Fantastic Voyage : Microcosm

by Kevin J. Anderson

  Pulses strobed quicker, blinking on and off. Steam curled out of broken seals. The gaps cracked wider, as if the pod were a cocoon ready to split open.

  Sujatha knew in his heart what was happening. His awed whisper went unheard in the commotion of the control room. “It is waking up.”

  Hunter nudged a set of controls and barked orders at his communications specialists. “See if you can reestablish contact with Major Devlin inside. Now.” The members of Team Proteus had been fully aware of the risks involved, but he couldn't bear the thought of losing the crew. Especially not Marc.

  He realized that neither Sujatha nor Pirov had done anything to trigger the change. But how could the Mote, no larger than a cell inside the alien's body, have caused such a dramatic change on a macro scale?

  Beside him, Garamov and the congressman spoke with excitement to see something happen after staring at the motionless alien for so long. The Russian's long, nicotine-stained fingers fidgeted, as if twitching for a cigarette.

  Durston's face hardened and his voice grew deeper, reflecting the no-nonsense gruffness that had gotten him elected. “Director Hunter, remember we're interested in that capsule technology as well as the alien specimen itself. The electronics and computer controls within such a device could offer immeasurable advancement to human technology.” Durston's constituents included numerous high-tech Silicon Valley firms. “To be shared with the Russians, of course.”

  Garamov gave him a look filled with irony. “How generous.”

  “We're aware of that, Congressman,” Hunter said. “Major Devlin is an excellent engineer. Once he returns from this mission, I intend to assign him the task of studying the capsule.”

  After the miniaturized mission, he hoped Garamov would let them have an additional hour before he dragged the lifepod away and returned it to Russian authorities. The Director would bring in other engineers and specialists, whoever he could find on short notice. Marc probably would complain about having too many people crowded around the capsule, where they could bump elbows and risk damaging the delicate systems.

  The humming lifepod reached a crescendo. Both Pirov and Sujatha stepped back, shielding their faceplates as the internal illumination turned an electric green, then dazzling yellow. The capsule's control markings flashed in a frenzy. The throbbing grew louder and louder.

  Then all the lights vanished, fading into the alien metal and leaving no mark. The still-closed armored pod became black and silent, as if burnt out.

  Durston leaned forward in his chair. “Did it break down?”

  Below, Pirov pushed forward like a child inspecting a curious gift. “I believe it is just—”

  With a loud hiss and an explosive pop of decompression, the lifepod split wide open. The curved top rose part way up with a smooth motion like the lid of a vampire's coffin at dusk. Gouts of cold white vapor poured down the capsule walls and pooled on the floor.

  Automatic security alarms blared inside the underground facility. Rotating amber lights flashed in the corridors. Guards raced into position. Scientists studied their monitors and waited.

  Hunter found it all very distracting. “What do you see?”

  “Nothing yet, Director, sir.” Sujatha wiped condensation off his faceplate and peered into the gaping pod. “Just a moment.”

  The steam faded. The lifepod lid paused for pressure to equalize as the last wisps of unearthly atmosphere escaped; then the heavy capsule cover slid to one side, revealing the prone form of the gray-skinned extraterrestrial. The alien astronaut remained motionless, still not awake, dead to all appearances. Waiting to be inspected.

  “Sleeping Beauty from Mars,” Congressman Durston said.

  Though protected in their anti-contamination garb, Pirov and Sujatha still hung back. The Bengali doctor heaved an audible sigh over the intercom. “Now you and I must cycle through the full decontamination routines before we can leave. This entire chamber will have to be purged and cleaned.”

  “I believe it will be at least a day before we are allowed to exit,” Pirov said, dismayed at the prospect of the delay, but eager to study the alien.

  Sujatha patted the old man's shoulder in commiseration. “I had been scheduled for furlough this evening. I will miss going back to see my daughters, but we must not allow such a magnificent opportunity to pass us by.”

  From the chair to Hunter's right, Vasili Garamov watched the open lifepod intently, his eyes flashing, wheels turning in his mind. Finally, he reached a decision. “There is now no need to avoid performing a gross body analysis, Director. We should consider having your doctors study what they can.”

