"Or if he had some notion which would really prove of use, it might have been localized in the part of the brain which has been destroyed."

"That is conceivable."

"Or if the notion is useful and is still in the intact portion of the brain, I might not be able to interpret the brain waves properly."

"That may well be."

"Putting it all together: Shapirov's suggestion may be wrong and, even if it isn't, it might be out of reach or, even if it isn't, I might not be able to interpret it. Considering that, what are the chances of success? And can't you see that we will be putting our lives into danger for something we will almost certainly fail to get?"

"Considering the matter objectively," said Boranova, "it would seem the chances are very small. However, if we do not hazard our lives, the chances of obtaining anything at all are zero -- flat zero. If we do risk our lives, the chances of success are very small, admittedly, but they are not zero. Under the circumstances, we must take the risk, even though the best we can say for our chances of success are that they are not zero."

"For me," said Morrison, "the risk is too great and the chances of success are too small."

Boranova placed one hand on Morrison's shoulder and said, "Surely that is not your final decision."

"Surely it is."

"Think about it. Think about the value to the Soviet Union. Think about the benefits to your own country that will result from your acknowledged participation, to the needs of global science, to your own fame and reputation. All this is in favor of doing it. Against it are your personal fears. These are understandable, but all achievement in life requires the overcoming of fear."

"Thinking about it won't change my mind."

"Think about it until tomorrow morning, anyway. That's fifteen hours and it's all we can spare you. After all, balancing fears against hopes can keep one irresolute for a lifetime and we don't have a lifetime. Poor Shapirov might linger on in coma for a decade, but we don't know how long what is left of his brain will retain his ideas and we dare not wait very long at all."

"I can not and will not concern myself with your problems."

Boranova seemed to hear none of his denials and refusals. She said in her unfailingly gentle voice, "We will not attempt to persuade you further right now. You may have a leisurely dinner. You may watch our holovision programs if you wish, view our books, think, sleep. Arkady will accompany you back to the hotel and if you have any more questions, you need only ask him."

Morrison nodded.

"And, Albert, remember, tomorrow morning you must give us your decision."

"Take it now. It will not change."

"No. The decision must be that you will join us and help us. See to it that you come to that decision -- for come to it you must -- and it will be easier for all of us if you do so gladly and voluntarily."

25.

It proved to be a quiet and thoughtful dinner for Morrison and not a very filling one -- for he found he could only pick at his food. Dezhnev seemed quite unaffected by the other's lack of appetite and reaction. He ate vigorously and spoke incessantly, drawing on what was apparently a large stock of funny stories -- in all of which his father played a key role -- and was clearly delighted to try them out on a new audience.

Morrison smiled faintly at one or two, more because he recognized from the other's raised voice that a punch line had been advanced than because he heard them with any interest at all.

Valeri Paleron, the waitress who had served them at breakfast, was still there at dinner. A long day -- but either that was reflected in her wages or it was required by her extracurricular duties. Either way, she glowered at Dezhnev each time she approached the table, perhaps (Morrison thought distantly) because she disapproved of his stories, which tended to be disrespectful of the Soviet regime.

Morrison did not particularly enjoy his own thoughts. Now that he was considering the distant possibility of getting away from the Grotto -- from Malenkigrad -- from the Soviet Union -- he was beginning to feel a perverse disappointment at what he might be missing. He found himself daydreaming just a little on the matter of miniaturization, of using it to prove the worth of his theories, of triumphing over the smug fools who had dismissed him out of hand.

He recognized the fact that, of all the arguments presented by Boranova, only the personal one had shaken him. Any reference to the greater good of science, or of humanity, or of this nation or that was just idle rhetoric. His own place in science was something more. That seethed within him.

When the serving woman passed near the table, he stirred himself to say, "How long must you stay on, waitress?"

She looked at him without favor. "Until you two grand dukes can bring yourselves to stir out of here."

"There's no rush," said Dezhnev as he emptied his glass. His speech was already slurred and his face was flushed. "I am so fond of the comrade waitress, I could stay on for as long as the Volga flows, that I might gaze on her face."

"As long as I don't have to gaze at yours," muttered Paleron.

Morrison filled Dezhnev's glass and said, "What do you think of Madame Boranova?"

Dezhnev gazed at the glass owlishly and did not offer to lift it immediately. He said with an attempt at gravity, "Not a first-class scientist, I am told, but an excellent admin-ministrator. Keen, makes up her mind quickly, and absolutely incorr-corruptible. A pain in the neck, I should think. If an administrator is incorr-- too infernally honest, it makes life hard in so many little ways. She is a worshipper of Shapirov, too, and she thinks him incorr-- no, incompre-- no, incontrovertible. That's it."

Morrison was not sure of the Russian word. "You mean she thinks he's always right."

"Exactly. If he hints that he knows how to make miniaturization cheap, she's sure he can. Yuri Konev is sure of it, too. He's another of the worshippers. But it's Bora-- Boranova who'll send you into Shapirov's brain. One way or another, she'll send you there. She has her ways. -- As for Yuri, that little shaver, he's the real scientist of the group. Very brilliant." Dezhnev nodded solemnly and sipped at his refilled drink gently.

"I'm interested in Yuri Konev," said Morrison, his eyes following the lifting of the glass, "and in the young woman, Sophia Kaliinin."

Dezhnev leered. "A fine young piece." Then sadly, shaking his head, "But she has no sense of humor."

"She's married, I take it."

Dezhnev shook his head more violently than the occasion seemed to require. "No."

"She said she had had a baby."

"Yes, a little girl, but it isn't the signing of the marriage book that makes one pregnant. It's the game of bed -- married or not."

"Does the puritanical Soviet Government approve of this?"

"No, but its approval was never asked, I think." He burst into laughter.

"Besides, as a scientist at Malenkigrad, she has her special dispen-pensations. The government looks the other way."

"It strikes me," said Morrison, "that Sophia is much interested in Yuri Konev."

"You see that, do you? It takes little shrewdness. She is so interested that she has made it quite clear that her child was the result of Yuri's collaboration in that little game I spoke of."

"Oh?"

"But he denies it. And very vigorously, too. I think it is rather humorous, in a bitter way, that he remains compelled to work with her. Neither one can be spared from the project and all he can do is pretend she doesn't exist."

"I noticed that he never looks at her, but they must have been friendly once."

"Very friendly -- if she is to be believed. If so, they were very discreet about it. But what's the difference? She doesn't need him to support the child. Her salary is a large one and the day-care center takes loving care of her daughter when she is at work. It is just a matter of emotion with her."

"What split them up, I wonder?"

"Who knows? Lovers take their disputes so seriously. I myself have never let myself fall in love -- not poetically. If I like a girl, I play with her. If I get tired, I move on. It is my good fortune that the women I engage are as prag-pragmatic -- isn't that a good word? -- as I am and make little fuss. As my father used to say, 'A woman who doesn't fuss has no faults.' Sometimes, to be truthful, they grow tired before I do, but even then, so what? A girl who is tired of me is not much good to me and, after all, there are others."

"I suppose Yuri is much like that, too, isn't he?"

Dezhnev had emptied his glass again and he held out his hand when Morrison made a move to refill it. "Enough! Enough!"

"Never enough," said Morrison calmly. "You were telling me about Yuri."

"What is there to tell? Yuri is not a man to fly from woman to woman, but I have heard --" He stared blearily at Morrison. "You know how one hears -- one tells another who tells another and who is to know whether what comes out of the funnel is anything like what went in. But I have heard that when Yuri was in the United States, being educated Western-style, he met an American girl. In went La Belle Americaine, they say, and out went poor little Soviet Sophia. Perhaps that was it. Perhaps he came back different and perhaps he still dreams of his lost love across the sea."

"And is that why Sophia is so ill-disposed to Americans?"

Dezhnev stared at the glass of vodka and sipped a little of it. "Our Sophia," he said, "has never liked Americans. This is not surprising." He leaned toward Morrison, his breath heavy with food and drink. "Americans are not a lovable people -- if I may say so without offense."

"I'm not offended," said Morrison evenly, as he watched Dezhnev's head sink slowly and come to rest on his bent right arm. His breathing grew stertorous.

Morrison watched him for half a minute or so, then raised his hand to beckon the serving woman.

She came at once, her ample hips swinging. She stared at the unconscious Dezhnev with rather more than half a sneer. "Well, do you wish me to get a large pair of tongs and use them to carry our prince here to his bed?"

"Not just yet, Miss Paleron. As you know, I'm an American."

"As everyone knows. You have but to say three words and the tables and chairs in this room nod to each other and say, 'An American.'"

Morrison winced. He had always been proud of the purity of his Russian and this was the second time the woman had sneered at it.

"Nevertheless," he said, "I have been brought here by force, against my will. I believe it was done without the knowledge of the Soviet Government, which would have disapproved of and prevented the action if they had known. The people here -- Dr. Boranova, whom you have referred to as the Tsarina -- have acted on their own. The Soviet Government should be told of this and they will then act speedily to return me to the United States and prevent an international incident that nobody would want. Don't you agree?"

The waitress put her fists on her hips and said, "And of what matter is it to anyone either here or in the United States as to whether I agree or not? Am I a diplomat? Am I the reincarnated spirit of Tsar Peter the Great Drinker?"

"You can see to it," said Morrison, suddenly uncertain, "that the government learns of it. Quickly."

"What is it you think, American? That I have but to tell my lover, who is on the Presidium, and all will be well for you? What have I to do with the government? What's more -- and in all seriousness, Comrade Foreigner -- I do not wish you to talk to me in this fashion again. Many a fine, loyal citizen has been hopelessly compromised by foreign blabbermouths. I will, of course, report this to Comrade Boranova at once and she will see to it that you do not insult me in this fashion again."

She left in a flounce and with a scowl and Morrison stared after her in dismay. And then his head whirled in surprise and astonishment when he heard Dezhnev's voice saying, "Albert, Albert, are you satisfied, my child?"

Dezhnev's head was raised from his pillowing arm and, though his eyes were a little bloodshot, his voice seemed to have lost its fuzziness. He said, "I wondered why you were so anxious to fill my glass, so I gobbled a little and let myself collapse. It was all very interesting."

"You are not drunk?" said Morrison, goggling at the other in wonder.

"I have been more sober in my life, certainly," said Dezhnev, "but I am not unconscious, nor have I been. You non-drinkers have an exaggerated idea of the speed with which all accomplished Soviet citizen will fall unconscious with drink -- which shows the dangers of being a nondrinker."

Morrison still found himself in a state of disbelief over the failure of the waitress to cooperate. "You said she was an intelligence operator."

"Did I?" Dezhnev shrugged. "I think I said I suspected she was, but suspicions are often wrong. Besides, she knows me better than you do, my little Albert, and was probably under no illusion that I was drunk. I'll bet you ten rubles to a kopeck that she knew I was listening with both ears. What would you have her say in such circumstances?"

"In that case," said Morrison, taking heart, "she will have heard what I said and will nevertheless inform your government of the state of affairs. Your government, to avoid an international incident, will then order me set free, probably with an apology, and you people here will have some tall explaining to do. You had better free me and send me back to the United States of your own accord."

Dezhnev laughed. "Your waste your time, my clever intriguer. You have too romantic a notion of our government. Conceivably, they may be willing to let you go someday but, regardless of possible embarrassment, not before you have been miniaturized and --"

"I don't believe anyone in authority knows you kidnapped me. They cannot approve once they find out."

"Maybe they don't know and maybe they will grind their teeth when they find out -- but what can they do? The government has invested too much money in the project to let you go before you have had your chance to make it practical, so that it will repay all that has been spent -- and more in addition. Well? Doesn't that seem logical to you?"

"No. Because I won't help you." Morrison felt his heart harden once again. "I will not allow myself to be miniaturized."

"That will be up to Natasha. She will be furious with you, you know, and will have no pity. You realize that you callously attempted to have everyone in the project thrown into the government's bad graces, have some of us retired -- or worse. And this, after we had treated you with perfect consideration and kindness."

"You kidnapped me."

"Even that was done with perfect consideration and kindness. Were you hurt in any way? Mistreated? Yet you have tried to harm us. Natasha will repay you for that."

"How? Force? Torture? Drugs?"

Dezhnev turned his eyes up to the ceiling. "How little you know our Natasha. She doesn't do such things. I might, but she wouldn't. She's as much a gentle chicken-heart as you are, my wicked Albert -- in her own way. But she will force you to go along with us."

"Well? How?"

"I don't know. I can never quite make out how she does it. But she manages. You will see." His smile developed a wolfish edge. And when Morrison saw that smile, he finally realized there was no escape.

26.

The next morning Morrison and Dezhnev returned to the Grotto. They entered a large windowless ceiling-lit office, which Morrison had not seen before. It was clearly not Boranova's and it was very impressive, as anything with an ostentatious waste of space is bound to be.

Boranova sat behind a bulky desk and on the wall behind her was a portrait of the Soviet Executive, looking grave. In the corner to her left was a water cooler and in the one on the right a microfilm cabinet. On the desk was a small word processor. That was all. The room was empty otherwise.

Dezhnev said, "I have brought him, you see. The mischievous fellow tried to use the charming Paleron to effect an escape by intriguing with the govemment behind our back."

"I have received the report," said Boranova quietly. "Please leave, Arkady. I wish to be alone with Professor Albert Morrison."

"Is that safe, Natasha?"

"I think so. Albert is not, in my opinion, a man of violence. -- Will I be safe, Albert?"

Morrison spoke for virtually the first time that day. "Let's not play games," he said. "What is it you want, Natalya?"

Boranova gestured with her hand peremptorily and Dezhnev left. When the door closed behind him, she said, "Why have you done this? Why have you tried to intrigue with someone you thought was an intelligence agent watching us? Have we treated you so badly?"

"Yes," said Morrison angrily, "you have. Why can't any of you get it through your head that hijacking me to the Soviet Union is not something I am likely to appreciate? Why do you expect gratitude of me? Because you didn't break my head in the process? You probably would have -- if my head, unbroken, hadn't been valuable to you."

"If your head, unbroken, hadn't been valuable to us, we would have left you in peace. You know that and you know the necessity that drove us. We have explained it carefully. If you were simply trying to get away, I would understand, but your method of attempted escape might have destroyed our project and perhaps us as well -- if you had succeeded. You hoped our government would disapprove of our actions and be appalled. If that were so, what do you think would have happened to us?"

Morrison's lips tightened and he looked sullen. "I could think of no other way of escaping. You speak of driving necessities. My needs drive me, too."

"Albert, we have tried every reasonable way to persuade you to help us. There has been no force, no threats of force, no unpleasantness of any kind after you had arrived there. Isn't that true?"

"I suppose so."

"You suppose so? It is true. But it has all failed. You still refuse to help us, I think."

"I still refuse and I shall continue to refuse."

"Then I am forced, very much against my will, to take the next step."

A bit of fear stirred within Morrison and he felt his heart skip a beat, but he tried desperately to sound defiant, "Which is?"

"You want to get home, to go back to America. Very well, if all our persuasiveness fails, you shall return."

"Are you serious?"

"Are you surprised?"

"Yes, I'm surprised, but I accept. I take you at your word. When will I leave?"

"The very moment we settle upon the story we're going to tell."

"Where's the problem? Tell the truth."

"That would be a little difficult, Albert. It would embarrass my government, which would have to deny having given permission for my action. I would be in serious trouble. It would be unreasonable for you to expect me to do that."

"What can you say instead?"

"That you came here at your own request, in order to help us with our projects."

Morrison shook his head vehemently. "That would be at least as difficult for me as admitting the kidnapping would be for you. These may be the good new days, but old habits die hard and the American public would be more than a little suspicious of an American scientist who went to the Soviet Union to help them with their projects. Old competitions remain and I have my reputation to think of."

"Yes, there is that difficulty," admitted Boranova, "but from my point of view, I would rather you had the difficulty than that I did."

"But I won't allow it. Do you suppose I will hesitate to tell the truth in full detail?"

"But, Albert," said Boranova quietly, "do you suppose anyone would believe you?"

"Of course. The American government knows that you asked me to come to the Soviet Union and that I refused. I would have had to be kidnapped to get here."

"I'm afraid your American government won't want to admit that, Albert. Would they want to say that Soviet agents had plucked an American out of his comfortable hotel room and carried him off by land, sea, and air without the forces of American law being aware of this? Considering modern American high-tech, of which your people are all so proud, that would argue either incompetence or a little inside treason on the part of your intelligence. I think your government would prefer to have the world believe you went to the Soviet Union voluntarily. -- Besides, they wanted you to go to the Soviet Union voluntarily, didn't they?"

Morrison was silent.

Boranova said, "Of course they did. They wanted you to find out as much about miniaturization as possible. You're going to have to tell them you refused to be miniaturized. All you'll be able to report will be that you watched a rabbit undergo miniaturization, which they will consider to have been a bit of flim-flam on our part. They will consider that we carefully hoodwinked you and you will have failed them badly. They will not feel bound to support you."

Morrison revolved the matter in his mind. He said, "Do you really intend to leave me in the position of being considered a spy and a traitor by my people? Is that what you're going to try to do?"

"No, indeed, Albert. We will tell all the truth we can. In fact, we would like to protect you, even though you showed no signs of wanting to protect us. We would explain that our great scientist Pyotr Shapirov is in a coma, that he had spoken highly of your neurophysical theories shortly before this tragedy had befallen him. We therefore called on you and asked you to use your theories and your expertise to see if you could bring him out of his coma. You can't object to that. It would hold you up to the world as a great humanitarian. Your government might well support this view. It would certainly protect them against possible embarrassment -- and our government as well. And it is all almost true."

"What about the miniaturization?"

"That is the one place where we must avoid the truth. We can't mention that."

"But what would keep me from mentioning it?"

"The fact that no one would believe you. Did you accept the existence of miniaturization until you saw it with your own eyes? Nor would your government want to spread the feeling that the Soviet Union has attained miniaturization. They would not want to frighten the American public until such time as they were certain the Soviet Union had the process and, better yet, that they had the process as well. -- But there you are, Albert. We will send you home with an innocuous story that doesn't mention miniaturization, doesn't embarrass either my country or yours, and relieves you of any suspicion of being a traitor. Are you satisfied?"

Morrison stared at Boranova uncertainly and rubbed his thin sandy hair till it stood Lip in vague tufts. "But why will you say you are sending me back? That has to be explained, too. You can't very well say that Shapirov recovered with my help unless he actually recovers so that you can produce him. Nor can you say that he died before I could get to him unless he actually does die soon, as otherwise you would have to explain why he is still in a coma or why, perhaps, he has come back to life. You can't hide the situation forever."

