His last truly sane thought, for a while, was that he needed no strength. Up meant no more than down for a weightless, massless body.

He wriggled upward, forgetting why, and a fog of darkness came down upon him.

46.

The first thing Morrison sensed was cold.

A wave of cold. Then a touch of cold.

Then light.

He was staring at a face. For an interval of time, he did not grasp the fact that it was a face. It was just a pattern of light and shade at first. Then a face. Then the face of Sophia Kaliinin.

She said softly, "Do you know me?"

Slowly, creakily, Morrison nodded.

"Say my name."

"Sophia," he croaked.

"And to your left?"

His eyes turned, and difficulty focusing, then he turned his head. "Natalya," he said.

"How do you feel?"

"Headache." His voice sounded small and far away.

"It will go away."

Morrison closed his eyes and surrendered to the peace of nonstruggle. Just to do nothing was the highest good. To feel nothing.

Then he felt a cool stroke over his groin and his eyes opened again. He discovered that the suit had been removed and he was naked.

He felt arms holding him down and heard a voice say, "Don't worry. We can't give you a shower. There's no water for that. But we can use a damp towel. You need to be cooled -- and cleaned."

"... undignified," he managed, struggling over the syllables.

"Foolish. We'll dry you now. A little deodorant. Then back into your one-piece." Morrison tried to relax. It was only when he felt cotton against his body that he spoke again. He asked, "Did I turn the ship properly?"

"Yes," said Kaliinin, nodding her head vigorously, "and fought off two red corpuscles most savagely. You were heroic."

Morrison said hoarsely, "Help me up." He pushed down with his elbows against his seat and, of course, drifted into the air.

He was brought down.

"I forgot," he muttered. "Well, strap me in. Let me sit and recover."

He fought down the dizzy feeling, then said, "That plastic suit is worthless. A suit for use in the bloodstream of a warm-blooded animal must be cooled."

"We know," said Dezhnev from his seat at the controls. "The next one will be."

"The next one," spat Morrison bitterly.

"At least," said Dezhnev, "you did what was necessary and the suit made that possible."

"At a cost," said Morrison, who then slipped into English in order to express his feelings more accurately.

"I understood that," said Konev. "I lived in the United States, you know. If it will make you feel better, I'll teach you how to say every one of those words in Russian."

"Thanks," said Morrison, "but they taste better in English." He licked his dry lips with a dry tongue and said, "Water would taste still better. I'm thirsty."

"Of course," said Kaliinin. She held a bottle to his lips. "Suck at it gently. It won't pour when it has no mass to speak of. -- Slowly, slowly. Don't waterlog yourself."

Morrison drew his head away from the bottle. "Do we have enough water?"

"You must replace what you lost. We'll have enough."

Morrison drank more, then sighed. "That's much better. -- There was something I thought of when I was out in the capillary. Just a flash. I wasn't sufficiently myself to understand my own thought." He bent his head and ,covered his eyes with his hands. "I'm not sufficiently myself to remember it now. Let me think."

There was silence in the ship.

And then Morrison said with a sigh and a rather massive clearing of his throat. "Yes, I remember it."

Boranova sighed also. "Good, then you have your memory."

"Of course I have," said Morrison pettishly. "What did you think?"

Konev said coldly, "That a loss of memory might be an early sign of brain damage."

Morrison's teeth clicked as his mouth snapped shut. Then he said, feeling a chill in the pit of his stomach. "Is that what you thought?"

"It was possible," said Konev. "As in Shapirov's case."

"Never mind," said Kaliinin insinuatingly. "It didn't happen. What was your thought, Albert? You still remember." It was half-confident statement, half-hopeful question.

"Yes, I do remember. We're pushing upstream now, aren't we? So to speak?"

"Yes," said Dezhnev. "I'm using the motors -- expending energy."

"When you reach the arteriole, you'll still be heading upstream and you can't turn. You'll be heading back the way you came. The ship will have to be turned again from outside. It can't be me. Do you understand? It can't be me!"

Kaliinin put her arm around his shoulder. "Shh! It's all right. It won't be you.

"It won't be anyone, Albert, my friend," said Dezhnev jovially. "Look ahead. We're coming to the arteriole now."

Morrison looked up and felt a twinge of pain. He must have grimaced, for Kaliinin put a cool hand on his forehead and said, "How is your headache?"

"Getting better," said Morrison, shaking her hand off rather querulously. He was peering forward and relieved to find that his vision seemed normal. The cylindrical tunnel up ahead was widening somewhat and beyond an elliptical lip he could see a distant wall in which the tiling was much less pronounced.

Morrison said, "The capillary comes off the arteriole like the branch of a tree at an oblique angle. We go through that opening up ahead and we'll be pointed three quarters of the way upstream -- and once we nudge the far wall, we'll bounce off and be moving fully upstream."

Dezhnev chuckled. "My old father used to say: 'Half an imagination is worse than none at all.' Watch, little Albert. See, I will wait until we are almost at the opening and I will throttle down the motor so that we make our way up the current very slowly. Now our ship sticks its snout out of the capillary -- a little more -- a little more -- and now the main stream of arteriole blood catches us and pushes against the nose and turns us -- and I push out a little more -- and it turns us a bit more -- and I come out the whole way -- and behold I've been turned, I am heading downstream once more, and I cut the motors."

He grinned triumphantly. "Wasn't that well-done?"

"Well-done," said Boranova, "but impossible without what Albert had done first."

"True enough," said Dezhnev, waving his hand. "I give him full credit and the Order of Lenin -- if he will take it."

Morrison felt infinite relief. He would not have to go out again. He said, "Thank you, Arkady." Then, rather bashfully, he added, "You know, Sophia, I'm still thirsty."

At once she handed him the bottle, but he hesitated. "Are you sure I'm not drinking more than my share, Sophia?"

"Of course you are, Albert," said Kaliinin, "but more than your share is your share. Come, water is easily recycled. Besides, we have a small additional supply. You did not fit into the air lock neatly. An elbow stuck well out and we had to crack the inner layer and pull it in -- which meant the entry of some plasma. Not much, thanks to its viscosity. It's been miniaturized of course and is being recycled now."

"Once miniaturized, it can't amount to more than a droplet."

"That's all it does amount to," said Kaliinin, smiling, "but even a droplet is an extra supply and since you brought it in, you deserve an extra supply. Logic is logic."

Morrison laughed and sucked up additional water greedily, squeezing it out of the flexible container astronaut-style. He was beginning to feel comparatively normal -- more than that. He was feeling the kind of dreamy contentment that comes from being freed from the intolerable.

He tried to concentrate, to gain some sense of reality, He was still in the ship. He was still the size of a bacterium, more or less. He was still in the bloodstream of a man in a coma. His chance of living another few hours was still problematical. -- And yet, even as he told himself all this, he nevertheless couldn't flog himself out of the feeling that the mere absence of unbearable heat, the mere being with others, the mere existence of a woman's care was, in itself, a touch of heaven.

He said, "I thank not only Arkady but all of you for pulling me in and caring for me."

"Don't bother," said Konev indifferently. "We need you and your computer program. If we had left you out there, the project would be a failure, even if we found the right cell."

"That may be so, Yuri," said Boranova, clearly indignant, "but at the time we were bringing Albert in, I did not think of that, but only of saving his life. I cannot believe that even you were cold-blooded enough to feel no anxiety for a human being who was risking his life to help us, except insofar as we needed him."

"Obviously," muttered Konev, "plain reason is not wanted."

Plain reason was certainly what Morrison wanted. Since the mention of brain damage, he had been testing himself, thinking, trying to come to conclusions. He said, "Arkady, when the microfusion engines are working, you are converting miniaturized hydrogen into miniaturized helium, and some of the helium escapes along with miniaturized water vapor or other materials designed to produce thrust."

"Yes," said Arkady warily. "And if that is so, what follows?"

"And the miniaturized particles -- atoms and less -- simply escape through Shapirov and through the Grotto and through the Earth and end in outer space, as you told me."

"Again -- what follows?"

"Surely," said Morrison, "they do not stay miniaturized. We are not initiating a process, are we, in which the Universe will gradually be filled with miniaturized particles as humanity proceeds to make use of miniaturization more and more?"

"If we did, what harm? All human activity for billions of years could not add a significant quantity of miniaturized particles to the Universe. But it is not so. Miniaturization is a metastable condition, which means that there is always a chance that a miniaturized particle will snap out, spontaneously, to true stability, that is, to the unminiaturized state." (Out of the corner of his eye, Morrison saw Boranova raise a warning hand, but Dezhnev was always hard to stop when in oral flood.)

"Naturally," he went on, "there is no predicting when a particular miniaturized particle will snap out of it, but it is a good wager that almost all will be beyond the moon when it happens. As for the few -- there are always a few -- who snap out of miniaturization almost at once, Shapirov's body can absorb them --"

He then seemed to see Boranova's gesture, which had grown peremptory, and he said, "But I'm boring you. As my old father said on his deathbed: 'My proverbs may have bored you, but now you can look forward to hearing them no more, so that you will mourn me less and, therefore, suffer less.' The old man would have been surprised -- and disappointed, perhaps -- to know how much we children mourned him, even so -- but I think I won't risk it with my companions in this ship --"

"Exactly," snapped Konev, "so please stop, especially since we are now approaching the capillary that we should be entering. Albert, lean over and study the cerebrograph. Do you agree?"

Kaliinin, carefully addressing Boranova, said, "Albert is in no condition to be badgered with cerebrographs."

"Let me try," said Morrison, struggling with his seat belt.

"No," said Boranova with authority. "Yuri can make this decision his own responsibility."

"Then I so make it," said Konev, looking sullen. "Arkady, can you get near the wall on our right and catch the current that turns into the capillary?"

Arkady said, "I've been racing the red corpuscles and I have caught one that is drifting toward the right wall. It will push us -- or the small eddy that is pushing it will also push us. -- Ah, you see, it is taking place, just as it did in the previous cases where we had to branch off. Each time I managed to use the natural current correctly." A broad grin creased his happy face as he said, "Applause, everybody. Say, 'Well-done, Arkady.'"

Morrison obligingly said, "Well-done, Arkady," and into the capillary the ship went.

47.

Morrison had recovered sufficiently to be tired of invalidism. Outside the transparent hull of the ship, the wall of the capillary was strongly tiled and seemed fairly close on all sides. It looked very much like the other capillary, the one in which he had turned the ship around.

He said, "I want to see the cerebrograph."

He flung open his seat belt, the first really decisive movement he had made since returning to the ship, and stared rebelliously at the perturbed Kaliinin as he did so.

He pushed himself gently upward into a float, holding himself in position to look over Konev's shoulders by repeated corrections -- first up, then down. He said, "How do you know you are in the right one, Yuri?"

Konev looked up and said, "Counting and dead reckoning. See here. If we cut down the scale of the cerebrograph, this is the arteriole we've been following off the carotid. We took this branch and that one, and then it's a matter of counting the capillaries as they branch off on the right.

"We had our run-in with the white cell right here and in the time the white cell had at its disposal, this capillary was the only one it could reasonably have reached. Once we were turned around and got back to the arteriole, we followed its narrowing structure and matched what we saw against the cerebrograpb. The pattern of branch points outside matched almost exactly the pattern described by the cerebrograph and that alone assures me we were following the right path. Now we have gone into this capillary."

Morrison's left hand slipped off the smooth texture of the back of Konev's seat and his attempt to make up for that twisted him into a comic handstand on the outspread fingers of his right hand. He labored to right himself even as he thought, savagely, that another improvement that must be introduced in later versions of the ship would be handholds on the seats and in other strategic areas.

He said, panting, "And where will this capillary take us?"

Konev said, "Directly to one of the centers which you believe to be a crossroad for the processes of abstract thought. -- Let's cut down the scale of the cerebrograph again. Right here."

Morrison nodded. "Please remember that I've located them in human beings only indirectly, judging from my findings in animal brains. Still, if I'm correct, that should be the superior external skeptic node."

Konev said, "According to you, there should be eight such nodes, four on each side. This one, however, is the largest and most intricate on the left side and therefore stands the best chance of giving us the data we need. Am I right?"

"I think so," said Morrison cautiously, "but please remember that my reasoning has not been accepted by the scientific community."

"And do you begin to doubt it now, too, Albert?"

"Caution is a reasonable scientific attitude, Yuri. My concept of the skeptic node makes sense in the light of my observations, but I have never been able to test the matter directly -- that's all -- and I do not wish it said later that I misled you."

Dezhnev snickered. "Skeptic node! No wonder your countrymen are skeptical of the whole notion, Albert. My father used to say: 'People are ready enough to laugh at you. Don't make funny faces in order to encourage them.' -- Why didn't you call it 'thought node' in simple Russian? It would have sounded much better."

"Or 'thought node' in simple English," said Morrison patiently. "But science is international and one uses Greek or Latin when possible. The Greek word for 'thought' is 'skeptis.' It has given us 'skeptical' both in English and in Russian to indicate a habitual doubting attitude. That's because the very act of doubt implies thought. Surely you all know that the most efficient way of accepting the foolish dogmas foisted on us by social orthodoxy is to refrain from thinking."

