Visible through the capsule's transparent side and top walls lay a motionless humanoid form, fragile-looking and gray-skinned. It had an enlarged head, similar to those of the alien visitors that had become so popular in the tabloids. The enormous eyes were gently closed in sleep, or death.
“Holy shit! Is this for real?”
“It's very real, Mr. Freeth.” Devlin saw that the UFO expert was gibbering with excitement and pale with shock. “I—uh, hope you brought along a clean pair of undershorts.”
“I can't believe it. Holy shit!”
“And we need you to help us figure it out. You'll be part of the team.”
Devlin looked up as redheaded Dr. Trish Wylde, the Proteus chief pathologist, came running down the hall. Trish was also trained in miniaturized missions, though she hadn't been chosen for the upcoming exploration. Her narrow face bore a look of alarm. “Major Devlin, you've got to go see Director Hunter. There's been an emergency.”
He was instantly alert, ready to respond. Perhaps Felix wasn't just being frazzled after all. “What kind of emergency?”
“It's Captain Wilcox. The doctors don't think he'll lose his leg, but he's definitely not flying the mission this afternoon.”
Devlin's heart turned to lead. “Roger that. I'm on my way. Trish, please see to Mr. Freeth. He needs a jumpsuit in his size. Try to run him through a simulation or two before it's time.” He stopped and spun halfway around. “Whoa, I didn't even tell him about the miniaturization yet. He needs a briefing before we go inside the alien.” Devlin raced off to where he could find the Director.
“Miniaturization?” Freeth said. “Going inside the alien? What is he talking about?”
Trish Wylde smiled at the UFO expert, taking him by the arm. “You're going to be reduced to the size of a cell so you can join a microscopic exploration team that's going to be inserted directly into the alien's bloodstream. The rest of us envy you the opportunity.”
Freeth's mouth opened, closed, and opened again. “But that's… ridiculous. Shrinking a person down to a dust speck—”
“Smaller, actually.”
“But that's preposterous! It can't be done.”
Trish Wylde arched her thin eyebrows. “Says the man who believes in alien abductions?” Freeth reddened, but couldn't counter her argument. She nudged him down the corridor. “Aren't you glad you agreed to come along?”
Chapter 8
Thursday, noon
The main miniaturization lab was the crown jewel of Project Proteus, capable of safely reducing a test subject to an infinitesimal fraction of its original size. At least, so long as everything went according to plan.
Director Hunter stood inside the chamber, hands locked behind his back. Enough had already gone awry for one day. Captain Wilcox had come out of surgery and remained in recovery. Marc Devlin still hadn't checked in, and Deputy Foreign Minister Garamov should be landing in San Francisco any moment now.
“Are we ready for our test?” Impatient, Hunter turned to Dr. Rajid Sujatha, who had suited up in full clean-room garb. “We'll only have time for this last check.”
They didn't have the luxury to make this a model mission, but Hunter and his crew would pull off a miracle anyway. He couldn't pass up a chance like this.
The Bengali doctor nodded vigorously from across the room. “As soon as we bring in Fluffy Alice, Mr. Director, sir.”
In Hunter's considered opinion, the miniaturizing apparatus itself appeared to have been inspired by an alien spacecraft. Indeed, after he had pulled strings to resurrect this mothballed program, he'd never asked where the equipment had originated. The technology seemed beyond anything the most ingenious minds—American or Soviet—had ever created. Back in the 1960s, how could mere human scientists have developed an apparatus so much more complex than even the Manhattan Project's atomic bomb or NASA's Apollo moon landing?
Some things Hunter didn't want to know.
Waiting behind the barricade, he brushed a hand over his mustache. His neat hair was a shade too dark to be called iron-gray, but it gave his lean face an extremely distinguished appearance.
Technicians in gloves and clean-room suits moved around the chamber, fine-tuning the prismatic grid, double-checking the outputs of myriad devices behind the interlocked focusing plates.
“Ten minutes to activation!” a jumpsuited woman called.
“Check. Everybody finish up your procedures. Bring in the rabbit.”