"That is a problem that worries us, Albert, and it is clever of you to see it. After all, we are sending you back within a few days of your arrival -- and why? The only logical reason, I'm afraid, is that we have found you to be a charlatan. We brought you here in high hopes for our poor Shapirov, but in no time at all it turned out that your views were incoherent nonsense and, with bitter disappointment, we sent you back. That will do you no harm, Albert. Being a charlatan is not the same as being a spy."

"Don't play the innocent, Natalya. You can't do that." He had turned white with anger.

"But it makes sense, doesn't it? Your own peers don't take you seriously. They laugh at your views. They would agree with us that your neurophysical suggestions are incoherent nonsense. We'd be a little embarrassed for having been so credulous as to take you seriously, but it was really Shapirov who thought highly of you and he was, unbeknown to us, on the edge of a stroke and total mental breakdown, so that one could scarcely blame him for his mad admiration of you."

Morrison's lips trembled. "But you can't make a clown out of me. You can't ruin my reputation so."

"But what reputation are you talking about, Albert? Your wife has left you and some people think it was because having your career founder on your mad ideas was the last straw for her. We have heard that your appointment is not to be renewed and that you have not managed to find another place. You are finished as a scientist in any case and this story of ours would merely conflrm what already exists. Perhaps you can find some other way of making a living -- outside of science. You would probably have had to do that anyway, even if we had never touched you. There's that consolation."

"But you're lying and you know you're lying, Natalya. Have you no code of ethics? Can a respectable scientist do this to an honorable brother scientist?"

"You were unmoved by abstractions yesterday, Albert, and I am unmoved by them today in consequence."

"Someday scientists will discover I was right. How will you look then?"

"We may all be dead by then. Besides, you know that that is not the way it works. Franz Anton Mesmer, though he discovered hypnotism, was considered a fraud and a charlatan. When James Braid rediscovered hypnotism, he got the credit and Mesmer was still considered a fraud and charlatan. Besides-are we truly lying when we call you a charlatan?"

"Of course you are!"

"Let's reason it out. Why do you refuse to venture into an experiment of miniaturization which may enable you to establish your theories and which is likely to increase your knowledge of the brain by whole orders of magnitude? Such refusal can only arise through your own certain knowledge that your theories are wrong, that you are either a fool or a fraud or both, and that you don't want this established beyond a doubt, as it would be if you subjected yourself to miniaturization."

"That is not so."

"Do you expect us to believe that you refuse miniaturization simply because you are frightened? That you turn down a chance at knowledge, glory, fame, victory, vindication after years of scorn -- all because you are scared? Come, we can't think so little of you, Albert. It makes much more sense to believe you are a fraud and so we will have no hesitation in saying you are."

"Americans won't believe a Soviet libel against an American scientist."

"Oh, Albert, of course they will. When we release you, with our explanation, it will be in all your American newspapers at once. They will be full of it. They are the most enterprising in the world and the freest, as you are all so fond of saying, meaning they are a law unto themselves. They pride themselves on it and never tire of flaunting that in the eyes of our own more sedate press. This will be such a lovely story for them: 'American Faker Fools Stupid Soviets.' I can see the headlines now. In fact, Albert, you may make a great deal of money on your American lecture circuit. You know: 'How I Made Jerks of the Soviets.' Then you can tell them all the ridiculous things you persuaded us to believe before we caught on to you and the audiences will laugh themselves into hysterics."

Morrison said in a whisper, "Natalya, why do you do this to me?"

"I? I am doing nothing. You are doing it. You want to go home and since we've failed to get you to accept miniaturization, we have no choice but to agree. Once, though, we agree to send you home, then, step by step, everything else must logically follow."

"But in that case, I can't go home. I can't have my life destroyed beyond repair."

"But who would care, Albert? Your estranged wife? Your children, who no longer know you and can always change their names anyway? Your university, which is firing you? Your colleagues, who laugh at you? Your government, which has abandoned you? Take heart. No one would care. An initial raucous laugh across the whole country and then you would be forgotten forever. You'll die without an obituary notice eventually, except for those papers who might not object to the tastelessness of bringing back that old joke for one more spurt of laughter to follow you to your grave."

Morrison shook his head in despair. "I can't go home."

"But you must. Unless you are willing to help us, which you're not, you can't stay here."

"But I can't go home on your terms."

"But what is the alternative?"

Morrison stared at the woman, who was looking at him with such mild concern. He whispered, "I accept the alternative."

Boranova looked at him for a long minute. "I do not wish to be mistaken, Albert. Put your agreement into clear language."

"It's either consent to be miniaturized or consent to be destroyed. Isn't that it?"

Boranova thrust out her lips. "That's a harsh way of putting it. I prefer that you look at it this way. Either you agree to help us by noon or you will be on a plane to the United States by 2 p.m. What do you say? It is now nearly 11 a.m. You have over an hour to decide."

"What's the use? An hour won't change anything. I'll be miniaturized."

"We will be miniaturized. You will not be alone." Boranova reached out and touched a contact on her desk.

Dezhnev entered. "Well, Albert. You stand there looking so sad, so crumpled, that it strikes me you have decided to help us."

Boranova said, "You need make no sardonic remarks. Albert will help us and we will be grateful for his help. His decision was a voluntary one."

"I'm sure it was," said Dezhnev. "How you squeezed it out this time, Natasha, I can't say, but I knew you would. -- And I must contratulate you, too, Albert. It took her quite a bit longer than I thought it would."

Morrison could only stare at the two vacantly. He felt as though he had swallowed an icicle whole -- one that didn't melt but that, instead, reduced the temperature of his abdomen to the freezing point.

Certainly, he was shivering.

CHAPTER 7 -- SHIP

No voyage is dangerous to the one who waves good-bye from the shore.

-- Dezhnev Senior

27.

Morrison felt numb all through lunch and yet in a way the pressure was off. There were no determined voices pressing on him, no intensity of explanations and persuasions, no smiles of intent, no heads closing in.

Of course, they made it quite clear, in a cool businesslike way, that he would no longer leave the Grotto till the deed was done and that from the Grotto there was, of course, no escape.

And then every once in a while a thought swirled into his mind. He had actually agreed to be miniaturized!

They took him to a room of his own in the Grotto where he could view book-films through a viewer provided for his personal use -- even English-language book-films if he wanted the inner familiarity of home to pass the next few hours. So he sat there with a book-film unreeling through the viewer strapped on his eyes and somehow it left his mind totally untouched.

He had actually agreed to be miniaturized!

He had been told that he could do as he pleased until someone came for him. He could do as he pleased, that is, provided he did not please to leave. There were guards everywhere.

The feeling of terror had, Morrison was aware, much diminished. That was the use of numbness and, of course, the more one repeats a sentence in one's mind, the more it loses meaning. He had actually agreed to be miniaturized, The more it rang in his mind like the tolling of a bell, over and over, the more the horror of it faded. And left a mere vacuum of non-sensation in its place.

He was distantly aware that the door of his room had opened. Someone, he presumed dully, had come for him. He removed his viewer, lifted his eyes languidly, and, for just a moment, felt a mild spark of interest.

It was Sophia Kaliinin, looking beautiful even to his bleared senses. She said in English, "A good afternoon to you, gentleman."

He grimaced slightly. He would rather hear Russian than English delivered with quite so distorted an accent.

He said sullenly in Russian, "Please speak in Russian, Sophia."

His Russian might be as distressing to her, for all he knew, as her English was to him, but he didn't care. He was here by their doing and if his shortcomings troubled them, that was their doing, too.

She shrugged slightly and said in Russian, "Certainly -- if that is what pleases you."

Then she stared at him for a thoughtful while. He met that stare easily enough for, at the moment, he did not much care what he did and looking at her was not much different to him than looking at something else would have been -- or looking at nothing would have been. The momentary impression of beauty that had come with her entrance had faded.

She said finally, "I understand that you have now agreed to accompany us on our venture."

"Yes, I have."

"That is good of you. We are all grateful. In all honesty, I did not think you would do so, since you are an American. I apologize."

Morrison said with a far-off touch of regret and anger, "The decision to help you was not voluntary. I was persuaded -- by an expert."

"By Natalya Boranova?"

Morrison nodded.

"She is very good at persuading," said Kaliinin. "Not very kind, usually, but very good. I, too, required persuasion."

"Why you?" said Morrison.

"I had other reasons -- ones that were important to me."

"Indeed? What were they?"

"But unimportant to you."

There was a short uncomfortable pause.

"Come, the task I have been given is to show you the ship," said Kaliinin.

"The ship? How long have you been planning this? Have you had time to build a ship?"

"For the specific purpose of testing Shapirov's brain from within? Of course not. It was meant for other, simpler purposes, but it is the only thing we have that we can use. -- Come, Albert, Natalya thinks it will be wise for you to become acquainted with it, see it, feel it. It is possible that the down-to-earthness of the technology will reconcile you to the task."

Morrison held back. "Why must I see it now? Can't I have time to grow accustomed to the whole subject of personal miniaturization?"

"That is foolish, Albert. If you had more time to sit in your room and brood, you would have more time to feed your uncertainty. Besides, we have no time. How long do you suppose we can allow Shapirov to lie there deteriorating, with his thoughts diminishing with each moment? The ship embarks on its journey tomorrow morning."

"Tomorrow morning," muttered Morrison, his throat dry. Foolishly, he looked at his watch.

"You have few enough hours, but we'll keep track of the time for you so you need not consult your watch. Tomorrow morning the ship enters a human body. And you will be on the ship."

Then, without warning, she slapped his cheek hard. She said, "Your eyes were beginning to turn upward. Were you planning to faint?"

Morrison rubbed his cheek, grimacing with pain. "I wasn't planning anything," he mumbled, "but I might have fainted without planning it. Have you no gentler way of breaking the news?"

"Have I really caught you by surprise, when you already know that you have agreed to be miniaturized and it is self-evident that we have no time?"

She gestured peremptorily, "Now come with me."

And Morrison, still rubbing his cheek and seething with rage and humiliation, followed.

28.

It was back to the miniaturization area -- back to the busy people, each concerned with their own affairs and paying no attention to one another. Through them all, Kaliinin walked with an erect carriage and maintained the aristocratic air that arises automatically when all defer to you.

She was one of the leading lights, Morrison could see (his hand still resting lightly on his cheek, which felt inflamed and which he hesitated to expose), and all who crossed or even neared her path nodded their heads in a kind of rudimentary bow and stepped a little backward, as though to make sure not to impede her patch. No one acknowledged Morrison's presence at all.

On, on, through one room after another -- and everywhere the feel of pent-up energy held in bare check.

Kaliinin must have sensed it too, familiar as she must be with it, for she muttered to Morrison with a certain pride, "There's a solar power station in space, a major part of whose output is reserved for Malenkigrad."

And then they were upon it before Morrison had a true chance to realize what he was looking at. It was not a very large room and the object within it was not of impressive bulk. Indeed, Morrison's first impression was that it was a piece of artwork.

It was a streamlined object not much larger than an automobile, certainly shorter than a stretch limousine, though taller. And it was transparent!

Automatically, Morrison reached out to feel it.

It was not cold to the touch. It felt smooth and almost moist, but when he removed his hand, his fingertips were perfectly dry. He tried it again and as he ran his fingertips across the surface, they seemed to stick slightly, but they left no sweaty mark. On impulse, he breathed upon it. There was the shadow of condensing moisture on the transparent material, but it disappeared quickly.

"It is a plastic material," said Kaliinin, "but I don't know its composition. If I knew, it would probably come under the head of classified information anyway, but whatever it is, it is stronger than steel -- tougher and more resistant to shock -- kilogram for kilogram."

"Weight for weight, perhaps," said Morrison, for the moment his scientific curiosity drowning his uneasiness, "but such a thickness of plastic material could not possibly be as strong as the same thickness of steel. It could not be as strong, volume for volume."

"Yes, but where are we going?" said Kaliinin. "There will be no pressure differential inside and outside the ship; there will be no meteroids or even cosmic dust against which we must protect ourselves. There will be about us nothing but soft cell structure. This plastic will be ample protection and it is light. The two of us could perhaps lift it if we tried. That is what is important. As you can well understand, we must be sparing of mass. Every additional kilogram consumes considerable electromagnetic energy in miniaturization and delivers considerable heat in deminiaturization."

"Will it hold a large enough crew?" said Morrison, peering inside.

"It will. It is very compact, but it can hold six and we will only be five. And it contains a surprising amount of unusual gadgetry. Not as much as we would like, of course. The original plans -- But what can we do? There are always pressures for economy, even unwarranted ones, in this unjust world."

Morrison said with a twinge of strong uneasiness, "How much pressure for how much economy? Does everything work?"

"I assure you it does." Her face had lit up. Now that the settled melancholy had left (temporarily only, Morrison felt sure), Kaliinin was unmistakably good-looking. "Everything in it has been tested exhaustively, both singly and all together. Zero risk is impossible of attainment, but we have a reasonably close to zero risk here. And all with virtually no metal. What with microchips, fiber optics, and Manuilsky junctions, we have all we want in a total of less than five kilograms of devices all together. That is why the ship can be so small. After all, voyages into the microcosm are not expected to last for more than some hours, so we don't need sleeping arrangements, cycling equipment, elaborate food and air supplies, anything other than quite simple devices for excretory functions, and so on."

"Who'll be at the controls?"

"Arkady."

"Arkady Dezhnev?"

"You seem surprised."

"I don't know why I should. I presume he's qualified."

"Completely. He's in engineering design and he's a genius at it. You can't go by the way he sounds -- No, you can go by the way he sounds. Do you suppose any of us could endure his crude humor and affectations if he weren't a genius at something? He designed the ship -- every part of it -- and all its equipment. He invented a dozen completely new ways of lowering mass and introducing compactness. You have nothing like it in the United States."

Morrison said stiffly, "I have no way of knowing what the United States may have or may not have in unusual devices."

"I am sure they don't. Dezhnev is an unusual person, for all his love of presenting himself as a boor. He is a descendant of Semyon Ivanov Dezhnev. You have heard of him, I suppose."

Morrison shook his head.

"Really?" Kaliinin's voice turned icy. "He is only the famous explorer who, in the time of Peter the Great, explored Siberia to its easternmost centimeter and said there was a stretch of sea separating Siberia and North America decades before Vitus Bering, a Dane in Russian employ, discovered the Bering Strait. -- And you don't know Dezhnev. That's so American. Unless a Westerner did it, you never heard of it."

"Don't see insults everywhere, Sophia. I haven't studied exploration. There are many American explorers that I don't know -- and that you don't, either." He shook his finger at her, again remembering her slap and rubbing his check once more, "This is what I mean. You find things to feed hate on -- inconsequential things you should feel ashamed to grub up."

"Semyon Dezhnev was a great explorer -- and not inconsequential."

"I'm willing to admit that. I am glad to learn of him and I marvel at his achievement. But my not having heard of him is not a fit occasion for Soviet-American rivalry. Be ashamed of yourself!"

Kaliinin's eyes fell, then lifted to his cheek. (Had she left a bruise there? Morrison wondered.) She said, "I'm sorry I struck you, Albert. It need not have been that hard, but I didn't want you to faint. At that moment, I felt I would have no patience to deal with an unconscious American. I did let unjustified anger guide me."

"I'll grant you meant well, but I, too, wish you had not struck so hard. Still, I will accept your apology."

"Then let us get into the ship,"

Morrison managed a smile. Somehow he felt a little better dealing with Kaliinin than he would have with Dezhnev or Konev -- or even Boranova. A pretty woman, still quite young, does somehow distract a man's mind from his troubles more effectively than most things would. He said, "Aren't you afraid I might try to sabotage it?"

Kaliinin paused. "Actually, I'm not. I suspect you have enough respect for a vessel of scientific exploration to avoid doing it any damage whatever. Besides -- and I say this seriously, Albert -- the laws against sabotage are excessively severe in the Soviet Union and the slightest mistake in handling anything in the ship will set off an alarm that will have guards here in a matter of seconds. We have strict laws against guards beating up saboteurs, but sometimes they tend to forget themselves in their indignation. Please don't even think of touching anything."

She put a hand on the hull as she spoke and presumably closed a contact, though Morrison didn't see how it was done. A door -- a rectangle curved at the edge -- opened. (The door's own edge seemed to be double. Would it also act as an air lock?)

The opening was compact. Kaliinin, entering first, had to stoop. She held out a hand to Morrison. "Careful, Albert."

Morrison not only stooped, but turned sideways. Once inside the ship, he found that he could not quite stand upright. When he bumped his head gently, he looked up at the ceiling, startled.

Kaliinin said, "We'll be doing our work sitting down for the most part, so don't be concerned about the ceiling."

"I don't think claustrophobes would like this."

"Are you claustrophobic?"

"No."

Kaliinin nodded her relief. "That's good. We have to save space, you know. What can I tell you?"

Morrison looked around. There were six seats, in pairs. He sat down in the one nearest the door and said, "These are not exactly roomy, either."

"No," admitted Kaliinin. "Weight lifters could not be accommodated."

Morrison said, "Obviously, this ship was built long before Shapirov went into his coma."

"Of course. We've been planning to have miniaturized personnel invade living tissue for a long time. That would be necessary if we wished to make truly important biological discoveries. Naturally, we expected that we would work with animals at the start and study the circulatory system in fine detail. It is for that project that this ship was built. No one could possibly have guessed that when the time came to carry out the first such microvoyage, the subject would not only be a human body but Shapirov himself."

Morrison was still studying the interior of the ship. It seemed bare. Detail was surprisingly difficult to make out in the situation of transparency-on-transparency and miniaturization of the old-type -- ordinary, but microscopic -- components.

He said, "There will be five on the ship: you and I, Boranova, Konev, and Dezhnev."

"That's right."

"And what will each of us be doing?"

"Arkady will control the ship. Obviously, he knows how to do that. It's the child of his hands and mind. He'll be in the left front seat. To his right will be the other male, who has a complete map of the neurocirculatory pattern of Shapirov's brain. He will be the pilot. I will sit behind Arkady and I will control the electromagnetic pattern of the ship's surface."

"An electromagnetic pattern? What's that for?"

"My dear Albert. You recognize objects by reflected light, a dog recognizes objects by emitted odor, a molecule recognizes objects by surface electromagnetic pattern. If we're going to make our way as a miniaturized object among molecules, we must have the proper patterns in order to be treated as friends rather than foes."

"That sounds complicated."

"It is -- but it happens to be my life study. Natalya will sit behind me. She will be the captain of the expedition. She will make the decisions."

"What kind of decisions?"

"Whatever kind are necessary. Obviously, those can't be predicted in advance. As for you, you will sit to my right."

Morrison rose and managed to shift his position along the narrow aisle on the door side of the seats and move one seat back. He had been in Konev's seat and now he was in what would be his own. He could feel his heart pounding as he imagined himself in that same seat on the following day, with the miniaturization process in progress.

He said in a muffled voice, "There is only one man, then -- Yuri Konev -- who was miniaturized and deminiaturized and was unharmed by the process."