There was an uncomfortable silence at that, whereupon Morrison (having left it there for just long enough, out of a faint malice -- he owed them that much) said, "As human beings in all nations know."

The atmosphere lightened perceptibly at once and Dezhnev said, "In that case, we will see how skeptical we need be of the skeptic node, when we reach it."

"I hope," said Konev with a scowl, "that you don't think this is something to joke about, you clown. That node is where we can hope to detect Pyotr Shapirov's thoughts. Without that, this venture will come to nothing."

Dezhnev said, "To each his own job. I will take you there, with my expert handling of the ship. Once there, you will get the thoughts -- or Albert will, if you cannot. And if you do as well with the thoughts as I do with the ship, you will have nothing to be unhappy about. My father used to say --"

"Your father is better off where he is," said Konev. "Don't dig him up again."

"Yuri," said Boranova sharply, "that was an unbearably rude remark to make. You must apologize."

"That's all right," said Dezhnev. "My father used to say: 'The time for offense is when a man, once he has cooled down, repeats an insult he has offered in his rage.' I am not sure that I can always follow that advice, but in honor of my father, I will pass over Yuri's stupid remark this time." He bent over his controls, his face grim.

Morrison had listened to the altercation (just Konev being nasty -- obviously because he was under a great strain) with only half an ear. His mind slipped back to something else, to Dezhnev's carefree chatter and Boranova's warning hand.

He lowered himself into his seat, clasping himself in for stability, and turned his head toward Boranova. "Natalya! A question!"

"Yes, Albert?"

"Those miniaturized particles released into the normal, unminiaturized Universe --"

"Yes, Albert?"

"Eventually, they deminiaturize."

Boranova hesitated. "As Arkady told you, they do."

"When?"

She shrugged. "Unpredictably. Like the radioactive breakdown of a single atom."

"How do you know?"

"Because it's so."

"I mean, what experiments have been conducted? Nothing has ever been miniaturized to the extent that we are now miniaturized, so surely you can't know what happens to such miniaturized particles by direct observation."

Boranova said, "We've observed events at miniaturizations we have reached and in that way determined what seem to be the laws of behavior of miniaturized objects. We extrapolate --"

"Extrapolations aren't always trustworthy when they go well outside the realm of direct study."

"Granted."

"You compared spontaneous deminiaturization to radioactive breakdown. Is there a half-life of deminiaturization? Even if you can't tell when a particular miniaturized particle will deminiaturize, can you tell when half of a particular large quantity of them will?"

"We have half-life figures and we think they are expressions of first-order kinetics, as radioactive half-lives are."

Morrison said, "Can you generalize from one type of particle to another?"

Boranova pursed her lips and, for a moment, seemed lost in thought. Then she said, "It would seem that the half-life of a miniaturized object varies inversely with the intensity of miniaturization and also with the normal mass of the object."

"So that as we are miniaturized to smaller and smaller sizes, the less time we are likely to remain miniaturized, and the smaller we are to begin with, the less time we are likely to remain miniaturized."

"That's right," replied Boranova stiffly.

Morrison looked at her gravely. "I admire your integrity, Natalya. You're not anxious to tell me things. You don't volunteer information. Still, you draw the line at misinforming me."

Boranova said, "I am a human being and I tell lies on occasion out of necessity or out of defects in my emotions or personality. But I am also a scientist and I would not twist scientific fact for any but the most compelling reasons."

"Then what it amounts to is this. Even this ship, although it is much more massive than a helium nucleus, has a half-life."

"A very long one," put in Boranova quickly.

"But the fact that we are so intensely miniaturized has curtailed this very long half-life."

"Still leaving it long."

"And what about the individual components of the ship? The molecules of water that we drink, the molecules of air we breathe, the individual atoms that make up our body? They could have -- must have -- very short --"

"No!" said Boranova forcefully, seeming to find relief in being able to deny something. "The miniaturization field overlaps where it deals with particles sufficiently close together, and that are at rest, or nearly at rest, relative to each other. An extended body -- such as the ship and everything it contains -- is treated as a large but single particle and has a half-life of deminiaturization to match. There miniaturization differs from radioactivity."

"Ah," said Morrison, "but when I was out of the ship and out of contact with it, could it be that I was then a separate particle with a much smaller mass than the ship and its contents and that I had a miniaturization half-life much smaller than we have now?"

"I'm not sure," said Boranova, "whether the distance between yourself and the ship was great enough to make you a separate body. Possibly it did, for the time you were not in contact."

"And I then had a shorter half-life -- much shorter."

"Possibly -- but then you were out of contact only a matter of minutes."

"Well, then, what is the half-life of this ship at the present level of miniaturization?"

"We can't really speak of the half-life of a single object."

"Yes, because half-lives are statistical. For any particle, deminiaturization can come, spontaneously, at any time, even after a very short time and even though the half-life of a large number of similar particles would be quite long."

"For spontaneous deminiaturization to come after a very short time when the statistical half-life is long is extremely improbable."

"But not impossible, is it?"

"No," said Boranova. "It is not impossible."

"So we can suddenly deminiaturize in five minutes, or even in one minute, or even as I take my next breath."

"In theory."

"Did you all know?" His eyes darted around the ship. "Of course you all knew. Why was I not told?"

Boranova said, "We are volunteers, Albert, working for science and for our nation. We know all the dangers and accept them. You have been forced into this and you don't have the motives that drive us. It seemed possible that if you knew all the dangers, you would have refused to enter the ship voluntarily under any persuasion or that, being brought on board ship by force, you would be altogether useless to us out of sheer --" She paused.

"Out of sheer fright, you were going to say," said Morrison. "Surely I have a right to be afraid. There is reason for fear."

Kaliinin interrupted, her voice a little shrill. "It is time to stop harping on Albert's fear, Natalya. It is he who left the ship in an inadequate suit. It is he who turned the ship around at the risk of his life. Where was his fear then? If he felt it, he bottled it inside and didn't let it prevent him from doing what had to be done."

Dezhnev said, "And yet it was you who did not hesitate to say, in the past, that Americans were all cowardly."

"Then I was wrong. I was speaking unfairly and I ask Albert's pardon."

It was at this point that Morrison caught Konev's eye. The man was twisting around in his seat and glowering at him. Morrison did not pretend to be a master at reading facial expressions, but felt that he could, at a glance, tell what was ailing Konev. The man was jealous -- furiously and quite impressively jealous.

48.

The ship continued its slow way along the capillary toward the destination Konev had marked out: the skeptic node. It was not depending on the current now, which was slow indeed. The engines were going, as Morrison could tell, in two different ways. First, it steadied the ship to have it move along actively, rather than drift passively, and it further deadened the already surprisingly small effect of Brownian motion. Second, the ship was overtaking one red corpuscle after another.

In most cases these were nudged to one side and the red corpuscles then rolled backward between the ship and the wall. Occasionally, a red corpuscle would be met too near dead-center and it would then be pushed forward for a while until it burst. The debris would flow backward, leaving the ship's hull unmarked. With at least five million corpuscles in every cubic millimeter of blood, it didn't matter how many were disrupted and Morrison had become hardened to the carnage.

Morrison deliberately thought of the red cells, rather than of the chance of spontaneous deminiaturization. He knew there was no appreciable chance of exploding outward in the next few moments and, even if it happened, it would simply mean blackout. Death by fried brain would take place so quickly that there would be no conceivable way of sensing it.

Not long before, he had been heating much more slowly in the bloodstream itself. He had felt himself dying. After that, instantaneous death had no terrors.

But he preferred to think of other things just the same.

Konev's look! What was seething within him and tearing him apart? He had abandoned Sophia with the utmost cruelty. Did he really think the child was not his? People needed no reason to come to an emotional conclusion and the suspicion of being wrong just bolted the conclusion defensively and immovably in place. Pathological. Think of Leontes in The Winter's Tale. Shakespeare always got these things right. Konev would push her away and hate her for the wrong he had done her. He would push her into another man's arms and hate her for being pushed -- and be jealous in addition.

And she? Did she know of the jealousy and play upon it? Would she deliberately turn to Morrison, an American, to tear Konev into strips? Tenderly patting the American with the wet towel. Defending him at every step. With Konev, of course, a witness to everything.

Morrison's lips tightened. He didn't like to be a tennis ball, batted from one to another in order to produce maximum pain.

It was none of his business, after all, and he shouldn't take sides. But how was he going to not take sides? Sophia Kaliinin was an attractive woman who reacted with silent sorrow. Yuri Konev was a frowning nasty man who reacted with a compressed boiling of anger. He could neither help liking Sophia nor help disliking Yuri.

He then noted Boranova staring at him gravely and wondered if she were misinterpreting his thoughtfulness and silence. Did she feel he was brooding about the possibility of death by miniaturization -- which he was manfully trying not to do?

It seemed so, when Boranova suddenly said, "Albert, none of us are reckless. I have a husband. I have a son. I want to go back to them alive and I intend to get us all back alive. I want you to understand that."

"I'm sure your intentions are good," said Morrison, "but what can you do against a possibility of deminiaturization that is spontaneous, unpredictable, unstoppable?"

"Spontaneous and unpredictable, I agree, but who said unstoppable?"

"Can you stop it, then?"

"I can try. We each have our jobs here. Arkady maneuvers the ship. Yuri directs it to the destination. Sophia gives the ship its electric pattern. You will study the brain waves. As for me, I sit back here and make decisions -- my major decision up to now was a mistake, I admit that -- and I watch the heat flow."

"The heat flow?"

"Yes. Before the deminiaturization takes place, there is a small evolution of heat, characteristic in pattern. It is that emission that is destabilizing; it is what tips the delicate balance and, after a small delay, starts the process of deminiaturization. When that happens, if I am fast enough, I can intensify the miniaturization field in such a way as to reabsorb the heat and reestablish the metastability."

Morrison said dubiously, "And has that ever been done -- actually been done under field conditions -- or is it simply theory?"

"It has been done -- under much smaller intensities of miniaturization, of course. Still, I have trained at this and my reflexes are sharpened. I hope not to be caught short."

"Was it spontaneous deminiaturization that put Shapirov into a coma, Natalya?"

Boranova hesitated. "We don't really know whether it was an unfortunate encounter with the laws of nature or human error -- or both. It may have been a slightly greater wobble from the metastable point of equilibrium than usual and nothing more than that. It is not something I can analyze in detail with you, for you don't have the needed background in the physics and mathematics of miniaturization, nor would I be permitted to give you that

background."

"I understand. Classified material."

"Of course."

Dezhnev broke in, "Natasha, we have reached the skeptic node -- or so Yuri says."

"Then come to a halt," ordered Boranova.

49.

Coming to a halt took a while.

Morrison noted, with some mild surprise, that Dezhnev did not seem concerned in the process. He was checking his instruments but was making no effort to control the motion of the ship.

It was Kaliinin who was deeply involved now. Morrison looked to his left, studying her as she bent over her instrument, her hair failing forward but not long enough to get in her way, her eyes intent, her slim fingers caressing the keys of her computer. The graphic patterns on the screen she was watching made no sense to Morrison, of course.

"Arkady," she said, "move forward just a little."

The feeble current in the capillaries barely stirred the ship. Dezhnev supplied a small burst of power. (Morrison felt his almost massless body move slightly backward, since there wasn't sufficient inertia to give it a real jerk.) The nearest red corpuscles between the ship and the farther wall of the capillary drifted backward.

"Stop, stop," said Kaliinin. "Enough."

"I can't stop," said Dezhnev. "I can only cut the motors and that I've done."

"It's all right," said Kaliinin. "I have it now," then added the all-but-inevitable saving afterthought of "I think." Then: "Yes, I do have it."

Morrison felt himself sway forward very slightly. Then he noted the nearby red corpuscles, together with an occasional platelet, drift forward and pass by lazily.

In addition, he became aware of a total cessation of the Brownian motion, that faint tremble he had grown so used to that he was able to ignore it -- until it stopped. Now its absence was noticeable and it produced the same sensation within Morrison as the sudden cessation of a continuous low hum would have. He stirred uneasily. It was as though his heart had stopped, even though intellectually he knew it had not.

He asked, "What's happened to the Brownian motion, Sophia?"

She replied, "We're affixed to the wall of the capillary, Albert."

Morrison nodded. If the ship was one piece with the capillary wall, so to speak, the bombarding water molecules that produced the Brownian motion would lose their effect. Their impacts would work toward moving an entire section of comparatively inert wall, instead of a tiny ship the size of a blood platelet. Naturally, the trembling would cease.

"How did you manage to affix the ship, Sophia?" he asked.

"The usual electrical forces. The capillary wall is partly protein, partly phospholipid in character. There are positively and negatively charged groups here and there. I had to detect a pattern sufficiently compact, and then produce a complementary pattern on the ship; negative where the wall is positive and vice versa. The trouble is that the ship is moving with the current, so that I have to detect it a little ahead and produce the complementary pattern before we pass it. I missed three such occasions and then we hit a region where there were no suitable patterns at all, so I had to get Arkady to move us ahead a bit into a better region. -- But I made it."

