‘What do you know about it?’ the voice finally said, somewhat defensively.
Jack put the fire extinguisher down on the sofa. ‘I know that somebody would have to be pretty desperate to volunteer for an experiment like that! I mean, hey, I’ll donate my body to medical science - but not until I’m finished with it! How hard up can you get!’
Yet again there was a pause. But despite all his bluster, Jack suddenly found that he was convinced by the story. The whole thing was so preposterous it made a weird sort of sense in the absence of any other rational explanation. And to Jack it was a far better explanation of the voice he was hearing than the possibility that he was going mad.
‘How big are you, anyway?’ he asked.
‘I think you mean, how small,' said the voice. ‘Small enough to be injected into you through a hypodermic needle.’
Instantly Jack remembered the sting he had felt in his buttock in the shopping mall when that crazy guy had grabbed hold of him. That could have easily been a hypodermic.
‘I need something to drink,’ Jack said softly.
‘Now we’re talking!’ the voice said with some relish.
Jack rose and went into his kitchen. From the fridge he removed a bottle filled with a dark red liquid.
‘Is that wine?’ asked the voice.
‘It’s prune juice,’ Jack told him.
‘Prune juice! You’ve gotta be kidding!’
‘What’s wrong with that? All natural ingredients. No chemicals or additives. It’s good for you'.
‘it’s not exactly what I had in mind.’
‘Who’s having this drink, anyway?’ said Jack. ‘You or me?’
‘With any luck,’ said the voice, ‘both of us. C’mon. Think of me as company. Be a good host and take out the hard stuff.’
Dutifully Jack looked through his cupboards. He tended to avoid alcohol, fearful that it might do permanent damage to his body. But finally he came across a bottle.
‘Here’s some sherry left over from Christmas,’ he announced.
The voice murmured something, and it did not sound approving. Then, louder, it said, ‘Okay, sherry’s fine. Here’s what you do. Take a nice big tug on that baby and I’ll do the rest.’
Jack uncorked the bottle and lifted it towards his lips. Meanwhile Tuck, now positioned in Jack’s throat, had activated one of the pod’s articulating arms. It extended out from the pod’s body with a soft mechanical whirring. Clutched in its claw was Tuck’s empty flask.
Tuck looked through the viewing dome to make sure that the arm and flask were properly in place.
Okay, Jack,’ he said. ‘Down the hatch!’
A few seconds later, a tidal wave of amber liquid splashed down from above, crashing into the pod. Tuck was flung back in his seat as the pod went swirling and tumbling along in the current.
It was a rough ride, the pod bumping and crashing against the sides of Jack’s alimentary canal. At length it came to rest in a dark vestibular channel.
Tuck pressed a few buttons, and the articulating arm began to retract into the pod. Presently claw and flask slid into the pod through an air-lock opening.
Tuck took a cloth and wiped the outside of the flask before sloshing it around under his nose. It gave off a pungent odour.
‘Hmm,’ he said to himself. ‘Smells a little like floor cleaner.’ He peeked into the bottle. ‘Looks a shade green.’ But his desire for some alcohol overcame any reservations. ‘Oh, well. Probably just some harmless biochemical waste material
He gave it a final slosh preparatory to putting the flask to his mouth. A drop of the liquid splashed out on to the breast of his jumpsuit. It hissed, fumed, and burnt a hole straight through the fabric.
Tuck stared at the flask with horror, realization dawning.
‘Hydrochloric acid!’ he murmured. The pod must have slipped down into Jack’s stomach so that the flask had filled up with his digestive juices.
Swiftly he capped the flask and set it aside. Suddenly he heard a knocking sound from ‘outside’.
‘What’s that?’ he asked Jack.
Through his eyes, Tuck watched Jack go out of the kitchen and through the living room to open the door.
A man clad in black leather was standing there holding something in his hand.
‘Jack Putter?’ he asked.
‘Yeah . . .’ said Jack.
‘From World Tour Travel,’ the man said, handing him the envelope. ‘Cruise tickets, I think.’
Jack took the envelope. The man then handed him the clipboard he was also carrying. ‘Sign on number twelve.’
Jack took the pen and signed.
‘Mind if I use your phone?’ the messenger asked.
