Fantastic Voyage II: Destination Brain fv-2

by Isaac Asimov

  Boranova said dryly, "If you lost seven kilograms, Arkady, so much the better. And we would consume less energy in the miniaturization."

  "The thought has occurred to me at times, Natasha," replied Dezhnev coolly. "I will now test the controls of the ship and if all responds properly, as I'm sure it will, we will be ready to begin."

  There was what seemed to Morrison to be a tense wait in utter silence, except for a soft whistle between the teeth on the part of Dezhnev, as he bent over his controls.

  Then Dezhnev sat up, wiped his forehead with his sleeve, and said, "All is well. Comrade ladies, Comrade gentleman, and Comrade American, the fantastic voyage we face is about to begin." He fixed an auditor in his left ear, raised a tiny microphone before his mouth, and said, "All is operational within. Is all operational outside? - Very well, then, wish us good fortune, comrades all."

  Nothing seemed to happen and Morrison cast a quick look at Kaliinin. She was still immobile, but she seemed to be aware of Morrison's head turning toward her, for she said, "Yes, we are miniaturizing."

  The blood roared in Morrison's ears. This was the first time he was consciously miniaturizing.

  Chapter 9. Artery

  If the current flow is taking you where you want to go, don't argue.

  — Dezhnev Senior

  36.

  Morrison's eyes remained, for the most part, focused on the recess before him, on the computer, and on the software he had inserted. The software - the one material object of the long ago.

  Long ago? It was less than a hundred hours ago that he was half-dozing his way through a dull talk on his last day at the conference and wondering whether there was any way to save his position at the university. And now a hundred subjective years had passed in those hundred objective hours and he could no longer clearly visualize the university at all or the life of sad frustration he had been leading there toward the end.

  He would have given a great deal to have broken out of the dull cycle of useless striving a hundred hours ago. He would give a great deal more - a great deal more - to break back into it now, to wake up and to find the last hundred hours (or years) had never taken place.

  He glanced through the transparent wall of the ship, there at his right elbow, his eyes half-closed as though he were really reluctant to see anything. He was reluctant. He did not want to see anything larger than it should be. It would interfere with his wild hope that the miniaturization process had broken down or that the whole thing had - somehow - been an illusion.

  But a man walked into his view - tall, over two meters tall. But then, perhaps he was actually that tall.

  Others appeared. They couldn't all be that tall.

  He shrank down into his seat and looked no more. It was enough. He knew that the miniaturization process was going its inexorable way.

  The silence inside the ship was oppressive, unbearable. Morrison felt he had to hear a voice, even if only his own.

  Kaliinin, at his left side, was the one to whom he could speak most easily and she might be the best of a difficult choice, perhaps. Since Morrison did not want Dezhnev's misplaced jocularity, or Boranova's one-dimensional concentration, or Konev's dark intensity, he turned to Kaliinin's frozen sorrow.

  He said, "How will we get into Shapirov's body, Sophia?"

  It took a while, it seemed, for Kaliinin to hear him. When she did, her lips moved pallidly and she said in a whisper, "Injection."

  Then, as though with a supreme effort, she apparently decided that she must be companionable, so she turned to him and said, "When we are small enough, we will be placed into a hypodermic needle and injected into Academician Shapirov's left carotid artery."

  "We'll be shaken up like dice," said Morrison, appalled.

  "Not at all. It will be complex, but the problems have been thought through."

  "How do you know? This has never been done before. Never in a ship. Never in a hypodermic needle, Never into a human body."

  "True," said Kaliinin, "but problems like this - much simpler ones, of course - have been planned for a long time and we have had extended seminars over the last few days on this mission. You don't think that Arkady's announcements before miniaturization began - the ones about toilet tissue and so on - were new to us, do you? We have heard it all before, over and over. It was for your benefit, actually, since you have attended no seminars, and for Arkady's, too, since he loves his moment in the sun."

  "Tell me, then, what will happen?"

  "I will explain events as they occur. For now we do nothing until we are in the centimeter range. It will take another twenty minutes, but not everything will be so slow. The smaller we get, the faster we can miniaturize, in proportion. - Have you felt any bad effects yet?"

  Morrison mentally subtracted the rapid beating of his heart and the panting of his lungs and said, "None." Then, feeling that to be an unduly optimistic remark, he added, "At least so far."

  "Well, then?" said Kaliinin and closed her eyes as though to indicate that she was tired of talking.

  Morrison thought that might not be such a bad idea and closed his as well.

  He might have actually fallen asleep or he might simply have gone into a protective state of semi unconsciousness, withdrawing from reality, for it seemed that no time had passed when he was brought to by a slight jar.

  He opened his eyes wide and found himself a centimeter or so above the seat. He had the odd sensation of drifting with each vagrant puff of wind.

  Boranova had moved over to the seat behind him and placed her hands on his shoulders. She pushed down gently and said, "Albert, put on your seat belt. Sophia, show him how. I'm sorry, Albert - we should have gone over all of this - everything - before we started, but we had little time and you were nervous enough as it was. We did not wish to reduce you to utter helplessness by flooding you with information."