"If the ship had a reverse gear," said Morrison, "there would have been no problem, would there?"

"True," said Kaliinin, "and the next ship will have one. But for now, we have only what we have."

"Quite so," put in Dezhnev. "As my father used to say: 'On tomorrow's feast, we can starve today.'"

"On the other hand," said Kaliinin, "if we had a motor that could do all we would want it to do, we would have a strong impulse to use it lavishly and that might not be so good for poor Shapirov. And it would be expensive besides. As it is, we used an electric field which is more sparing of energy than a motor would be and the price is only a little more work for me -- and what of that?"

Morrison was quite certain she wasn't talking for his benefit. He said, "Are you always so philosophical?"

For a moment, her eyes widened and her nostrils tightened, but only for a moment. Then she relaxed and said with a small smile, "No, who could be? But I try."

Boranova interjected, impatiently, "Enough chat, Sophia. -- Arkady, you are clearly in touch with the Grotto. What's the delay?"

Arkady held up a large hand, half-twisting in his seat to present its palm toward Boranova. "Patience, my captain. They want us to stay exactly where we are for two reasons. First, I'm sending out a carrier wave in three directions. They are locating each and using them to locate us in order to see if the location they determine jibes with what Yuri says it is by dead reckoning."

"How long will that take?"

"Who can say? A few minutes, at any rate. But then my carrier waves are not very intense and the location must be precise, so they may have to repeat the measurement several times and take a mean and calculate limits of error. After all, they have to be correct, for as my father used to say: 'Almost right is no better than wrong.'"

"Yes yes, Arkady, but that depends on the nature of the problem. What is the second reason we are waiting?"

"They're going through some observations on Pyotr Shapirov. His heartbeat has become slightly irregular."

Konev looked up, his mouth failing open slightly and his thin cheeks looking gaunt under his high cheekbones. "What! Do they say it's anything we're doing?"

"No," said Dezhnev. "Do not become a tragedian. They say nothing of the sort. And what can we be doing to Shapirov that is of any importance? We are merely a red corpuscle among red corpuscles in his bloodstream, one among trillions."

"Well, then, what's wrong?"

"Do I know?" said Dezhnev, clearly irritated. "Do they tell me? Am I a physician? I just maneuver this vessel and they pay me no mind except as a pair of hands on the controls."

Kaliinin said with a touch of sadness, "Academician Shapirov clings but weakly to life in any case. It is a wonder that he has remained in stable condition so long."

Boranova nodded. "You are right, Sophia."

Konev said savagely, "But he must continue to remain so. He can't let go now. Not now. We haven't made our measurements yet."

"We will make them," said Boranova. "An irregular heartbeat is not the end of the world, even for a man in a coma."

Konev pounded the arm of his seat with a clenched fist. "I will not lose a moment. Albert, let's begin."

Morrison was startled. He said, "What can be done here in the bloodstream?"

"A neural effect may be felt immediately outside the nerve cell."

"Surely not. Why would the neurons have axons and dendrites to channel the impulse if it was going to spread and weaken into space beyond? Locomotives move along rails, telephone messages along wires, neural impulses --"

"Don't argue the case, Albert. Let's not accept failure by some fine process of reasoning. Let's test the matter. See if you can detect brain waves and if you can analyze them in the proper fashion."

Morrison said, "I'll try, but don't order me around in that bullying tone."

"I'm sorry," said Konev, not sounding sorry at all. "I want to watch what you do." He unclasped himself, turned in his seat, holding on tightly, muttering, "We must have more room the next time."

"An ocean liner, certainly," said Dezhnev. "Next time."

"What we have to do first," said Morrison, "is to discover whether we can detect anything at all. The trouble is, we are surrounded by electromagnetic fields. The muscles are rich in them and each molecule, almost, is the origin point of a --"

"Take all that as known," said Konev.

"I am only filling in the time while I carry my device through some necessary steps. The neural field is characteristic in several ways and by adjusting the computer to eliminate fields without those characteristics, I leave only what the neurons produce. We blank out all microfields like so and we deflect the muscle fields in this manner --"

"In what manner?" demanded Konev.

"I describe it in my papers."

"But I didn't see what you did."

Wordlessly, Morrison repeated the maneuver slowly.

"Oh," said Konev.

"And by now we should be detecting only neural waves if any are present here to detect -- and there aren't."

Konev's right fist clenched. "Are you sure?"

"The screen shows a horizontal line. Nothing else."

"It's quivering."

"Noise. Possibly from the ship's own electric field, which is complex and not entirely like any of the natural fields of the body. I've never had to adjust a computer to filter out an artificial field."

"Well, then, we have to move on. -- Arkady, tell them we can wait no longer."

"I can't do that, Yuri, unless Natasha tells me to. She's the captain. Or had you forgotten?"

"Thank you, Arkady," said Boranova coldly. "You, at least, have not. We'll forgive Konev his lapse and put it down to overzealousness in pursuit of his work. My orders are not to move until the Grotto gives us the word. If this mission fails because of anything that goes wrong with Shapirov, there must be no opportunity for anyone to say it was because we did not follow orders."

"What if some disaster happens because we did follow orders? That can happen, too, you know." Konev's voice rose to near-hysteria.

Boranova replied, "The fault will then lie with those who gave the orders."

"I can find no satisfaction in apportioning blame, whether to myself or to anyone else. It is results that count," said Konev.

"I agree," said Boranova, "if we are dealing with finespun theory. But if you expect to continue working on this project past the time of a possible catastrophe, you will find that the manner of allotting blame is all-important."

"Well, then," said Konev, stuttering slightly in his passion. "Urge them to let us move as soon as possible and then we'll -- we'll --"

"Yes?" said Boranova.

"And then we'll enter the cell. We must."

CHAPTER 12 -- INTERCELLULAR

In life, unlike chess, the game continues after checkmate.

-- Dezhnev Senior

50.

A heavy silence fell upon the five shipmates. Konev's silence was the least quiet. He was quivering with unrest and his hands would not keep still.

Morrison felt a dim sympathy. To have reached the destination, to have done just as planned, through difficulties, to imagine one's self at the point of snatching success, and to have to fear that it will be moved away from the eagerly grasping fingers even now -- he knew the feeling. No longer quite as sharply perhaps, as once, now that he was ground down and dulled by frustration, but he remembered the early occasions. Experiments that raised hope, but were somehow never quite conclusive. Colleagues who smiled and nodded, but were never convinced.

He leaned forward and said, "Look, Yuri, just watch the red corpuscles. They're creeping ahead, one after the other, steadily -- and that means the heart is beating and is doing so fairly normally. As long as the red corpuscles move steadily ahead, we're safe."

Dezhnev said, "There's the blood temperature, too. I've got it monitored at all times and it will have to start dropping slowly, but with determination, if Shapirov lets go. Actually, the temperature is at the upper edge of normal."

Konev grunted, as though scorning consolation and pushing it to one side, but it seemed to Morrison that he was noticeably quieter after that.

Morrison sank back in his seat and let his eyes close. He wondered if he was experiencing hunger and decided that he was not. He also wondered if there was a distinct sensation of bladder pressure. There wasn't but that did not relieve him much. One could always postpone eating for a considerable length of time, but the necessity of urination did not lend itself to quite the same flexibility of choice.

He was suddenly aware that Kaliinin had addressed him but he had not been listening. "Pardon me. What did you say?" he asked, turning toward her.

Kalfinin looked surprised. She said softly, "I ask your pardon. I interrupted your thoughts."

"They were worth interrupting, Sophia. I ask your pardon for being inattentive."

"In that case, I asked what it is you do in your analysis of brain waves. I mean, what is it you do that is different from what others do? Why was it necessary for us --" She paused, clearly uncertain as to how to proceed.

Morrison finished her thought without difficulty. "Why was it necessary for me to be abstracted forcibly from my country?"

"Have I made you angry?"

"No. I presume you did not advise the action."

"Of course not. I knew nothing of it. In fact, that is why I am asking you my question. I know nothing about your field except that there are electroneural waves; that electroencephalography has become an intricate study, and an important one."

"Then if you ask me what is special about my own views, I'm afraid I can't tell you."

"Is it secret, then? I thought it might be."

"No, it is not secret," said Morrison, frowning. "There are no secrets in science, or there should be none -- except that there are struggles for priority so that scientists are sometimes cautious about what they say, and I am guilty of that, too, sometimes. In this case, though, I mean it literally. I can't tell you because you lack the basis for understanding."

Kaliinin considered, her lips compressed as though in aid to thought. "Could you explain a bit of it?"

"I can try, if you're willing to hear simple assertions. I can't very well describe the entire field. -- What we call brain waves are a conglomeration of all sorts of neuronic activity -- sense perceptions of various kinds, stimuli of various muscles and glands, arousal mechanisms, coordinations, and so on. Lost among all these are those waves that control, or result from, constructive and creative thought. Isolating those skeptic waves, as I call them, from all the rest is an enormous problem. The body does it without any difficulty, but we poor scientists are, for the most part, at a total loss."

"I'm having no difficulty understanding this," said Kaliinin, smiling and looking pleased. (She is remarkably pretty, thought Morrison, when she manages to get rid of her air of melancholy.)

"I haven't gotten to the hard part yet," he said.

"Please do, then."

"About twenty years ago, it was demonstrated that there was what seemed a random component in the waves that no one had ever picked up because the instruments that had been used until then did not pick up what we now call 'the twinkle.' It's a very rapid oscillation of irregular amplitude and intensity. That's not a discovery I made, you understand."

Kaliinin smiled again. "I imagine that twenty years ago you would have been too young to make the discovery."

"I was an undergraduate then, making the discovery that young women were not entirely unapproachable, which is by no means an unimportant thing to find out. In fact, each person may have to rediscover it now and then, I think. -- But never mind that.

"A number of people speculated that the twinkle might represent thought processes in the mind, but no one managed to isolate it properly. It would come and go, be detectable at times and not at others, and the general feeling was that it was artifactitious, a matter of working with instruments that were too delicate for the thing they were measuring so that one picked up what was, essentially, noise.

"I thought not. In time I developed a computer program that made it possible for me to isolate the twinkle and to demonstrate it was always present in the human brain. For that I got some credit, though few people were able to duplicate my work. I used animals for types of experimentation that were too dangerous to perform on human beings and used the results to further sharpen my program of analysis. But the sharper I made the analysis and the more significant I thought the results, the less others were able to duplicate them and the more they insisted that I was misled by my animal experimentation.

"But even isolating the twinkle was a long way from demonstrating that it was a representation of abstract thought. I have amplified it, intensified it, modified my program over and over, and have convinced myself that I am studying thought, the skeptic waves themselves. Still, no one can duplicate the crucial points of my work. I have, on several occasions, allowed someone to use my program and my computer -- the sort of thing I'm using now -- and they invariably fail."

Kaliinin was listening gravely. She said, "Can you imagine why no one can duplicate your work?"

"The easiest explanation is that there is something wrong with me, that I am a crank -- if not a madman. I believe that some of my colleagues suspect that to be the answer."

"Do you think you're a madman?"

"No, I don't, Sophia, but even I waver sometimes. You see, after you isolate the skeptic waves and amplify them, it is conceivable that the human brain itself might become a receiving instrument. The waves may transfer the thoughts from the thinker you are studying directly to you. The brain would certainly be an extraordinarily delicate receiver, but it would also be an extraordinarily individual one. If I improved my program so that I could sense the thoughts better, that would mean I improved it to suit my own individual brain. Other brains might not be affected and, in fact, might be less affected, the closer I adjusted it to mine. It would be like a painting. The closer a painting is made to look like me, the less it looks like anyone else. The more I can make my program produce sensible self-consistent results, the less anyone else can."

"Have you actually sensed thought?"

"I'm not sure. There are times I have thought I did, but I'm never quite convinced it's not my imagination. Certainly no one else -- with my program or any other -- has sensed anything. I have used the twinkle to track down the skeptic nodes in the brains of chimpanzees and from that reasoned out where they would be in human brains, but that is not accepted either. It is considered the overenthusiasm of a scientist oversold on his own unlikely theory. And even using leads into the skeptic nodes -- on animals, of course -- I couldn't be sure."

"With animals it would be difficult. Have you published these -- sensations of yours?"

"I haven't dared," said Morrison, shaking his head. "No one would accept such subjective findings. I've mentioned it in passing to several people -- foolish of me -- and the news spread and merely convinced my colleagues all the more firmly that I am, shall we say, unstable. It was only last Sunday that Natalya told me that Shapirov took me seriously, but he is considered, at least in my country, to be unstable, too."

"He is not," said Kaliinin firmly, "or was not."

"It would be nice to think he wasn't, obviously."

