Ten (Stories) to The Stars

by Raymond Z. Gallun

  My hide was coldly atingle again. "Darn!" I laughed. "Why does the idea of smallness and beauty always suggest fairyland, unreality? Small things are just as factual as large ones."

  "Fairyland is a dream, Charlie," Jan chuckled. "Something which many of us in humdrum surroundings wish was so. But a yearning can sometimes be made to come true."

  Though we felt that we were being watched, nothing came to interrupt our hard work. At last we won our fight with materials when we arrived at the microscopic size-level limit of the workability of metals. We now had three true micro-robots. They were like their half-inch creators, except that they had two coordinated sets of eyes—a lensed pair to see by ordinary light, and another pair, fitted with magnetic focusing rings, to see by the rebounding of electrons from objects at close range, where detail was less than the span of a single light-wave.

  Step two, down into The Small, was made like step one. We used the same control hoods, adjusted slightly, while we sat at our work table in the shop aboard the ship.

  "To the bottom of the pit!" were Jan's final words as a woman.

  We put on our hoods and plunged. It seemed infinite, this time. The gleaming walls and girders of the shop appeared as distant as planets. The surface on which we sprawled became pitted and scored from our new viewpoint. Polish was gone with magnification. An eerie, elfin ringing—perhaps the finer overtones of normal sounds—reached our tiny, tympanic ears.

  We arose unsteadily. Our mechanical fingers joined, till we were a chain of three, moving toward the door of the box as a group. Then we were out on the undulating porcelain expanse of the table top. An air current, magnified to a hurricane by our minuteness, lifted us up till we floated free, still clutching each other's hands.

  One peculiar thing about difference in size, is that the smaller an object is, the larger is its exposed surface in proportion to volume and mass. That greater surface in relation to weight, allows the bombardment of passing air molecules to lift anything of dust-grain dimensions and density into wingless flight. It also can give a sense of helplessness, as if the atmosphere has become a treacherous medium full of irresistible currents.

  We tumbled, we laughed, and would have been panic stricken except for knowing that our real selves were in normal circumstances. Nearby, the air seemed to shimmer. A gnarled thing floated close—floss, looking like a twisted tree-stump, to which clear ovoids clung—some common form of microscopic life. A chunk of mineral dust came drifting nearer, its sheared-off side glinting like quartz strata. Our two pairs of eyes still were not developed to distinguish colors. Yet Jan had reasons when she exclaimed in tinkling tones:

  "Beautiful, truly beautiful! We came—we got here! In a sense, it's farther than the stars! But now what happens? Where are—they?"

  "I don't believe they'll be long in coming," Dr. Lanvin said at last. "To write, to make tools, and to get into our sealed ship requires a capacity to think and plan. So, about us, they must be following a set purpose."

  IV

  Tension mounted in me. As we drifted in the air, I looked at our human selves, seated giants in armor, cowled, brooding, and of legendary height. Here was a chance for a meeting with entities of another shape, flesh, and history. For the Martians and Xians seemed as extinct as the dinosaurs. Their artifacts and mummies were known; but their voices, movements, and real selves, were elusively beyond imagining.

  In most of the old imaginative stories of the future, beings from another region spoke and thought like men. But a recent University course had pointed out how deeply different must be races sprung from wholly separate chains of evolution, not only in form but psychology; how there would be no helloes or similarity of custom on the other side, and how one must wait with perfect self-control and mind utterly open, until an equal horror of alienness lessened in the alien beings, too....

  Jan said, "Look." The word was a single, flat, undramatic note. But we saw them. A mass of lint, gray to our colorblind vision, drifted toward us like twisted branches. Out of it, as from shrubbery, a dozen pair of eyes peered—lenses with a moist glint, fuzzed at the edges; here I thought not so much of lashes as of strange, misplaced antennae. The creatures were like rough-hewn dolls, with craggy, almost triangular heads. Yet these were not metal robots. Their skin was rough, as from a coarse binding of spherical cells, still small, yet almost large enough to be seen individually.