‘No ... I guess not,’ said Jack.
The messenger entered, and the first thing he noticed was Jack’s foam-covered TV.
‘What's up?’ he asked. ‘Thinking of giving your set a shave?’
‘Just a small domestic accident,’ Jack told him. He pointed to the phone. Turning his back to Jack, the messenger picked it up and began dialling.
‘Lucky man,’ he said conversationally. ‘Going on a cruise. What about your room mate?’
‘Room mate?’ said Jack.
‘Thought I heard you talking to somebody as I came to the door.’
‘No, no,’ Jack said hastily. ‘I live here alone.’
‘Don’t trust him!’ came Tuck’s voice from within.
‘He’s not a messenger!’
Jack backed away, whispering, ‘How do you know?’
‘Gut reaction,’ Tuck said. ‘Call it survival instinct. Just get out now.'
The messenger muttered something into the phone, obviously not wanting Jack to hear. He hung up, then saw that Jack was looking at him strangely.
Jack glanced towards the door. The messenger immediately looked suspicious.
Panic overwhelmed Jack. He made a dash for the door, but the messenger was faster, leaping in front of him and blocking his path. He also drew a gun.
Jack instinctively grabbed his gun hand, and the two of them began to struggle for control of it. Locked together like a pair of arm wrestlers, they strained and heaved, strained and heaved.
Tuck had taken the pod into Jack’s blood system. The pounding of his heart grew louder, and the pod was carried along faster and faster as the blood pumped through Jack’s veins and arteries.
‘Jack!’ Tuck cried. ‘Your pulse rate! I’m going too fast!’
With infuriating calmness, the synthetic computer voice announced: ‘Approaching tricuspid valve of heart. Do not enter. Do not enter heart.’
Tuck stared at the monitor. Jack and the messenger were still grappling for control of the gun. It was raised in the air above their heads, all four hands wrapped around it.
Tuck, studying the gun, realized something.
‘The safety’s on!’ he shouted at Jack. ‘He can’t fire it!’
The monitor suddenly went black. It took a second for Tuck to realize what had happened: Jack had shut his eyes in fright.
‘Open your eyes!’ he yelled. ‘I can’t see!’
Jack obeyed. Still he was locked together with the messenger.
‘Bring your knee up!’ Tuck shouted. ‘Bring it up fast -NOW!!’
Jack did as he was ordered.
The messenger gave a grunt of pain and released his hold on the gun, staggering backwards in pain. Jack was left holding the gun by its barrel as the messenger doubled up in front of him.
‘Hit him!’ Tuck ordered. ‘Use the gun as a club!’
Jack hesitated.
‘Do it!’ Tuck yelled.
Jack brought the gun down hard on the back of the messenger’s head. He crumpled to the floor.
‘Now run!’ Tuck shouted.
But Jack was staring down at the messenger, ‘I’m so sorry . . .'he began.
‘Don’t apologize!’ Tuck screamed. ‘Run!'
Jack dropped the gun and wrenched open the door. Then he bolted, heading acr
oss the courtyard.
Just then he spotted a dark-suited man entering the courtyard. There was something familiar about him, especially his black-gloved hand. Before the man could see him, Jack ducked behind a palm tree, out of sight.
The man passed by and entered Jack’s apartment. Jack could feel his blood running cold again. The guy had the meanest face, and it was a sure bet that he wasn’t going around trying to sell people encyclopaedias.
What’s going on?’ Jack whispered urgently to Tuck. His heart was still pounding at a terrible rate. ‘Why are all these people after me, Tuck? . . . Tuck?’
Deep within Jack, Tuck was far too busy to answer. The pod was hurtling towards Jack’s heart at a tremendous speed, caught in a rapid red flow. Tuck fought for control of the craft as it bumped along. The interior lights had dimmed, and the computer was flashing WARNING! on one of the screens.
Tuck pushed forward two console panel levers. Imediately the forward thrusters on the side of the fired up and began to reverse, fighting the current. The pod slowed, vibrating strongly under the strain. Dead ahead, Tuck could see the gaping maw of the heart valve. It opened and closed like the mouth of a giant eel. Still the pod was moving towards it.