Konev, from in front of Morrison, said suddenly, without turning around, "It was your sensations of thought that impressed Shapirov. I know! He discussed it with me. He said on a number of occasions that your program was a relay station and he would like to try it himself. If you were inside a neuron, a key neuron of the skeptic node, things would be different. You would sense thoughts unmistakably. Shapirov thought so and I think so. Shapirov thought it possible you might even have sensed thoughts unmistakably as it was, but were not ready to let the world know. Is that so?"

How they harped on secrecy, all of them, thought Morrison. Then he caught the look on Kaliinin's face. Her mouth was partly open, her eyebrows drawn together, her finger hovering near her lips. It was as though she wanted to ask him to be quiet with a kind of agonizing intensity, without quite daring to do so openly.

But then he was distracted by Dezhnev's voice, joyfully loud. "Enough babble, my children. The Grotto has located us and we are, to their enormous astonishment, exactly where we say we are."

Konev threw up both hands and his voice sounded almost boyish. "Exactly where I say we are."

Dezhnev said, "Let us have communal responsibility. Where we say we are."

"No," said Boranova. "I ordered Konev to make the decision on his own responsibility. The credit is therefore his."

Konev was not mollified. He said, "You would not have so quickly demanded communal responsibility, Arkady Vissarionovich" -- he used the patronymic in a style long out of fashion in the Soviet Union, as though to emphasize the fact that Dezhnev was the son of a peasant, among whom, only, the style remained in fashion -- "had we proved to be in the wrong capillary."

Dezhnev's smile became an uncomfortable one and his somewhat yellow upper incisors caught at his lower lip.

Boranova said in her masterful contralto, cutting off any retort Dezhnev might have made, "And Shapirov. What of him?"

"That," said Dezhnev, "has passed. An injection of some sort steadied the heartbeat."

Konev said, "Well, then, are we ready to go?"

"Yes," said Boranova.

"In that case -- out of the bloodstream at last."

51.

Boranova and Kaliinin were bent over their instruments. Morrison watched them for a few moments, but, of course, knew nothing of what was going on. He turned to Dezhnev, who sat in a relaxed position (unlike Konev, whose body was tense, almost ridged with muscle), and said, "What will be done, Arkady? We can't very well just blast our way out of a blood vessel in the brain."

"We'll sneak out once we're small enough. We're miniaturizing again. Look around you."

Startled, Morrison did. He realized that every time the outside world seemed to stabilize, he quickly learned to take it for granted and to pay no attention to it.

The current had picked up speed. Or, rather, it hadn't, but the ship had shrunk in size once more and objects moving by took correspondingly less time to pass, so that the mind, insisting on considering the ship's size unchanged, interpreted what was seen as a faster current.

A red cell passed by, moving as it had (or seeming to move as it had) in the carotid artery, but despite its speed, it billowed past for a long time, like a quivering whale passing a rowboat. It had grown faint indeed. It was almost transparent now and its edge was fuzzy with Brownian motion. There was a grayish dimness about it, so that it looked like an angry thundercloud spreading its way over the heavens. It had lost most of its oxygen by this time, of course, giving it up to the avid brain cells which, without motion or visible signs of life, consumed one quarter of all the oxygen carried by the blood to the various organs of the body. For all that the brain seemed to simply sit there, sense perception, response, and thought, all of it coordinated with a complexity that no human computer could come within an astronomical distance of duplication -- might never duplicate -- did not come cheap.

To make up for the spreading of the red cells, the platelets, and the comparatively rare white cells that had grown into monsters that were now too large to grasp, the blood plasma was becoming far less featurelessly liquid.

It had started to turn grainy and now the grains were slowly expanding as they shot past with gradually increasing speed. Morrison knew he was looking at protein molecules and, after a while, it seemed to him that through their whirling and flexing he could make out the helical arrangements of their atoms in fuzzy manner. Some had a miniature forest of lipid molecules partially encasing them.

He was becoming aware also of movement, not the tremble of Brownian motion but a lurching that was becoming more pronounced.

He turned his head to look out the other side at the capillary wall to which they were attached.

The tiling was gone -- or at least one tile (or cell, as he might as well think of it now) had expanded to the point where it was the only one to be seen. Slipping off behind was the bulge of the nucleus of the cell, large and thick and growing larger and thicker.

The ship lurched as part of it slid away from the wall and then lurched again as it slid back.

"What's happening?" said Morrison, looking at Kaliinin, who shook her head impatiently. She was totally absorbed in her work.

Dezhnev said, "Sophia is trying to neutralize the ship's electric charge here and there so that it lets go before the tension damages the wall. And she has to find new areas of attachment to keep from losing the wall altogether. It's not easy, having to miniaturize and, at the same time, staying attached to the wall."

Morrison said, alarmed, "How far will we miniaturize?"

His words were overborne by Kaliinin's shrill command. "Arkady, move it forward. Gently! Just put forward pressure on the ship."

"Yes, Sophia -- but tell me when to stop." To Morrison, he added, "My father used to say: 'Between not enough and too much is a hair's breadth.'"

"More, more," said Kaliinin. "All right. Now we'll try." The ship seemed to stick and strain and then it suddenly slid forward and Morrison felt himself thrust gently back against his seat.

"Good," said Kaliinin. "Just a little less now."

The cell came to an end. Beyond it was another cell. Thin cells, as cells went, a mere film of cells, fitted together to make a tiny tube, with the ship and its crew of five clinging to the inner surface by minute attractions of electric charge.

The space between the adjoining cells seemed ropy, with cables stretching from inside one cell to the other. They were not all intact and there were stumps visible like the remains of a felled forest. It seemed to Morrison that there were narrow gaps in that felled forest, but he couldn't see clearly from the angle at which he viewed them.

He said again, "How far will we miniaturize, Arkady?"

"Eventually to the size of a small organic molecule."

"But what would the chances be of spontaneous deminiaturization at that size?"

"Appreciable," said Dezhnev. "Much more than it was when we were the size of a red corpuscle or even of a blood platelet."

"Still not enough to worry about," said Boranova. "I assure you."

"Exactly," said Dezhnev and raised his hand slightly with the first two fingers crossed so that Morrison could just see it and Boranova, farther back, could not. That American gesture had become universal and Morrison, knowing exactly what it meant, felt himself growing cold inside.

Dezhnev was looking straight ahead, but he might have sensed Morrison's grimace or heard his soft grunt. He said, "Don't worry about it, young Albert. It is always wise to have but one worry at a time and right now let us worry about squeezing out of the blood vessel. -- Sophia, my loved one."

"Yes, Arkady," she said.

"Weaken the field in the rear of the ship and when I move grope for one ahead."

"I will do so, Arkady. Didn't your father once say: 'There is no point in trying to teach a thief to steal'?"

"Yes, he did. Steal, then, little thief, steal."

Morrison wondered whether Dezhnev and Kaliinin were deliberately being lighthearted in the face of the possibility of sudden death as a way of cheering him up? Or were they showing contempt for his cowardice? He chose the former. Surely when an action might equally well be interpreted as friendly or hostile, one might as well choose the friendly. Perhaps Dezhnev's father would have agreed. With that thought, he felt cheered.

The ship's rear seemed to be hanging loosely and to remain several centimeters (several picometers in real measure?) from the wall of the capillary. Morrison studied it closely and could see the serried ranks of protein and lipid molecules that made up that wall.

He thought, What are we doing ignoring this? Here is our opportunity to study tissues with greater precision than the best scanning electron microscope can -- and to study them while alive; to see not only position but living change and motion. We have passed through the bloodstream and narrowed in on a capillary wall without looking at anything in any real scientific sense. We are only passing through, with no more interest than we would show if we were in a subway, barreling through an underground tunnel. -- All to study oscillations that might be produced by thought ... and might not.

The ship was inching along (an old word, thought Morrison suddenly, antedating the metric system, but he'd never heard anyone say "centimetering along") as though it were somehow feeling its way. Perhaps, between Dezhnev's motors and Kaliinin's flickering electric fields, that was precisely what it was doing.

"We're approaching the junction, little Sophia," said Dezhnev in a curiously tight voice. "Make sure your hold is firm in front, while I move forward another meter or so."

"I suspect from the appearance and electrical behavior," said Kaliinin, "that we have a clump of arginines toward the junction. That represents a strong region of positive charge and I can handle that as smoothly as sour cream."

But Boranova said sternly, "No overconfidence, Sophia. Keep a firm watch. If you miss and the ship tears loose, there will be much to do over."

"Yes, Natalya," said Sophia, "but with all respect, the warning is not really needed."

Dezhnev said, "Sophia, do exactly what I say. Keep only the prow of the ship attached to the wall, but strongly. Release everything else."

"Done," said Sophia faintly.

Morrison found himself holding his breath. The rear of the ship had spun away from the wall, but it held in front. The bloodstream caught the detached rear end and pushed the ship into a position at right angles to the current, while the capillary wall, where the ship still held, moved outward like a pimple.

Morrison said tightly, "Watch out. We'll pull a section out of the wall."

"Quiet, all!" thundered Dezhnev. Then, in an ordinary voice, "Sophia, I shall increase the engine push slowly. Get yourself in position to break all remaining attraction. The ship is to be entirely neutral -- but not until I say so."

Sophia cast a quick look toward Boranova, who said in her quiet way, "Do exactly as you're told, Sophia. For this, Arkady's word is absolute."

Morrison imagined he felt the ship straining forward. The section of the capillary wall to which it was attached stretched farther and farther.

Sophia said urgently, "Arkady, either the field will snap or the wall will."

"Another moment, dear one, another moment. -- Now."

The wall snapped back and the ship bounded forward in a great leap that rocked Morrison gently backward. The forward end of the ship buried itself in the cement stuff between the two cells of the capillary wall.

52.

For the first time, Morrison was aware of the laboring of the microfusion engines. There was a subliminal throbbing as the ship worked its way through the joint with what seemed increasing difficulty. There was nothing to see up ahead. The thickness of the capillary wall, very thin though it was in normal terms, was far thicker than the length of the ship.

The ship was now totally immersed in the joint and Dezhnev, beads of sweat on his forehead, turned his head and spoke to Boranova. "We're using up energy faster than we should."

Boranova said, "Then stop the ship and let's consider."

Deshnev said, "If I do that, there is a chance that the natural elasticity of this material will pop us out of the joint and back into the bloodstream."

"Slow the engines down, then. Choose a level that will be enough to keep us in place."

The throbbing came to an end.

Dezhnev said, "The joint is exerting considerable pressure on the ship."

"Enough to crush us, Arkady?"

"Not now. But who can say for the future if the pressure continues."

Morrison burst out. "This is ridiculous. Didn't someone say we're the size of a small organic molecule?"

"We're the size of a glucose molecule," said Boranova, "which is made up of twenty-four atoms altogether."

"Thank you," said Morrison freezingly, "but I know how many atoms there are in a glucose molecule. As it happens, small molecules drift through the capillary walls constantly by diffusion. Diffusion! That's the way the body works. Why aren't we diffusing through?"

Boranova said, "Diffusion is a statistical proposition. There are twenty-four billion trillion glucose molecules in the bloodstream at any given time. They move around randomly and some manage to hit in such places and in such ways as to move through a joint, or to move into the membrane of a capillary wall cell, into the cell, and out the other side. A very small percentage succeed at any given second, but that is enough to ensure proper tissue functioning. However, by chance, a particular glucose molecule may remain in the bloodstream for a month without diffusing. Can we wait a month for a chance to do its work?"

"That's no argument, Natalya," said Morrison impatiently. "Why don't we simply do deliberately what a real glucose molecule would do by chance? Especially now, when we're part way through the joint. Why are we stuck in position?"

Konev said, "I'm on Albert's side. Diffusion probably isn't a passive leakage. There's some sort of interaction between the diffusing object and the barrier through which the diffusion takes place -- except that no one knows what the interaction might be exactly. Especially here, where we face the blood-brain barrier."

"We're here at the barrier," said Dezhnev. "You're the brain expert. Can you look around and tell us how this diffusion works?"

"No, I can't. But glucose is one molecule that gets through the blood-brain barrier easily. It must because it is the brain's sole fuel for energy. The trouble is that while the ship is as small as a glucose molecule, it isn't a glucose molecule."

"Are you getting at something, Yuri," said Boranova, "or is this a lecture?"

"I'm getting at something. We had the ship become uncharged in order to lunge into the joint, but why leave it uncharged now? Can it be given the charge pattern of a glucose molecule? If so, it will be a glucose molecule as far as Shapirov's body is concerned. I suggest you order it done, Natalya."

Kaliinin did not wait for the order. She said, "It is done, Natalya."

(They each addressed Boranova, Morrison noted. Each still maintained the fiction of the other's nonexistence.)

Dezhnev said, "And the joint's pressure decreases at once. It recognizes a friend, so it bows politely and steps aside. My father's mother, long may I keep her memory, would have cried out, 'Black magic,' and at once would have hidden beneath the bed."

"Arkady," said Boranova, "increase the power of the engines and pass through before the joint notices that underneath the glucose pattern is something that is not glucose."