"Yes."

"And he mentioned no discomfort in the process, no sickness, no mental disturbance?"

"Nothing of the sort was reported."

"Would that be because he is a stoic? Would he feel it would be beneath the dignity of a hero of Soviet science to complain?"

"Don't be foolish. We are not heroes of Soviet science and the one you speak of certainly isn't. We are human beings and scientists and, in fact, if there were any discomfort that we felt, we would be compelled to describe it in full detail, since it might be that with modifications of the process we could remove that discomfort and make future miniaturizations less difficult. Hiding any part of the truth would be unscientific, unethical, and dangerous. Don't you see that -- since you are a scientist yourself?"

"Yet there may be individual differences. Yuri Konev survived untouched. Pyotr Shapirov did not -- quite."

"That had nothing to do with individual differences," said Kaliinin impatiently.

"We can't really tell, can we?"

"Then judge for yourself, Albert. Do you think we would take the ship into miniaturization without a final testing -- with and without human beings aboard? This ship was miniaturized, empty, during the course of this past night -- not to a very great extent, but enough to know that all is well."

At once Morrison struggled upward to get out of his seat. "In that case, if you don't mind, Sophia, I want to get out before it is tested with human beings aboard."

"But, Albert, it's too late."

"What!"

"Look out the ship at the room. You haven't once looked outside since you got in, which, I suppose, was a good thing. But look out now. Go ahead. The walls are transparent and the process is complete for now. Please! Look!"

Morrison, startled, did so and then, very slowly, his knees bent and he seated himself again. He asked (and even as he did so, he knew how foolish he must sound), "Do the ship's walls have a magnifying effect?"

"No, of course not. Everything outside is as it always is. The ship and I and you have been miniaturized to about half our linear dimensions."

29.

Morrison felt dizziness overcome him and he bent his head between his knees and breathed slowly and deeply. When he lifted his head again, he saw Kaliinin watching him thoughtfully. She was standing in the narrow aisle, leaning slightly against a seat's armrest to allow the ceiling to clear her head.

"You might have fainted this time," she said. "It would not have disturbed me. We are being deminiaturized now and that will be more time-consuming than the miniaturization, which took no more than three or four minutes. It will take an hour or so for us to get back, so you will have ample time to recover."

"It was not a decent act to do this without telling me, Sophia."

"On the contrary," said Kaliinin. "It was an act of kindness. Would you have entered the ship as freely and as easily as you did if you had suspected that we would be miniaturized? Would you have inspected the ship as coolly if you had known? And if you had been anticipating miniaturization, would you not have developed psychogenic symptoms of all sorts?"

Morrison was silent.

Kaliinin said, "Did you feel anything? Were you even aware that you were being miniaturized?"

Morrison shook his head. "No."

Then, driven by a certain shame, he said, "You've never been miniaturized before any more than I have, have you?"

"No. Before this day, Konev and Shapirov have been the only human beings to have undergone miniaturization."

"And you weren't at all apprehensive?"

She said, "I wouldn't say that. I was uneasy. We know from our experience with space travel that, as you said earlier, there are individual differences in reaction to unusual environments. Some astronauts suffer episodes of nausea under zero gravity and some do not, for instance. I couldn't be sure how I would react. -- Did you feel nausea?"

"I didn't until I found out we had been miniaturized, but I suppose feeling queasy now doesn't count. -- Who planned this?"

"Natalya."

"Of course. I needn't have asked," he said drily.

"There were reasons. She felt we couldn't have you break down once the voyage began. We couldn't be expected to deal with hysteria on your part once we began miniaturizing."

"I suppose I deserve that lack of confidence," said Morrison, his eyes looking away in embarrassment from those of Kaliinin. "And I imagine she assigned you to come with me for the precise purpose of distracting my attention while all this was going on."

"No. That was my idea. She wanted to come with you herself, but with her, by now, I thought you might be anticipating trickery."

"Whereas with you, I might be at my ease."

"At least, as you say, distracted. I am still young enough to distract men." Then, with a touch of bitterness, "Most men."

Morrison looked up, eyes narrowing. "You said I might be anticipating trickery."

"I mean, with Natalya."

"Why not with you? All I see now is that everything outside seems enlarged. How can I be sure that that is not an illusion, something designed to make me think I have been miniaturized and that it is harmless -- merely so that I step quietly into the ship tomorrow?"

"That's ridiculous, Albert, but let's consider something. You and I have lost half our linear dimension in every direction. The strength of our muscles varies inversely with their cross-sections. They are now half their normal width and half their normal thickness, so that they have half times half or one fourth the cross-section and, therefore, the strength they would normally have. Do you see what I mean? Do you understand?"

"Yes, of course," said Morrison, annoyed. "That is elementary."

"But our bodies as a whole are half as tall, half as wide, and half as thick, so that the total volume -- and mass and weight as well -- is half times half times half or one eighth what it was originally. -- If we are miniaturized, that is."

"Yes. This is the square-cube law. It's been understood since Galileo's time."

"I know, but you haven't been thinking about it. If I were to try to lift you now, I would be lifting one eighth your normal weight and I would be doing so with my muscles at one quarter their normal strength. My muscles compared to your weight would be twice as strong as they would appear to be if we were not miniaturized."

And with that, Kaliinin thrust her hands under his armpits and, with a grunt, lifted. Up he moved from his seat.

She held him so while she gasped twice and then she lowered him. "It's not easy," she said, panting a bit, "but I could do it. And since you may be telling yourself, 'Ah yes, but this is Sophia, probably a Soviet weight lifter,' then do it to me."

Kaliinin seated herself in the seat before him and held out her arms to either side and said, "Come, stand up and lift me."

Morrison rose to his feet and into the aisle. He moved forward, turned, and faced her. The slight bending enforced on him by the low ceiling made it an uncomfortable position. For a moment, he hesitated.

Kaliinin said, "Come, seize me under the arms. I use deodorant. And you needn't be concerned about possibly touching my breasts. They have been touched before this. Come -- I'm lighter than you are and you're stronger than I am. Since I have lifted you, you should have no trouble at all lifting me."

Nor did he. He couldn't lift with his full strength because of his slight, uncomfortable stoop, but he automatically applied the force he judged, through years of experience, would be suitable for an object her size. She floated upward, however, almost as though she were weightless. Despite the fact that he had been somewhat prepared for the possibility, he almost dropped her.

"Do you consider that an illusion?" Kaliinin asked. "Or are we miniaturized?"

"We are miniaturized," said Morrison. "But how did you do it? I never saw you make a move that looked as though you might be using miniaturization controls."

"I didn't. It's all done from outside. The ship is equipped with miniaturization devices of its own, but I wouldn't dare use them. That would be part of Natalya's job."

"And now the deminiaturization is being controlled from outside, too, isn't it?"

"That's right."

"And if the deminiaturization gets slightly out of hand, our brains will be damanged as Shapirov's was -- or worse."

"That's not really likely," said Kaliinin, stretching her legs out into the aisle, "and it doesn't help to think about it. Why not just relax and close your eyes?"

Morrison persisted. "But damage is possible."

"Of course it's possible. Almost anything is possible. A three-meter-wide meteroite may strike two minutes from now, penetrate the mountain shell above us, flash into this room, and destroy the ship and us and perhaps the entire project in a few flaming seconds. -- But it's not likely."

Morrison cradled his head in his arms and wondered whether -- if the ship started warming -- he could feel the heat before his brain proteins denatured.

30.

Well over half an hour had passed before Morrison felt convinced that the objects he could see outside the ship were shrinking and were receding perceptibly toward their normal size.

Morrison said, "I am thinking of a paradox."

"What's that?" said Kaliinin, yawning. She had obviously taken her own advice about the advisability of relaxing.

"The objects outside the ship seemed to grow larger as we shrink. Ought not the wavelengths of light outside the ship also grow larger, becoming longer in wavelength, as we shrink? Should we not see everything outside turn reddish, since there can scarcely be enough ultraviolet outside to expand and replace the shorter-wave visible light?"

Kaliinin said, "If you could see the light waves outside, that would indeed be how they would appear to you. But you don't. You see the light waves only after they've entered the ship and impinged upon your retina. And as they enter the ship, they come under the influence of the miniaturization field and automatically shrink in wavelength, so that you see those wavelengths inside the ship exactly as you would see them outside."

"If they shrink in wavelength, they must gain energy."

"Yes, if Planck's constant were the same size inside the miniaturization field as it is outside. But Planck's constant decreases inside the miniaturization field -- that is the essence of miniaturization. The wavelengths, in shrinking, maintain their relationship to the shrunken Planck's constant and do not gain energy. An analogous case is that of the atoms. They also shrink and yet the interrelationships among atoms and among the subatomic particles that make them up remain the same to us inside the ship as they would seem to us outside the ship."

"But gravity changes. It becomes weaker in here."

"The strong interaction and the electroweak interaction come under the umbrella of the quantum theory. They depend on Planck's constant. As for gravitation?" Kaliinin shrugged. "Despite two centuries of effort, gravitation has never been quantized. Frankly, I think the gravitational change with miniaturization is evidence enough that gravitation cannot be quantized, that it is fundamentally nonquantum in nature."

"I can't believe that," said Morrison. "Two centuries of failure can merely mean we haven't managed to get deep enough into the problem yet. Superstring theory nearly gave us our unified field at last." (It relieved him to discuss the matter. Surely he couldn't do so if his brain were heating in the least.)

"Nearly doesn't count," said Kaliinin. "Still, Shapirov agreed with you, I think. It was his notion that once we tied Planck's constant to the speed of light, we would not only have the practical effect of miniaturizing and deminiaturizing in an essentially energy-free manner, but that we would have the theoretical effect of being able to work out the connection between quantum theory and relativity and finally have a good unified field theory. And probably a simpler one than we could have imagined possible, he would say."

"Maybe," said Morrison. He didn't know enough to comment beyond that.

"Shapirov would say," said Kaliinin, warming to the task, "that at ultraminiaturization, the gravitational effect would be close enough to zero to be utterly ignored and that the speed of light would be so great that it might be considered infinite. With mass virtually zero, inertia would be virtually zero and any object, like this ship, for instance, could be accelerated with virtually zero energy input to any speed. We would have, practically speaking, antigravity and faster-than-light travel. Chemical drive, he said, gave us the Solar System, ion drive would give us the nearer stars, but relativistic miniaturization would give us the whole Universe at a bound."

"It's a beautiful vision," said Morrison, ravished.

"Then you know what we're looking for now, don't you?"

Morrison nodded. "All that -- if we can read Shapirov's mind. And if he really had something there and wasn't merely dreaming."

"Isn't the chance worth the risk?"

"I am on the point of believing so," said Morrison in a low voice. "You are terribly convincing. Why couldn't Natalya have used arguments of that sort, rather than those she did use?"

"Natalya is -- Natalya. She is a highly practical person, not a dreamer. She gets things done."

Morrison studied Kaliinin as she sat, now in the seat to his left, looking straight ahead with an abstracted look that gave her profile the appearance of an impractical dreamer, at that -- but perhaps not one who, like Shapirov, dreamed of conquering the Universe. With her, it was something closer to home perhaps.

He said, "Your unhappiness is not my business, Sophia, as you've said -- but I have been told about Yuri."

Her eyes flashed. "Arkady! I know it was he. He is a -- a --" She shook her head. "With all his education and all his genius, he remains a peasant. I always think of him as a bearded serf with a vodka bottle."

"I think he's concerned about you in his own way, even if he doesn't express himself poetically. Everyone must be concerned."

Kaliinin stared at Morrison fiercely, as if holding her words back.

He prodded her gently, saying, "Why don't you tell me about it? I think it will help and I am a logical choice, being the outsider of the party -- I assure you I am trustworthy."

Kaliinin looked at him again, this time almost gratefully.

"Yuri!" she spat. "Everyone may be concerned, except Yuri. He has no feelings."

"He must have been in love with you at one time."

"Must he? I don't believe it. He has a -- a --" -- she looked up and spread her hands, which were shaking, as though groping for a word and having to settle for something inferior -- "vision."

"We're not always masters of our own emotions and affections, Sophia. If he has found another woman and dreams of her --"

"There's no other woman," said Kaliinin, frowning. "None! He uses that as an excuse to hide behind! He loved me, if at all, only absently, because I was convenient at hand, because I satisfied a vague physical need, and because I was also involved in the project, so that he didn't have to lose much time dallying with me. As long as he had this project firmly in hand, he didn't mind having me -- quietly, unobtrusively -- at odd moments."

"A man's work --"

"Need not fill every moment of time. I told you he has a vision. He plans to be the new Newton, the new Einstein. He wants to make discoveries so fundamental, so great, that he will leave nothing for the future. He will take Shapirov's speculations and turn them into hard science. Yuri Konev will become the whole of the natural law and everyone else will be commentary!"

"Might that not be considered an admirable ambition?"

"Not when it makes him sacrifice everything and everyone else, when it makes him deny his own child. I? What do I matter? I can be neglected, denied. I am an adult. I can take care of myself. But a baby? A child? To deny her a father? To refuse her? To reject her? She would distract him from his work, she would make demands on him, she would consume a few moments of time here and there -- so he insists he is not the father."

"A genetic analysis --"

"No. Would I drag him to court and force a legal decision upon him? Consider what his denial implies? The child is not a virgin birth. Someone must be the father. He implies -- no, he states -- that I am promiscuous. He has not hesitated to give it as his opinion that I do not know the father of my child since I am lost among the numerous possibilities. Shall I labor to make a man as low as he is the legally proved father of my child against his will? No, let him come to me and admit he is the father and apologize for what he has done -- and I may allow him a glance, now and then, at the child."

"Yet I have a feeling you still love him."

"If I do, that is my curse," said Kaliinin bitterly. "It shall not be my child's."

"Is that why you have had to be persuaded to undertake this miniaturization?"

"And work with him? Yes, that is why. But they tell me I cannot be replaced, that what we may do for science lies far above and beyond any conceivable personal feeling -- any anger, any hate. Besides --"

"Besides?"

"Besides, if I abandon the project, I lose my status as a Soviet scientist. I lose many privileges and perquisites, which do not matter, and so does my daughter -- which matters a great deal."

"Did Yuri have to be persuaded, too, to work with you?"

"He? Of course not. The project is all he knows and sees. He does not look at me. He does not see me. And if he dies in the course of this attempt --" She held out her hand in appeal to him. "Please understand that I do not for a moment believe that this will happen. It is just a stupidly romantic notion that I torture myself with for the love of pain, I suppose. If he should die, he would not even be aware that I would die with him."

Morrison felt himself tremble. "Don't talk like that," he said. "And what would happen to your daughter in that case? Did Natalya tell you that?"

"She did not have to. I know that without her. My daughter would be reared by the state, as the child of a Soviet martyr to science. She might be better off so." Sophia paused and looked around. "But it's beginning to look quite normal out there. We should be out of the ship soon."

Morrison shrugged.

"You will have to spend much of the rest of the day being medically and psychologically examined, Albert. So will I. It will be very boring, but it has to be done. How do you feel?"

"I'd feel better," said Morrison in a burst of honesty, "if you hadn't talked about dying. -- Listen! Tomorrow, when we make the trip into Shapirov's body, how far will we be miniaturized?"

"That will be Natalya's decision. To cellular dimensions at the very least, obviously. Perhaps to molecular dimensions."

"Has anyone ever done that?"

"Not to my knowledge."

"Rabbits? Inanimate objects?"

Kaliinin shook her head and said again, "Not to my knowledge."

"How, then, does anyone know that miniaturization to such an extent is possible? Or that, if it is, any of us can surivive?"

"The theory says it is and that we can. So far, every bit of experimentation has fit in with the theory."

"Yes, but there are always boundaries. Wouldn't it be better if ultraminiaturization were tested on a simple bar of plastic, then on a rabbit, then on a --"

"Yes, of course. But persuading the Central Coordinating Committee to allow the energy expenditure would be an enormous task and such experiments would have to be dribbled out over months and years. We have no time! We must get into Shapirov immediately."

"But we're going to be doing something unprecedented, crossing into an untested region, with only the maybes of theory to --"

"Exactly, exactly. Come, the light is flashing and we must emerge and accompany the waiting physicians."

But for Morrison the marginal euphoria of a safe deminiaturization was seeping away. What he had experienced today was in no way indicative of what he must face the next day.

The terror was returning.

CHAPTER 8 -- PRELIMINAIRIES

The greatest difficulty comes at the start. It's called "getting ready."

-- Dezhnev Senior

31.

Later that evening, after a long -- and tedious -- medical exam, he joined the four Soviet researchers for dinner. The Last Supper, Morrison thought grimly.

Sitting down, he burst out, "No one told me the results of my examination!" He turned to Kaliinin. "Did they examine you, Sophia?"

"Yes, indeed, Albert."

"Did they tell you the results?"

"I'm afraid not. Since it is not we who pay them, I suppose they don't feel they owe us anything."

"It doesn't matter," said Dezhnev jovially. "My old father used to say, 'Bad news has the wings of an eagle, good news the legs of a sloth.' If they said nothing, it was because they had nothing bad to report."

"Even the bad news," said Boranova, "would have been reported to me -- and only to me. I am the one who must decide who will accompany us."

"What did they tell you about me?" asked Morrison.

"That there is nothing important wrong with you. You will be coming with us and in twelve hours the adventure will begin."

"Is there anything unimportant wrong with me, then, Natalya?"

"Nothing worth mentioning, except that you display, according to one doctor, a 'typical American bad temper.'"

"Huh!" said Morrison. "One of our American freedoms is that of being bad-tempered when doctors show a typical Soviet lack of concern for their patients."

Nevertheless, his apprehension over the state of his mind ebbed and, as it did so, inevitably the apprehension over his impending miniaturization rose higher.

He lapsed into silence, eating slowly and without much of an appetite.

32.

Yuri Konev was the first to rise from the dinner table. For a moment he remained standing, leaning forward over the table, a slight frown on his intense, youthful face.

"Natalya," he said, "I must take Albert to my office. It is necessary that we discuss tomorrow's task and prepare for it."

Boranova said, "You will remember, please, that we must all have a good night's sleep. I don't wish you to forget the passage of time. Do you want Arkady to go with you?"

"I don't need him," said Konev haughtily.

"Nevertheless," said Boranova, "there will be two guards at your office door and you will call out if you need them."

Konev turned from her impatiently and said, "I won't need them, Natalya, I'm sure. Come with me, Albert."

Morrison, who had been watching them both from under lowered eyebrows, rose and said, "Is this going to be a long trip? I'm tired of being shuttled from point to point in the Grotto."

Morrison knew well he was being ungracious, but it didn't seem to bother Konev, who responded just as ungraciously, "I should think a professor would be used to plunging back and forth across a university campus."