Dr. Sujatha wheeled a cart into the center of the projection area, his sparkling black eyes framed by his dust-filter mask and bushy dark brows. Inside a cage sat a contented-looking white rabbit, all twitching ears and blinking pink eyes.
Sujatha positioned the test animal at the focal point of the miniaturization beams, then stepped behind the barricade, out of the clean zone. He had a wife and three daughters at home, but they had no inkling of what he did for Project Proteus. Eleven times now, he had gone out of his way to show Hunter snapshots of his lovely girls.
Sujatha yanked down his mask and removed his latex gloves. “Fluffy Alice is ready for another test run, Director, sir.”
Only a few more hours… The mission must proceed, despite the problems, despite the speed bumps. Hunter's stomach wouldn't start to unknot, though, until Marc Devlin got back. What was taking him so long to bring the alleged UFO expert? He hoped his son-in-law had had a nice, quiet drive, because all hell was breaking loose around here.
“Five minutes,” a technician called.
Unexpected sparks crackled from one of the control panels, accompanied by a thin curl of smoke and the smell of burning plastic insulation. Shouting, two technicians shut down the preliminary run and yanked the cover plate off their main panel.
“Do we need to cancel the test?” Hunter growled. “We can't afford another setback.”
One tech yanked out a circuit board and pried at a blackened component. “We can get this replaced in a minute, sir. Put the countdown on hold for sixty seconds. That's all we need.”
Inside the miniaturization grid, the rabbit sniffed around her cage, as if looking for something to nibble.
“We expect no surprises, Director, sir.” Sujatha tried to sound reassuring.
“If we expected them, they wouldn't exactly be surprises. After what happened to Captain Wilcox, I insist on total safety for my team members.”
Hunter remembered why the miniaturization research had been shut down in the first place. No matter what the cost, Hunter vowed that no micro-explorers would be lost on his watch—not even a rabbit. He hoped.
The technician slid the board back into place, closed the cover plate, then powered up the system again. He studied the yellow lights until each one turned green. He ran another quick circuit check, then nodded. “All ready to go, sir. Picking up the countdown.”
The rabbit poked about for a way to escape from the cage. She hopped from one side to the other, trapped. The green lights flickered off again, then came back on, weaker than before.
The double door swung open into the main chamber, and Major Devlin hurried in, his face flushed. He saw them behind the observation barricade. “Felix! I got your message. What's wrong?”
The sight of his son-in-law flooded Hunter with relief, followed by a heaviness about what he'd have to ask. “Marc, I'm glad you're here. Did you fetch Mr. Freeth as expected?”
“Affirmative. Dr. Wylde is running him through the hoops. The Reader's Digest condensed version.”
Hunter brushed a tanned hand across his forehead. “At least something went as planned today.”
Devlin's hazel gaze remained intense. “Don't dance around the problem, Felix. What happened to Captain Wilcox? Where does that leave us for the mission, sir?”
Hunter drew a deep breath. “Garrett had a run-in with some molten metal during this morning's training exercise. Tomiko brought him out, and Doctor Pirov kept him alive. The medics here did what they could, but he'll be a long time healing and will probably need a walking stick for
the rest of his life.”
Devlin's voice was hoarse. “I'll try to find him a stylish one.”
“Ready for miniaturization!” the first technician announced. “Powering up the system, Director Hunter. All apparatus has stabilized.”
Hunter leaned forward to the viewing window in the shielded wall. “Are you certain the systems are optimal?”
“Absolutely, sir.” He tapped the panel again. “Everything checks out.”
“Be damned sure,” Hunter said. “Another glitch at this stage will cancel our primary mission. We'll never have a second chance at that alien.”
And Project Proteus would be back to square one.
Thanks to a slip of the tongue from a drunken ambassador, Hunter had learned of the mothballed miniaturization program years ago. He'd done some digging, using connections he had accumulated for decades. Regardless of its problems, the shrinking process worked and should not have been forgotten.