"Yes, Natalya," said Dezhnev.

Morrison said, "This one is yours, Yuri. Your suggestion was just right. In hindsight I see that I should have thought of that, too, but the fact is, I didn't."

Konev said gruffly, as though finding praise something he couldn't handle, "It was nothing. Since the brain lives on glucose, we got down to glucose size. Eventually, we would have had to have a glucose pattern, and as soon as you asked the question why we weren't diffusing when we should have been, I realized we needed the pattern already."

Dezhnev said, "Members of the expedition, we are through the joint. We are out of the bloodstream. We are in the brain."

53.

In the brain, thought Morrison, but not in a brain cell. So far they had only passed from the intercellular space between the cells of the capillary wall, into the intercellular spaces of the brain where the support structures existed that maintained the form and interrelationships of the nerve cells, or neurons. Remove them and the cells would squash into amorphous masses, pulled together by gravity and unable to maintain any sensible function.

It was a jungle, made up of thick viny threads of collagen. (This was the nearly universal animal connective protein that fulfilled the function of cellulose in plants, less cheaply, since it was protein rather than carbohydrate, but far more flexibly.) Through the eye of ultraminiaturization, those collagen threads, totally invisible without an electron microscope, looked like tree trunks, leaning this way and that in a world in which gravity was of little importance.

There were finer and still finer threads. Morrison knew that some of them might be elastin and that the collagen itself might come in subtly different varieties. If he could see the whole in a wider view, from a less-miniaturized standpoint, he would have been able to detect order and structure. At this level, however, it was chaotic. One couldn't even see far in any direction; the overlapping fibers blocked vision.

Morrison became aware that the ship was moving very slowly. The four others were each staring around in wonder. Either they had not expected this (Morrison hadn't, for he had been too interested in the electrical properties of the brain to think much concerning its microanatomy) or, if they had, they had nevertheless failed to visualize it.

Morrison said, "How do you expect to find your way to a neuron? Does anybody know?"

Dezhnev was the first to answer, "The ship can only move straight ahead, so we move straight ahead until we get to a cell."

"How do we move straight ahead through this jungle? If we can't steer the ship, how do we move around obstacles?"

Dezhnev rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "We don't move around, we push around. The ship will move past one of those objects and there will be more friction on the contact side than on the other, so our path bends, like a comet rounding the sun." He smiled. "Cosmonauts do that when they use gravity to skim around a satellite or planet. We'll do it to skim around those things."

Konev said morosely, "Those things are collagen fibers."

Morrison said, "Some of them are pretty thick. You won't always pass by. You'll hit one head-on and stay there and if you can only move forward, what will you do? This ship was designed only for the bloodstream. We're helpless out of it with nothing to carry us along."

Boranova interposed. "Arkady, you have three microfusion engines and the jets, I know, are arranged at the rear at the apices of an equilateral triangle. Can you fire only one of them?"

"No. One contact controls all three."

"Yes, Arkady, that is how it is now. But you designed the ship and you know the details of its controls. Is there anything you can do to modify them so that you can fire them one at a time?"

Dezhnev took a deep breath. "Everyone told me over and over again that I must cut corners, that I must save the budget, that I must do nothing to irritate the bureaucrats."

"Aside from that, Arkady, is there anything you can do?"

"Let me think. It means jury-rigging. It means finding something to make switches out of, and extra wire, and who knows if it will work or how long it will work if it does, and if we won't end up worse than we are. I see what you mean, though. If I can fire only one of the engines, it will set up an unbalanced thrust."

"You'll be able to steer then, depending on which you fire."

"I'll try, Natalya."

Morrison said angrily, "Why didn't you think of this when we were in the wrong capillary? It might have saved me the small trouble of nearly dying trying to turn the ship by hand."

Dezhnev said, "If you hadn't so promptly suggested turning the ship by hand, we might have thought of it -- but it wouldn't have been a good idea."

"Why not?"

"We were in the current of the bloodstream. The ship is carefully streamlined to take advantage of it and its surface is designed to allow water to flow past it without turbulence, which makes it all the harder to turn out of the current. It would have taken much longer than turning by hand -- and very much more energy. The narrow confines of the capillary must be remembered, too. Here, there is no current and because we've been so miniaturized there is a great deal of room."

"Enough," said Boranova. "Get to work, Arkady."

Dezhnev did so, rummaging through a tool chest, removing a cover plate and studying the control details within, maintaining through it all a kind of incoherent muttering.

Konev, his hands clasped behind his neck, said, without turning, "Albert, tell us about those sensations you receive."

"Sensations?"

"You were telling us about them just before we got the news from the Grotto that we were located in the correct capillary. I'm talking about the sensations you experienced when you were trying to analyze the thought waves."

"Ah," said Morrison and caught Kaliinin's eye.

Very slightly, she shook her head. Very tentatively, a warning finger crossed her lips.

Morrison said, "Nothing to tell. I had vague sensations I couldn't describe in any objective way. It could well have been my imagination. Certainly those whom I tried to tell about it were convinced it was."

"And you never published anything about them?"

"Never. I merely mentioned it in passing at conventions and that was bad enough. If Shapirov and you heard of it, it was through word of mouth only. If I had published, that would have come as near to scientific suicide as I would ever want to be."

"Too bad."

Morrison looked briefly toward Kaliinin. She had nodded very slightly, but said nothing. Clearly, she couldn't say anything without being overheard by the entire ship.

Morrison looked around carelessly. Dezhnev was lost in his work, clucking to himself. Konev stared straight ahead, lost in whatever tortuous thoughts he happened to have. Boranova, behind Kaliinin, was studying the screen of her computer carefully and was making notes. Morrison did not try to read them -- he could read English upside down, but he hadn't come to that pitch of ease with Russian.

Only Kaliinin, to his left, was looking at him.

Morrison pressed his lips together and then shifted his computer into a word-processing mode. It did not have a Cyrillic adjunct, but he spelled out the Russian words in phonetic Roman lettering. WHAT IS WRONG?

She hesitated, probably not very much at home in Roman.

Then her own fingers flashed and the neat Cyrillic on her screen read: DON'T TRUST HIM. SAY NOTHING. It was erased at once.

Morrison wrote: WHY?

Kaliinin said: NOT EVIL, BUT PRIORITY, CREDIT. WILL DO ANYTHING, ANYTHING, ANYTHING.

The words were gone and she looked away firmly.

Morrison considered her thoughtfully. Was it only the vengefulness of a woman betrayed?

It didn't matter, in any case, for he had no intention of talking about anything that he hadn't already given away, either in a paper or by word of mouth. He himself was not evil, but where priority and credit were concerned, he might not do anything, anything, anything, but he would do a great deal.

Still, there was nothing to be done at that moment. Or one thing, perhaps, which was completely aside from the point, but which was beginning, just beginning, to occupy his mind to the exclusion of other things.

He turned to Boranova, who was still staring at her instrument and tapping her fingers softly against the arm of her seat in thoughtful concentration.

"Natalya?"

"Yes, Albert?" She did not look up.

"I hate to introduce a note of ugly realism, but" -- his voice lowered to near-soundlessness -- "I'm thinking of urinating."

She looked up at him, a corner of her lips twitching very slightly, but avoiding the smile. She did not lower her voice. "Why think of it, Albert? Do it."

Morrison felt like a little boy raising his hand for permission to leave the room -- unreasonably so, he knew. "I don't like to be the first."

Boranova frowned, almost as though she were the teacher in the case. "That is quite silly and, in any case, you are not. I have already taken care of such a need in myself." Then, with a faint shrug, "Tension tends to increase urgency, I have frequently found."

Morrison had frequently found that, too. He whispered, "It's all very well for you. You're there in the back seat alone." And he nodded slightly in the direction of Sophia.

"So?" Boranova shook her head. "Surely you don't wish me to improvise a curtain for you? Shall I place my hand over her eyes." (Kaliinin looked in their direction in surprise.) "She will ignore you, I'm sure, out of decency and out of a feeling that in short order she will wish you to ignore her."

Morrison was keenly embarrassed, for Kaliinin was now looking at him with obvious understanding. She said, "Come, Albert, I held you naked in my lap. What room need one make for modesty now?"

Morrison smiled weakly and made a little thank-you gesture.

He tried to remember how to manage the waste lid on his seat, but once he remembered, he found that it slid open with a small but definite click. (Those irritating Soviets! Backward always in small ways. It might easily have been designed to open noiselessly.)

He also managed to loosen the electrostatic seam along his crotch and then found himself worrying whether he would manage to close it unobtrusively afterward.

Morrison felt the current of air at the moment the waste lid opened and it felt uncomfortably cold against his bare skin. He sighed with a tremendous relief when he was done, then he managed to close the seal along the crotch and sat there, panting. He realized that he must have been holding his breath.

"Here," said Boranova brusquely. He stared, for a moment, at what she was holding, then recognized it as a small sealed towel. He tore open the seal, found the towel within moistened and scented and rubbed his hands with it. (The Soviets were learning small elegances, obviously -- or decadences, depending on whether finickiness or impatience won the battle for domination within you.)

And then Dezhnev's throaty voice sounded loudly, very loudly, in Morrison's ear after all the whispering he had been engaged in. "That's done now."

"What's done?" asked Morrison angrily, automatically assuming the reference was to his bodily functions.

"The individual firing of the motors," said Dezhnev, making a there-you-are gesture with both hands in the directions of the ship's controls. "I can fire any one, or two, or all three, if I wish. Absolutely certain -- I think."

"Which is it, Arkady?" said Boranova waspishly. "Is it quite certain or is it a matter of opinion?"

"Both," said Dezhnev. "It is my opinion that I am absolutely certain. The trouble is that my opinion isn't always right. My father used to say --"

"I think we ought to try it out," said Konev, cutting off Dezhnev's father, perhaps in the full realization he was doing so.

"Of course," said Dezhnev. "That goes without saying, but as my father used to say" -- he raised his voice as though determined not to be again subverted -- "the sure thing about anything that goes without saying is that someone is bound to say it. -- And you might as well know --"

He paused momentarily and Boranova said, "What might we as well know?"

"Several things, Natasha," said Dezhnev. "In the first place, steering will take a lot of energy. I've done my best, but the ship is not designed for this. For another -- well, I can't communicate with the Grotto now."

"Can't communicate?" said Kaliinin, her voice rising to a near squeak in what was either surprise or indignation.

Boranova's voice marked her as definitely indignant. "What do you mean, we can't communicate?"

"Come, Natasha, I can't wire up the motors separately without wires, can I? The best engineer in the world can't make wires out of nothing and can't manufacture silicon chips out of nothing, either. Something had to be dismantled and the one thing I could dismantle without disabling the ship was communications. I told them that out in the Grotto and there was a lot of shrieking and complaining, but how could they stop me? So now we can steer, I think -- and we can't communicate, I know."

54.

There was silence as the ship began to move. The surroundings were utterly different now. In the bloodstream, there had been a heaving medley of objects -- some crawling ahead of the ship, some slowly drifting behind, depending on eddies and streamlining, Morrison supposed. There was the feeling of movement, if only because the markings on the walls -- fatty plaques in the arteries, tiling in the capillaries, slipped steadily backward.

Here, in intercellular space, however, there was stasis. No motion. No feeling of life. The tangle of collagen fibers seemed a forest primeval, built up of trunks only, without leaves, without color, without sound, without motion.

Once the ship pushed forward through the viscous intercellular fluid, however, everything began to move backward. The ship slipped toward and through a V-shaped meeting of fibers and, as they passed through, Morrison had the plain impression of a loose spiral making its way upward along each collagen fiber, the spiral being more marked on the thinner of the two.

Up ahead was a thicker fiber still, a monarch of the collagen jungle.

"You'll have to turn, Arkady," said Konev. "Now's the time to test it."

"All right, but I'll have to lean over. I don't have the controls neatly at my fingertips. There's a limit to improvization." He leaned forward, groping at a level about that of his calves. "I do not relish the thought of having to do this constantly. It is hard on a man of portly habit."

"You mean a man who is fat," said Konev ill-naturedly. "You have let yourself go flabby, Arkady. You should lose weight."

Dezhnev straightened up. "Very well. I will stop right now, go home, and begin to lose weight. Is this a time, Yuri, to lecture me?"

"It is not a time for you to get emotional either, Arkady," said Boranova. "Steer!"

Dezhnev bent over, suppressing a grunt. Slowly, the ship turned rightward in a gentle arc; or, to judge more literally by appearance, the thick collagen fiber drifted leftward as it approached -- as did everything else.

"You will hit it," said Konev. "Turn more sharply."

"It won't turn more sharply," said Dezhnev. "Each motor is only so far off-center and I can't change that."

"Well, then, we will hit it," said Konev, an edge of anxiety in his voice.

"Then let us hit," said Boranova angrily. "Yuri, do not go into panic over inconsequentials. The ship is tough plastic; that fiber is undoubtedly rubbery."

