“Not anymore,” Durston said.
Realizing the futility of his efforts to escape, Pirov paced like a tiger in a cage. His arms swayed back and forth with coiled violence, until he reached an internal crisis. As if his anti-contamination suit had begun to burn his skin, the old man tore at the seals and openings with inhuman strength. He yowled out a primal scream and ripped the tape fastenings, splitting zippers with his fingers. Tiny metal teeth sprayed out like raindrops. The polymer-reinforced fabric dropped into rags.
With an enormous heave, Pirov yanked off his flexible hood, tearing the lapped seams that joined it to his collar. He threw the flopping hood like a projectile up at the observation gallery, where it struck the window with a loud thump.
The hybrid creature that had once been Dr. Sergei Pirov stood fully revealed in the harsh light.
The man's skin was smooth and grayish. Most of his short, salt-and-pepper hair had fallen out like bristly dust. Pirov's eyes bulged, enlarged beyond what Hunter had thought a human skull could accommodate. His nose had melted into the slab of his face, his ears atrophied until they were streamlined nubs against the side of his head.
“On the bright side, now we have two specimens.” Durston drew in a quick breath, and his eyes narrowed. “And this one's alive and kicking.”
Garamov frowned at him in disgust, concerned for both the original alien in the lifepod and the transformed Russian doctor. “Are you certain your security field will hold, Director Hunter?”
“It'll hold.” His mind reeled as he tried to formulate explanations, something he could accept. He turned to the Deputy Foreign Minister. “Now I am even more relieved that you didn't let any curious soldiers or local Azerbaijani doctors crack open the lifepod.”
“I fear that even this security might not be enough.” Garamov couldn't tear his eyes from Dr. Pirov's behavior. “If Sergei gets his way.”
The transformed Russian looked up at the men in the observation deck. His narrow shoulders sagged, and he spoke in an unearthly tenor with a newly lipless mouth. “Let… me… out.” He selected each word as if pulling it from an unfamiliar database. “I need … to get… out.”
Hunter didn't answer. The Pirov creature took two long, heaving breaths, and seemed to rediscover his inner emotions. He added a desperate plea, sounding almost human again. “Director Hunter, I have to get out. Please let me. You don't understand what's happening here, what's happening to me.” His voice became a mewling cry.
Now that the Pirov-alien could communicate using human words again, Hunter tried to get some answers. “Sergei, you know I can't let you out. Are you able to explain what's happened to you? Do you know what—”
As soon as Hunter denied his request, Pirov became a whirlwind again, smashing equipment, throwing himself against anchored tables. He seemed careful not to harm the lifepod, where the original alien astronaut lay, still motionless. Hunter realized that Dr. Pirov was the alien's counterpart now.
Crouched in a corner under an equipment rack, Rajid Sujatha drew his legs up to his chest. Trying to remain unseen, he touched his cracked faceplate in horror, knowing he must be contaminated, too.
He saw what had become of Dr. Pirov and feared that the same fate lay in store for him.
Chapter 35
Mission clock: 46 minutes remaining
The battered Mote accelerated toward the opposite end of the long bone shaft. Reproducing blood cells and geometric platelets crowded the fatty globules in the yellow marrow, but Devlin found enough room to maneuver.
With time running out, he kept the ship racing at full speed. He was relieved to have a clear path ahead, yet disconcerted that he had no idea where they were going, or how the team would get out of the alien's body.
In forty-six minutes they would start to grow.
Dr. Tyler looked up from her crude diagrams on the analysis table. “Obviously, bone marrow doesn't offer any egress from the body. We have to work our way outward, through blood vessels and fatty tissue, to the epidermis and another pore.”
Devlin noted the dwindling time left on the chronometer. “Roger that, but I'd be more comfortable if we knew we were making progress in the right direction. With all that nanocritter-generated static, it's been a long time since I've gotten a decent reading from the navigation computer.”
The vessel rushed along, buffeted by currents in the marrow fluid, the hiss of thick plasma sounding like a waterfall against the windows. After so many hours, the atmosphere inside the craft had grown warm and stuffy.