Morrison followed Konev out the door and together they tramped along the corridor in silence. Morrison was aware that at a certain point two guards fell in behind them. He heard additional footsteps keeping time with his own. He looked back, but Konev did not.

Morrison said impatiently, "Much longer, Yuri?"

"That is a foolish question, Albert. I have no intention of walking you past our destination. When we get there, we will be there. If we are still walking, it is because we are not there yet."

"I should think, with all this walking, you might arrange golf carts or something of the sort for the corridors."

"Anything to allow the muscles to atrophy, Albert? Come, you are not so old that you cannot walk or so young that you must be carried."

Morrison thought, If I were that poor woman with his child, I would shoot off fireworks to celebrate his denial of fatherhood.

They reached Konev's office at last. At least Morrison assumed it was his office when Konev barked the word "Open" and the door slid smoothly open in response to his voiceprint. Konev strode through first.

"What if someone imitates your voice?" asked Morrison curiously. "You don't have a very distinctive voice, you know."

Konev said, "It also scans my face. It will not respond to either separately."

"And if you have a cold?"

"One time when I had a bad one, I could not get into my office for three days and I finally had to have the door opened mechanically. If my face were bruised or scarred by accident, I might also have trouble. Still, that is the price of security."

"But are the people here so -- inquisitive -- that they would invade your privacy?"

"People are people and it is not wise to overtempt even the best of them. I have things here unique to myself and they may be viewed only when I decide to allow it. This, for instance." His slim hand (very well cared-for and manicured, Morrison noticed -- he might neglect other things for his work, but not himself) rested on an extraordinarily large and thick volume, which, in turn, rested on a stand that had been clearly designed for it.

"What is that?" asked Morrison.

"That," said Konev, "is Academician Shapirov -- or at least the essence of him." He opened the book and flipped the pages. Page after page (all of them, perhaps) were filled with symbols arranged in diagrammatic fashion.

Konev said, "I have it on microfilm, of course, but there are certain conveniences to having it in a printed volume." He patted the pages almost lovingly.

"I still don't understand," said Morrison.

"This is the basic structure of Shapirov's brain, translated into a symbolism of my own devising. Fed into the appropriate software, it can reconstitute a three-dimensional map of the brain in intimate detail on a computer screen."

"Astonishing," said Morrison, "if you are serious."

"I am serious," said Konev. "I have spent my entire career on this task: translating brain structure into symbols and symbols into brain structure. I have invented and advanced this science of cerebrography."

"And you used Shapirov as your subject."

"By incredible good fortune, I did. Or perhaps it was not good fortune, but merely inevitable. We all have our small vanities and it seemed to Shapirov that his brain was worth preserving in detail. Once I began working on this field under his direction -- for there was the feeling that we might someday want to explore animal brains at least -- he insisted on having his own brain analyzed cerebrographically."

Morrison said with a sudden excitement, "Can you get his theories out of the recorded cerebral structure of his brain?"

"Of course not. These symbols record a cerebral scanning that was carried through three years ago. That was before he had evolved his recent notions and, in any case, what I have preserved here is, unfortunately, only the physical structure and not the thoughts. Still, the cerebrograph will be invaluable to us in tomorrow's voyage."

"I should think so -- but I have never heard of this."

"I'm not surprised. I have published papers on this, but only in the Grotto's own publication -- and these remain highly classified. No one outside the Grotto, not even here in the Soviet Union, knows of them."

"That is bad policy. You will be overtaken by someone else who will publish and who will be granted priority."

Konev shook his head. "At the first sign that significant advances in this direction are being made elsewhere, enough of my early work will be published to establish priority. I have cerebrographs of canine brains that I can publish, for instance. But never mind that. The point is that we have a map of Shapirov's brain to guide us, which is a matter of incredible good fortune. It was made without the knowledge that we might need it someday to guide us through that very cerebral jungle."

Konev turned to a computer and, with practiced flips of his wrist, inserted five large discs.

"Each one of these," he said, "can hold all the information in the Central Moscow Library without crowding. It is all devoted to Shapirov's brain."

"Are you trying to tell me," said Morrison indignantly, "that you could transfer all that information, all of Shapirov's brain, into that book you have here?"

"Well, no," said Konev, glancing at the book. "In comparison with the total code, that book is only a small pamphlet. However, it does hold the basic skeleton, so to speak, of Shapirov's neuronic structure and I was able to use it as a guide by which to direct a computer program that mapped it out in greater detail. It took months for the best and most advanced computer we have to do the job.

"And even so, Albert, all we have reaches merely to the cellular level. If we were to map the brain down to the molecular level and try to record all the permutations and combinations -- all the conceivable thoughts that might arise from a particular human brain like Shapirov's; all the creativity, actual and potential -- I suppose it would take a computer the size of the Universe working for a much longer time than the Universe has existed. What I have, however, may be enough for our task."

Morrison, entranced, asked, "Can you show me how it works, Yuri?"

Konev studied the computer -- which was turned on, as one could tell by the soft whisper of its cooling mechanism -- then pushed the necessary keys. On the screen there appeared the side view of a human brain.

Konev said, "This can be viewed at any cross-section." He pressed a key and the brain began to peel as though it were being continually sliced by an ultrathin microtome some thousands of slices per second. "At this rate," he said, "it would take an hour and fifteen minutes to complete the task, but I could stop it at any chosen point. I could also cut off thicker slices or cut off one thick calculated slice to bring me at once to any wanted cross-section."

As he spoke, he demonstrated. "Or I could orient it in another direction or rotate it along any axis. Or I can magnify it to any extent down to the cellular level, either slowly or, as you see, quickly." As he said this, the material of the brain spread outward in all directions from a central point -- dizzyingly -- so that Morrison was forced to blink his eyes and then look away.

Konev said, "This is now at the cellular level. Those small objects are individual neurons and if I expanded the image still further, you would see the axons and dendrites. If one wishes, we could follow a single axon through the cell into a dendrite and across a synapse to another neuron and so on, traveling, by computer, through a brain three-dimensionally. Nor is the matter of three demensions just a manner of speaking. The computer is outfitted for holographic imaging and it can present a three-dimensional appearance quite literally."

Morrison said challengingly, "Then why do you need miniaturization? Why do you need to send ships into the brain?"

Konev briefly allowed a look of contempt to cross his face. "That is a foolish question, Albert, and I suppose it is inspired only by your fear of miniaturization. You are groping for any excuse to eliminate it. What you see here on the screen is a three-dimensional mapping of the brain, but only three-dimensional. It has caught it at what is, essentially, an instant of time. In effect, we see unchanging material -- dead material. What we want to be able to detect is the living activity of the neurons, the changing activity with time. We want a four-dimensional view of the electric potentials that rise and fall, the microcurrents that travel along the cells and cell fibers, and we want to interpret them into thoughts. That's your task, Albert. Arkady Dezhnev will manipulate the ship along the routes I have chosen and you will give us the thoughts."

"On what basis have you chosen the routes?"

"On the basis of your own papers, Albert. I have chosen the regions you had decided must represent the neuronic network for creative thought and, using this book, with its coded representation of Shapirov's brain as my initial guide, I calculated centers where more or less direct pathways could be found to several portions of the network. I then located them more accurately on the computer and it is to one or more of those centers that we will penetrate tomorrow."

Morrison shook his head. "I'm afraid I can't guarantee that we will be able to determine actual thoughts, even if we find the centers in which thinking takes place. It's as though we might reach a place where we can hear people's voices, but if we don't know the language, we are still left in ignorance of what they are saying."

"We can't know that in advance. The varying electric potentials in Sbapirov's mind must resemble those in ours and we may simply be aware of his thoughts without knowing how we are aware. In any case, we can't tell unless we go in and try."

"In that case, you will have to be ready for possible disappointment."

"Never," said Konev with the utmost seriousness. "I intend to be the person to whom the human brain will finally yield its secrets. I will solve, completely, the ultimate physiological mystery of humanity, perhaps of the Universe -- if we are the most advanced thinking devices that exist anywhere. So we will work together, you and I, tomorrow. I want you to be ready for it, to help guide me by studying carefully the brain waves we encounter. I want you to interpret Shapirov's thoughts and, most particularly, his thoughts on combining quantum theory and relativity so that trips such as ours tomorrow can become routine and we can begin the study of the brain in all earnestness."

He stopped and stared at Morrison intently, then said, "Well?"

"Well, what?"

"Does none of this impress you?"

"Of course it impresses me, but ... I have a question. Today when I watched the rabbit being miniaturized, there was a pronounced whine during the process -- and a rumble when it was deminiaturized. There was nothing of the sort when I was subjected to it -- or I would have known what was happening."

Konev raised a finger, "Ah. The noise is apparent when you are in real space, but not when you are in miniaturized space. I was the first to realize that was so when I was miniaturized and I reported it. We still don't know why the miniaturization field seems to stop sound waves when it doesn't stop light waves, but then we expect to learn new aspects of the process as we go on."

"As long as we don't discover fatal aspects," muttered Morrison. "Are you afraid of nothing, Yuri?"

"I'm afraid of not being able to complete my work. That would be true if I died tomorrow or if I refused to undergo miniaturization. Being stopped by death, however, is only a small possibility, but if I refuse to undergo miniaturization, then I am stopped certainly. That is why I much prefer to risk the former than take the latter way out."

"Does it bother you that Sophia will be undergoing miniaturization with you?"

Konev frowned. "What?"

"If you don't remember her first name, it may help if I refer to her as Kaliinin."

"She is part of the group and will be on the ship. Yes."

"And you don't mind?"

"Why should I?"

"After all, she feels you have betrayed her."

Konev frowned darkly and a dull flush rose to his face. "Has her madness gone so far as to force her to confide her incoherencies to strangers? If she weren't needed on this project --"

"I'm sorry. She didn't sound incoherent to me."

Morrison didn't know why he was pushing the matter. Perhaps he felt diminished at fearing a task the other so ardently welcomed and he therefore wished to dirninish in turn. "Were you never her -- friend?"

"Friend?" Konev's face mirrored his contempt. "What is friendship? When I joined the project, I found her here; she had joined a month earlier. We worked together, we were new and untried together. Of course, there was what one might call friendship, a physical need for intimacy. What of it? We were young and unsure of ourselves. It was a passing phase."

"But it left something behind. A child."

"That was not my doing." And his mouth closed with a snap.

"She says --"

"I have no doubt she would like to saddle me with the responsibility, but it won't work."

"Have you considered genetic analysis?"

"No! The child is adequately cared for, I imagine, and even if genetic analysis seemed to indicate I might be the parent, I would refuse all efforts to tie me to the child emotionally, so what would the woman have to gain?"

"Are you so coldhearted?"

"Coldhearted! What do you imagine I have done -- corrupted a young, innocent virgin? She took the initiative in everything. In the sad story that I suppose she told you, did she happen to mention that she'd been pregnant before, that she had had an abortion some years before I met her? I don't know who the father was then or who it is now. Perhaps neither does she -- either time."

"You are being unkind to her."

"I am not. She is being unkind to herself. I have a mistress. I have a love. It is this project. It is the human brain in the abstract, its study, its analysis, and all that that might lead to. The woman was, at best, a distraction -- at worst, a destruction. This little talk we are having -- that I did not ask for -- that she goaded you into undertaking, no doubt --"

"She did not," intedected Morrison.

"Goads are not necessarily noticed. This discussion may cost me a night's sleep and make me that much less sharp tomorrow when I will need all my sharpness. Is that your intention?"

"No, of course not," Morrison said quietly.

"Then it is surely hers. You have no idea in how many different ways she has attempted interference and how often she has succeeded. I don't look at her, I don't speak to her, yet she will not leave me alone. Her imaginary wrongs seem as fresh in her mind as they were when I first broke away. Yes, I do mind her being on the ship with me and I have said so to Boranova, but she says that both of us are needed. Are you satisfied?"

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to upset you so."

"What did you mean? Simply to have a quiet conversation? 'Say, what about all those betrayals and dirty tricks you have committed?' Just a friendly talk?"

Morrison remained silent, bowing his head slightly against the other's rage. Three out of five on the ship -- himself and the two ex-lovers -- would be laboring under a sense of unbearable wrong. He wondered if, on careful questioning, Dezhnev and Boranova would prove similarly disabled.

Konev said harshly, "You had better go. I brought you here to bury your fear of the project by providing you with a blaze of enthusiasm. Obviously, I have failed. You are more interested in prurient gossip. Go, the guards outside this door will take you to the quarters assigned you. You will need to sleep."

Morrison sighed. Sleep?

33.

Yet on this, his third night in the Soviet Union, Morrison slept.

Dezhnev had been waiting outside Konev's room with the guards, his broad face grinning and his large ears all but flapping with merriment. After the shadowed intensity of Konev's personality, Morrison found himself welcoming Dezhnev's chatter on all subjects but the morrow's miniaturization.

Dezhnev urged a drink on him. "It is not vodka, not alcohol," he had said, "It is milk and a little sugar and flavoring. I stole it from the commissary where it is used, I think, for animals, because all those officials find human beings more easily replaceable than the animals. It is the curse of overpopulation. As my father used to say, 'To get a human being takes a moment of pleasure, but to get a horse costs money.' But drink. It will settle the stomach. I promise you."

The drink was in a can which Morrison punctured. He poured it into a cup that Dezhnev proffered and it tasted fairly good. He thanked Dezhnev almost cheerily.

When they got to Morrison's room, Dezhnev said, "Now the important thing for you to do is to sleep. Sleep well. Let me show you where everything is." And as he did so, he rather resembled a large and slightly unkempt mother hen. With a hearty "Good night. Be sure to get plenty of sleep," Dezhnev left the room.

And Morrison slept. Almost as soon as he worked himself into his favorite position -- stomach down, left leg bent, knee outward -- he began to feel sleepy. Of course, he had little sleep the last two nights, but he suddenly guessed that there had been a mild sedative in the cup into which he had poured the drink. Then came the thought that perhaps Konev should take such a sedative. Then -- nothing.

When he woke, he could not even remember having had any dreams.

Nor did he wake of his own accord. Dezhnev was shaking him, as cheerful as he had been the evening before, as wide awake, and even as spruced up as it was possible for that animated haystack to be.

He said, "Awake, Comrade American, for it is time. You must shave and wash. There are fresh towels, combs, deodorants, tissues, and soap in the bathroom. I know because I have delivered them myself. Also a new electric razor. And on top of that, new cotton clothes for you to wear with a reinforcement in the crotch so you will not feel so exposed. They actually have them, the rotten bureaucrats, if you know how to ask -- with a fist." And he raised his fist while twisting his face into a look of ferocity.

Morrison stirred and sat up on the bed. It took him a moment to place himself and to weather the shock of realization that it was Thursday morning and that miniaturization was just ahead.

Half an hour or so later, when Morrison stepped out of the bathroom again -- satisfactorily bathed, dried, deodorized, shaved, combed, and reaching for his two-piece cotton uniform and his slippers -- Dezhnev said, "Satisfactory elimination, my lad? No constipation?"

"Quite satisfactory," said Morrison.

"Good! I don't ask out of idle curiosity, of course. I am not fascinated by excrement. It is just that the ship is not ideally suited for such things. Better we all go in empty. I didn't trust to nature, myself. I took a bit of a laxative."

"How long will we stay miniaturized?" asked Morrison.

"Perhaps not long. An hour if we are very lucky, perhaps twelve if we're not."

"But, look," said Morrison. "I can count on a well-behaved colon, but I can't go for twelve hours without urinating."

"Who can?" asked Dezhnev jovially. "Each seat in the ship is equipped for the eventuality. There is a recess, a removable cover. A built-in toilet, so to speak. I designed it myself. But it will be a struggle and, if you're sensitive, embarrassing. Someday, though, when the energy-free miniaturization process is a fact, we can build ocean liners for miniaturization and live in them like tsars of old."

"Well, let's hope the expedition is not unnecessarily extended." (He found it odd that, for a moment, his apprehension shifted from fears of death or mental disability to the details of how to manipulate the toilet lid and how to proceed as unobtrusively as possible. -- It occurred to him that there must have been many grossnesses and indelicacies, involved in the great exploratory trips of the past, items that had gone undetailed and, therefore, unnoted.)

He was in his cotton clothes and had stepped into his slippers when Dezhnev, dressed in slightly larger versions of the same (also with refinement in the crotch), said, "Let us now go to breakfast. We will have good food, high calories, and low bulk, for there will be no eating on board the ship. There'll be water, of course, and fruit juices, but no real beverages of any kind. The sweet Natasha made a terrible face when I suggested we might need a drop of vodka now and then. There were a lot of uncalled-for comments about sots and drunkards. Albert, Albert, how I am persecuted -- and unjustly, too."

Breakfast was indeed plentiful, but not exactly filling. There was gelatin and custard, thick slabs of white bread with butter and marmalade, fruit juices, and several varieties of pills to be sluiced down.

The talk over the breakfast table was moderately animated and, for the most part, dealt with the local chess tournament. There was no mention of the ship or of miniaturization. (Was it bad luck to mention the project?)

Morrison did not object to the direction of comment. He even made a few comments about his own adventures as a chess player of marked lack of renown.

And then, all too soon, the table was being cleared and it was time.

They left for the ship.

34.

They walked in single file, with space between themselves. Dezhnev was first, then Kaliinin, then Boranova, then Morrison, and finally Konev.

Almost at once, Morrison understood the purpose. They were on view and they were being individualized. Along the edges of the corridor were men and women -- employees of the project, obviously -- watching eagerly.

They, at least, must know what was going on, even if the rest of the Soviet Union (let alone the world) did not.

Drezhnev, in front, waved eagerly to the right and left, rather in the fashion of a kindly and popular monarch, and the crowds responded appropriately, shouting, waving, and calling out his name.

Each name was called at various times, for obviously each prospective crew member was known to all. The two women were restrained in their acknowledgement and Konev (as Morrison could see when he looked behind him) was, not unexpectedly, moving along, eyes forward and unresponsive.

And then Morrison was surprised when he distinctly heard the cry, in English, "Hurrah, the American!"

He looked in the direction of the outcry and automatically waved, at which, just as automatically, there was a loud and enthusiastic shout and the words were picked up until "Hurrah, the American!" drowned out all else.

Morrison found himself unable to maintain his earlier sullen resignation. He had never been the object of mob jubilation and he took to it immediately and without trouble, waving and grinning madly. He caught Boranova's gravely amused expression and saw Dezhnev pointing his finger at him in an ostentatious that's-the-American gesture, but allowed neither action to disturb him.

And then they passed out of the line of observers and into the large room in which Shapirov was resting in his mental cocoon of coma. The ship was also in the room.

Morrison looked around with astonishment. He said, "There's a camera crew out there."

