don't have the motives that drive us. It seemed possible that if you knew all the dangers, you would have refused to enter the ship voluntarily under any persuasion or that, being brought on board ship by force, you would be altogether useless to us out of sheer -" She paused.

  "Out of sheer fright, you were going to say," said Morrison. "Surely I have a right to be afraid. There is reason for fear. "

  Kaliinin interrupted, her voice a little shrill. "It is time to stop harping on Albert's fear, Natalya. It is he who left the ship in an inadequate suit. It is he who turned the ship around at the risk of his life. Where was his fear then? If he felt it, he bottled it inside and didn't let it prevent him from doing what had to be done. "

  Dezhnev said, "And yet it was you who did not hesitate to say, in the past, that Americans were all cowardly. "

  "Then I was wrong. I was speaking unfairly and I ask Albert's pardo
n. "

  It was at this point that Morrison caught Konev's eye. The man was twisting around in his seat and glowering at him. Morrison did not pretend to be a master at reading facial expressions, but felt that he could, at a glance, tell what was ailing Konev. The man was jealous - furiously and quite impressively jealous.

  48.

  The ship continued its slow way along the capillary toward the destination Konev had marked out: the skeptic node. It was not depending on the current now, which was slow indeed. The engines were going, as Morrison could tell, in two different ways. First, it steadied the ship to have it move along actively, rather than drift passively, and it further deadened the already surprisingly small effect of Brownian motion. Second, the ship was overtaking one red corpuscle after another.

  In most cases these were nudged to one side and the red corpuscles then rolled backward between the ship and the wall. Occasionally, a red corpuscle would be met too near dead-center and it would then be pushed forward for a while until it burst. The debris would flow backward, leaving the ship's hull unmarked. With at least five million corpuscles in every cubic millimeter of blood, it didn't matter how many were disrupted and Morrison had become hardened to the carnage.

  Morrison deliberately thought of the red cells, rather than of the chance of spontaneous deminiaturization. He knew there was no appreciable chance of exploding outward in the next few moments and, even if it happened, it would simply mean blackout. Death by fried brain would take place so quickly that there would be no conceivable way of sensing it.

  Not long before, he had been heating much more slowly in the bloodstream itself. He had felt himself dying. After that, instantaneous death had no terrors.

  But he preferred to think of other things just the same.

  Konev's look! What was seething within him and tearing him apart? He had abandoned Sophia with the utmost cruelty. Did he really think the child was not his? People needed no reason to come to an emotional conclusion and the suspicion of being wrong just bolted the conclusion defensively and immovably in place. Pathological. Think of Leontes in The Winter's Tale. Shakespeare always got these things right. Konev would push her away and hate her for the wrong he had done her. He would push her into another man's arms and hate her for being pushed - and be jealous in addition.

  And she? Did she know of the jealousy and play upon it? Would she deliberately turn to Morrison, an American, to tear Konev into strips? Tenderly patting the American with the wet towel. Defending him at every step. With Konev, of course, a witness to everything.

  Morrison's lips tightened. He didn't like to be a tennis ball, batted from one to another in order to produce maximum pain.

  It was none of his business, after all, and he shouldn't take sides. But how was he going to not take sides? Sophia Kaliinin was an attractive woman who reacted with silent sorrow. Yuri Konev was a frowning nasty man who reacted with a compressed boiling of anger. He could neither help liking Sophia nor help disliking Yuri.

  He then noted Boranova staring at him gravely and wondered if she were misinterpreting his thoughtfulness and silence. Did she feel he was brooding about the possibility of death by miniaturization - which he was manfully trying not to do?

  It seemed so, when Boranova suddenly said, "Albert, none of us are reckless. I have a husband. I have a son. I want to go back to them alive and I intend to get us all back alive. I want you to understand that. "

  "I'm sure your intentions are good," said Morrison, "but what can you do against a possibility of deminiaturization that is spontaneous, unpredictable, unstoppable?"

  "Spontaneous and unpredictable, I agree, but who said unstoppable?"

  "Can you stop it, then?"

  "I can try. We each have our jobs here. Arkady maneuvers the ship. Yuri directs it to the destination. Sophia gives the ship its electric pattern. You will study the brain waves. As for me, I sit back here and make decisions - my major decision up to now was a mistake, I admit that - and I watch the heat flow. "

  "The heat flow?"

  "Yes. Before the deminiaturization takes place, there is a small evolution of heat, characteristic in pattern. It is that emission that is destabilizing; it is what tips the delicate balance and, after a small delay, starts the process of deminiaturization. When that happens, if I am fast enough, I can intensify the miniaturization field in such a way as to reabsorb the heat and reestablish the metastability. "

  Morrison said dubiously, "And has that ever been done - actually been done under field conditions - or is it simply theory?"