Devlin spared a glance to check the Mote's power levels: batteries low but within acceptable limits, impellers operating with sufficient fuel. The laser charges were diminished; Tomiko had used her weaponry far more than any scenario had anticipated.
At last, given a moment of reflection in the constant tension, Devlin remembered that he had promised himself to buy her a nice dinner after they had survived the pedicel ordeal. “Are you free Saturday night?” By now, he probably owed her a month of fine cuisine…
She looked at him quickly, pleased and surprised by the offer. “You mean, can I break away from the wide range of leisure activities available inside the Proteus Facility? Gee, I'll have to check my social calendar.” She returned her attention to her weapons control. “But let's get out of here first.”
Traveling the length of the bone shaft, they encountered only one nanoscout, which Tomiko blasted before it could send out an alarm signal. “There'll be more of those things when we get to the other end, Marc.”
“Affirmative. I'm counting on it.” He enjoyed her startled glance.
Ahead he could see a Swiss-cheese webwork of bone, calcified curtains that turned the marrow into a factory maze, where human red blood cells would have been produced. The bone passages looked like wormholes in rotted wood. Devlin selected his spot at a juncture of tunnels with overhanging calcium fibers. “Here's where we'll go to ground.” He rotated the Mote, reversed the impellers, and backed into the meager shelter. Waiting, like a spider in a hole.
Devlin flicked a switch on the comm system. “Keep a lookout, everybody. I just turned our SOS signal back on.”
Freeth gaped at him. “But we know that attracts the nanocritters.”
“Precisely. But I want to choose the time and place for an ambush.” Devlin cracked his knuckles, limbering up for action. “I plan to capture a nanomachine. Once we disable it, I'm hoping I can extract its IFF. Then we'll be perfectly camouflaged, a sheep in wolf's clothing.”
It would have been so simple to play back recorded alien signals, but the carrier pulse was in a complex, variable code that shifted at random. With so little time remaining, Devlin could not separate out a predictable pattern. He'd have to snatch a transmitter with its programming already built in.
Marrow fluid swirled around them, gently rocking the deck. He shut down their bright spotlights. The SOS beacon fluttered like a matador's red cape for the marauding nanocritters.
“My finger's on the firing button, Marc,” Tomiko said.
“Wait for it. Try not to cause too much damage.”
The first prowling machines arrived without warning, a hunting pair that streaked out of a side passage toward the miniaturized ship.
Tomiko shifted the targeting cross, then fired a brief burst at the first one, ripping open its chain-link underbelly and shorting out the diamond memory wafer. Then she punched through the fullerene wall of the second device to burn out its power source. The flailing, clacking carbon-lattice claws of the oncoming machines drooped.
Devlin shut down the SOS signal. “Nice shooting. You can hang one as a trophy on your wall.”
“I'd need an awfully small taxidermist.”
After switching on the spotlights again, he climbed out of the piloting chair. Tomiko launched the anchor harpoons into the calcified walls. The thunk of impact reverberated along the cable.
“Okay, let's suit up. Mr. Freeth, we'll need your help outside. This is going to have to be the fastes
t jury-rig in history.”
The UFO expert was so startled he took a step backward, bumping into one of the detachable chairs and sitting down heavily. “Me? But I don't know how a nanomachine works.”
Cynthia Tyler looked at him, her eyes flashing. “Just use your imagination, Freeth. You're good at that.”
Devlin clapped him on the shoulder and handed him a slithery suit from the equipment closet. “Here, this one'll fit you.”
He and Tomiko pulled on their suits and adjusted the seals while Freeth struggled into his own garb. The UFO expert flexed his arms, fiddled with his gloves, and adjusted the curved faceplate to make sure he could see properly. Tomiko settled Freeth's airtank onto his thin shoulders, cinched the straps tighter, and whispered, “Don't hyperventilate, Arnold. We need your help.”
“I'll continue to take readings and measurements,” Tyler said. “This will be our last chance. But no heroics out there. Not even you, Freeth.”
“Believe me, no heroics,” he agreed.
With the three of them crowded inside the airlock tube, Devlin operated the manual valves. Alien plasma fluid streamed around them, squeezing its clammy grip around their legs, waists, and chests.