Kaliinin was now standing next to him. (How beautiful her breasts are, Morrison thought. They were veiled but not hidden by the thin cotton and he could see why Konev had referred to her as a distraction.) She said, "Oh yes, we'll be on television. Every significant experiment is carefully recorded and there are reporters at each occasion so that it might be described. There was even a camera present when you and I were miniaturized yesterday, but we kept it out of sight since you weren't to know you were to undergo the process."

"But if this is a secret project --"

"It will not always be secret. Someday, when we have reached full success, the details of our progress will be revealed to our people and to the world. -- Sooner, if it seems some other nation is making progress on its own in the same direction."

Morrison shook his head. "It isn't good, this primary concern with priority. Progress would be much faster if additional brains and resources were put on the job."

Kaliinin said, "Would you willingly give up priority in your own field of research?"

Morrison was silent. It was the obvious retort.

Kaliinin, noting this, said with a shake of her head, "I thought so. It is easy to be generous with someone else's money."

Boranova, meanwhile, was talking to someone whom Morrison judged to be a reporter, one who was listening eagerly. Morrison transferred his attention and found himself listening eagerly, too.

Boranova was saying, "This is the American scientist, Albert Jonas Morrison, who is a professor of neurophysics, which is, of course, Academician Konev's field. He is here serving as both an American observer and as an assistant to Academician Konev."

"And there will be five who will be on the ship?"

"Yes. And there will never be so remarkable a five again -- or so remarkable an event -- if miniaturization lasts a million years. Academician Konev is the very first human being ever to have undergone miniaturization. Dr. Sophia Kaliinin is the first woman and Professor Albert Morrison is the first American ever to have undergone miniaturization. Kaliinin and Morrison represent the first multiple miniaturization and were the first to be miniaturized in the ship. And as for today's voyage, this will represent the first miniaturization of five human beings at once and it will be the first occasion on which a miniaturized ship and its crew will be inserted into a living human being. The human being into whom we will be inserted is, of course, Academician Pyotr Shapirov, who was the second human being to be miniaturized and the first to be a casualty of the process."

Dezhnev, who was suddenly at Morrison's side, whispered hoarsely into his ear, "There you are, Albert. You are now an indelible footnote in history. You might have imagined until now that you were a failure, but not so. No one can take from you the fact that you were the first American ever to be miniaturized. Even if your countrymen work out the miniaturization process on their own and miniaturize an American, that American can be no better than second."

Morrison had not thought of that. He was tasting this newfound and permanent personal statistic (if the Soviets would someday release Natalya's statement, undistorted and unrewritten) and he found it savory.

Yet he was not satisfied. "It is not what I want to be remembered for."

"Do a good job on this journey we are to take and you will end up being known for much more," said Dezhnev. "Besides, as my old father used to say, 'It is good to be at the head of the table, even if only one other sits with you and there is but a bowl of cabbage soup to share.'"

Dezhnev stepped away and now Kaliinin was again at Morrison's side. She tugged at his sleeve and said, "Albert."

"Yes, Sophia?"

"You were with him after dinner last night, weren't you?"

"He showed me a map of Shapirov's brain. Marvelous!"

"Did he say anything about me?"

Morrison hesitated. "Why should he have?"

"Because you are a curious man, trying to escape your own private devils. You would have asked."

Morrison winced at her characterization of him. He said, "He defended himself."

"How?"

"He mentioned an earlier pregnancy -- and -- and abortion. It was not something I would believe, Sophia, unless you admitted it."

Kaliinin's eyes became bright with gathering tears. "Did he---did he describe the circumstances?"

"No, Sophia. Nor did I ask."

"He might have told you. I was forced when I was seventeen. It had undesirable consequences and my parents took legal measures."

"I understand. Perhaps Yuri chooses not to believe this."

"He may choose to think that I asked for it, but it is all on the record and the rapist is still in prison. Soviet law is hard on offenders of this type, but only if the situation can be thoroughly proven. I recognize the fact that women can falsely accuse men of rape, but this was not one of those situations and Yuri knows it. How cowardly of him to state the fact without the extenuation."

Morrison said, "Nevertheless, now is not the time to be concerned about this, although I understand how deeply it must affect you. We will have a complicated job to do inside the ship and it will need all our concentration and skill. I assure you, though, that I am on your side and not on his."

Kaliinin nodded and said, "I thank you for your kindness and sympathy, but don't be afraid of me. I will do my job."

At this point, Boranova called out, "We are now to enter the ship in the order in which I call your names: Dezhnev -- Konev -- Kaliinin -- Morrison -- and myself."

Boranova moved immediately into position behind him and murmured, "How do you feel, Albert?"

"Terrible," said Morrison. "Did you expect any other answer?"

"No," said Boranova. "But, nevertheless, I expect you to do your work as though you didn't feel lousy. Do you understand?"

"I will try," said Morrison through stiff lips and, following Kaliinin, he entered the ship a second time.

35.

One by one, they had to adjust themselves into their seats in the arrangement that Kaliinin had described the day before. Dezhnev was front left at the controls, Konev front right, Kaliinin mid-left, Morrison mid-right, and Boranova rear left.

Morrison blinked his eyes and blew his nose into a tissue he found in one of his pockets. What if he needed more tissues than had been supplied him? (A silly thing to worry about, but it was a more comfortable worry than some he might have.) His forehead felt damp. Was that because of the closeness? Would five people breathing -- hyperventilating, perhaps -- into a skimpy volume raise the humidity to maximum? Or would there be sufficient ventilation?

He thought suddenly of the first astronauts of a century before -- even more constricted, more helpless -- but going into a space that was somewhat known and understood, not into a microcosm that was utterly virgin territory.

Yet, as Morrison sat down, he felt the edge of terror dulled. He had, after all, been in the ship before. He had even been miniaturized and deminiaturized and was none the worse for it. It didn't hurt.

He looked around to see how the others were taking it. Kaliinin, to his left, looked coldly blank. A rather icy loveliness. It might have been impressive that she was showing no fear, no anxiety, but (as she had said of him) she was probably sitting there fighting her private devils.

Dezhnev was looking back, perhaps trying to weigh reactions as Morrison was, and very likely for different reasons. Morrison was trying to bolster what little inner courage he could find by borrowing from that of others, whereas Dezhnev (Morrison thought) was weighing responses in order to measure the possible success of the mission.

Konev faced directly forward and Morrison could see only the back of his neck. Boranova was just seating herself and was straightening her flimsy cotton costume.

Dezhnev said, "Friends. Fellow-travelers. Before we can leave, we must each inspect our equipment. Once we start, telling me something doesn't work is not going to strike me as an uproarious joke. As my father used to say, 'The truly wise trapeze artist does not inspect his nails in mid-jump.' It will be my job to make sure that the ship's controls are in order, as I am particularly certain they are, since I designed them myself and supervised the construction.

"As for you, Yuri, my friend, your cereb-whatever-you-call-it -- Or your brain map, as anyone with sense would call it -- has been transferred point for point into the software of your computer behind the plate before you. Please make sure that you know how to operate the plate and then see if the brain map is functional in all respects.

"Sophia, my little dove, I don't know what it is you do except that you make electricity, therefore make sure you can make it in the style you will find suitable. Natalya," his voice lifted slightly, "are you all right back there?"

Boranova said, "I am perfectly all right. Please check Albert. He needs your help most."

"Of course," said Dezhnev. "I have left him for last, so that he can get my full attention. Albert, do you know how to operate the panel before you?"

"Of course not," Morrison snapped. "How should I know?"

"In two seconds, you will know. This contact is to open and that contact is to close. Albert, open! -- Ah, you see, it slides open noiselessly. Now close! Perfect. Now you know. -- And have you seen what is inside the recess?"

"A computer," said Morrison.

"Perfect again, but do me a favor and see if it is a computer equivalent to yours. Your programmed software is in the recess to the side. Please check it out, make sure it fits the computer, and make sure it works as it is supposed to work. I will rely on you to tell me if it is working properly. Please! If you have any doubts, any suspicion, the tiniest hint that something is not just so, we will delay until it is fixed to your entire satisfaction."

Boranova said, "Please, Arkady, no dramatics. There is no time."

Dezhnev ignored her. "But if you tell me that something is wrong that really isn't wrong, my good Albert, Yuri will find out, I assure you, and neither he, nor I, nor anyone will be pleased. So if it occurs to you that inventing a trouble may delay the trip or even cancel it, let it unoccur to you at once."

Morrison could feel his face flushing and he hoped that it would be interpreted as the result of a generous anger over the thought that he might be dishonest in this fashion and not as guilt over a foiled plot.

Actually, as he hovered over his computer, he thought again of what his design and repeated redesign of his program had done. Now and then, these most recent designs of his had brought him -- feelings. It was not something he could identify, but it felt as though his own thought centers were being directly stimulated by the brain waves he was analyzing. He had not reported these, but he had occasionally talked about it and the word had gotten out. Shapirov had called his program a relay station because of that -- if Yuri was to be believed. Well, then, how could he now check if that were working well, when at best he had had the sensation only a few times and at unpredictable occasions?

Or might it all be simply the will-to-believe, the same will that had led Percival Lowell to see canals on Mars?

He realized that it hadn't actually even occurred to him to try to stymie the voyage by saying his program wasn't working. Dearly as he longed to avoid the risk, he could not do so at the cost of vilifying his program.

And then there was suddenly cause for a bit of fresh panic within Morrison's heart. What if the program had been damaged somehow in transit? How could he persuade them that there was truly something wrong and that he was not simply pretending?

But it all worked beautifully, at least as far as he could tell without it being in actual contact with a skull behind which an active brain existed.

Dezhnev said, as he watched Morrison's hands working, "We have placed new batteries in it. American batteries."

"Everything is working properly," said Morrison, "as far as I can see."

"Good. Is everyone satisfied with the equipment? Then lift your pretty rears from your seats and check the sliding panels there. Do they work? Believe me, you would all be very unhappy if they didn't."

Morrison watched Kaliinin open and close the panel (covered with a thin layer of upholstery) that she was sitting on. His own worked similarly when he imitated her motions.

Dezhnev said, "It will take solid wastes, too, within reason, but let us hope we will have no occasion to check that out. In case the worst comes to the worst, there is a small roll of tissue just under the edge of your seat, where you can reach it easily. As we miniaturize, everything loses mass, so excretions would float. There will, however, be a downward current of air to prevent that. Don't let the draft startle you. There is a liter of water in a tiny refrigerator under the side of your seat. It is only for drinking. If you get dirty or sweaty or smelly, just make up your mind to stay that way. No washing until we get out. And no eating. If we lose a few ounces, so much the better."

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.

Kaliinin 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 of 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."

Morrison said, "But since you've never miniaturized anything as large as this ship through so many orders of magnitude, you are depending on the extrapolation of data obtained for a much different size range."

(They're not speaking to an infant, he thought indignantly. I am their equal.)

"Yes," said Boranova. "We are taking the chance that the extrapolation will hold, that something new and unexpected will not surprise us. Still, we live in a Universe that faces us with uncertainties now and then. That can't be helped."

"But we all face death if something goes wrong."

"Didn't you know that?" said Boranova calmly. "Have you been uneasy about this fantastic voyage of ours simply for the pleasure of being uneasy? But we are not alone in this. If things go wrong and the stored energy of miniaturization is released, it will not only destroy us, but it may damage the Grotto to some extent. I'm sure that many an unminiaturized person out there is holding his or her breath and wondering if he or she will survive an explosion. You see, Albert, even those who are not undergoing the risks of miniaturization are not altogether safe."

Dezhnev turned and grinned widely. Morrison noted that one of his upper molars was capped and did not match the rather yellowish tint of his other teeth.

Dezhnev said, "Concentrate on the thought, my friend, that if something goes wrong, you will never know. My father used to say, 'Since we all must die, what better can we ask for than a quick and sudden death?'"

Morrison said, "Julius Caesar said the same thing."

Dezhnev said, "Yes, but we won't even have time to say, 'Et tu, Brute.'"

"There will be no death," said Konev sharply, "and it is foolish to speak of it. The equations are correct."

"Ah," said Dezhnev. "There was a time of superstition when people relied on the protection of God. Thank Equations we now have Equations to rely on."

"Not funny," said Konev.

"I didn't mean to be funny, Yuri. -- Natasha, they're ready out there for us to proceed."

Boranova said, "Then there will be no further need to speculate. Here we go."

Morrison gripped his seat tightly, preparing himself, but he felt nothing happen. Up front, though, the round circle he had made out expanded and grew dimmer and dimmer as it moved very slowly backward until it could no longer be made out.

"Are we moving?" he asked automatically. It was the kind of question one was unable to refrain from asking, even though the answer was obvious.

"Yes," said Kaliinin, "and we are expending no energy in doing so. We are not battling the water molecules. We are being carried along by the water flow in the needle as the cylinder presses in slowly."

Morrison was counting to himself. It kept his mind more efficiently occupied than studying the second hand of his watch would have done.

When he reached a hundred, he said, "How long will it take?"

"How long will what take?" asked Kaliinin.

"When do we reach the bloodstream?"

Dezhnev said, "A few minutes. They are going very slowly, just in case there is some kind of microturbulence. As my father once said, 'It is slower, but better, to creep along the downward path than to leap over the cliff.'"

Morrison grunted, then said, "Are we still miniaturizing?"

Boranova answered from behind him. "No. We are down in the cellular range and that is far enough for our needs now."

Morrison was surprised to find that he was trembling. After all, so much was happening and so many new things existed to think about that he had somehow lacked the room to remain in terror. He was not terrified, at least not to an acute stage -- yet for some reason he continued to tremble.

He attempted to will himself to relax. He tried to let himself droop, but that required more than an effort of will. It needed gravitational pull and there was none to speak of. He closed his eyes and slowed his breathing. He even tried humming, under his breath, the choral singing from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.

Finally he felt himself forced into comment on the matter. "I'm sorry," he said. "I seem to be shaking."

Dezhnev snickered. "Aha! I wondered who would be the first to mention it."

Boranova said, "It's not you, Albert. We are all shaking slightly. It's the ship."

Morrison was at once elevated into fright. "Is something wrong with it?"

"No. It's just a matter of size. It's small enough to feel the effect of Brownian motion. You know what that is, don't you?"

It was a purely rhetorical question. Boranova would surely expect a high school student of physics to know what Brownian motion was, let alone Morrison, and yet Morrison found himself explaining it in his own mind -- not in words, but as a flash of concept.

Every object suspended in a liquid is bombarded on all sides by the atoms or molecules of the liquid. These particles strike randomly and therefore unevenly, but the unevenness is so small compared to the total that it is unnoticeable and has no measurable effect. As an object grows smaller, however, the unevenness becomes greater among the smaller and smaller number of particles striking the object in a given time. The ship was small enough now to respond to the slight excesses of coillisions -- first in one direction, then in another -- randomly. It moved slightly in consequence, a random trembling.

Morrison said, "Yes, I should have thought of that. It will get worse if we continue to become smaller."

"Actually, it won't," said Boranova. "There will be other counteracting effects."

"I don't know of any," said Morrison, frowning.

"Nevertheless, there will be such effects."

"Leave it to the Equations," said Dezhnev in an affectedly pious tone. "The Equations know."

Morrison said, "I think this could make us seasick."

"It certainly would," said Boranova, "but there is a chemical treatment for that. We have been dosed with the same chemical that cosmonauts use against space sickness."

"Not I," said Morrison indignantly. "Not only haven't I been treated, I haven't even been forewarned."

"We told you as little as possible of the discomforts and dangers out of concern for your comfort, Albert. As for treatment, you consumed your dose with your breakfast. -- How do you feel?"

Morrison, who had begun to feel a bit squeamish with all this talk about sickness, decided that he felt fine. Astonishing, he thought, the tyranny exerted over the body by the mind.

He said in a low voice, "Tolerable."

"Good," said Boranova, "because we are now in Academician Shapirov's bloodstream."

38.

Morrison stared through the transparent wall of the ship.

Blood?

His first impulse was to expect redness. What else?

He peered out, squinting his eyes slightly, but could see nothing, even in the gleaming light of the ship. He might as well have been in a rowboat, drifting down the calm surface of a pond on a dark and cloudy night.

Morrison's thoughts suddenly veered. In the absolute sense, the light within the ship had the wavelength of gamma rays -- and very hard gamma rays at that. Yet the wavelengths were the result of miniaturizing ordinary visible light and to the equally miniaturized retinas and optic lobes of the people within the ship they were still light rays and had the property of light rays.

Outside, just beyond the hull of the ship, where the miniaturization field ended, the miniaturized photons enlarged to ordinary light-wave photons and those that were reflected back to the ship were miniaturized again when the field boundary was crossed. The others might be accustomed to this paradox-ridden situation, but to Morrison the attempt to grasp the effect of a miniaturized bubble within a sea of normality was dizzying. Was the boundary visible, marking off the miniaturized from the normal? Was there a discontinuity somewhere?

Following his line of thought, he whispered to Kaliinin, who was bent over her instrument, "Sophia, when our light leaves the miniaturization field and expands, it must give off heat energy, and when it's reflected back into the ship it must absorb energy in order to be miniaturized and the energy must come from us. Am I right?"

"Perfectly, Albert," said Kaliinin without looking up. "Our use of light results in a small but steady loss of energy, but our motors can supply that. It is not a significant drain."

"And are we really in the bloodstream?"

"Never fear. We are. Natalya will probably dim the internal lights in a while and you'll see the outside more clearly then."

Almost as though that were a signal, Boranova said, "There! Now we can relax for a few moments." The lights dimmed.

At once, objects outside the ship came dimly into view. He could not make them out clearly yet, but they were immersed in something heterogeneous, something with objects floating in it, as would be true of blood.

Morrison stirred uneasily, straining at the constraint of his seat belt. He said, "But if we are in the bloodstream, which is at a temperature of thirty-seven degrees Celsius, we'll --"

"Our temperature is conditioned. We'll be quite comfortable," said Kaliinin. "Really, Albert, we've thought of these things."

"Perhaps you have," said Morrison, slightly offended, "but I haven't been privy to those thoughts, have I? How can you condition the temperature when you don't have a cold sink?"

"We don't have one here, but there's outer space, isn't there? The microfusion motors give off a thin drizzle of subatomic particles which, under miniaturized conditions, have a mass of very nearly zero. They therefore travel at virtually the speed of light, penetrating matter as easily as neutrinos do and carrying off energy with them. In less than a second they are in outer space, so that the effect is of transferring heat from within the ship into outer space and we keep cool. Do you see?"

"I see," muttered Morrison. It was ingenious -- but perhaps obvious, after all, to those used to thinking in terms of miniaturization.

Morrison noticed that the controls of the ship, immediately under Dezhnev's hands, were luminous, as were the instruments before Kaliinin. He struggled to raise himself in his seat and managed to see a corner of the computer screen in front of Konev. It contained what Morrison thought might be a map of the circulatory system of the neck. For a moment, before his body ceased its fight against the webbing of the belt and he sank down into his seat again, he saw a small red dot on the screen, which, he deduced, was a device to mark the position of the ship in the left internal carotid artery.