And as she spoke, the prow of the ship began to pass the collagen fiber, with little room to spare. Watching through the port side of the ship, it was clear that the broadening beam of the ship would make contact. When the fiber was nearly level with Kalimin's seat, it happened. There was no scraping sound, only a very soft hiss could be detected. Not only was the fiber rubbery, as Boranova had said, so that it compressed slightly under the force of the collision, then rebounded, pushing the ship a trifle away -- but the slimy intercellular fluid served as a cushion and a friction reducer.

The ship continued to move and turned leftward in the direction of the fiber.

Dezhnev said, "I shut off the motor as soon as I saw we were about to make contact. This leftward turn we're going through now is a friction turn."

"Yes," said Konev, "but what if you had wanted to turn in the other direction?"

"Then I would have used the motor. Or, considerably earlier in our progress, I would have made a turn toward a graze with the fiber to the right. That fiber would have turned us rightward. The main thing, in any case, is to use the motors as little as possible and the fibers as much as possible. In the first place, we don't want to consume our supply of energy too rapidly. In the second place, the rapid output of energy increases the chances of spontaneous deminiaturization."

"What!" cried Morrison. He turned to Boranova. "Is that true?"

"It's not an important effect," said Boranova, "but it's true. The chances go up a bit. I should say that conservation is the more important of the two reasons for saving energy."

But Morrison could not repress his anger. "Don't you see how ridiculous -- no, criminal -- this whole situation is? We're in a ship that simply isn't up to the task and everything we do makes it worse."

Boranova shook her head. "Albert, please. You know we have no choice."

"Besides," said Dezhnev, grinning, "if we manage to do the job in this unsuitable ship, think how much more remarkable that will make us. We will be heroes. Authentic heroes. We will surely get the Order of Lenin -- each one of us. It will be a foregone conclusion. And if we fail, it is comforting to think that we will be able to explain it as the ship's fault."

"Yes. Soviet heroes, win or lose, all of you," said Morrison. "And what will I be?"

Boranova said, "Remember, Albert, you will not be neglected if we succeed. The Order of Lenin has been given to foreigners on a number of occasions, including many Americans. Even if you should not want the honor for some reason, the success of your theories will be established and you may receive a Nobel Prize before any of us do."

"We're in no position to count our chickens," said Morrison. "I shall refrain from composing my Nobel acceptance speech for just a while, thank you."

"Actually," said Kaliinin, "I wonder if we're in a position to reach a neuron."

"What's the difficulty?" asked Dezhnev. "We can move and steer and we're outside the capillary and in the brain. Just out there is a neuron, any number of them, billions of them."

"Just out where?" Kaliinin asked. "I don't see any neurons. Just collagen fibers."

Dezhnev said, "How much of this intercellular fluid do you think there is?"

"A microscopic thickness," said Kaliinin, "if we were normal in size. However, we're the size of a glucose molecule and, relative to ourselves, there may be a kilometer's distance or more to the nearest neuron."

"Well, then," said Dezhnev, "we'll move our ship a kilometer. It may take a little time but it can be done."

"Yes, if we could move in a straight line, but we're in the middle of a dense jungle. We have to turn and twist around this fiber and that and, in the end, we may travel fifty kilometers by our own measurement and find ourselves back at our starting point. We're just going to be blundering through a maze and we won't reach a neuron except by sheerest accident."

"Yuri has a map," said Dezhnev, sounding a little nonplussed. "Yuri's cerebro-whatever--"

Konev, frowning, shook his head. "My cerebrograph shows me the circulatory network of the brain and the cell pattern, but I can't expand it to the point where it will indicate our position in the intercellular fluid between cells, We don't know that sort of fine detail and we can't get out of cerebrography any more than we can put into it."

Morrison looked through the wall of the ship. In all directions, the collagen fibers could be made out, overlapping and blocking them in. In no direction could the eye see through them very far and in no direction was there any sign of anything but fiber upon fiber.

No nerve cells! No neurons!

CHAPTER 13 -- CELL

The wall that says "Welcome, stranger" has never been built.

-- Dezhnev Senior

55.

Boranova's nostrils flared slightly and her dark eyebrows hunched together, but her voice remained calm.

"Arkady," she said, "You will travel forward in as straight a line as possible. Curve to a minimum extent and, if you can, curve left and right alternately. And, since we're in a three-dimensional situation, up and down alternately."

"It would get confusing, Natasha," said Dezhnev.

"Of course it will, but perhaps it won't get completely confusing. We may not be able to travel ruler-straight, but maybe we won't go in circles, spirals, or helixes either. And sooner or later we should reach a cell."

"Perhaps," said Dezhnev, "if you deminiaturize the ship a little bit --"

"No," said Boranova.

"Wait, Natasha. Think about it. If we deminiaturize a bit, then there will be less space to travel. We grow larger, the space between blood vessel and neuron grows smaller." He made eloquent gestures with his hands. "You understand?"

"I understand. But the larger we get, Arkady, the more difficult it will be to pass between the fibers. The neurons of the brain are well-protected. The brain is the only organ to be completely encased in bone and the neurons themselves, which are the most irregular in the body, are well-packed with intercellular material. Look for yourself. It's only if we're down to the size of a glucose molecule that we can make our way through and around the collagen without, perhaps, doing drastic damage to the brain."

At this point, Konev committed the unusual act of turning in his seat, looking upward as he turned to his left so that his glance passed over Kaliinin before meeting Boranova's eyes. He said, "I don't think we have to travel onward completely blind -- completely at random."

"How otherwise, Yuri?" asked Boranova.

"Surely the neurons give themselves away. Each has nerve impulses running its length periodically and at very short intervals. That might be detected."

Morrison frowned. "The neurons are insulated."

"The axons are -- not the cell bodies."

"But it is the axons where the nerve impulse is strongest."

"No, it is the synapses where the nerve impulse may be strongest and they are not insulated, either. The synpases ought to be sparking all the time and you ought to be able to detect it."

Morrison said, "We couldn't in the capillary."

"We were on the wrong side of the capillary wall at the time. -- Look, Albert, why are you arguing the matter? I'm asking you to try to detect brain waves. That's why you're here, isn't it?"

"I was kidnapped," said Morrison violently. "That's why I'm here."

Boranova leaned forward. "Albert, whatever the reason, you're here and Yuri's suggestion is a reasonable one. -- And, Yuri, must you always be confrontational?"

Morrison found himself shaking with anger and for a moment he wasn't sure why. Konev's suggestion was indeed reasonable.

Then it occurred to him that he was being asked to put his theories to the test under conditions which would allow him no escape. He was on the very border of a brain cell that was magnified with respect to himself to mountainous proportions. He might be asked next to make his test inside, actually inside, such a cell. And if he did -- and if he failed -- under what blanket of argument and excuse could he hide from the fact that his work was wrong and had always been wrong?

He was angry, surely, at being thrust into this uncomfortable corner by circumstance and not at Konev particularly.

He was aware of Boranova waiting for him to say something and of Konev maintaining his incandescent stare.

Morrison said, "If I detect signals, I will detect them from all sides. Except for the capillary we have just left, we're surrounded by uncounted numbers of neurons."

"But some are closer than others," said Konev, "and one or two would be closest of all. Can't you detect the direction from which the signals will be the strongest? We can home in on that signal."

"My receiving device isn't equipped to determine directional signals."

"Ah! Then Americans, too, make use of devices that are equipped for specific purposes and do not prepare for emergency needs. It is not merely the ignorant Soviets who --"

"Yuri!" said Boranova sternly.

Konev swallowed. "I suppose you'll tell me I'm confrontational again. In that case, Natalya, you tell him to think of a way of devising something that will tell him the direction from which the strongest signals are coming."

"Please, Albert, make the attempt," said Boranova. "If you fail, we shall just have to blunder our way through this collagen jungle and hope we come upon something before too long."

"We're blundering onward even as we speak," put in Dezhnev almost cheerfully, "but I still see nothing."

Still angry, Morrison activated his computer and put it into the brain wave reception mode. The screen flickered, but it was only noise -- though the noise was more prominent than it had been within the capillary.

Until now, he had always used leads that involved micropositioning inside a nerve. Where was he to put the leads now? He had no nerve to put them into -- or, rather, he was already inside the brain, which made the whole matter of positioning anomalous. Perhaps, though, if he let the leads (made as stiff as possible) rise in the air and spread apart like a pair of antennae, they might play the part. At their present size, the spread would be tiny and could scarcely be useful but --

He doubled and redoubled the leads and they stood up in long loops, looking very much like the insect antennae that had first given them their names. He then focused and sharpened reception as well as he could and the flickering on the screen suddenly broke into deep narrow waves -- but only for a moment. Involuntarily, he let out a cry.

"What happened?" said Boranova, startled.

"I received something. Just a flash. But it's gone."

"Try again."

Morrison looked up. "Listen. All of you. Quiet. Working this thing is difficult and I manage best when I can concentrate entirely. Understood? No noise. Nothing."

"What was it you received?" said Konev softly.

"What?"

"Like a flash. You received something like a flash. May we know what it was?"

"No. I don't know what I received. I want to listen again." He looked behind him to the left. "Natalya, I'm in no position to give orders, but you are. I am not to be disturbed by anyone, particularly by Yuri."

"We will all be quiet," said Boranova. "Proceed, Albert. -- Yuri, not one word."

Morrison looked sharply to his left, for there had been a soft touch on his hand. Kaliinin was looking at him keenly and there was a small smile on her face. She mouthed words in an exaggerated fashion and he managed to catch the Russian: "Pay no attention to him. Show him! Show him!"

Her eyes seemed to glitter. Morrison could not help but smile warmly in response. She might be motivated entirely by a desire for vengeance against the man who had abandoned her, but he enjoyed the look of assurance and faith that was present in her eyes.

(How long ago had it been since a woman had looked at him with pride and with trust in his abilities? How many years ago had it been since Brenda had lost hers?)

A spasm of self-pity shook him and he had to wait for a moment.

Back to the device. He tried to shut out the world, shut out his condition, think only of his computer, only of the tiny fluctuations in the electromagnetic field produced by the interchange of sodium and potassium ions across the neuronic membrane.

The screen flashed again, steadied, and resolved into a pattern of low peaks and valleys. Carefully, barely daring to touch the keys, Morrison threw in an expansion directive. The peaks and valleys spread out, the edges sliding off the screen. On the single peak and valley left remaining, there was a fuzzy smaller wiggle.

It's recording the waves, he thought, afraid to say so, afraid even to think it with any intensity, lest the slightest physical or mental effect suffice to blank it out.

The minor wiggle -- the skeptic waves, as he called them -- went out of focus and back in, never quite sharpening.

Morrison wasn't surprised. He might be detecting the fields of a number of cells that didn't quite duplicate each other. There was also the insulating effect of the plastic wall of the ship. There was the eternal shaking of Brownian motion. There might even be the interfering charge of atom groupings outside the miniaturization field.

The wonder was that he had gotten waves at all.

Slowly he made hand contact with the antennae -- slid his fingers up and down, first one hand, then the other, then both in unison, then both in opposite directions. Then he bent the antennae gently, this way and that. There were sharpening and fuzzing of the skeptic waves, but he didn't know, for certain, exactly what he was doing that resulted in the sharpening.

And then, at a certain point, the tiny waves sharpened acutely. A little to one direction and another they fuzzed, but in one particular direction they were sharp. He tried to keep his hands from trembling.

"Arkady," he said.

"Yes, my American magician," said Dezhnev.

"Curve left and a little upward. I don't want to talk too much."

"I'll have to curve around the fibers."

"Curve slowly. Too fast and I'll lose the focus."

Morrison fought to keep his eyes from flickering leftward toward Kaliinin. Just one look at her face and one inevitable thought of her prettiness would be distraction enough to fuzz out the screen. Even the thought of distraction was itself distracting enough for the thought wave to flicker.

Dezhnev was curving the ship in the gentle arc that was all that the offset motors would manage and slowly Morrison shifted the antennae to suit. Occasionally he muttered a brief whispered direction: "Up and right," "Down," "A little left."

Finally he gasped, "Straight ahead."

It should get easier, he thought, as they got closer, but he couldn't relax until a neuron was actually in sight. And, through the obscuring collagen thicket, that was not likely to be until they were nearly on top of it.

Concentrating on only one subject was as tiring as clenching a muscle and leaving it clenched. He had to introduce just a bit of quick variation. He had to think of something else, but something neutral, something that would, for a while, leave his mind unclenched. So he thought of his broken family because he had thought of them so often that the image had faded and lost effect somehow. It was a photograph that was growing bent and gray and he could snap out of it quickly and return to the single-minded contemplation of the skeptic waves.

Then -- without warning and overwhelmingly -- another thought invaded his mind. It was a sharp mental picture of Sophia Kaliinin, looking younger, prettier, and happier than she had ever seemed to him in the short time he had known her. And with that picture came a tumbling of love and frustration and jealousy that left him weak.

He had not been consciously aware of any of these feelings, but who knew what unconscious thoughts and emotions might be hidden there in his own brain cells? Kaliinin? Did he feel that way about her? So quickly? Or was it the abnormal tensions of this fantastic voyage into the brain that had brought about fantastic responses?