With their respirators and faceplates in place and line-of-sight radios checked, Tomiko pulled up the hatch. Pushing off from the airlock wall and Devlin's shoulder, she swam out first. The two men followed her into the microscopic bone caverns. Cones of harsh light from the tethered ship cast stark shadows, swaying as the Mote was nudged by tricky biological currents.
The dead nanocritters drifted like derelict spaceships.
Freeth thrashed in the syrupy, protein-rich liquid, clearly not remembering his training drill with Dr. Wylde. Tomiko turned backward and pulled him along for a few strokes until he adjusted, and the three of them swam to the pair of burned, pitted nanomachines.
Devlin set his jaw, remembering how simple it had been when the nanocritters were deactivated. Though he still had only a partial understanding of their carbon-lattice structure and buckytube piston mechanics, he had to make some guesses. Right now, with only thirty-five minutes left, he would have to take a few shortcuts.
The two gutted machines hung like junk heaps in the sluggish fluid. One barely attached claw arm dangled like an articulated crowbar. Because the signal generator was on such a small scale, Devlin believed its mechanics would be straightforward and comprehensible even to him. The transmitter's instruction-set memory must be far simpler than the full self-replication and mission programming.
Or so he hoped.
There was no time for finesse. He would remove the transmitter component, connect it to a direct power source from the Mote, and coax it into sending the appropriate “leave me alone” signal. It wasn't going to be easy.
He took out his toolkit and set to work with a screwdriver. His gloved hands got past molecular connections, shifting matrices of buckyballs and breaking the bonds between extruded components. The bell-shaped transceiver seemed intact, but the laser blast had destroyed the controller chip.
As Devlin worked, he gestured to Tomiko and Freeth. “See if you can remove the control chip from the other one. It's a self-contained module below the signal generator.”
“It better be a separate component, Marc,” Tomiko said over the suit radio. “I sort of fried the main diamond memory wafer on this one.”
Amazed at what he was doing, Freeth reluctantly ran his gloved hands over the slippery side of the second nanomachine, touching the burnt crater where Tomiko's laser had blasted apart the fullerene walls. Hardened graphite spears and whiskers of rearranged carbon broken from the fullerene lattice sprouted like snowflakes around the wound. Tiny bubbles oozed out of the nanomachine's broken side, like leaking blood.
Working together, Freeth and Tomiko removed the intact controller module above the singed diamond memory wafer. They broke the connections holding it to the damaged transmitter and pried it loose. They swam through the murky fluid carrying the delicate black box of impurity-laced carbon webwork back to Devlin.
He lifted the bizarre transmitter construction. Detached buckyballs dropped like marbles, broken out of the structural grid. The clunky, bell-shaped mouth of the device reminded him of a mad scientist's prop from an old movie.
Since their vessel was surrounded by a miniaturization field, he couldn't mount the slapdash transmitter directly onto the hull, but he could tow it behind them. He would use the metal-core anchor cable as a tether and power conduit.
It had sounded like a simple and obvious idea, but when he actually attempted his plan, every step in the process seemed improbable. Devlin had no other choice but to try.
Devlin uprooted molecular-chain wires and bent them with great effort, connecting the components cannibalized from the two machines, a controller and a transmitter. Now he only needed a flow of electrons from the Mote's generators.
Stroking backward in the marrow fluid, Devlin lugged the apparatus to where the nearest anchor cable was embedded in the calcium wall. He let the transmitter float free while he planted his booted feet and uprooted the sharp anchor.
Stringing the cable to the alien IFF device, he tried to make proper connections, conductor against conductor. If he could jolt the transmitter with enough power, the system just might operate according to its self-contained programming. If he'd guessed right, the signal might fool the nanomachines. If not, he had just wasted half of their remaining time for getting out of the alien body.
“Company coming, Marc,” Tomiko transmitted.
He thrashed around to see a new machine barreling toward the Mote, closing in for the kill. “What have these things got against my ship?”
Overhead, thin bone crumbled away like pieces broken from a glacier. Another nanocritter chewed through the calcium ceiling. This machine had six sharp arms, each one ending in a diamond-edged knife, pyridine-tipped punch, or a sawblade pincer claw.