Tuck deployed one of the articulating arms. It shot out from the pod, and Tuck manipulated the controls, trying to grab the side of the atrial wall with the steel claw at its end.
Tuck’s head was filled with a roar of sounds: the thrusters shrieking, the valve pounding, the blood rushing into the heart. At the last possible moment, just as Tuck was convinced the pod was going to disappear down into the heart - the claw took hold of the atrial wall.
Tuck activated the laser scalpel and sliced an opening. Giving the pod full thrust, he pushed it through the gap to safety. Immediately afterwards he sealed the incision, using the laser at lower intensity to weld the muscle back together. Only then did he pause to mop his brow. His jumpsuit was soaked through with sweat.
Looking up at the monitor, Tuck saw Jack at the wheel of his Volkswagen, driving rapidly down a road.
‘Jack?’ he said. ‘Are you okay?’
‘Tuck!’ Jack said with obvious relief. ‘Where have I you been?’
‘That’s not important,’ Tuck told him, deciding to spare him the messy details of how he had nearly killed him. ‘Right now we’ve got to get back to the lab.’
Chapter 6
Jack sat in the Observation Room of Vectorscope, talking to Niles and Blanchard. Through the window he could see a team of technicians tidying up the lab beyond. It had been ransacked.
‘He can actually talk to you?’ Niles was saying to Jack.
Under Tuck’s instructions, Jack had told both men the whole story. He nodded. ‘Yes, sir. He can talk to me, and I can talk to him - and he can see everything that I see.’
Niles looked triumphant. ‘He’s patched into the optic rerve and the eardrum!’ He turned to Blanchard. ‘That was part of the experiment! To see if a miniaturized human could make visual and audio contact with his host organism.’
Blanchard gave a twisted smile. ‘C’mon, Doc. We’re talking about a guy here, not a bunny.'
‘I know. I know. But the computer isn’t aware of that, do you see? It simply reads its environment and then makes the appropriate adjustments. We’d intended to build as much flexibility into its programme as possible, but this is far better than any of us had hoped.’
Almost despite himself, Blanchard looked impressed. At first he had stared at Jack as if he was a raving lunatic while Jack was telling him the story. But now he seemed convinced.
Niles peered close into Jack’s eyes.
‘Can you see me, Lieutenant? Good work. A job well done!’
‘I can’t believe what I’m hearing,’ said Tuck’s voice from within Jack. ‘Find out what went wrong!’
‘Why didn’t you come to me sooner with this?' Blanchard was asking Niles.
‘Lieutenant Pendelton wants to know what went! wrong,’ Jack said.
‘I'll tell him what went wrong,’ Blanchard said, and then he leaned close to Jack’s ear and began to whisper so that Niles couldn’t hear him. ‘You threw in with a bunch of amateurs, that’s what went wrong. These eggheads don’t know squat about security.’ Then, speaking louder for Niles’s benefit, he went on: ‘But don’t worry. Tuck old buddy, we’re gonna do everything possible to get you out of this civilian.’
‘You’d better,’ Tuck said vehemently. ‘You two-faced sonofabitch!’
Jack flushed with embarrassment. Then he realized that Blanchard couldn’t actually hear Tuck.
‘Tuck says, thanks,’ he announced.
Blanchard smiled. ‘Would you excuse us for a moment?’ he said to Jack.
‘Sure,’ Jack replied.
Blanchard went out of the office with Niles. They walked into the lab next door.
‘Looks like you’re home free now,’ Jack said to Tuck.
‘Don’t count on it,’ Tuck replied. ‘I’ve never trusted Pete Blanchard, and I’m not about to start now. Can you see where they went?’
‘Yeah,’ said Jack, peering through the glass. ‘I can see them.’
Blanchard and Niles were already in earnest conversation. Tuck hastily made some adjustments to the dials on his console.
‘Look directly at them,’ he told Jack. ‘Don’t turn your head. I think I can beef up this reception a little.’
Jack obeyed. Suddenly Niles’s voice was heard from the pod’s speaker - blasting at ear-shattering level. Tuck instantly adjusted the volume. The picture on the screen reeled as Jack rocked back.
‘What are you doing? What are you doing?’ he demanded.
‘Don’t worry, it’s all right now.’