  These beings possessed two arms and two legs. Yet, in still another way they were familiar. They took all their major details from the mummied bodies of the Xians, though those original Xians had been of human size. What strange retreat, or advance, was implied here?

  I was trying to answer everything about tremendous mysteries at once. But I heard Jan tinkle out words matching my own awe:

  "Charlie.... Doc.... Other intelligent beings.... Real.... See their clothing, and the metal devices at their belts and in their grasp. Seeing something completely hidden previously, is getting closer to the Ultimate Secret of the universe, isn't it?"

  The little robot that represented Doc, holding onto the right hand of Jan's proxy as I clutched its left, had things to say, too, as we floated free, waiting for whatever would happen:

  "Critters as little as these micro-robots of ours—and intelligent, and of flesh. But there couldn't be an intelligent brain working on the familiar human principle in so small a size. The molecules are simply too coarse to achieve such compactness. For that and other reasons, these strangers have to have flesh of some advanced form of protoplast with its possible flow of many types of energy, submolecular or electronic. This might well apply to brain function, making its countless patterns not inconceivable in an almost infinitely smaller package."

  Just for a second, Doc paused, before he brought his topic to an avid point: "Androids," he said. "Micro-androids, or the equivalent, in relation to beings not human! Is that what they are? Then it is another demonstration of the advantages of this improved, lab-developed basis for life—venturing into space unprotected, being almost indestructible—even going down into The Small!... Or could it have evolved naturally?"

  The chill in my mind sharpened and turned more eager. But now Dr. Lanvin's groping words faded out.

  For, warily at first, our opposite numbers in this strangest of historic meetings, at last went into action. As a group, each with a purpose, they leapt from that floating mass of floss, their graceful, swimming motions in the air aided by the reaction of hot flickers from little jet-tubes they carried.

  Swiftly, as if taking a citadel, they surrounded us, and held us in their explorative, yet strong clutch. Now was the moment of blundering, of attempted communication, across the great, mysterious gulf of difference.

  Doc addressed them: "Now what do I do or say? Who learns whose way of conversing? Or would it be trite to think that you might be telepathic?"

  Could these beings even recognize Doc's friendliness? Well, we were in for a surprise. They had a spokesman. Out of his thorax came a slurred buzzing, struggling to mimic human speech:

  "Telepathy? No, Mister. Not so good for us with you people. Funny? Maybe.... Learn conversing? One can always learn more.... But we have been visiting Earth, mostly unnoticed—since—before—there were—men."

  Here was English, idiomatic to the point of slang. Yet, to add an eeriness, there were pauses, as if the effort to think in a human manner was more difficult for this trained but outworldly psychology than the speech itself!

  So, the simplicity of communication was like in some of the old, imaginative stories. Well, why not, if these little people had been haunting human stamping grounds for ages? Besides, could extra-terrestrial thought, dealing with common physical facts, be so totally different? That University course had exaggerated.

  Doc cursed happily: "Dammit, things'll be easy, now!"

  "Easy," came the cheerfully buzzed answer. But soon I suspected that a cheerful tone was pure mimicry of a human way, without, necessarily, a real, corresponding emotion. For now our escort g
ripped us roughly, and drew us along through the great gulf of air, using hand-held jet-tubes for propulsion.

  Doc's shouted, "Hey, what goes on?" and my equivalent complaints, were ignored. Our escort broke in two, six of its members, including the leader, continuing to lift Doc, Jan, and me upward through the air inside our ship, the other six, bearing what looked like massive equipment, falling behind.

  In the ceiling of our lab compartment there was a circle, still edged with the rough scale of a tool cutting with intense heat, and there was a hinged, circular door of metal. They had cut through the skin of our ship, and had installed an airlock, quite like our own variety in principle, yet so tiny that our human eyes had missed it entirely.

  Helplessly we were drawn through it, and onward into the murky night of Ganymede, over which Jupiter and his other scattered moons held sway. Our robot-selves of course did not feel the cold, which approached absolute zero. Nor apparently did our unarmored hosts. Nor did they seem compelled to breath oxygen.