Hunter had spent years gathering the people and resources necessary to work the bugs out. The original prototype apparatus had disappeared somewhere along the line, but the blueprints and specs remained. He had scouted funding from various countries to keep Project Proteus alive, and also to muddy (and, he hoped, defuse) the politics of one government having sole access to such breakthrough technology.
In the chaos of the crumbling Eastern Bloc, Hunter had negotiated with Vasili Garamov himself to purchase the classified Soviet miniaturization equipment. He'd brought over the Russian program's top researchers, including Sergei Pirov, people who were only too willing to be given a new life in the U.S. For years, Hunter's hand-picked scientists and engineers had refined the shrinking technology, taking the best parts from the old American program as well as the Soviet equipment they had purchased.
After his daughter's unexpected diagnosis of cancer, her death had been so sudden that the Project had rolled on its own momentum for a time, while Hunter and Marc Devlin stayed by Kelli's side. He had done his best to watch over his son-in-law ever since.
“Felix, how can you go without Captain Wilcox?” Devlin asked. “He's been trained and tested on the Mote. You didn't have time to assign a backup pilot, and there isn't anyone—” He stopped in mid-sentence.
Hunter had known Devlin would figure it out for himself. “It's got to be you, Marc. You designed the Mote. You've flown her on a number of tests.” His heart sank. “I'm very sorry. I never wanted to send you into danger, because I don't trust my objectivity where you're concerned. But right now I don't have a choice.”
Devlin squeezed Hunter's shoulder in a strong grip. “Felix, you're a captain of industry, and I've seen you wrestle politicians to the ground. You've never been one to let emotions get in the way of an important decision.”
“I won't let anything happen to you, Marc. I promise.”
“I know.” His hazel eyes glittered with growing excitement. “I'm honored to go, I really am. Nobody can take better care of the ship than me. The Mote and I have a special bond.”
Buzzers sounded in the chamber, warning that the miniaturization process was about to commence. Automatic fail-safes locked the doors, and air-exchange systems roared inside the sealed chamber.
“Activating miniaturization beams.”
The prismatic lights in the floor and ceiling began to pulse out of phase, an alternating sequence that glowed from outside the visible spectrum. Behind the filtered observation window, Hunter's eyes adjusted to take in more of the fringe illumination. He saw a flicker of static discharge around the rabbit cage.
“Good-bye, Fluffy Alice,” Sujatha said. “Come back to us in one piece.”
A throbbing sound grew, like the bass of a rock group playing miles away. Slowly at first, the table, cage, and rabbit shrank down in perfect symmetry, until Fluffy Alice was the size of a hamster, then a mouse, then a fly.
The technicians worked at their panels, scrambling with touch-screens and keypads, whispering furiously at each other. Hunter did not like the concerned expressions on their faces. One of the green lights burned out. He considered calling off the test, but held his tongue. He did not have time to be obsessively cautious.
“The technology has been proven safe many times, Mr. Director, sir,” Sujatha said, picking up on Hunter's uneasiness.
In an adjacent room, walled off behind thick shielding, the primary miniaturization apparatus hummed, its huge engines sucking power through high tension lines from the nearest hydroelectric plant. Behind the walls, where only physicists dared to go, the true shrinking process took place.
Safe in her cage, Fluffy Alice didn't seem perturbed as the entire table and cage diminished to a pinpoint and became an exhibit for bacteria and dust motes.
The glowing lights stopped, the pulsing fell silent. The interlocked prisms dimmed, and the technicians heaved a sigh of relief. One mopped his forehead, noticed Hunter looking at him, and quickly focused back on his work.
The loudspeaker proclaimed, “Phase One successful. Miniaturization accomplished, factor of ten to the minus fifth.”
“Never ceases to amaze me,” Hunter muttered.
“That'll be me in a few hours.” Devlin sounded as if he still couldn't believe he would be going along after all.
Sujatha looked over at Hunter. “Would you like to be miniaturized yourself, sir? As Project Director, I am certain you have the authority to assign yourself to an exploration team.”
Devlin laughed at the suggestion. “While Director Hunter has complete confidence in the technology, Dr. Sujatha, I don't think he's cut out to be a daring adventurer. Maybe someday … . when he's younger.”