  To his own surprise, Morrison had not been feeling helpless. He had rather enjoyed the sensation of sitting on air.

  Kaliinin touched a spot on her seat edge between her knees and a belt around her waist flipped away. It had not been there, Morrison was sure, when he had closed his eyes and now it was again no longer there, for it disappeared, with a snap, into a recess in the seat to her left. She twisted toward Morrison and said, "This, here to your left, is your belt ejector." Morrison couldn't help noticing that, now unbound, she lifted up from her seat slightly as she moved toward him.

  She pressed the ejector - a somewhat darker circle in a light background - and a flexible network of clear plastic shot out with a faint hiss, wrapped itself about him, and buried its triple tip into the seat at his other side. He found himself held, elastically, in a kind of lacework.

  "If you want to free yourself, there is the belt release there, just between your knees." Kaliinin leaned farther toward him to indicate the place and Morrison found the pressure of her body against his to be pleasurable.

  She did not seem to be aware of it and, having completed her task, she pulled herself back into her chair and re-belted herself.

  Morrison glanced quicky around, squeezing upward and forward as far as the belt would let him, and peered, with difficulty, over Konev's shoulder. All five were belted.

  He said, "We've miniaturized to the point where we have very little weight, is that it?"

  "You only weigh about twenty-five milligrams now," said Boranova, "so that you might as well consider yourself weightless. Then, too, the ship is being lifted."

  Morrison looked at Kaliinin accusingly and Kaliinin shrugged slightly and said, "I told you I'd describe things as they happened, but you seemed to be asleep and I thought it wiser to let you stay that way. The jar of the clamp woke you and lifted you out of the seat."

  "The clamp?" He looked to one side. He had been conscious of a shadow on both sides, but walls were supposed to be opaque and he had dismissed the sensation. Now he suddenly remembered that the ship's walls were transparent and realized that the light on either side was blocked.

  Kal
iinin nodded. "A clamp is gripping us and helping to keep us steady so that we are not shaken up unnecessarily. It looks enormous, but it is a very small and delicately padded clamp. And we are being put into a small tank of saline solution. We are also being held steady by an airstream being sucked upward into a blunt nozzle. That pushes us against the nozzle so that, with the clamps, we are held three ways."

  Morrison looked out again. Objects outside the ship that might have been visible through portions of the wall not blocked by the clamp or by the overhead nozzle were, nevertheless, not visible. Morrison could see occasional shifting of light and shadow and realized that whatever existed out there was too large to make out clearly with his tiny eyes. If the photons that approached the ship were not themselves miniaturized as they entered the field, they would behave as though they were long radio waves and he would have seen nothing at all.

  He felt the ship suddenly jar again as the clamps withdrew, although he couldn't actually see them withdraw. One moment they were there and the next they weren't. The movement - on his scale - was too rapid to see.

  Then he felt himself rising slightly against the belt that bound him in and he interpreted that as a downward movement of the ship. There followed a slow bobbing sensation.

  Dezhnev pointed to a dark horizontal line that moved slowly up and down against the wall of the ship and said with satisfaction, "That's the surface of the water. I thought the motions would be worse. Apparently, there are engineers in this place who are almost as good as I am."

  Boranova said, "Actually, engineering has little to do with it. We're being held in place by surface tension. That will only work while we're at the surface of a fluid. It will not affect us once we're in Shapirov's body."

  "But this ripple effect, Natasha? This up-and-down movement. Is that affecting it at all?"

  Boranova was studying her instruments and, in particular, a small screen on which a horizontal line seemed to be playing out forever, without budging from the center. Morrison, twisting and lifting until his back ached, could just make it out.

  Boranova said, "It's as steady as your hand when you are sober, Arkady."

  "No better than that, eh?" Dezhnev's laugh boomed out.

  (He sounds relieved, thought Morrison uneasily and wondered what the "it" was that Dezhnev had felt might be affected.)

  "What happens now?" asked Morrison.

  Konev spoke for the first time, as far as Morrison could remember, since miniaturization had begun. "Must everything be explained to you?"

  Morrison answered with spirit. "Yes! You have had everything explained to you. Why should I not have it explained as well?"

  Boranova said quietly, "Albert is perfectly correct, Yuri. Please hold your temper and be reasonable. You will need his help soon enough and I hope he will not be so discourteous as to snap at you."

  Konev's shoulders twitched, but he said nothing in reply.

  Boranova said, "The cylinder of a hypodermic syringe will pick us up, Albert. It will be under remote control."

  And, as though that cylinder were waiting to hear her say so, a shadow encased them from behind, swallowing them almost at once. Only in front was there a circle of light visible for a moment and then that disappeared, too.

  Boranova said calmly, "The needle has been clamped on. Now we will have to wait a while."

  The interior of the ship, which had become quite dark, was suddenly suffused with a white light, rather softer and more restful than before, and Boranova said, "From now on there will be no more light from the outside until our journey is over. We will have to rely on our own internal illumination, Albert."