It was only then that he noticed that the screen had fuzzed out completely. He was about to shout a warning to Dezhnev to stop the motors while he concentrated and tried to recapture the waves when Dezhnev's voice boomed out.

"There it is, Albert. You guided us to the cell like a bloodhound. Congratulations!"

"Also," said Boranova, gazing at Konev's lowering countenance, "congratulations to Yuri for coming up with the idea and persuading Albert to make the effort."

Konev's face relaxed and Dezhnev said, "But now, how do we get inide?"

56.

Morrison stared at the vista ahead with interest. What he saw was a vast ridged wall stretching up and down, right and left, as far as the ship's light made it possible to see. The ridges were themselves broken up into domes so that, on closer inspection, the wall seemed to be a checkerboard with each square bulging outward. There were ragged extensions jutting outward between the bulges, like thick, short, and branching ropes that gave the wall an appearance of being tattered.

Morrison, with some effort, allowed for his own miniaturization and grasped the fact that the bulges were the ends of molecules (of phospholipids, he assumed) that made up the cell membrane. He realized with some dismay just what it meant for the ship to be the size of a glucose molecule. The cell was an enormous object; by present ship measure, it must be many kilometers across.

Konev had been staring at the cell membrane also, but emerged from his thoughtful contemplation sooner than Morrison did.

"I'm not sure," said Konev, "that this is a brain cell -- or, at least, a neuron."

"What else can it be?" said Dezhnev. "We're in the brain and that's a cell."

Konev made no visible attempt to smother the disgust in his expression as he said, "There is more than one kind of brain cell. The neuron is the important cell, the chief agent of the mind. There are ten billion of them in the human brain. There are also some ten times as many glial cells of several kinds, which serve supporting and subsidiary functions. They are considerably smaller than the neurons. On the basis of chance, then, it is ten to one that this is a glia. The thought waves are in the neurons."

Boranova said, "We can't be guided simply by chance, Yuri. Can you tell in some definitive way whether this is glia or a neuron without involving statistics?"

"Not just by looking at it, no. From this size, all I see is a small section of a cell membrane and in such a case one cell looks like another. We'll have to become larger and get a more panoramic view. I presume we can become larger now, Natalya. After all, we're through what you called the collagen jungle."

"We can deminiaturize, if necessary," said Boranova, "but increasing size is more tedious and risky than decreasing it. An increase means the generation of heat and must be done slowly. Is there any alternative?"

Konev said tartly, "We might try Albert's instrument again. Albert, can you tell us if the skeptic waves you can detect are coming from straight ahead or from a slightly different direction?"

Morrison hesitated. Before his instrument had fuzzed out at a time just before the cell had been sighted, there had been the Kaliinin vision and he didn't want it back. It was too embarrassing, too upsetting. Surely, if his mind hid and suppressed emotions, it was because they were better hidden and suppressed.

He said uncertainly, "I'm not sure --"

"Try it," said Konev and all four Soviets were now looking at Morrison earnestly.

With an inward shrug, Morrison put his computer into action. After some consideration, he said, "I get the waves, Yuri, but not as strongly as I did on the way here."

"Do they get stronger in another direction?"

"Slightly, from a more upward direction, but I must warn you again that the directional abilities of my device are very primitive."

"Yes, like this ship you complain about. -- Here is what it seems to me has happened, Natalya. Coming here, we were able to detect a neuron directly above the top of a glia that lay before it. When he saw the glia, Arkady naturally steered for it and its bulk now masks the neuron and we get the thought waves more dimly."

"In that case," said Boranova, "we must go over the glia to the neuron."

"And in that case," said Konev, "I say again that we must deminiaturize. At our present glucose size, the distance we must pass in moving over the glia may well prove to be a hundred or a hundred and fifty kilometers. If we increase in length ten times, say to the size and mass of a small protein molecule, we would reduce the apparent distance to merely ten or fifteen kilometers."

Kaliinin said in an abstracted voice, as though what she had to say bore no relationship to what had just been said, "We will have to be our present size to get into the neuron, Natalya."

And, after a short pause, as though disengaging himself from the possibility of directly answering the remark, Konev said, "Of course. Once we reach the neuron, we readjust our size to whatever seems best."

Boranova sighed and seemed lost in her own thought.

Konev said with unaccustomed gentleness, "Natalya, we'll have to change size eventually. We can't stay glucose size forever."

"I hate to deminiaturize oftener than I must," said Boranova.

"But we must in this case, Natalya. We cannot spend hours cruising along a cell membrane. And deminiaturizing tenfold at this stage involved a very low absolute energy change."

Morrison said, "Is it that starting the deminiaturizing process might initiate an uncontrolled and explosive continuation?"

Boranova said, "There's nothing wrong with your intuition, Albert. Without knowing anything about miniaturization theory, you manage to grasp the point. Once started, it is safest to allow the deminiaturization to continue. Stopping it involves a certain risk."

"So does remaining at glucose size for hours longer than we need," said Konev.

"True," said Boranova, nodding her head.

Dezhnev said, "Shall we put it to a vote and come to a people's democratic decision?"

At this, Boranova's head snapped up and her dark eyes seemed to flash. Her heavy jaws set firmly and she said, "No, Arkady. It is my responsibility to make the decision and I will increase the size of the ship." Then, abandoning the air of majesty, she said, "Of course you can wish me well."

Dezhnev said, "And why not? It would be the same as wishing all of ourselves well."

Boranova bent over her controls and Morrison grew quickly tired of trying to watch. He couldn't actually see what she was doing, wouldn't understand that she was doing if he did see it, and there was the mundane fact that his neck was beginning to ache with the effort to keep it turned. He looked forward and found Konev peering at him over his shoulder.

"About the skeptic wave detection," said Konev.

"What about the skeptic wave detection?" said Morrison.

"When we were making our way to this cell through the collagen jungle --"

"Yes yes, what about it?"

"Did you get any -- images?"

Morrison remembered that tearing vision of Sophia Kaliinin. Nothing like it existed in his mind now. Even when he thought of it as it had then been, it now roused no response. Whatever it was in his mind, it seemed to have been reached only under the intense stimulation of concentrated skeptic waves; and whatever it was, he was not going to describe it to Konev -- or to anyone else, for that matter.

He temporized, "Why should I have sensed any images?"

"Because you did on occasion when you analyzed skeptic waves at normal-size intensities."

"You're assuming that analysis during miniaturization would produce greater intensities or possess greater image-producing powers."

"It's a reasonable assumption. But did you or didn't you? The question doesn't involve theorizing. I'm asking about an observation. Did you get any images?"

And Morrison sighed inwardly and said, "No."

Konev continued his sidewise peering (under which Morrison felt himself grow a little restless and rather more than a little irate), then said softly, "I did."

"You did?" Morrison's eyes widened in honest surprise. Then, more cautiously, "What did you sense?"

"Not much, but I thought you might have gotten it more clearly. You were actually holding and manipulating your detector and it is probably more adapted to your brain than mine."

"Just what was it you got? Can you can describe it at all?"

"A kind of flicker that moved into and out of awareness. It seemed to me that I saw three human figures, one larger than the others."

"And what did you make of that?"

"Well, Shapirov had a daughter whom he adored and she had two children whom he also adored. I imagine that in his coma he may have been thinking of them, or remembering them, or being under the delusion that he was seeing them. Who knows what goes on in a coma?"

"Do you know his daughter and his grandchildren? Did you recognize them?"

"I was seeing them, as it were, through translucent glass in the twilight. It was all I could do to sense three figures." He sounded disappointed. "I had hoped you would see it more clearly."

Morrison, thinking hard, said, "I neither saw, nor sensed, anything like that."

Konev said, "Of course, things should be sharper once we are inside a neuron. It is not images we must sense, in any case. We want to hear words."

"I've never heard words," said Morrison, shaking his head.

"Of course not," said Konev, "since you worked with animals who don't use words."

"True," said Morrison. "Just the same, I once managed to run some tests on a human being, though I never reported it. I sensed no words then or images either."

Konev shrugged it off.

Morrison said, "You know, under the circumstances, it might be natural for Shapirov's mind to be full of family -- if we accept your interpretation of what you thought you sensed. What would the chances be that he would be thinking of some esoteric extension of miniaturization mathematics?"

"He was a physicist. Even his family came second to that. If we can sense words out of those skeptic waves, they'll be words dealing with physics."

"You think that, do you?"

"I am positive."

The two fell quiet and for a few minutes there was no sound in the ship. Then Boranova said, "I've deminiaturized the ship to protein size and I have brought the process to a halt."

A moment passed and then Dezhnev, with an unaccustomed tightness to his throaty voice, said, "Are things all right, Natasha?"

Boranova said, "The mere fact that you can ask the question, Arkady, is an answer in the positive. Deminiaturization has stopped without incident."

She smiled, but there was a definite trace of perspiration glistening at her hairline.

57.

The surface of the glial cell still stretched out as far as the eye could see into the dimness beyond the reach of the ship's light, but it had changed in character. The domes and ridges had faded out into a fine texture. The ropes that had extended from between the domes had become threads nearly impossible to see as the ship sped along the surface.

Morrison's attention was, for the most part, on his computer, as he watched to see that the skeptic waves did not decline in intensity, but, periodically, he could not help but drift away from that and gaze at the panorama outside.

Occasionally, there would emerge from the surface of the cell the typical dendritic processes of a nerve cell -- even one that was merely a subsidiary glial cell. They branched and sub-branched like a tree in winter, growing out of the cell membrane.

Even at the new and larger size of the ship, the dendrites were large when they emerged from the cell. They were like tree trunks, which, however, narrowed rapidly and were clearly flexible. Lacking the rigidity of the cartilage fibers, they swayed in the eddies set up by the ship's progress through the extracellular fluid. They swayed, indeed, at the ship's approach and Dezhnev rarely had to do anything to avoid them. They would bend out of line and the ship would pass them safely.

Collagen fibers were fewer in the immediate neighborhood of the cell and, thanks to the larger size of the ship, were much thinner and more fragile. On one occasion, Dezhnev either did not see one looming directly ahead of the ship or did not care that it was. The ship brushed past it in a way that brought it just outside Morrison's seat. He flinched at the grating collision, but the ship was in no way damaged. It was the collagen fiber that bent, then snapped and dangled free. Morrison's head turned and his eyes followed the broken fiber for the second or so that it remained in view before floating away.

Boranova must have seen it, too, and watched Morrison's reaction, for she said, "There's no reason for concern. There are trillions of those fibers scattered through the brain, so that one more or less doesn't matter. Besides, they heal -- even in a brain as badly damaged as poor Shapirov's."

"I suppose so," said Morrison, "yet I can't help but think we are crashing without any right through an infinitely delicate mechanism not meant for technological invasion."

"I appreciate your feeling," said Boranova, "but hardly anything in the world seems to have been brought into being by geological and biological processes with any apparent pre-vision of human interference. Humanity does a great deal of wrong to Earth and to life, some of it wittingly. -- Incidentally, I'm thirsty. Are you?"

"Definitely," said Morrison.

"You'll find a cup in the little recess under your right armrest. Pass it back."

She distributed water to all five, saying matter-of-factly, "There's no shortage of water, so if you want seconds, say so."

Dezhnev looked at his cup distastefully, while keeping one hand on the controls. He sniffed at it and said, "My father used to say: 'There is no drink like pure water, provided one realizes that it is alcohol that is the purifying agent.'"

"Yes, Arkady," said Boranova. "I am quite sure your father purified his water frequently, but here on the ship, with your hands on the controls, you will have your water unpurified."

"We must all go through privations now and then," said Dezhnev, who then downed his water and made a face.

It might have been the taste of the water that caused Kaliinin to fumble between her legs. It took a moment for Morrison to realize that it was her turn to urinate and he turned his head toward the window and waited to see if another collagen fiber might go flying.

Boranova said, "I suppose, strictly speaking, it's lunchtime, but we can do without. Still --"

"Still what?" asked Dezhnev. "A good plate of piping hot borscht with sour cream?"

Boranova said, "What I have smuggled in against regulations are bits of chocolate -- high-calorie, zero-fiber."

Kaliinin, who had disposed of her small damp paper towel and was shaking her hands to dry them, said, "It will rot our teeth."

"Not immediately," said Boranova, "and you can rinse your mouth with a little water to reduce the sugar residue. Who wants one?"

Four hands went up, Kaliinin's not the last. Morrison welcomed his gladly. He was fond of chocolate in any case and sucked at it to make it last longer. The taste reminded him poignantly of his boyhood in the outskirts of Muncie.

The chocolate was gone when Konev said to Morrison in a low voice, "Have you sensed anything while we've been skimming past the glial cell?"

"No," said Morrison. (He hadn't.) "Have you?"

"I thought I did. The phrase 'green fields' crossed my mind."

Morrison could not prevent himself from saying "Hmm" and for a while remained lost in thought.

"Well?" said Konev.