  Now even the congressman looked excited. “Consider it? The capsule's open, and the alien's just lying there. Take a few samples, skin scrapings, draw some blood. Why not? What can it harm?”

  Hunter pursed his lips, trying to imagine any negative consequences that might come from intrusive study. “We can't be sure, Congressman.”

  The Deputy Foreign Minister touched his fingers to the pack of cigarettes in his pocket, as if comforted by their mere presence. “I suggest we let Dr. Pirov study the body, the musculature, the sensory organs. Due to the politics of this situation, it might be more acceptable to have a Russian perform the analysis, even if he is an emigre. It will help my explanations later.”

  “Maybe we should call in a few more experts,” Durston said. “We can assemble an international team, so we don't step on anybody's toes. It might take a few days, though.”

  “We will not wait a few days, Congressman,” Garamov said, his voice sharp. “Please, you must understand the sensitivity—”

  Hunter interrupted, “I remind both of you gentlemen that with the lifepod open now, our decontamination problem has increased a hundredfold. Bringing new scientists inside would be impossible at this point. Drs. Pirov and Sujatha are eminent medical specialists. Let's allow them to conduct a preliminary exterior study now, completely noninvasive.”

  “That would be preferable,” Garamov said; he already looked at a loss as to how he could salvage the situation. “If we bring in more people, the chances increase that information will leak to the general public. I do not wish it widely known that Russian fighter jets are in the habit of shooting down possibly peaceful alien spacecraft.”

  Durston gave a ponderous nod. “All right, why waste time? So long as we don't begin the complete autopsy until we bring together a full international team.”

  “Autopsy?” Hunter didn't even try to cover his surprise. “We haven't yet determined if the creature is alive or dead.”

  Durston waved his hand dismissively.

  Hunter reached forward to open a direct channel into the containment room. “Dr. Pirov, you are in charge. Do as thorough an examination as you can with minimal effect to the alien. Don't leave any marks, not even any fingerprints.”

  From behind his faceplate, Pirov looked at Sujatha with an oddly worried expression, but he understood and acknowledged. The two picked up their instruments and prepared to work on the alien body.

  The Bengali doctor grinned at Pirov. “Certainly, this will be remembered as the crowning achievement of our careers.”

  Chapter 26

  Mission clock: 2:18 remaining

  Awash in pearlescent nutrient fluid, the once-dormant nanomachines continued to self-activate, swarming like a nest of angry wasps. As signals thundered through the electromagnetic spectrum, additional clusters of machines throughout the alien's body awakened.

  The devices moved about, priming their minuscule mechanical systems. Then, following their programming, they began to explore. Something about their search implied hunger and ruthlessness. Devlin put on another burst of speed.

  After tugging Tomiko through the hatch, he sealed the lid at his feet. Foregoing the usual double-checks and tests, he pumped the liquid out of the airlock chamber. Within two minutes, the two emerged dripping into the main cabin, grabbing towels to wipe themselves off.

  “What did you do out there
, Major Devlin?” Dr. Tyler said, rushing forward. “I don't like the looks of this at all.”

  Arnold Freeth turned from the observation window, blinking rapidly. “Check out that frenzied motion! You really riled those machines.”

  Outside, the blocky devices behaved like maddened ants, swirling in circles. Machines came together, touched sensor pads to each other, and exchanged information with a crackle of blue energy at contact points; they altered programming on their diamond-memory wafers, shared stored data.

  Tomiko narrowed her dark eyes. “Looks like an army regrouping, reconnoitering… preparing for an invasion.”

  In the cockpit, the ship's comm system was a shrieking nightmare of signals, as if the Mote were having some kind of a seizure. Underlying it all came a thunderous carrier wave, the standby signal emitted by the tiny machines, which must have been blocking all outside scanning beams. The electromagnetic storm had turned into a hurricane.

  Devlin sprinted toward his pilot seat. Wincing, he covered his ears to muffle the undulating feedback until he managed to turn down the speaker volume, muffling the migraine-inducing throbs to a dull whisper.