  Puzzled, Morrison looked around for the source of the light. It seemed to be in the transparent walls themselves.

  Kaliinin, interpreting his glance, said, "Electroluminescence."

  "But what is the source of power?"

  "We have three microfusion engines." She looked at him proudly. "Of a type that's the best in the world." Then she repeated, "In the world."

  Morrison let it go. He had the impulse to talk of the American microfusion engines on the latest space vessels, but what would be the point? Someday the world would be freed of its nationalist fervors, but that day had not yet arrived. Still, as long as those fervors did not express themselves in violence or threat of violence, matters were bearable.

  Dezhnev, leaning back in his seat with his arms behind his neck and apparently addressing the gently illuminated wall before him, said, "Someday what we will do is expand a hypodermic syringe, place that around a full-sized ship, and miniaturize the whole thing. Then we won't have this small-scale maneuvering."

  Morrison said, "Oh, can you do the other thing, too? What do you call it? Maximization? Gigantization?"

  "We don't call it anything," said Konev crisply, "because it can't be done."

  "Maybe someday, though."

  "No," said Konev. "Never. It is physically impossible. It takes a lot of energy to miniaturize, but more than an infinite amount to maximize."

  "Even if you hooked it up to relativity?"

  "Even so."

  Dezhnev made an inelegant sound with his lips. "That for your physically impossible. Someday you will see."

  Konev relapsed into indignant silence.

  Morrison said, "What is it we are waiting for?"

  Boranova said, "The last-minute preparation of Shapirov and then the moving up of the needle and its insertion into the carotid."

  As she spoke, the ship was jarred forward.

  "Is that it?" asked Morrison.

  "Not yet. They were merely removing the air bubbles. Don't worry, Albert. We'll know."

  "How?"

  "Why, they'll tell us. Arkady is in contact with them. It's not difficult. Radio wave photons miniaturize as they cross the boundary from there to here and deminiaturize as they cross in the other direction. There's very little energy involved - even less than in the case of light."

  Dezhnev said, "It's time to move up to the base of the needle."

  "Then go ahead," said Boranova. "We might as well test the motive power under miniaturization."

  There was a gathering rumble that reached a low peak and then settled down into a buzzing murmur. Morrison twisted his head in order to look as nearly backward as he could against his restraining belt.

  Water was churning behind them as though paddle wheels were turning. In the absence of any real reference point outside, it was impossible to judge how quickly they were moving, but progress seemed slow to Morrison.

  "Are we moving much?" he asked.

  "No, but we don't need to," said Boranova. "There's no use wasting energy trying to move faster. After all, we're pushing against normal-sized molecules, which means high viscosity on our scale."

  "But with microfusion motors -"

  "We have many energy needs for matters other than propulsion."

  "I'm just wondering how long it will take us to get to key points in the brain."

  "Believe me," said Boranova grimly, "I'm wondering, too, but we will have an arterial current taking us as close as possible."

  Dezhnev cried out, "We're there! See?"

  Right ahead, in the forward light beam of the ship, a round circle could be seen. Morrison had no trouble translating that into the base of the needle.

  On the other end of that needle, they would find Pyotr Shapirov's bloodstream and then they would actually be within a human body.

  37.

  Morrison said, "We're too large to go through the needle, Natalya."

  He felt a peculiar amalgam of emotions at the thought. Uppermost was a feeling of hope that perhaps the whole experiment had failed. This might be as small as they could get and it wasn't small enough. They would have to deminiaturize and it would all be over.

  Under that thought, well-hidden, was a little sigh of disappointment. Having come so far, might it not be as well to get into the body and experience the interior of a nerve cell? Ordinarily, being no darer of dangers, no scaler o
f heights, Morrison would have turned away in horror at the thought - he did turn away in horror - but having miniaturized, having reached this point, having survived the fright so far, was it possible that he might want to go farther?

  But above these contradictory urges came a bit of realism. Surely these people were not such fools as to deal with a ship that could not be reduced to a size that would pass through the needle it was supposed to pass through. No conceivable stupidity in these very intelligent people could reach that pitch.

  And Boranova, as though she were resonating with that thought, said, almost indifferently, "Yes, we are too large now, but we will not stay too large. That is my job here."

  "Yours?" said Morrison blankly.

  "Of course. We have been reduced to this point by our central miniaturization device. Now the fine adjustments will be made by me."

  Kaliinin murmured, "That is one of the things we must save our microfusion motors for as much as possible."

  Morrison looked from one to another. "Do we have enough energy on board ship for further miniaturization? Surely the impression I got was that a vast quantity of energy was needed for -"

  "Albert," said Boranova, "if gravitation were quantized, then it would take the same enormous amount of energy to reduce a mass by half, regardless of the original value of that mass. To reduce the mass of a mouse by half would take the same energy as was required to reduce the mass of an elephant by half. But the gravitational interaction is not quantized and, therefore, neither is mass loss. That means that the energy required for mass loss decreases with that loss - not entirely in proportion, but to an extent. We have so little mass now that it takes much less energy to miniaturize further."