  "It has been done - under much smaller intensities of miniaturization, of course. Still, I have trained at this and my reflexes are sharpened. I hope not to be caught short. "

  "Was it spontaneous deminiaturization that put Shapirov into a coma, Natalya?"

  Boranova hesitated. "We don't really know whether it was an unfortunate encounter with the laws of nature or human error - or both. It may have been a slightly greater wobble from the metastable point of equilibrium than usual and nothing more than that. It is not something I can analyze in detail with you, for you don't have the needed background in the physics and mathematics of miniaturization, nor would I be permitted to give you that background. "

  "I understand. Classified material. "

  "Of course. "

  Dezhnev broke in, "Natasha, we have reached the skeptic node - or so Yuri says. "

  "Then come to a halt," ordered Boranova.

  49.

  Coming to a halt took a while.

  Morrison noted, with some mild surprise, that Dezhnev did not seem concerned in the process. He was checking his instruments but was making no effort to control the motion of the ship.

  It was Kaliinin who was deeply involved now. Morrison looked to his left, studying her as she bent over her instrument, her hair failing forward but not long enough to get in her way, her eyes intent, her slim fingers caressing the keys of her computer. The graphic patterns on the screen she was watching made no sense to Morrison, of course.

  "Arkady," she said, "move forward just a little. "

  The feeble current in the capillaries barely stirred the ship. Dezhnev supplied a small burst of power. (Morrison felt his almost massless body move slightly backward, since there wasn't sufficient inertia to give it a real jerk. ) The nearest red corpuscles between the ship and the farther wall of the capillary drifted backward.

  "Stop, stop," said Kaliinin. "Enough. "

  "I can't stop," said Dezhnev. "I can only cut the motors and that I've done. "

  "It's all right," said Kaliinin. "I have it now," then added the all-but-inevitable saving afterthought of "I think. " Then: "Yes, I do have it. "

  Morrison felt himself sway forward very slightly. Then he noted the nearby red corpuscles, together with an occasional platelet, drift forward and pass by lazily.

  In addition, he became aware of a total cessation of the Brownian motion, that faint tremble he had grown so used to that he was able to ignore it - until it stopped. Now its absence was noticeable and it produced the same sensation within Morrison as the sudden cessation of a continuous low hum would have. He stirred uneasily. It was as though his heart had stopped, even though intellectually he knew it had not.

  He asked, "What's happened to the Brownian motion, Sophia?"

  She replied, "We're affixed to the wall of the capillary, Albert. "

  Morrison nodded. If the ship was one piece with the capillary wall, so to speak, the bombarding water molecules that produced the Brownian motion would lose their effect. Their impacts would work toward moving an entire section of comparatively inert wall, instead of a tiny ship the size of a blood platelet. Naturally, the trembling would cease.

  "How did you manage to affix the ship, Sophia?" he asked.

  "The usual electrical forces. The capillary wall is partly protein, partly phospholipid in character. There are positively and negatively charged groups here and there. I h
ad to detect a pattern sufficiently compact, and then produce a complementary pattern on the ship; negative where the wall is positive and vice versa. The trouble is that the ship is moving with the current, so that I have to detect it a little ahead and produce the complementary pattern before we pass it. I missed three such occasions and then we hit a region where there were no suitable patterns at all, so I had to get Arkady to move us ahead a bit into a better region. - But I made it. "

  "If the ship had a reverse gear," said Morrison, "there would have been no problem, would there?"

  "True," said Kaliinin, "and the next ship will have one. But for now, we have only what we have. "

  "Quite so," put in Dezhnev. "As my father used to say: 'On tomorrow's feast, we can starve today. '"

  "On the other hand," said Kaliinin, "if we had a motor that could do all we would want it to do, we would have a strong impulse to use it lavishly and that might not be so good for poor Shapirov. And it would be expensive besides. As it is, we used an electric field which is more sparing of energy than a motor would be and the price is only a little more work for me - and what of that?"

  Morrison was quite certain she wasn't talking for his benefit. He said, "Are you always so philosophical?"

  For a moment, her eyes widened and her nostrils tightened, but only for a moment. Then she relaxed and said with a small smile, "No, who could be? But I try. "

  Boranova interjected, impatiently, "Enough chat, Sophia. - Arkady, you are clearly in touch with the Grotto. What's the delay?"

  Arkady held up a large hand, half-twisting in his seat to present its palm toward Boranova. "Patience, my captain. They want us to stay exactly where we are for two reasons. First, I'm sending out a carrier wave in three directions. They are locating each and using them to locate us in order to see if the location they determine jibes with what Yuri says it is by dead reckoning. "

  "How long will that take?"