  “Whew, that's a relief.”

  “Felix is probably having heartburn right now,” Tomiko said.

  Four nanocritters in the cluster, now fully programmed and functional, spun about like water fleas, then sped off through the pearly fluid. Scouts? Sentries? Couriers? They disappeared into the membrane walls and followed the sparks of a ganglion.

  Fascinated and horrified at what he was seeing, Devlin wondered what sort of system could have created such sophisticated microscopic machines—and to what purpose. Through the cockpit window, he watched another one putter toward the tissue walls, tunnel its way through, and disappear into the alien's body cavity.

  As she slipped into the copilot's seat, Tomiko tossed back her sweat-streaked black hair, which was somewhat flattened after being tucked into her exploration suit hood. “So what do you think they're going to do? Are they a threat?” She sounded almost hopeful.

  “Engineers only know how things work, Tomiko. Ask a psychologist for intentions and motivations.” He fiddled with the comm system again and received an unpleasant squelch of static. “I'm going to signal Project Proteus, but I'll need to use a lot of power to get through this noise.” He bent over the amplifiers and transmission systems.

  Devlin dictated a short summary of what they'd encountered, ready to go out in a single burst. No time for rambling conversations. “Everybody hold on for a second. There'll be a power drop, and we may lose a bit of stability.” Without waiting for Tyler or Freeth to acknowledge, he diverted energy from the batteries and generators. “This is our message in a bottle. Let's hope it washes up on some friendly shore.” His communications burst screamed out like a gammawave comet, an information packet that should have plowed clear of the nano-jamming signals.

  He kept his fingers crossed.

  The Mote lurched as its stabilizers went offline. The deck tilted, and Devlin slid halfway out of his seat toward Tomiko's lap. She raised her eyebrows, as if implying he'd meant to do that.

  Outside, the nanocritters reacted to the signal like hornets from a jostled nest.

  A dozen of the machines lined up in front of the Mote, as if forming a security cordon. Tiny lights blinked in their mechanical bodies, a flurry of hungrily curious sensor eyes gathering data. Grasping claws tipped with benzene molecular teeth flexed and clicked at the end of fullerene-rod arms. Sparks flew from circuit path to circuit path across a densely patterned diamond memory wafer, as if they were considering a question … or deciding whether to attack.

  “Somebody heard your message, Marc,” Tomiko said. “Must have sounded like an air-raid siren to them.”

  The nanocritters hovered like a gang of bullies rolling up their sleeves and ready to do some damage. Aggressively curious, the lead nanomachine crept forward, extending whisker probes with pyridine-molecule sensors. It extended a sharp cutting apparatus at the end of a carbon-matrix arm.

  “I'm not sure we should provoke them.” Devlin powered up the Mote's impellers and swiftly rotated the vessel away from the line of machines in the pearly fluid. “Let's go explore somewhere else.”

  “No argument from me.” Tomiko touched the weapons controls, reassuring herself that the laser cannons were ready to fire. “No telling what they might do.”

  The Mote streaked away from the agitated machines.

  Startled by the ship's sudden retreat, the nanocritt-ers spun about like whirligigs. Two spurted forward to catch the miniaturized vessel, but Devlin accelerated blindly away, banking and curving without waiting to see what they would do next.

  Tyler stumbled as she rushed from the laboratory modules to the cockpit. “If we get back into a blood vessel and follow it to a large vein or artery, we'll make much better time away from these machines.”

  “Getting away is good,” Freeth said. “See, Dr. Tyler? We can agree on some things.”

  “Affirmative.” Devlin headed straight for the cell wall ahead of them. Behind, the nanocritters began to close the distance. “Tomiko, if you'd be so kind?”

  She sliced a cellular seam with her lasers, and the Mote dove through the rubbery organic curtain, splitring the tiled chains of cells that held the wall together. The ship jostled into the graceful circulatory flow among spherical and disk-shaped blood cells. “Home free.”

  Freeth joined them in the crowded cockpit, his mousy-brown hair tousled, his freckled face flushed. “We're only home free if we don't run into any other clusters of those nanocritters.”