He was panting a little from his effort and had to wait a few moments to regain control of his breath. The recess in which his own computer rested was illuminated and he shielded that bit of light from his face by raising his left hand. Then he looked out.

Far in the distance, Morrison could see something that looked like a wall, a barrier of some sort. It receded, then approached, then receded again, over and over, rhythmically. Automatically, he looked at his watch for a few seconds. It was clearly the pulsation of the arterial wall.

He said to Kaliinin in a low voice, "Obviously the passage of time is not affected by miniaturization. At least the pulsation of the heart is -- just what it ought to be, even though I view it with miniaturized eyes and time it with a miniaturized watch."

It was Konev who answered. "Time isn't quantized apparently, or at least it isn't affected oy the miniaturization field, which may be the same thing. That's convenient. If we had to take a shifting time flow into account, things might become unbearably complicated."

Morrison silently agreed and turned his thoughts in other directions.

If they were inside an artery, and if the ship were merely being swept forward by the current, the forward movement would have to be in spurts, one spurt for each contraction of the distant heart (the very distant heart -- on the scale of their present size). And if that were so, he ought to feel those spurts of motion.

He closed his eyes and tried to hold as still as possible, to move not at all except for the trembling of the Brownian motion -- which, after all, he could in no way control.

Ah, he could feel it. A slight but distinct push backward as the spurt started, a slight push forward as it came to an end.

But why was the spurt not more energetic? Why was he not yanked backward and forward in a sickening fashion?

And then he thought of the mass he no longer possessed. With his remaining mass so tiny, his inertia was similarly tiny. The viscosity of the normal fluid of the bloodstream exerted an enormous cushioning effect, so that the spurts were all but lost in the Brownian motion.

And, ever so slightly, Morrison felt himself relax. He felt something inside himself untighten a bit. The miniaturized environment was unexpectedly benign.

He looked through the ship's transparent hull again, his eyes focusing on the volume between himself and the arterial wall. He could see bubbles, faintly outlined. No, not bubbles, but things of substance -- many of them. Some turned slowly and changed apparent shape as they did so, so they were not spheres. They were disks, he now realized.

The truth burst in on him and shamed him. Why was he so slow in identifying them, since he knew he was in a bloodstream? -- But then he knew the answer to that, too. He could not really conceive of himself as being in a bloodstream; it was too easy to suppose he was in a submarine making its way through an ocean. He would naturally expect to see the familiar sights of an ocean and would be foolishly puzzled at anything he saw that did not fit his assumption.

He would see the red corpuscles of the blood -- the erythrocytes -- and fail to recognize them.

Of course, they weren't red but faintly yellowish. Each one absorbed some shortwave light to produce that color. Get them in bulk, though, millions and billions of them, and they would absorb enough such light to appear red -- in arterial blood, anyway, and they were in an artery now. Once the cells withdrew the oxygen carried by the red corpuscles, the individual corpuscle would seem faintly bluish, and, in bulk, blue-purple.

He watched the erythrocytes with interest and saw them quite clearly now that he had recognized them for what they were.

They were biconcave discs, the centers depressed on each side. To Morrison, they were enormous, considering that, under normal conditions, they were microscopic, perhaps seven and a half micrometers in diameter and a little over two micrometers thick. Now here they were, swollen objects the size of his hand.

There were many of them in sight and they had a tendency to pile together in roulettes. These weren't static, however. Some corpuscles would peel off the roulettes and others would add on and there were always some single corpuscles in view. Those that were in sight tended to stay in sight; they weren't moving relative to the ship.

"I take it," said Morrison, "that we're simply going with the flow."

"That's right," said Kaliinin. "It saves energy."

But, at that, the red corpuscles weren't entirely stationary relative to the ship. Morrison noticed one corpuscle drifting slowly toward the ship, carried perhaps by a bit of microturbulence or by a random push of Brownian motion. The corpuscle flattened slightly and momentarily against the plastic of the ship and then rebounded.

Morrison turned to Kaliinin. "Did you see that, Sophia?"

"The red corpuscle nudging us? Yes."

"Why didn't it miniaturize? Surely it entered the field."

"Not quite, Albert. It bounced off the field, which extends a small distance beyond any miniaturized object, such as our ship, in every direction. There's a certain repulsion between normal matter and miniaturized matter, and the greater the extent of miniaturization, the stronger the repulsion. That's why very tiny objects such as miniaturized atoms or subatomic particles go through matter without interacting with it. It's also that which keeps the miniaturized state metastable."

"How do you mean?"

"Any miniaturized object is always surrounded by normal matter, unless it is in deep space. If nothing served to keep normal matter out of the field, such matter would forever be miniaturizing and, in the process, absorbing energy from the miniaturized object. The drain would be significant and the miniaturized object would quickly deminiaturize. In fact, it would be impossible to induce miniaturization in the first place, since the energy crammed into the miniaturizing object would leak away at once. What we would then be trying to do, in effect, would be to miniaturize the entire Universe. -- Of course, the repulsion isn't extremely strong at our size. If a red corpuscle collided with sufficient force, the colliding surface might undergo some miniaturization."

Morrison turned back to the view and, almost at once, something that was obviously a shredded red corpuscle drifted into view.

"Ah," said Morrison, "is that an example of one that approached us too forcefully?"

Kaliinin bent toward Morrison to get a better view in the direction he was pointing. She shook her head. "I don't think so, Albert. Red corpuscles have a limited life of about a hundred and twenty days. The poor things wear out and break down. In the volume of blood we can see, several dozen would break down every minute, so that torn and damaged red corpuscles would be a common sight. -- And that is a good thing, too, for it means that if we were to use our power and rush through the bloodstream, breaking up a few red corpuscles, or even a few million, it would make no difference to Shapirov. We couldn't possibly break down red corpuscles at a rate even approaching that of natural breakdown."

Morrison said, "What about platelets?"

"Why do you ask?"

"That must be a platelet I see there." He pointed. "It's lentil-shaped and only half the size of the red corpuscles."

A pause and then Kaliinin nodded. "Ah yes, I see it now. That's a platelet. There should be one of them to every twenty red corpuscles."

That was about right, Morrison thought. If he were on a carousel, reaching out for rings as he passed, and reach red corpuscle were an ordinary iron ring, the occasional platelet would represent the coveted brass ring.

Morrison said, "My point, Sophia, is that platelets are more fragile than red corpuscles and when they break they start the clotting process. If we break a few, we'll start a clot forming in the artery. Shapirov will then have another stroke and surely die."

Boranova, who had been listening to the exchange between Morrison and Kaliinin, interposed at this point. "In the first place," she said, "platelets are not as fragile as all that. They can strike us lightly and rebound without harm. The danger of another stroke lies at the arterial wall. The platelets are moving much faster relative to the inner wall of the carotid artery than they are relative to us. And the inner wall of the artery may be layered with cholesterol and lipid plaques of all kinds. That surface is therefore much rougher and uneven than the smooth plastic hull of our ship. It's at the arterial wall that the clots might form -- not here. And even that isn't too enormous a danger. A single platelet -- or even a few hundred of them -- might be broken and still be insufficient to start the clotting process in a way that doesn't damp out. Massive quantities of platelets must break to turn the trick."

Morrison watched a platelet that vanished, now and then, behind the numerous red corpuscles. He wanted to see if it would make contact with the ship and, if it did, what would happen. The platelet, however, did not oblige but remained at a distance.

It then occurred to Morrison that the platelet appeared to be as large as his hand. How could that be if they were half the diameter of the red corpuscles and the red corpuscles were themselves as large as his hand? His eyes sought out a red call and, sure enough, it seemed considerably larger than his hand.

He said, troubled, "The objects out there are getting larger."

"We're still miniaturizing, obviously," called out Konev, apparently annoyed at Morrison's seeming inability to draw the proper conclusion from an observed fact.

Boranova said, "That's right, Albert. The coronary is narrowing as we progress and we want to keep pace with it."

"We don't want to get stuck in the pipe," said Dezhnev genially, "by being too fat." Then, as another thought struck him, he added, "You know, Natasha, I've never been this thin in my life."

Boranova said, unmoved, "You are as fat as ever, Arkady, on the scale of Planck's constant."

Morrison was in no mood for airy banter. "But how far do we miniaturize, Natalya?"

"Down to molecular size, Albert."

And all of Morrison's apprehensions surged up again.

39.

Morrison felt foolish at his failure to realize at once that they were still miniaturizing and, at the same time, bitterly resentful at Konev for making it plain he recognized that folly. The trouble was that all these others had been living and thinking miniaturization for years and he himself, a newcomer to the concept, was still trying to cram it into his reluctant brain. Couldn't they sympathize with his difficulties?

He studied the red corpuscles moodily. They were distinctly larger. They were wider across than his chest and their boundaries were becoming less sharp. Their surfaces quivered, as though they were canvas bags full of syrup.

He said in a low voice to Kaliinin, "Molecular size?"

Kaliinin looked quickly at him, then turned away and said, "Yes."

Morrison said, "I don't know why that should bother me, considering the small size to which we have already miniaturized, but there's something rather frightening about being as small as a molecule. How small a molecule, do you suppose?"

Kaliinin shrugged. "I don't know. That's up to Natalya. A virus molecule, perhaps."

"But this sort of thing has never been tried."

Kaliinin shook her head. "We're charting unknown territory."

There was a pause and then Morrison said uneasily, "Aren't you afraid?"

She looked at him furiously, but continued to whisper. "Of course I'm afraid. What do you think I am? It isn't sensible not to be afraid when you have rational reason for it. I was afraid when I was violated. I was afraid when I was pregnant and deserted. I've spent half my life being afraid. Everyone does. That's why people drink as much as they do, to wipe out the fear that grips them." She was virtually hissing through clenched teeth. "Do you want me to be sorry for you because you're afraid?"

"No," muttered Morrison, taken aback.

"There's nothing remarkable about being afraid," she went on, "as long as you don't act afraid -- as long as you don't let yourself be twisted into doing nothing because of fear, into having hysterics because of fear, into failing --" She interrupted herself in a bitter, whispered self-accusation. "I've had hysterics in my time." Her glance flickered in the direction of Konev, whose back was straight, stiff, and motionless.

"But now," she went on, "I intend to do my part, even if I am half-dead with fear. No one will tell from my actions that I'm afraid. And that had better be your case, too, Mr. American."

Morrison swallowed hard and he said, "Yes, of course," but it sounded very unconvincing, even to him.

His eyes flicked backward, then forward. There was no use whispering in those close quarters. There was no whisper so low it would not be overheard.

Boranova, behind Kaliinin, was obviously busy with her miniaturization mechanism, but there was a tiny smile on her face. Approval? Contempt? Morrison couldn't tell.

As for Dezhnev, he turned his head and called out, "Natasha, it is continuing to narrow. Should you hasten the miniaturization?"

"I'll do what is needed, Arkady."

Dezhnev's eye caught Morrison's and he winked, with a grin. "Don't believe little Sophia," he said, pretending to whisper. "She is not afraid. Never afraid. She just doesn't want you to be alone with your uneasiness. She has a very soft heart, our Sophia, as soft as her --"

"Keep quiet, Arkady," said Sophia. "Surely your father must have told you that it is not wise to beat the empty teapot you call your head with the rusty spoon you call your tongue."

"Ah," said Dezhnev, rolling his eyes, "that was harsh. What my father did say was that no knife could be honed as sharp as a woman's tongue. -- But, Albert, seriously, reaching molecular size is nothing. Wait until we have learned to attach relativity to quantum theory and then, with a tiny puff of energy, we will reduce ourselves to subatomic size. Then you will see."

"What will I see?" said Morrison.

"You would see instant acceleration. We would simply take off --" He removed his hands from the controls momentarily in order to make a whizzing gesture with them, accompanied by a shrill whistle.

Boranova said calmly, "Hands on the controls, Arkady."

"Of course, my dear Natasha," said Dezhnev, "A moment of excusable drama, no more." Then to Morrison, "Instantly we would go at nearly the speed of light, the much faster speed of light under such conditions. In ten minutes we could be across the Galaxy, in three hours at the Andromeda, in two years at the nearest quasar. And if that's not fast enough, we can get smaller still. We have faster-than-light travel, we have antigravity, we have everything. The Soviet Union will lead the way to it all."

Morrison said, "And how would you guide the flight, Arkady?"

"What?"

"How would you guide it?" said Morrison seriously. "As soon as the ship swoops down to the proper sizelessness and masslessness, it will, in effect, radiate outward at hundreds of light-years per second. That means that if there were trillions of ships, they would shoot out in every direction with spherical symmetry -- like sunlight. But since there would only be one ship, it would move outward in one particular direction, but in an absolutely unpredictable one."

"That's a problem for the clever theoreticians -- like Yuri."

Konev had not indicated any interest in the conversation up to that point, but now he snorted loudly.

Morrison said, "I'm not sure that it's wise to develop the traveling and carelessly assume the steering. Wouldn't your father say: 'A wise man does not build the roof of a house first.'"

"He might," said Arkady, "but what he once did say was this: 'If you find a gold key without a lock, don't throw it away. The gold is also sufficient.'"

Boranova stirred in her seat behind Morrison and said, "Enough with the saws and sayings, my friends. -- Where are we, Yuri? Are we making progress?"

Konev said, "In my opinion we are, but I would like the American to support my judgment, or correct it."

"How can I do either?" snapped Morrison. "I'm strapped in."

"Then unstrap," said Konev. "if you float a bit, at least you can't float very far."

For a moment, Morrison fumbled at his seat belt, having forgotten the location of the appropriate contact. Kaliinin's hand moved quickly and he was free.

"Thank you, Sophia," he said.

"You will learn," she replied indifferently.

"Lift yourself so that you can see over my shoulder," said Konev.

Morrison did so and, inevitably, pushed too hard against the back of the seat ahead. As a result of his insignificant inertia, he moved upward explosively and struck his head against the roof of the ship. Had this happened at the same speed under unminiaturized conditions, he might well have suffered the blinding pain of a concussion, but the very lack of mass and inertia that had sent him shooting upward had bounced him back almost once with no sensation of pain and virtually none of pressure. He was as easy to stop as he had been to start.

Konev clicked his tongue. "Gently. Just lift your hand upward edgewise, turn it slowly, then push it down flatwise, slowly. Do you get it?"

Morrison said, "I understand."

He followed Konev's suggestion and moved up slowly. He caught at Konev's shoulder and stopped himself.

Konev said, "Now, look here at the cerebrograph. Do you see where we are at this moment?"

Morrison found himself looking at an enormously complex network, with a distinct three-dimensional effect. It consisted of sinuous rills branching outward in such a way as to form an exceedingly intricate tree. In one of the larger branches there was a small red dot, moving slowly and progressively.

Morrison said, "Can you give me a broader view so that I can place this section?"

Konev, with another click of his tongue, one that might have signified impatience, expanded the view. "Does this help?"

"Yes, we're on the edge of the brain." He could recognize the individual convolutions and fissures. "Where do you plan to go?"

The picture magnified somewhat. Konev said, "We'll curve off here into the interior of the neuronic layer -- the gray matter. And where I'd like to head for, by this route" -- he named the areas in Russian rapidly and Morrison struggled to translate them in his mind into English -- "is this area here which, if I have read your papers correctly, is a crucial node of the neuronic network."

"No two brains are exactly alike," said Morrison. "I can pin down nothing with certainty, all the more so if the particular brain in question is one I have never studied. Still, I would say the area you're heading for looks hopeful."

"Good, as far as that goes. And if we get to my destination, will you be able to tell more accurately whether we are at a crossroads where several branches of the network meet or, if not, in what direction and how far such a crossroads might be?"

"I can try," said Morrison cautiously, "but please remember that I have made no guarantees as to my abilities in this connection. I have not offered you any promises. I have not volunteered --"

"We know that, Albert," said Boranova. "We ask only that you do what you can."

"In any case," said Konev, "that's where we're going as a first approximation and we'll get there before long, even though the current is slowing. We are, after all, almost down to capillary size. -- Strap yourself in, Albert. I'll let you know if I need you."

Morrison managed to operate the seat belt without any help, proving that even small triumphs can be sweet.

Almost to capillary size, he thought, and looked out through the walls of the ship.

The vessel wall was still at a comfortable distance, but it had changed in appearance. Earlier, the steadily pulsating walls had been rather featureless. Now, however, Morrison could make out no pulsing and the walls were beginning to look faintly tiled. The tiling, Morrison realized, consisted of the cells that made up the thinning walls.

He could not actually get a clear look at the tiling, either, for the red corpuscles were in the way. They were now soft bags nearly the size of the ship. Occasionally, one ballooned past the ship at close quarters and was pushed elastically inward at the point of contact, without undergoing any visible harm.

One time a small smear was left behind. Perhaps the contact had been just a little too forceful and a line of miniaturized molecules had been formed against the hull, Morrison thought. The smear lifted off quickly, however, and dissolved in the surrounding fluid.

The platelets were another story, since by their very nature they were much more fragile than the red corpuscles.

One made a head-on collision with the ship. Or perhaps it had been slowed by a collision with a red corpuscle so that the ship had overtaken it. The prow of the ship penetrated deeply and the skin of the platelet punctured. Its contents oozed out slowly, mixing with the plasma and then forming into two or three long strings that tangled with each other. They clung to a portion of the ship's hull for quite a time, trailing behind.

Morrison waited to see any evidence of a clot forming. None did.

Minutes later Morrison saw, up ahead, a milky fog that seemed to fill the blood vessel from wall to wall, pulsating and undulating. Inside it were dark granules that moved steadily from one side to the other. To Morrison, it looked like a malignant monster and he couldn't help but cry aloud in a moment of terror.

CHAPTER 10 -- CAPILLARY

If you want to know whether water is boiling, don't test it by hand.

-- Dezhnev Senior

40.

Dezhnev turned his head, startled, and said, "It's a white cell, Albert, a leucocyte. It is nothing to be bothered about."

Morrison swallowed and felt distinctly annoyed. "I know it's a white cell. It just caught me by surprise. It's bigger than I thought it would be."

"It's nothing," said Dezhnev. "A piece of pumpernickel, really, and no bigger than it should be. We're just smaller. And even if it were as big as Moscow, so what? It's just floating along in the bloodstream as we are."

"As a matter of fact," said Kaliinin gently, "it doesn't even know we're here -- I mean, that we're anything special. It thinks we're a red corpuscle."

Konev seemed to be addressing the air in front of him in an abstracted sort of way, saying, "White cells do not think."

A flash of resentment crossed Kaliinin's face, flushing it slightly, but her voice remained even. "By saying 'think,' Albert, I am merely using a figure of speech. What I mean is that the white cell's behavior toward us is that which it would display toward a red corpuscle."