  "Charlie! Doc!" I heard Jan call. "I hope they're not taking us too far! The radio control hoods, keeping us in contact with our micro-robots, here, are of limited range. We could lose the robots!..."

  "Not very far," came the answer from the being who had spoken before. "But Kobolah—myself—says it makes no difference to you."

  Perhaps that strange little monster meant to reassure us. By now I had him identified as an individual. The irregular filaments around his eyes were longer and paler than those of his henchmen.

  A Ganymedean wind wafted us along, our escort perhaps using it to cover distance, righting it only as much as necessary, with their spitting jet-tubes. Our course turned downward into the shadows of knotty rock masses near the old Xian camp.

  We went through another airlock, and into a tapered, cylindrical chamber. Figures like the others were there, craggy, yet obliquely charming in form. There was what must have been a propulsive mechanism, perhaps refined by ages of development, until matter was totally converted to energy.

  And there was a crystal vat in which complicated grids were suspended in gelatin. Deep in the menisculous, pearly medium were shapes, hardly seen, though suggestive.

  Kobolah spoke again: "You three even built small robots with great pains to pay us a visit. So we thought that maybe you should truly come. We shall see...."

  I saw that odd, triangular head. I could fathom nothing from the eyes, except perhaps a cold interest. But I felt tricked and trapped. As far as our senses were concerned, we were here, not back in our ship. Forgetting that, we had been off-guard there!

  Can a robot have a fearsome headache? Suddenly I had one. Dizziness and a blurring of consciousness was followed by panic. Suddenly I was back in the Intruder, frantically unfastening the helmet of my space armor, then casting off the control hood.

  I staggered erect. Dr. Shane Lanvin grunted beside me. His usually mild face was contorted. Jan gave a thick cry, her gloved hand on her brow. Doc and she had also torn off their helmets and hoods.

  I floundered to Jan, heard her say, "Charlie...."

  Then I saw a hole, like a tiny cigarette burn, at the fabric-and-wire elbow joint of my armor's left arm.

  "Scharber! Bowhart!" I yelled. It was a thin wheeze. I wished that they knew more about Doc's work so they could help us. My final awareness was of the rush of their footsteps.

  Time became timeless. Then I had a sense of struggling upward toward light. The effort was mental. A minute might have passed, or a year. I had a body which seemed to turn lightly on a mattress of coarse sticks. I felt like myself, clothed in real flesh. The light around me might have been diffused sunshine, and I saw colors, the familiar ones, plus what might be the indescribable paleness of ultra-violet, unknown to man as himself, and another nameless hue that perhaps was the sensory effect of electronic vision.

  I didn't fully guess all this at once; but its ghost was in the back of my mind, and at the edge of panic.

  I had sat up easily. I realized that I was still in the region of The Small. Once experiencing that environment denies any failure to recognize it later. Oh, there was the roughness of the glassy walls of the room, pleasingly decorated with geometric patterns like those of old tiles brought back to Earth from the asteroid belt. But I refer more to the insecure sense of buoyancy, of ease with which one might float in the air or recline upon it, after a tiny push at the floor. It is a feeling quite apart from the weightlessness experienced in space; and though there was certainly very little gravity here, too, the difference remained palpable. And now I even felt a tingling in my skin—the impact of molecules, perhaps, as they tried to lift and carry me away.

  My body seemed to conform to such a dimensional plane. It was me with some details blurred or omitted. I was clad in stiff imitations of the slacks and shirt I had worn inside my space armor. My hands, rough in texture, lacked the fine hairs, as if they had been left out in a process of transformation. Was the stiff, wirelike hair on my head still black? I fumbled at my face. The nose, large jaw, and brow, seemed the same, except for a certain shortness and roundness, as in a doll-like simulacra. Corresponding to this was the length of lashes around my eyes—or had electronic sense-organs been added, necessary here for close vision?