  Dr. Tyler looked skeptical again. “How many could there be?”

  With impellers roaring, the Mote surged forward as the capillary widened into a larger blood vessel. In the arterial stream, they saw no further sign of tiny machines, though the jamming signals remained omnipresent.

  “Two hours left,” Devlin said. He didn't think they had seen the last of the tiny devices. “Let's finish what we came to do and get out of this alien's body.”

  Chapter 27

  Mission clock: 1:52 remaining

  Piloting the ship faster than the flow of blood, Devlin careened into indigo and crimson spherical cells. The flexible globules bounced against the solid hull with wet-sounding thuds, then recoiled into the soft arterial walls.

  It felt like cruising with a powerful motorboat through a slow-moving biological Amazon. This stream would carry them toward the alien's primary organs—and away from the mysterious nanomachines. Other than that, Devlin had no idea where they were going.

  “That was weird,” Freeth said.

  “It's an alien, remember?” Tyler said sarcastically.

  The UFO expert smiled with a moment of self-deprecation. “Thank you for reminding me.”

  After following the main channel for several minutes, the blood vessel disgorged them into a lumpy forest of tissue, foaming gelatinous bubbles and spheres that extended on branches like rampant fungus growths in a complex cave. Under the glow of the ship's front spotlights, the place looked like an eerie wonderland.

  “The lungs! Now we're getting somewhere.” Tyler tapped the observation window. “Those nodules must be alveoli, tiny sacks filled with oxygen or carbon dioxide.”

  “Or whatever the alien breathed on its own world,” Freeth said.

  Tyler ignored him. “Capillaries touch the alveoli, and gas exchange occurs through the membrane barrier, where blood cells absorb oxygen and deposit the waste product of cellular respiration, which is then exhaled through the mouth or nose.”

  Frustrated, Freeth chided her again, showing his own impatience. “We don't know any of that. Please try to think beyond the human model. For example, fish breathe through gills that take in dissolved oxygen from circulating water. Insects don't even have lungs. Jellyfish and earthworms have no respiratory systems at all—their cells breathe directly through the skin. And every one of those diverse examples evolved right here on Earth. Believe me, thi
s extraterrestrial could be vastly different from what you're hypothesizing.”

  “Maybe you've got a point, Freeth,” Tyler admitted, as if plucking a splinter from her thumb. She pondered the alveolar jungle outside the window. “It's subtle, but there's already something strikingly unusual here. In a human body, blood is pumped through the heart first and then into the lungs, where it receives oxygen before being routed back to the heart for distribution through the arterial system.”

  Freeth brightened as he understood the implications. “And we've reached the lungs without finding any sort of blood-pumping chamber first. Now there's a major difference in anatomy. On the other hand, who says extraterrestrials have to follow the same blueprint?”

  “Thank you for continuing to point that out.” Tyler regarded him coldly, annoyed at his constant reassessments of her conclusions. “Tell me, what would your explanation be, Freeth? I'm sure you could publish it in True UFO Experiences, or some equally respectable journal.”

  He didn't rise to the bait. “Well… what if the alien doesn't have a single central heart pump, but maybe half a dozen substations, distributed at strategic points throughout the body?” Eyes bright, Freeth was on a roll now. “Redundant backups. Think of it—if a human gets shot in the heart, he's dead. But with distributed pumping stations, the alien could lose one, maybe even a couple of hearts, and still survive.”

  Tyler looked at the UFO expert as if he'd gone mad.

  “Got to admit, it makes engineering sense, Doc,” Devlin said from the cockpit, as the ship drifted among the curved alveolar bubbles. “I think you should call them Freeth Pumping Modules.”

  Finally, in a brusque tone, Cynthia Tyler said, “I suppose it's possible. I'll consider adding the conjecture as a footnote to one of my papers.”

  As the vessel picked a route through the spongy mass of lung tissue, Tyler returned to her analytical station. “Major Devlin, we've already got a breakdown of the atmospheric composition we encountered when we first entered the lifepod. Would it be possible to fire our sampling snorkel into one of these alveoli? That way I can run a comparative analysis.”