Sensor lights gleamed like predatory eyes on the wire-mesh body as it scanned the area, then lurched toward the anchored Mote, ignoring the miniaturized humans.
Like a bouncer in a biker bar, Tomiko moved to intercept the nanomachines. “I'll handle this little guy. Arnold, you take the other one.” She tore the half-severed arm from the wrecked device and shoved it at him. “Here. Show the thing who's boss.”
Confused, the UFO expert caught the microscopic spear and held it to do battle against a minuscule Goliath.
“Just get that transmitter functioning, Marc, and you'll save us all.”
“Roger that. But no pressure, right?” Devlin worked with fumbling hands, blinking sweat out of his eyes behind the facemask.
With powerful strokes, Tomiko met the multilimbed nanomachine before it could attach itself to the Mote. She fought it hand to hand, martial arts in fluid form, using fists and arms to counter the movement of its jointed carbon legs. She grabbed an angular protrusion and twisted it sideways, wrenching the buckytube out of its socket. Sparks glowed in the marrow fluid, and the sheathed-piston limb hung useless.
Now, for the first time, the relentless machine recognized her as a threat.
Tomiko grasped a second pincer, but the nanocritter bore down on her, pushing her backward through the marrow fluid. When she finally found leverage against the curving bone wall, she pressed back, harder this time. The second fullerene limb broke, and she snagged a third as the other arms grabbed for her, sharp tips slashing.
Trying another tactic, Tomiko plunged the attacking machine's spear arm into the porous bone. While the machine strained to disentangle itself, she kicked out, smashing the diamond memory circuit board again and again. Her boot scraped away carefully laid paths of hydrogen and fluorine. Brain damaged, the nanomachine jerked and jittered in a robotic seizure.
The second device swam up from below like a torpedo intercepting a target, and Arnold Freeth jabbed with the jagged end of his spear. He thrust the makeshift crowbar between the clacking components of a pincer claw. He knocked the claw off
, then stabbed again. The blunt end of his spear scraped the machine's body core, knocking a few carbon spheres loose, but did no substantial damage.
Freeth struck repeatedly, hindered by the surrounding fluid. Finally, by accident, he smashed an optical sensor. While the disoriented device spun in confusion, he brought the spear down on a second “eye,” then a third, blinding it completely. Within moments, he succeeded in incapacitating the device.
Meanwhile, fingers slippery in the thick fluid, breathing hard inside his suit, Devlin finally finished connecting the tetherwire to the controller module of the makeshift transmitter. “Got it! Let's get back inside and see if this thing works.”
Leaving their mechanical casualties behind, Tomiko was already stroking for the hatch. The three of them climbed up into the airlock. Freeth, proud of what he had done, sealed the hatch without even being told. As pumps in the floor sucked out the fluid, Devlin yanked down his suit hood and stripped off the environmental suit, gasping. He wiped his face with a towel, anxious to rush for the cockpit.
Cynthia Tyler met him as he emerged from the airlock. “More nanomachines just arrived, Major Devlin. I think they've got us cornered.”
Devlin threw himself into the cockpit chair and powered up the impellers, dismayed to see the machines already closing in on their hiding place. “Tomiko, detach that second anchor.”
At the controls, she winched the hooked spike out of the bone wall. “Go!” She reeled in the cable as the Mote lurched into motion.
Devlin maneuvered the ship out of the protected alcove, trailing the makeshift IFF transmitter in their wake.
The ship streaked away, on the run again, and the nanocritters followed. Three more devices slammed into the Mote, clinging hard like leeches. They battered the hull plates, slashing and cutting, using specialized tools.
Still moist and disheveled, smelling of the salty plasma fluid, Tomiko searched for a way to shoot the nanomachines that were already attached to the hull.
The additional weight of the predatory devices made for sluggish handling. The IFF transmitter trailed behind them, still intact and attached. “Time for the moment of truth.” Devlin crosswired circuits in the front control board, wishing he had time to double-check the power flux parameters. Gambling, he sent a pulse through the metallic tether.
Fantastic Voyage : Microcosm Page 21