  "Who can say? A few minutes, at any rate. But then my carrier waves are not very intense and the location must be precise, so they may have to repeat the measurement several times and take a mean and calculate limits of error. After all, they have to be correct, for as my father used to say: 'Almost right is no better than wrong. '"

  "Yes yes, Arkady, but that depends on the nature of the problem. What is the second reason we are waiting?"

  "They're going through some observations on Pyotr Shapirov. His heartbeat has become slightly irregular. "

  Konev looked up, his mouth failing open slightly and his thin cheeks looking gaunt under his high cheekbones. "What! Do they say it's anything we're doing?"

  "No," said Dezhnev. "Do not become a tragedian. They say nothing of the sort. And what can we be doing to Shapirov that is of any importance? We are merely a red corpuscle among red corpuscles in his bloodstream, one among trillions. "

  "Well, then, what's wrong?"

  "Do I know?" said Dezhnev, clearly irritated. "Do they tell me? Am I a physician? I just maneuver this vessel and they pay me no mind except as a pair of hands on the controls. "

  Kaliinin said with a touch of sadness, "Academician Shapirov clings but weakly to life in any case. It is a wonder that he has remained in stable condition so long. "

  Boranova nodded. "You are right, Sophia. "

  Konev said savagely, "But he must continue to remain so. He can't let go now. Not now. We haven't made our measurements yet. "

  "We will make them," said Boranova. "An irregular heartbeat is not the end of the world, even for a man in a coma. "

  Konev pounded the arm of his seat with a clenched fist. "I will not lose a moment. Albert, let's begin. "

  Morrison was startled. He said, "What can be done here in the bloodstream?"

  "A neural effect may be felt immediately outside the nerve cell. "

  "Surely not. Why would the neurons have axons and dendrites to channel the impulse if it was going to spread and weaken into space beyond? Locomotives move along rails, telephone messages along wires, neural impulses -"

  "Don't argue the case, Albert. Let's not accept failure by some fine process of reasoning. Let's test the matter. See if you can detect brain waves and if you can analyze them in the proper fashion. "

  Morrison said, "I'll try, but don't order me around in that bullying tone. "

  "I'm sorry," said Konev, not sounding sorry at all. "I want to watch what you do. " He unclasped himself, turned in his seat, holding on tightly, muttering, "We must have more room the next time. "

  "An ocean liner, certainly," said Dezhnev. "Next time. "

  "What we have to do first," said Morrison, "is to discover whether we can detect anything at all. The trouble is, we are surrounded by electromagnetic fields. The muscles are rich in them and each molecule, almost, is the origin point of a -"

  "Take all that as known," said Konev.

  "I am only filling in the time while I carry my device through some necessary steps. The neural field is characteristic in several ways and by adjusting the computer to eliminate fields without those characteristics, I leave only what the neurons produce. We blank out all microfields like so and we deflect the muscle fields in this manner -"

  "In what manner?" demanded Konev.

  "I describe it in my papers. "

  "But I didn't see what you did. "

  Wordlessly, Morrison repeated the maneuver slowly.

  "Oh," said Konev.

  "And by now we should be detecting only neural waves if any are present here to detect - and there aren't. "

  Konev's right fist clenched. "Are you sure?"

  "The screen shows a horizontal line. Nothing else. "

  "It's quivering. "

  "Noise. Possibly from the ship's own electric field, which is complex and not entirely like any of the natural fields of the body. I've never had to adjust a computer to filter out an artificial field. "

  "Well, then, we have to move on. - Arkady, tell them we can wait no longer. "

  "I can't do that, Yuri, unless Natasha tells me to. She's the captain. Or had you forgotten?"

  "Thank you, Arkady," said Boranova coldly. "You, at least, have not. We'll forgive Konev his lapse and put it down to overzealousness in pursuit of his work. My orders are not to move until the Grotto gives us the word. If this mission fails because of anything that goes wrong with Shapirov, there must be no opportunity for anyone to say it was because we did not follow orders. "

  "What if some disaster happens because we did follow orders? That can happen, too, you know. " Konev's voice rose to near-hysteria.

  Boranova replied, "The fault will then lie with those who gave the orders. "

  "I can find no satisfaction in apportioning blame, whether to myself or to anyone else. It is results that count," said Konev.

  "I agree," said Boranova, "if we are dealing with finespun theory. But if you expect to continue working on this project past the time of a possible catastrophe, you will find that the manner of allotting blame is all-important. "

  "Well, then," said Konev, stuttering slightly in his passion. "Urge them to let us move as soon as possible and then we'll - we'll -"

  "Yes?" said Boranova.

  "And then we'll enter the cell. We must. "