The rabbit still had not returned. Video monitors projected magnified images of the central miniaturization zone, but Fluffy Alice had been reduced far beyond conventional, nondestructive observation techniques. “Thirty seconds. Condition stable, as far as we can tell.”
“How long are we going to wait before restoration?” Hunter asked. Every second that ticked by raised his concerns.
“Relax, Felix,” Devlin whispered. “You're going to keep us reduced a lot longer than this.”
“It is only a routine short-term shrinkage and restoration, sir. The weak field will degrade rapidly,” Sujatha said. “However, I am certain we will be able to keep our exploration team intact for the maximum five-hour time allotment.”
All movement inside the sealed miniaturization chamber had ceased. No ventilation stirred, no machinery hummed. Hunter waited, unable to dispel his ever-present tension.
“We're at the one-minute point,” the disembodied voice reported. “Prepare for re-enlargement.”
The prismatic grid hummed again. Hunter instinctively shielded his eyes, but studied the focal point in the center of the beams until a black dot appeared and expanded rapidly into a discernible shape, a rectangular cage on a table. Everything looked normal.
Hunter held his breath. The rabbit twitched. Fluffy Alice sniffed about, her pink nose wiggling, ears erect.
“We've already had our quota of mishaps for one mission,” Devlin said, reassuringly. “Have faith in us, Felix. The rest will be smooth sailing.”
When the interlocked plates ceased glowing and the enormous machines fell silent, an all-clear signal sounded from the loudspeakers. With a loud thunk, the electronic security seals on the doors unlocked.
“Nothing to worry about.” Disheveled from his long round-trip drive and eager to get ready, Devlin turned to go. “I'm going to see Captain Wilcox in the infirmary, if he's awake by now. Trish Wylde will still be putting our UFO expert through the paces before our final briefing. Still in an hour, sir?”
“Yes, and Team Proteus is scheduled for miniaturization at sixteen-hundred hours this afternoon.”
Putting his mask and gloves back in place, Sujatha ran to check Fluffy Alice. He removed the plump rabbit from her cage, holding her up for a cursory checkup. He gave a thumbs-up sign and petted the animal before putting her back inside. “I am pleased, sir, that you do no
t require us to dissect our specimen after each journey.”
“I'm sure Fluffy Alice appreciates that too,” Hunter said. “It's the only way we can study the effects of repeated miniaturization. Your rabbit has been shrunk down more times than any other living creature.”
“Fluffy Alice is happy to serve.” Carrying the wire cage, Sujatha strode toward the exit. Hunter knew the Bengali doctor would reward his precious test rabbit with snippets of carrots and parsley.
“Bring the Mote through the hangar doors and position it in the field,” he instructed the other workers. “No time to waste.”
Hunter headed out of the miniaturization chamber, back toward his office. He had to pick up the dossiers and prepare for the briefing. He hoped the specialists he'd selected for this first, all-important mission would return in one piece, just like Fluffy Alice.
Chapter 9
Thursday, 12:24 p.m.
When Garrett Wilcox returned to consciousness, the last thing he wanted to see was the man who would replace him on the mission.
Devlin stood by the recovery bed in the infirmary, arms crossed over his chest. “Can't leave you alone for a second, can I, Garrett? I go away for a simple pickup, and look what happens.” He regarded the blond-haired patient with a frown. “What is it they say about young fighter pilots—balls the size of grapefruits, brains the size of peas?”
Struggling to raise his head off the pillow, Wilcox managed a smile that looked a little like an attack of gas pain.
While the Proteus infirmary did not have the equipment of a large medical center, Wilcox received the full attention of the project medical staff. If they had taken the time to airlift him to the nearest hospital after the accident, the young captain's burned limb might have needed amputation. Here, at least, the surgeons had salvaged his leg.
Still fighting off the painkillers and the anesthetic, Wilcox tried to focus his eyes. “Sorry… guess I'm just an attention grabber.”
Fantastic Voyage : Microcosm Page 6