  Again I looked around the room. One wall was absent. But the square left for ventilation was crossed by interwoven diagonals—bars which must have been incredibly fine wire from another viewpoint.

  Beyond this barrier was an egg-shaped chamber, so huge to my present minuteness that it was like a mountain valley, its sides curving up in shade and lushness; though through its vitreous, natural roof, light streamed. Everywhere, bright green foliage peeped over garden walls. Sometimes it was shaggy and filamented, sometimes massy and spheroidal on thin stalks. Along streets rising in angular charm, were geometric masses in pastel tints, some unknown to man, before. There were cubes, pyramids, even spheres—buildings, obviously—yet of such simple oddity that a child might have designed them.

  Water did not lie flat as in a lake, but gathered in great glistening dewdrops, burying a house or hill fantastically, but with startling beauty.

  But all this moved with the daily life of a teeming civilization—living, manufacturing, buying and selling in the market place. The air was full of craggy shapes, some propelling themselves with arm and leg movement, others using jet rods. High on a slope there was a continuous electrical flicker, a bluish spark. Perhaps the furnace of a metallurgical process.

  The springy stuff on which I sat, gross as brushwood, would have been cotton wool to normal-sized human touch. Perhaps it was vegetable fibre of that order. Crouching near me was a girl, clad in coarse blue fabric which in reality would have shamed our finest textiles. The details of her face were simplified in a doll-like blurring of line. But still she was recognizable, even with the lashlike filaments around her eyes.

  Somehow I still spoke with my lips. "Jan." My voice seemed a miniature bass bell. I crept to her side.

  Her courage and sense of humor were intact.

  Her laughter was a tinier bell. "I'm all right, Charlie. At least, yet. Maybe I just don't realize. One thing we've talked about has happened, hasn't it? You look sort of cute, Charlie, like a puppet in a show. Doc, too." Jan laughed again.

  Beyond her, dressed like myself, was the reduced image of Dr. Shane Lanvin, though his inner self remained unchanged, his triumphant smile just faintly edged with doubt.

  "Hi, Doc!" I greeted. "Congratulations for success in a venture which began with you. Now, for the record, let's hear your version of just what has happened."

  He smirked good-naturedly. "All right," he chuckled. "You can't get back to any control hoods, our former human-size selves. I've tried. So our whole identities must have been transferred to these far smaller forms. Somewhere in our adventures the structure of each of our brains must have been exhaustively charted, down to the finest wavering of cell-filament, and the least variation of chemical state. Thus must have been captured ever
y phase of our minds, memories, and personalities. This might have been done by something analagous to our focused radar or X-ray photography, penetrating deep, and making an instant record. From this record, the pattern of our brains must have been rebuilt, with all the complex channels of association and so forth, but in a totally different medium, capable of a far finer and more compact flow of energy than mere nerve impulses. In a brain of protoplast, I think it could happen."

  "Loose ends still dangle," I chuckled. "For instance, I remember a machine called George, and a statement by him that consciousness, awareness of self, was even difficult to define. How about transferring that?"

  Doc Lanvin shrugged. "Maybe the consciousness—the true self—is inherent in the brain channels, like the memory, and would also be transferred simply by copying them precisely," he said. "Or could the awareness be a kind of spark, capable of being captured and transported by an appropriate apparatus, as an electric spark can be captured in an electroscope? I don't know, Charlie. But I noticed some of the equipment carried by these Xians when they took us; and I thought of that."

  Silence seemed to close in as Doc finished; and it grew heavy with monumental implications, almost apart from mentioned things. I breathed, which suggested that my present form was getting energy in the familiar way—by the combustion of food substances. But as I held my breath for a prolonged moment, there was only a brief flutter, as of a heart quickening its beat inside me. I wondered eerily if this was evidence of a casual change-over, as if my android flesh could so quickly convert to some other energy supply, perhaps that of radioactive salts naturally in its substance. Such minerals were fairly common on the Jovian moons, and far commoner among the asteroids.