by Isaac Asimov
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 better."
"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 pardon."
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 sk
eptic 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?"