Suddenly Niles could be heard, talking at normal voice-level: ‘. . . we’re not the only ones who have been working with miniaturization, you know . . .’
‘Hey!’ said a startled Jack. ‘I can hear them!’
‘I know,’ said Tuck. ‘Ain’t I a clever boy? Now just be quiet for a few minutes. And don’t forget to keep looking straight ahead at the two of them.’
‘. . but we’re the first,’ Niles was continuing, ‘to have perfected the trickly re-enlargement process . . . by using two chips. One of them is still inside the pod. But the other one’s been stolen.’
Blanchard thought it over. ‘What do we have to do in order to save Pendelton?’
‘Recover the stolen chip. It’s as simple - and as difficult - as that.’
‘Don’t you have duplicates?’
‘No. These chips are prototypes. We can duplicate them, of course. But not before nine o’clock tomorrow morning.’
Blanchard gave a puzzled frown. ‘What’s so important about nine o’clock?’
‘That’s when the pod’s air supply runs out.’
Inside Jack, Tuck went cold. He had forgotten, of course. In the original experiment, he was only meant to inhabit the rabbit for a few hours at most. The pod wasn’t equipped for a long stay.
‘That’s no problem,’ Blanchard was saying. ‘All Pendelton has to do is take his pod into the guy’s lungs, open the hatch and grab all the air he needs.’
Tuck grinned with sheer relief. Why hadn’t he thought of that himself - it was so simple. But then his hopes were instantly crushed: ‘He can’t open the hatch,’ Niles said. ‘The sudden loss of cabin pressure would cause the pod to explode like a balloon.’
Dammit, thought Tuck. Now he really was in trouble. Already the air in the pod felt a bit stuffy - or was it just his imagination?
Blanchard looked at his watch, then glanced through the observation window at Jack.
‘In that case,’ he said softly to Niles, ‘we don’t really have to do anything, do we?’
Niles frowned. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean, the stolen chip’s useless without the one inside the pod, isn’t it? And we’ve got that one.’
‘So?’
‘You go ahead and make your duplicates. It doesn�
�t matter how long it takes. Soon we’ll be in business.’ ‘But what about Pendelton?’
Blanchard shrugged. ‘Well, we can’t save him, that much is obvious. Perhaps we can use him to bring the perpetrators out into the open.’
Niles looked shocked by Blanchard’s cold-hearted pragmatism. Inside the pod, Tuck was furious.
‘Do you think he means it?’ Jack murmured.
‘Of course he means it!’ Tuck replied. ‘He’s talking about using us as bait! Both of us! Find my jacket!’
‘Your what?’
‘My jacket! It should be here somewhere, in one of the lockers.’
Dutifully Jack went over to the wall against which the lockers were stacked. He began trying the doors, most of which wouldn’t open. Then he found one which held a brown leather jacket.
‘That’s it!’ Tuck shouted. ‘Okay! The keys are in the pocket - ’
‘The keys?’
‘Car keys, Jack! And the car’s out back. See the metal door over there? Use it!’
Jack saw the door. He hesitated, the keys in his hand.
‘What are you waiting for?!’ Tuck wanted to know.
‘Don’t rush me,’ said Jack. ‘Just be quiet and let me think this through.’
Tuck could hardly believe it. Did the guy have a proper grasp of the situation? This was no time for hesitation. He controlled himself sufficiently to talk to Jack in as measured a tone as possible:
‘Jack, excuse me, but I want you to consider this. You heard the guy. My air supply is running out. If you don’t help me, you’re gonna wind up with a miniaturized submersible pod floating around your insides for good. And inside it is going to be a dead body, slowly rotting away. Me, Jack. I’ll be dead!’
Tuck could immediately tell that he had hit the right nerve: Jack was revolted at the thought.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘But you have to do something for me in return.’
‘Anything!’ Jack shouted. ‘Anything you want. But can we talk about it later? First let’s go!’
Jack relented. He hurried off through the metal door. It led down a narrow fire-escape corridor of bare concrete and gave out on to the car park.
‘That’s the one,’ Tuck said. ‘The red ’69 Mustang Mach I convertible.’
Steven Spielberg's Innerspace Page 5