Morrison cast another look toward the large billowing cell up ahead and decided that, harmless or not, he found its appearance distasteful. He looked with much appreciation at the contrast made by Kaliinin's pretty high-cheekboned face, and wondered why she had never had that little mole under the left corner of her lip removed. Then he wondered if it didn't add just the right trifle of piquancy to a face that might otherwise be considered too pretty to possess character.

That moment of beside-the-point speculation effectively removed the uneasiness that the white cell's appearance had introduced and Morrison returned, in his mind, to Kaliinin's statement.

"Does it act as though we're a red corpuscle because we're the right size for it?"

"That may help," said Kaliinin, "but it's not the real reason. You judge a red corpuscle to be a red corpuscle because you see it. The white cell judges a red corpuscle to be one because it senses the characteristic pattern of the electromagnetic pattern on its surface. White cells are trained -- that is just another figure of speech -- let us say, adapted -- to ignore that."

"But this ship doesn't have the electromagnetic pattern of a red corpuscle ... Ah, but I guess you've taken care of that."

Kaliinin smiled in gentle self-satisfaction. "Yes, I have. It is my speciality."

Dezhnev said, "That is it, Albert. Our little Sophia knows, completely in her head" -- he tapped his right temple -- "the exact electromagnetic pattern of every cell, every bacterium, every virus, every protein molecule, every --"

"Not quite," said Kaliinin, "but those I forget, my computer can supply. And I have a device here that can use the energy of the microfusion motors to place positive and negative electric charges on the ship in whatever pattern I choose. The ship has the charge pattern of a red corpuscle on itself as best as I can duplicate it, and that is close enough to cause the white cell to react -- or, rather, not to react -- accordingly."

"When did you do that, Sophia?" asked Morrison with interest.

"When we were reduced to the size that would make us a potential object of interest for a white cell or for the immune apparatus generally. We don't want antibodies swarming over us, either."

A thought occurred to Morrison. "Since we're talking about being reduced in size, why hasn't the Brownian motion gotten worse? I should think it would batter us more as we got smaller."

Boranova put in from behind, "So it would if we were unminiaturized objects of this size. Since we are miniaturized, there are theoretical reasons that prevent Brownian motion from getting very bad. It's nothing to worry about."

Morrison thought about it, then shrugged. They weren't going to tell him anything they thought might make him too knowledgeable in the matter of miniaturization and what did that matter? The Brownian motion had not grown worse. In fact, it had grown less troublesome (or was he just getting used to it?) and he had no objection to that. That made it, as Boranova said, nothing to worry about.

His attention shifted back toward Kabinin. "How long have you been training in this field, Sophia?"

"Since my graduate days. Even without Shapirov's coma, we all knew the time would come when a trip through a bloodstream would become necessary. We've been planning something like this for a long time and we knew that this skill of mine would be needed."

"You might have planned an automated crewless ship."

"Someday, perhaps," said Boranova, "we will, but not yet. We cannot, even now, make the automation equivalent to the versatility and ingenuity of a human brain."

"That's true," said Kaliinin. "An automated pattern maker would place us in the red corpuscle pattern as a way of following the path of least resistance, and it would do little more than that. After all, it would be a useless expense and perhaps an impractical exercise altogether to try to instil in an automated pattern maker the ability to change appropriately in response to all sorts of improbable conditions. When I am present, however, I have the capacity to do almost anything. I can change the pattern to meet an unlikely emergency, to test the value of something earlier unthought of, or simply to suit a whim. -- For instance, I could change the ship's pattern to that of an E coli bacterium and the white cell would attack at once."

"I'm sure of that," said Morrison, "but don't do it, please."

"No fear," said Kaliinin. "I won't."

But Boranova's voice sounded in sudden -- and uncharacteristic -- excitement. "On the contrary, Sophia, do that!"

"But, Natalya --"

"I mean it, Sophia. Do it. We haven't tested your instrument under field conditions, you know. Let's try it."

Konev muttered, "That's a waste of time, Natalya. Let us first get to where we're going."

Boranova said, "It won't do us any good to get there -- if we can't enter a cell. Here is an immediate opportunity at hand to see if Sophia can control the behavior of a cell."

"I agree," said Dezhnev boisterously. "This has been a remarkably uneventful trip so far."

"That's the best kind, I should think," said Morrison.

But Dezhnev held up a disapproving hand. "My old father used to say: 'To want peace and quiet above all else is to hope for death.'"

"Go ahead, Sophia," Boranova said firmly. "We waste time."

Kaliinin hesitated a bare moment -- the time required, perhaps, to remember that Boranova was captain of the ship -- then her hand flickered over the controls of her device and the configurations upon the television screen altered markedly. (Morrison admired, in an apprehensive sort of way, the speed with which she did it.)

Morrison lifted his eyes to the white cell ahead, and for a moment he saw no change. And then it seemed as though a fit of trembling overtook the monster and Dezhnev whispered, "Aha, it recognizes the presence of its prey."

At the extreme forward end of the white cell, its substance seemed to bulge toward and all around them in an uneven circle. At the same time, the substance in the center retreated as though it were being sucked in. Morrison envisioned a monster's jaws preparing for a meal.

Konev said, "It works, Natalya. That creature ahead is preparing to envelop and engulf us."

Boranova said, "So it is. Very well, Sophia, restore us to the red cell mode."

Again Kaliinin's fingers flickered and the configurations on the screen returned (as nearly as Morrison's memory could judge) to what they had earlier been.

This time, however, the white cell remained unaffected. Its outer rim was shooting past the ship, which was now heading into the deep central concavity.

41.

Morrison was appalled. The entire ship was encased by something that looked precisely like fog -- a gritty granular fog, within which a multilobed object, faintly denser than the rest, writhed its way around them. Morrison knew that this must be the nucleus of the white cell.

Konev snapped out angrily, "Apparently, once the white cell gears itself for engulfment, the rest is automatic and nothing will stop it. -- What now, Natalya?"

Boranova replied quietly, "I admit I hadn't expected this. The fault is mine."

"What's the difference?" said Dezhnev, frowning. "It's no matter. What can this blob do to us? It cannot crush us. It is not a boa constrictor."

Konev said, "It can try to digest us. We're in a food vacuole right now and digestive enzymes are pouring in around us."

"Let them pour," said Dezhnev. "I wish them the joy of the attempt. The ship's wall is not digestible to anything a white cell has. After a while, it will reject us as indigestible residue."

"How will it know?" asked Kaliinin.

"How will it know what?" snapped Dezhnev.

"How will it know we are indigestible residue? It was spurred into activity by our bacterial charge pattern."

"Which you removed."

"Yes, but as someone remarked, the white cell, once stimulated, apparently has to go through its whole cycle of activity. It is not a thinking device; it is entirely automatic." Kaliinin was frowning now and looking around at the others. "It seems to me that the white cell will continue trying to digest us until it is given the appropriate stimulus that will put its engulfment mechanism into reverse and allow it to eject us."

Boranova said, "But we now have the charge pattern of a red corpuscle again. Don't you think that would stimulate rejection? It doesn't eat red cells."

"I think it's too late for that," said Kaliinin a little diffidently, as though nervous about standing up to Boranova. "The red corpuscle pattern keeps it unengulfed, but once it is engulfed by some means, it would seem that the pattern alone is insufficient to spark ejection. After all, here we are; we are not being ejected."

Her eyes -- all five pairs of eyes, in fact -- uneasily surveyed the wall of the ship. They were trapped in the cloudy cell.

"I think," Kaliinin went on, "that there's a charge pattern to the kind of indigestible residue left by the bacteria the white cell is designed to engulf and that that alone would be a trigger for ejection."

"In that case," said Dezhnev, "give it the pattern it wants, Sophia, my little chicken."

"Gladly," said Kaliinin, "if you will tell me what it is because I don't know. I can't just try patterns at random. The number of possible patterns is astronomical."

"As a matter of fact," said Konev, "can we be sure the white cell ejects anything at all? Perhaps indigestible residue becomes part of its granular material and remains within it until it is removed and dismantled in the spleen."

Boranova said sharply (perhaps weighed down with the knowledge that she was responsible for their present situation, thought Morrison), "There is no point in babbling. Is there a constructive suggestion?"

Dezhnev said, "I can turn on the microfusion motors and bore a way out of the white cell."

"No," said Boranova sharply. "Do you know the direction which we are heading at this moment? Inside this food vacuole we may be slowly turning or the vacuole itself may be drifting through the cell's substance. If you smash your way outward, you may damage the wall of the blood vessel and the brain itself."

Konev said, "For that matter, white cells can wiggle out of a capillary, working their way between the cells that make up the capillary wall. Since the path we have taken has led us into an arteriole branch that has narrowed to just about capillary size, we can't even be sure that we're still in the bloodstream."

"Yes, we can," said Morrison suddenly. "The white cell can pinch itself small, but it can't pinch us small. If it squeezes out of the vessel, it would be forced to leave us behind. -- And that would be a good thing, except that it hasn't done it."

"There you are," said Dezhnev. "I should have thought of it sooner. Natasha, make us bigger and crack the white cell open. Give it indigestion like it has never had."

Again a sharp negative from Boranova. "And crack the blood vessel open, too? The blood vessel is fairly small now, not much wider than the white cell."

Kaliinin said, "If Arkady will get in touch with the Grotto, someone there might have an idea."

There was silence for a moment and then Boranova said in a half-strangled way, "Not just yet. We have done something foolish -- well, I have -- and you know as well as I do that it would be better for all of us if we didn't need help."

"We can't wait forever," said Konev restlessly. "The fact is that I don't know where we are by now. I can't rely on the white cell drifting with the bloodstream or with maintaining any given speed, for that matter. Once we are lost, it may take considerable time to locate ourselves and we may need help from the Grotto to do it, too. In that case, how do we explain being lost?"

Morrison said, "How about the air-conditioning?"

There was a pause and Boranova said, "What do you mean, Albert?"

"Well, we're sending miniaturized subatomic particles out of the ship and into interplanetary space. They carry heat away from the ship, I was told, so that we remain cool even in the all-pervasive warmth of the body we're in. That coolness must be something the white cell is not designed to tolerate. If we turn up the air-conditioning and become colder still, there may come a time when the white cell will be uncomfortable enough to eject us."

Boranova mulled this over and said evenly, "I think -- possibly -- that might work."

Dezhnev said, "Don't bother thinking. I've turned up the air-conditioning to maximum. Let's see if anything happens besides all of us getting frostbite."

Morrison watched the fog outside. He was well aware that he was as tense as the others. He was not in agony over an unfortunate decision -- an ill-advised experiment. Nor was he biting his nails over the fate of Shapirov and yet -- Tapping his own emotions, it occurred to him that having come thus far, having been miniaturized and finding himself in a small cerebral arteriole, he suddenly had an urge to check out his theories. Had he come this far in order to turn back and spend the rest of his life, holding up an imaginary thumb and forefinger nearly in contact and saying in the depth of his mind, "Missed it by that much"?

Very well, then. He had passed from desperately not wanting to attempt the project to a definite reluctance to abort it.

Dezhnev's voice broke in on his thoughts. "I don't think this little animal likes what's happening."

Morrison was conscious of a biting chill, and shivered as he became aware that the thin cotton uniform he wore was a totally inadequate shield against this sudden onset of winter.

And perhaps the white cell "thought" this, too, for the fog thinned and a rift appeared in it. Then, in another moment or two, the surroundings were clear and the white cell was a ball of fog to their rear, drifting away -- or perhaps crawling away -- amoebalike, from an unpleasant experience.

Boranova said (sounding a little dumbfounded), "Well, it's gone."

Dezhnev waved both hands high in the air. "A toast -- if we had a small swallow of vodka with us -- to our American hero. It was an excellent suggestion."

Kaliinin nodded at Morrison and smiled. "It was a good idea."

"As good as mine was bad," said Boranova, "but at least we know that your technique can do what it should, Sophia -- as long as we know enough. And as for you, Arkady, ease the air-conditioning intensity before we all catch pneumonia. -- So you see, Albert, we have already done well to take you with us."

"Perhaps," said Konev tightly, "but in the meanwhile, I think the white cell took us on an excursion. We are not where we were and I do not know exactly where we are."

42.

Boranova's lips tightened and she asked with some difficulty, "How can you not know where we are? We were inside the white cell only a few minutes. It couldn't have moved us into the liver, could it?"

Konev seemed at least equally upset. "No, we're not in the liver, Madame." (He came down heavily on the honorific, giving it the French pronunciation.) "But I suspect the white cell, dragging us with it, has turned into a branching capillary so that we are now out of the mainstream of the arteriole -- which was not yet quite a capillary -- that we were carefully following."

"Which capillary did it turn into?" asked Boranova.

"That is what I don't know. There are a dozen capillaries it might have turned into and I don't know which one it was."

"Doesn't your red marker --" began Morrison.

"My red marker," said Konev at once, "works by dead reckoning. If I know where we are and the speed at which we're progressing, it will move along with us, turning when I tell it to turn."

"You mean," said Morrison incredulously, "it only marks your position insofar as you know your position -- no more than that?"

"It is not a magical marker, no," said Konev freezingly. "It acts to mark our place and keep track of it, lest we lose it in the confusion of the three-dimensional complexity of the bloodstream and the neuronic networks, but we have to guide it. At this stage, it's not complex enough to guide itself. In an emergency, we can be located from outside, but that's a time-consuming process."

It seemed to be time for someone to ask a classically foolish question and that someone turned out to be Dezhnev. He said, "Why should the white cell have turned off into a capillary?"

Konev turned red. Speaking so rapidly that Morrison could hardly make out the Russian, he said, "And how should I know that? Am I privy to the thought processes of a white cell?"

"That's enough," said Morrison sharply. "We're not here to fight with each other." (He noted the quick look that Boranova had shot toward him and he chose to interpret it as representing gratitude.)

"Actually," he went on, "the solution is simple. We're in a capillary. Very well. The current is at a creeping pace in capillaries, so where is the difficulty in making use of the famous microfusion engines? If you put them into reverse, we will just back out of this capillary and eventually -- not a very long eventually, either -- we will be back at the junction point and in the arteriole again. Then we continue onward until we get to the proper turnoff and into the proper capillary. We'll have lost a little time and spent a little power, that's all."

Morrison's statement was greeted with solemn stares. Even Konev, who generally spoke -- when he did -- with his face steadfastly forward, turned now, his angry frown concentrated on Morrison.

Morrison said uneasily, "Why are you all looking at me like that? It's a perfectly natural course of procedure. If you had been driving a car and accidentally turned into a narrow alley and found it the wrong one, wouldn't you back out?"

Boranova was shaking her head. "Albert, I'm sorry. We have no reverse."

"What?" Morrison stared at her blankly.

"We have no reverse. We have only a forward drive. Nothing more."

Morrison said, "How is it possible to -- No reverse gear at all?"

"None."

Morrison looked around at the other four faces and then burst out, "Of all the stupid, incompetent, maddening situations. It's only in the Sov--"

He stopped.

Boranova said, "Finish the thought. You were going to say that it's only in the Soviet Union that such a situation would be allowed to arise."

Morrison swallowed, then said grumpily, "I was going to say that, yes. It might be an ill-tempered statement, but I'm angry -- and the statement may be true, at that."

"And do you think we're not angry, Albert?" said Boranova with her glance level upon him. "Do you know how long we've been working on a ship like this? Years! Many years! Since miniaturization first seemed to become a practical possibility, we have been thinking of entering a bloodstream someday and exploring the working mammalian body -- if not the human body -- from within.

"But the more we planned and the more we designed, the more expensive the project grew, and the more stubborn the budgeteers in Moscow became in response. I can't blame them; they had to balance the expense of this project against other expenses in areas that were far less problematical than miniaturization was. So, as a result, the ship grew simpler and simpler in concept, as we cut out first this, then that, then the other thing. Do you remember when you Americans were building your first shuttles? What you planned and what you got?

"In any case, we ended up with an unpowered craft, fit for observation only. We planned to enter the bloodstream and let the current carry us where it would. When we had all the information we could get, we would slowly deminiaturize. This would kill the animal which we had been studying -- it would only be an animal, of course, but even so some of us agonized over that. That was all this ship was planned for. Nothing more. We had no way of knowing that we would suddenly be faced with a situation in which we had to invade a human body, in which we had to get to a specific spot in the brain, in which we would have to emerge without killing the body. In which we had to -- and all we had was this ship, which was not meant for the job at all."

The anger and contempt on Morrison's face had vanished into a frown of concern. "What did you do?"

"We worked as fast as we could. We improved the microfusion motors and a few other things, frightened that at any moment Shapirov would die, and equally frightened -- or more so -- that our hurry would cause us to make some fatal mistake. Well, I don't think we made any fatal mistakes, but still the microfusion motors we ended up with were to be used for acceleration only when absolutely necessary -- they had originally been designed only for lighting, air-conditioning, and other low-energy uses. Of course, we lacked the time to do a complete job, so -- no reverse gear."

"Didn't anyone point out that there might just be a chance you would want to go into reverse?"

"That would mean more money and there was none to be had. After all, we had to compete with space, which was a going concern, with the realistic needs of agriculture, commerce, industry, crime control, and half a hundred other departments of government all clutching at the national purse. Of course we never had enough."

Dezhnev sighed and said, "And so here we are. As my good father used to say: 'Only simpletons go to fortune-tellers. Who else would be in such a hurry to hear bad news?'"

"Your father is telling me nothing I don't know, Arkady. At least with that remark. I'm afraid to ask, but can we simply turn the ship?" Morrison asked.

Dezhnev said, "You are wise to be afraid. In the first place, the capillary is too narrow. The ship has no room to turn."

Morrison shook his head impatiently. "You don't have to do it in the ship's present size. Shrink it a bit. Miniaturize it. You're going to have to miniaturize anyway before getting inside a cell. Do it now and turn it."

Dezhnev said mildly, "And in the second place, we can't turn it any more than we can go backward. We have a forward gear and that is all."

"Unbelievable," whispered Morrison to himself. Then aloud, "How could you consent to begin this project with so inadequate a ship?"

Konev said, "We had no choice and we were not counting on playing games with white cells."

Boranova, her face expressionless, her voice toneless, said, "If the project fails, I will take full responsibility."

Kaliinin looked up and said, "Natalya, assigning blame will not help us. Right now, we have no choice. We must go ahead. Let us move on, miniaturize if we have to, and find some likely cell to enter."

"Any cell?" said Konev in a stifled fury, and addressing no one. "Any cell? What good will that do?"

"We might find something useful anywhere we go, Natalya," said Kaliinin.

When Konev made no response, Boranova said, "Is there any objection to that, Yuri?"

"Objection? Of course there's objection." He did not turn, but his very back seemed stiff with anger. "We have ten billion neurons in the brain and someone is suggesting that we wander among them blindly and choose one at random. It would be an easier task to drive along Earth's roads in an automobile and randomly choose some human being on the wayside in the hope that he might be a long-lost relative. Much easier. The number of human beings on Earth is a little more than half the number of neurons in the brain."

"That is a false analogy," said Kaliinin, carefully turning her face toward Boranova. "We are not engaged in a blind search. We are looking for Pyotr Shapirov's thoughts. Once we detect them, we need only move in the direction in which the thoughts strengthen."

"If you can," said Morrison, shaking his head. "If your single forward gear happens to be carrying you in the direction in which the thoughts weaken, what do you do then?"

"Exactly," said Konev. "I had plotted out a course that would have taken us directly to an important junction in the particular neuronic network that is related to abstract thought -- according to Albert's researches. The bloodstream would have carried us there and whatever tortuous path it took, the ship would have followed. And now --" He lifted both his arms and shook them at the unresponsive Universe.

"Nevertheless," said Boranova, her voice strained, "I don't see that we have any choice but to do what Sophia suggests. If that fails, we must find a way out of the body and perhaps try again another day."

"Wait, Natalya," said Morrison. "There just may be another way to remedy the situation. Is it at all possible for one of us to get outside the ship and into the bloodstream?"

43.

Morrison did not expect an affirmative answer. The ship, which had seemed to him earlier to be a marvelous example of high technology, had now shrunk in his imagination to a stripped-down scow of which nothing at all could be expected.

It seemed to him best, from any practical standpoint, to do as Kaliinin had suggested -- to try any brain cell they could reach. But if that failed, it would mean getting out of the body and trying again, as Boranova had just said, and Morrison did not feel he would be physically capable of going through this again. He would try any wild scheme to prevent that.

"Is it possible to get out of this ship, Natalya?" he asked again as she looked at him, dazed. (The others were no more responsive.) "-- Look, don't you understand? Suppose you want to collect samples? Do you have a dredge, a scoop, a net? Or can someone get outside and go scuba diving?"

Boranova finally seemed to overcome her surprise at the question. Her heavy eyebrows lifted into an attitude of wonder. "You know, we do. One diving suit for reconnoitering, the plans say. It should be under the back row seats. Under here, in fact."

She unclasped herself and went into a slow float, then managed to pull herself into a horizontal position, her light cotton clothing billowing.

"It's here, Albert," she said. "I presume it has been checked -- I mean, against gross errors. There would be no leaks, no obvious flaws. I don't know that it's been field-tested."

"How could it be?" said Morrison. "I take it this is the first time the ship -- or anything -- has been in a bloodstream."

"I imagine it must have been checked in warm water adjusted to the proper viscosity. I blame myself for not checking on this, but of course there was no thought at any time of anyone leaving the ship. I had even forgotten the suit existed."

"Do you at least know if the suit has an air supply?"

"Indeed it does," said Boranova with sonie asperity. "And it has a power supply that makes it possible for it to have a light of its own. You mustn't think of us as utter incompetents, Albert. --Though," she said with a rueful shrug, "I suppose we -- or, at least, I -- have given you some reason to think so."

"Does the suit have flippers?"

"Yes, on both hands and feet. It is meant for maneuvering in fluid."

"In that case," said Morrison, "there is perhaps a way out."

"What are you thinking of, Albert?" asked Kaliinin.

Morrison said, "Suppose we miniaturize a bit further so that the ship can turn easily without scraping the capillary walls. Someone then gets into the suit, moves outside the ship -- assuming you have an air lock of some sort -- and, propelling himself by means of the flippers, turns the ship. Once the ship is turned, the person gets back into the ship, which is now facing in the correct direction. The motor is started and we push our way back against the feeble capillary current to the joining with the arteriole and thus back to our original path."

Boranova said thoughtfully, "A desperate remedy, but our condition, too, is desperate. Have you ever done any scuba diving, Albert?"

"Some," said Morrison. "That's why I thought of this."

"And none of us have -- which is why we didn't think of it. In that case, Albert, unclasp yourself and let us get this suit on you."

"On me?" Morrison sputtered.

"Of course. It is your idea and you're the one with experience."

"Not in the bloodstream."

"No one has experience in the bloodstream, but the rest of us don't even have it in water."

"No," said Morrison savagely. "This thing is your baby -- you four. I've done the thinking that got you out of the white cell and I've just done the thinking that could get you out of your present fix. That's my share. You do the doing. One of you."

"Albert," said Boranova. "We're all in this together. In here, we are neither Soviets nor Americans; we are human beings trying to survive and to accomplish a great task. Who does what depends on who can do what best, and nothing more."

Morrison caught Kaliinin's eye. She was smiling very slightly and Morrison thought he could read admiration in that smile.

Groaning softly at the folly of being influenced in so childish a manner by a hunger for admiration, Morrison knew he would agree to this madness of his own suggestion.

44.

Boranova had the suit out. Like the ship itself, it was transparent, and, except in the head portion, it lay wrinkled and flat. To Morrison, it looked unpleasantly like a life-sized caricature of a human being drawn in outline by a child.

He reached out to touch it and said, "What is it made of? Plastic wrap?"

Boranova said, "No, Albert. It is thin, but it is not weak and it is exceedingly tough and inert. No foreign material will cling to it and it should be perfectly leakproof."

"Should be?" echoed Morrison sardonically.

Dezhnev interrupted. "It is leakproof. I seem to recall it was tested some time ago."

"You seem to recall it."

"I blame myself for not having checked it personally in going over the ship, but I, too, forgot its existence. There was no thought --"

Morrison bitterly exclaimed, "I'm sure your father must have told you once that self-blame is a cheap penalty for incompetence, Arkady."

Dezhnev replied, raspingly, "I am not incompetent, Albert."

Boranova cut in, "We will have our fights when this is all over. Albert, there is nothing to worry about. Even if there were a microscopic leak, the water molecules in the plasma outside are far larger in comparison to the suit than they would be under normal conditions. A leak in a normal suit might let in normal water molecules, but that same leak in a miniaturized suit would not allow those same water molecules, now giants in comparison, to enter."

"That makes sense," muttered Morrison, looking for solace.

"Of course," said Boranova. "We can insert a standard oxygen cylinder right here -- small size, but you won't be out there for long -- an absorption canister for carbon dioxide here, and a battery for the light. So, you see, you will be equipped."

"Just the same," said Konev, turning to look at Morrison dispassionately, "you had better do it as quickly as possible. It's warm out there -- thirty-seven degrees Celsius -- and I don't think the suit has a cooling mechanism."

"No cooling mechanism?" Morrison looked at Boranova questioningly.

Boranova shrugged. "It is not easy to cool an object in an isothermal medium. This entire body, which is as large as a mountain to us, is all at a constant temperature of thirty-seven. The ship itself can be cooled by means of the microfusion engines. We can't build an equivalent device into the suit, but then, as we keep saying, you won't be out for very long. -- Still, you had better take off the suit you're wearing now, Albert."

Morrison demurred. "It's not heavy, just a thin layer of cotton."

"If you perspire with it on," said Boranova, "you will be sitting in wet clothes when you return to the ship. We have no spare clothing we can ofrer you."

"Well, if you insist," Morrison said. Then he removed his sandals and tried to strip his one-piecer off his legs, something which proved surprisingly difficult in his nearly weightless state.

Boranova, noting his discomfort, said, "Arkady, please help Albert into the suit."

Dezhnev worked his way, with difficulty, over the back of his seat to where Morrison floated, in a cramped posture, against the hull of the ship.

Dezhnev helped Morrison into the legs of the suit one at a time, though the two, working together, were scarcely less clumsy than Morrison alone had been. (Everything about us, Morrison thought, is designed to work in the presence of gravity.)

Dezhnev maintained a running commentary as they struggled. "The material of this suit," he said, "is precisely that of the ship itself. Entirely secret, of course, though, for all I know, you have a similar material in the United States -- also secret, I am sure." He paused on a small note of inquiry.

"I wouldn't know," muttered Morrison. His bare leg worked its way into a sheath of thin plastic. It didn't stick to his leg, but moved smoothly along, yet it somehow gave the impression of being cold and wet without, in reality, being either. He had never encountered a surface quite like that of the plastic suit and he didn't know how to intepret the sensation.

Dezhnev said, "When the seams close, they become virtually a single piece of material."

"How do they open again?"

"The electrostatics can be neutralized once you're back in the ship. For now, most of the exterior of the suit has a mild negative charge, balanced by a positive one on the inner surface. Any portion of the suit will cling to any positively charged area on the ship's surface, but not so strongly that you can't pull loose."

Morrison said, "What about the rear end of the ship where the engines are?"

"You need not be concerned about them. They are working at minimum power for our cooling and illumination and any particles emerging from them will pass through you without noticing your presence at all. The oxygen cylinders and waste absorption work automatically. You will produce no bubbles. You need only breathe normally."

"One must be grateful for some technological blessings."

Dezhnev frowned and said darkly, "It is well-known that Soviet spacesuits are the best in the world and the Japanese are second."

"But this is not a spacesuit."

"It is modeled on one in many ways." Dezhnev made as though to pull the headpiece down.

"Wait," said Morrison. "What about a radio?"

Dezhnev paused. "Why would you need a radio?"

"To communicate."

"You will be able to see us, and we will be able to see you. Everything is transparent. You can signal to us."

Morrison drew a deep breath. "In other words, no radio."

Boranova said, "I am sorry, Albert. It is really only a very simple suit for small tasks."

Morrison said sourly, "Still, if you do a thing, it's worth doing well."

"Not to bureaucrats," said Dezhnev. "To them, if you do a thing, it's worth doing cheaply."

There was one advantage of irritation and annoyance, thought Morrison; it did tend to wipe out fear. He said, "How do you plan to get me out of the ship?"

Dezhnev said, "Right where you're standing, the hull is double."

Morrison turned sharply to look and, of course, went floundering. He could not seem to remember for three seconds running that he was essentially weightless. Dezhnev helped him control his body at some cost to himself (We must look like a pair of clowns, Morrison thought.)

Morrison found himself staring, at last, at the indicated portion of the hull. Now that his attention was drawn to it, it did seem faintly less transparent than the other portions, but that might well have been his imagination.

Dezhnev said, "Hold still, Albert. My father used to say: 'It is only when a child has learned to hold still that it can be considered a creature of sense.'"

"Your father was not considering zero-gravity conditions."

"The air lock," said Dezhnev, ignoring Morrison's comment, "is modeled on the type we have in our lunar surface enclosures. The inner layer of the lock will peel back, then move around you and seal. Most of the air between the layers will be sucked out -- we can't afford to waste air -- which will give you a strange feeling, no doubt. Then the outer layer will peel open and you will be outside. Simple! -- Now, let me close your helmet."

"Wait! How do I get back?"

"The same way. In reverse."

Now Morrison was closed in completely and a definite claustrophobic sensation helped unsettle him, as the coldness of fear began to wipe out the saving sensation of anger.

Dezhnev was pushing him against the hull and Konev, having managed to turn about in his seat, was helping. The two women remained calmly in their seats and were staring intently.

Morrison did not for a moment feel that they were staring at his body; he wished they were, in fact. That would be relatively benign. He was absolutely certain they were watching to see if the air lock would work, if his suit would work, if he himself would remain alive for more than a few minutes once he was outside the ship.

He wanted to cry out and call off everything, but the impulse to do so remained only an impulse.

He felt a slippery motion behind him and then the whipping of a transparent sheet before him. It was like the seat belt clasping itself around his waist and chest, but here the sheet enclosed him entirely, head to toe, side to side.

It clung to him more and more tightly, as the air between was pumped out. The material of his suit seemed to strain outward as the air inside it pushed against the developing vacuum outside.

And then the outer layer of the hull behind him whipped away and he felt a soft thrust that sent him tumbling outward and into the blood plasma within the capillary.

He was out of the ship and on his own.

CHAPTER 11 -- DESTINATION

Going there may be most of the fun -- but only if you get there in the end.

-- Dezhnev Senior

45.

Immediately, Morrison felt the enveloping warmth and gasped. As Konev had said -- the temperature was 37 degrees Celsius. It was the heat of a sweltering summer day and there was no escape. No shade, no breeze.

He looked around, getting his bearings. Clearly, Boranova had miniaturized the ship further while he had clumsily clambered into the suit. The tiled wall of the capillary was farther away. He could see only a bit of it, for between himself and the wall was a huge cloudy object. A red corpuscle, of course. Then a platelet went slipping between the red corpuscle and the wall, but very slowly.

All of them -- red corpuscle, platelet, himself, the ship -- were moving along with the small creeping current within the capillary, if one judged by the slow drifting motion of the tilings in the wall.

Morrison wondered why he felt the Brownian motion as little as he did. There was indeed the sensation of movement and the other objects in sight appeared to tremble. Even the tile marks of the capillary walls seemed to shift somehow, in a rather peculiar manner.

But there was no time to be keenly analytical. He had to get things done and get back within the ship.

He was a meter or so from the ship. (A meter? Purely subjective. How many micrometers -- how many millionths of a meter was he separated from the ship in real measurements? He didn't pause to try to work out an answer to the question.) He twiddled his flippers to get back to the ship. The plasma was distinctly more viscous than seawater -- unpleasantly so.

The heat continued, of course. It would never stop while the body he was in remained alive. Morrison's forehead was getting moist. -- Come, he had to get started.

His hand reached out to the place where he had left the ship, but it touched nothing. It was almost as though it were pushing into a soft rubbery cushion of air, although his eyes told him there was nothing between that portion of the hull of the ship and his suited hand except, at best, a film of fluid.

A moment of thought and he saw what was happening. The outer skin of his suit carried a negative electric charge. So did that portion of the hull he was touching. It was repelling him.

There were other portions of the hull, however. Morrison slid his hands along until he was aware of touching the plastic. That was not in itself enough, however, for his hands moved along the area as though it were infinitely slippery.

And then, almost with a click, his left hand froze. It had passed a region of positive charge and remained in place. He tried to pull free first by a gentle backward push and then more frantically. He might as well have been riveted to the spot. He felt farther along with his right hand. Anchor that and he might be able to pull his left hand free.

Click. Anchored now by his right hand, he pulled at his left. Nothing happened. He clung to the hull, crucified there.

Drops of perspiration rolled down his forehead and collected in his armpits.

He shouted uselessly, wiggling his legs in an ecstasy of effort.

They were looking at him, but how could he gesture to his trapped hands? The red corpuscle that had been companion to the ship since he had emerged from it drifted closer and nudged him against the hull. His chest, however, did not cling. Luckily, it was not up against a positively charged region.

Kaliinin was looking toward him. Her lips were moving, but he could not lip-read -- not Russian, at any rate. She did something with her computer and his left arm pulled free. Presumably, she had weakened the intensity of the charge.

He nodded his head in what he hoped would be interpreted as a gesture of thanks. Now it would only be necessary to work his way back, positively charged area by positively charged area, until he reached the rear of the ship.

He began the motion and found himself more or less pinned, but not so much this time by the harsh pull of the electromagnetic interaction as by the soft, pillowy push of the red corpuscle.

"Get back!" shouted Morrison, but the red corpuscle knew nothing of shouts. Its role was purely passive.

Morrison thrust at it with his hands and used his leg flippers to push harder. The elastic surface film of the red cell gave and bellied inward, but resisted more strongly, the more it gave until, finally, Morrison was pushing uselessly and, as he tired, was forced back against the ship.

He paused to catch his breath, which was difficult, hot and sweat-drenched as he was. He wondered whether he would be disabled first by dehydration or by the fever which would surely come over him if he could not get rid of the heat his own body was producing -- and all the more so because of the effort he was making to free himself of the red corpuscle.

He lifted his arm again and brought it down, the plastic flipper held edgewise. It sliced through the pellicle of the corpuscle, puncturing it like a balloon. The surface tension of the film pulled the opening wider and wider. Matter exuded -- a thin cloud of granules -- and the red corpuscle began to shrink.

Morrison felt as though he had killed an inoffensive living creature and experienced a pang of guilt -- then decided that there were trillions of others in the circulatory system and that a red corpuscle only had 120 days of functioning anyhow.

Now he could pull back toward the rear.

No fog collected on the inner surface of his suit. Why should it? The surface was as warm as he was and nothing would cling to the plastic anyway. What would have been fog was probably collecting as little pools of sweat in this corner and that of the suit, rolling around as he did.

He was back at the rear now, back where the ship's streamlining failed because the jets of each of the three microfusion engines broke the smooth lines. Here he was as far from the center of gravity of the ship as possible. (With luck, the other four would move as close to the front of the ship as they could. -- He wished he had thought to make that explicit before getting into the suit.) What he had to do was to find positively charged areas that would hold his hands back and then -- push!

He was feeling a little dizzy. Physical? Psychological? The effect was the same, either way.

He took another deep breath and blinked his eyes as perspiration leaked into them (there was no way he could brush it away and again he felt a spasm of fury against the fools who had designed a suit only microscopically better than none at all).

He found the handholds against the hull and paddled his feet. Would this work? The mass he was trying to turn was only micrograms in quantity, but he had at his disposal -- what? Microergs? He knew that the square-cube law gave him a tremendous advantage, but how much efficiency could he put into his push?

But the ship moved. He could tell that by the motions of the tiling on the capillary wall. He could now reach that wall with his feet, so the ship must be lying across the capillary. He had turned it 90 degrees.

When his feet touched the capillary wall, he pushed with perhaps injudicious savagery. If he were to punch a hole in the wall, the results might be incalculably bad, but he was aware he had little time left and he could not think beyond that. Fortunately, his feet rebounded as though they had sunk into spongy rubber and the ship turned a bit faster.

Then stuck.

Morrison looked up blearily, squinting and willing himself to see. (He was almost past the ability to breathe in the squalid damp heat of the suit's interior.) It was another red corpuscle. Surely it was another red corpuscle. They were as closely spaced in capillaries as -- as cars on a busy city street.

This time he did not wait. The flipper on his right hand came down at once, carving open a vast swath, and this time he did not spend a microsecond of worry over the murder of an innocent object. His legs worked again and the ship moved.

He hoped it was shifting in the same direction as before. What if he had managed to twist himself upside down in his mad attack on the red corpuscle and he was simply pushing the ship back into the wrong direction? He was almost beyond caring.

The ship was now parallel to the long axis of the capillary. Gasping, he tried to study the tiles. If they were moving forward toward the prow of the ship, then the ship was moving backward with the current and it was facing the junction of the arteriole.

He decided it was. No, he didn't care. Right way, wrong way, he had to get back into the ship.

He was not ready to sell his life for success.

Where? Where?

His hands were sliding along the walls of the ship. Sticking here. Sticking there.

Vaguely he saw the dim figures on the other side of the wall. Motioning. He tried to follow the gestures.

They were fading out.

Up? Signaling up? How could he clamber up? He had no strength.