Morrison shrugged. "Phrases go through one's mind all the time. You hear something out of the corner of your ear, so to speak, and sometime later it penetrates your consciousness; or some stream-of-consciousness thoughts invade your mind and one phrase surfaces; or you can have an auditory hallucination of some sort."

"It crossed my mind when I was looking at your instrument and concentrating."

"You wanted to be aware of something, I suppose, and something promptly obliged by flitting through your mind in response. You get the same effect in dreams."

"No. This was real."

"How can you tell, Yuri? -- I didn't sense any such thing. Did anyone else sense it, do you suppose?"

"They wouldn't. No one else was concentrating on your machine. Perhaps no one else in the ship had a brain sufficiently like yours to sense on your wavelength, so to speak."

"You're just guessing. Besides, what does the phrase mean?"

"Green fields? Shapirov had a house out in the country. He would remember the green fields."

"He might have merely supplied the image. You would supply the words."

Konev frowned, paused a moment, then said in a clearly hostile manner, "Why are you so opposed to the possibility of getting a message?"

Morrison allowed himself to be equally hostile. "Because I've been burned by reporting such sense perceptions. I've been ridiculed long enough and I have become cautious. An image of a woman and two children doesn't tell us anything. Neither does a phrase like 'green fields.' If you report it, how can you possibly tell it from a self-generated image or phrase? Now listen, Yuri, a hint, to be useful, must, however vaguely and indirectly, tie in with the quantum-relativity relationship. That we can report. Anything less than that is not compelling; it won't force belief. It will only succeed in hurting us. I speak from experience."

Konev said, "What, then, if you succeed in hearing something vital, something that bears on our project? Will you perhaps keep it to yourself?"

"Why should I? If I sense something in physics relating to miniaturization, I would lack the background to understand it and keeping it to myself would get me nowhere. If some useful result is shared between us, this computer remains my machine and it is activated by my theory. I am the one who will get the major share of the credit. I won't keep it to myself, Yuri. Both my self-interest and my honor as a scientist will keep me from doing that. -- And what about you?"

"Of course I'll share whatever I sense. I have been doing so just now."

"I don't mean 'green fields.' That is nonsense. Suppose you sense something very significant and I don't. Might it not occur to you that the knowledge would be a state secret, as miniaturization itself is? Would you then tell me that knowledge and risk the wrath of your Central Coordinating Committee."

They had been speaking in whispers, heads together, but Boranova's ears picked up the key word. "Politics, gentlemen?" she asked frostily.

Konev said, "We're discussing the possible uses of Albert's instrument, Natalya. If I learn something of importance from Shapirov's skeptic waves and Albert does not, he thinks I will keep it from him under the excuse that it is a state secret."

Boranova said, "It well may be."

Konev said mildly, "We need Albert's cooperation. It is his machine and his program and I am sure he knows how to work it at less than perfect efficiency. If he is not completely assured of our honesty and goodwill, he may arrange to have us sense nothing. I am willing to share anything that I sense if he will do the same."

"The Committee may disapprove, as Albert himself pointed out," said Boranova.

"Let it. I don't concern myself with it," said Konev.

"I'll prove I love you, Yuri," interposed Dezhnev with a chuckle. "I won't quote you."

Kaliinin said, "Natalya, I agree that we should be honest with Albert, since we must ask him to be honest with us. Using his own device with which he has experience, he is far more likely to come up with something useful than we are. A policy of quid pro quo is likely to be far more to our advantage than to his. -- Isn't that so, Albert?"

Morrison nodded. "I've been thinking precisely that and would have mentioned it if it looked as though you were going to tell me that it was against government policy to be honest with me."

Boranova said, "Well, let us await events." The tension died down.

Morrison remained busy with his own thoughts, watching his machine only in abstraction.

And then Dezhnev said, "There's another cell just ahead -- a kilometer or two. It looks as though it might be larger than the one we've been passing. Is that a neuron, Yuri?"

Konev, who seemed to have been in a brown study of his own, snapped to attention. "Albert, what does your machine say? Is that a neuron?"

Morrison was already handling his device. "It must be," he said. "I've never seen the skeptic waves this sharp."

"Good!" said Dezhnev. "Now what?"

58.

Kaliinin looked thoughtfully at the cell surface below. She said, "Natalya, we'll have to miniaturize to glucose size again. Arkady, get us in among the dendrites so that we can get down to the surface of the cell body."

Morrison watched the surface also. The dendrites were much more elaborate than those on the glia. The nearest one branched and branched again until it looked like a fuzzy frond vanishing beyond the reach of ship's light. Others, farther away, were fuzzier and smaller.

Morrison suspected that the fuzziness was at least partly the result of Brownian motion. Surely there couldn't be much of that, however. Probably each final strand of the branchings -- each twig -- met a similar twig or some neighboring neuron to form that intimate near-touch called a synapse. The wavering of the twig would not be strong enough to break the contact or the brain couldn't do its work.

Dezhnev had the ship approach the surface of the cell body, slowly slithering past the nearest dendrite (he was learning to handle the unbalance of the individual engines with a certain finesse, Morrison thought) -- and, as he did so, it seemed to Morrison that the surface of the neuron was changing character.

Of course, it had to, for the ship was miniaturizing again. The ridges in the cell surface were becoming more prominent and were dividing into domes. Between the phospholipid domes the hairs were becoming ropier. Receptors, thought Morrison. Each one of them was designed to link on to a particular molecule that would be useful to the neuron and certainly glucose would he the most useful of those.

The downward change was considerably more rapid than the upward change. Absorbing energy was simple, while the energy release of deminiaturization was dangerous. Morrison understood that well by now.

Kaliinin said, frowning in concern, "I don't know which receptors are for glucose, but a great many of them must be. Skim across them slowly, Arkady -- very slowly. If we're caught, I don't want to tear loose -- or to tear them loose, either."

"No problem, little Sophie," said Dezhnev. "If I shut off the motors, the ship stops at once. It can't push through the giant atoms that surround us at all easily. Too viscous. So I just give it a touch of energy, enough to shoulder our way past the molecules of water, and we'll tiptoe across the receptors."

"'Through the tulips,'" said Morrison, looking at Konev.

"What?" said Konev, looking both annoyed and puzzled.

"It's a phrase that went through my head. There's an old show tune called 'Tip Toe Through the Tulips With Me,' In English, the words are --"

"What nonsense are you speaking?" snapped Konev.

"I'm trying to point out that whenever someone says 'tiptoe' to me, I automatically hear the phrase 'through the tulips' in my mind. If I happen to be concentrating on my computer when someone says 'tiptoe,' I will still hear the phrase in my mind and it will not mean that I am getting it from the skeptic waves on the computer. Do you take my meaning?"

"You're talking emptily," said Konev. "Leave me alone."

But he looked shaken, Morrison thought. He had taken the meaning.

They were now moving parallel to the surface of the neuron. The receptors were moving gently and Morrison realized that he couldn't tell which were empty and which had attached themselves to some of the molecules moving through the extracellular fluid with them.

He tried to concentrate on those molecules. There seemed to be glitterings in the fluid which might have been the light of the ship's beacon reflected from molecules, but none of it showed up well. Even the surface of the cell membrane wasn't actually clear if you looked at it directly. It was more the surrealistic impression of a surface than an actual one -- too few photons were being reflected and too few were reaching them on their small scale.

Still, by the glitter, he could make out a kind of grittiness in the fluid they were passing through (water molecules, surely) and among them, now and then, something wormy-twisting, turning, closing up, then opening again. The immediate neighborhood of the ship was, of course, within the miniaturization field, so that atoms and molecules of the standard-size world were constantly shrinking as they entered -- and expanding again as they left. The number of atoms doing so must be enormous but the energy change that resulted, even totaled over that number, were small enough so that it did not drain the ship perceptibly, or bring about spontaneous deminiaturization, or do any damage. -- Or, at least, it seemed to do no damage.

Morrison tried not to think about it.

Boranova said, "I don't mean to question your ability, Sophia, but please check and make sure the ship has the electrical pattern of glucose."

"I assure you it does," said Kaliinin.

And as though to give notice that that was indeed so, the ship seemed to twist in mid-fluid, judging by the sudden shift in view through the walls.

Under ordinary conditions, such a twist would have thrown every person on the ship hard against the wall or the seat arm. Mass and inertia, however, were at virtually zero and there was only a faint swaying, hardly distinguishable from that which they associated with Brownian motion.

Kaliinin said, "We've attached ourselves to a glucose receptor."

"Good," said Dezhnev. "I've turned off the motor. Now what do we do?"

"Nothing," said Kaliinin. "We let the cell do its work and we wait."

The receptor did not actually make contact with the ship. This was good, for had it come any closer it would have entered the miniaturization field and its tip would have collapsed. As it was, there was a close meeting of electrical fields only, negative to positive and positive to negative. The attractions were not the full attractions but the lesser ones that resembled hydrogen bonds. It was enough to hold, but weak enough to allow the ship to pull away somewhat, as though it were connected to the receptor by rubber bands rather than by grappling hooks.

The receptor stretched the length of the ship and was irregular in outline, as though it were embracing a pattern of bulges along the plastic hull. The hull was smooth and featureless to the eye, of course, but Morrison was quite certain that there was an electric field that bulged in just the locations where the hydroxyl groups would be in the glucopyranose structure, the bulges taking on just the shapes they would in the natural molecule.

Morrison looked out again. The receptor virtually blanked out vision on the side of the ship along which it lay. If he looked beyond the receptor, however, he could see a farther stretch of the neuron's surface, seemingly without end, for it vanished beyond the reach of the ship's light.

The neuronic surface seemed to be heaving slightly and he could see greater detail. Among the regular domes of the rank and file of phospholipid molecules, he caught occasional glimpses of an irregular mass, which he guessed to be a protein molecule that ran through the thickness of the cell membrane. It was to these molecules that the receptors were attached, which did not surprise Morrison. He knew that the receptors must be peptides -- chains of amino acids. They were part of the thread of a protein backbone, sticking outward, each different receptor made up of different amino acids in a specific order so designed as to possess an electric field pattern matching (in opposing attractions and physical shape) that of the molecule it was designed to pick up.

Then, even as he watched, it seemed to him that the receptors were moving toward him. He could see them now in greater numbers and could also see that those numbers were still increasing. The receptors and the protein molecules to which they were attached seemed to be swimming through the phospholipid molecules (with a film of cholesterol molecules underneath, Morrison knew), which opened before and closed behind.

"Something's happening," said Morrison as he felt the ship's own motion through the tiny drag of inertia that remained to them at their thoroughly negligible mass.

59.

Kone said, "The surface is gathering us in."

Dezhnev nodded. "It looks like its doing this." He held up his thick and callused hand, cupping it.

"Exactly," said Konev. "It will invaginate, make a deeper and deeper cup, narrowing the neck and finally closing it, and we will be inside the cell." He seemed quite calm about it.

So was Morrison. They wanted to be inside the cell and this was the way it was done.

The receptors continued coming together, alongside each one of them some molecule -- some real molecule -- and in among them the feigning molecule of the ship. The cell's surface, like Dezhnev's cupped hand, closed upon them entirely and drew them in.

"Now what?" said Dezhnev.

"We're in a vesicle inside the cell," said Kaliinin. "It will grow more acid and the receptor will then detach itself from us. It and all the receptors will then return to the cell membrane."

"And we?" persisted Dezhnev.

"Since we are recognized by our electric field as a glucose molecule," said Kaliinin, "the cell will try to metabolize us -- break us up into smaller fragments and extract energy from us."

Even as she spoke, the peptide receptor fell away, uncoiling.

"Is that a good idea, having it metabolize us?" asked Dezhnev.

"It won't," said Morrison. "We'll be attached to an appropriate enzyme molecule which will find that we don't react as expected. We won't take on a phosphate group, so it will be helpless and will probably release us. We're not really a glucose molecule."

"But if the enzyme molecule releases us, won't another enzyme molecule of the same type attach itself to us and try again -- and so on indefinitely."

"Now that you mention it," said Morrison, rubbing his chin and absently noticing the bristles grown since his morning shave, "it may be that the first molecules won't let us go, I suppose, if we won't do the expected."

"A fine situation," said Dezhnev indignantly, slipping into his local dialect of Russian, as he always seemed to do when excited, and which Morrison always had a bit of difficulty in following. "The best we can expect is that an enzyme molecule either holds us forever all by himself or holds us forever in a relay race as we pass from one enzyme to another indefinitely. -- My father used to say: 'To be saved from the jaws of a wolf by a hungry bear is no great cause for gratitude.'"

"Please notice," said Kaliinin, "that no enzyme molecule has attached itself to us."

"Why is that?" asked Morrison, who had, indeed, noticed that.

"Because of a slight change in electric charge pattern. We had to mimic a glucose molecule to get into the cell, but once in, we don't have to be one anymore. In fact, we must mimic something else."

Boranova leaned forward. "Won't any molecule we mimic be liable to metabolic change, Sophia?"

"Actually, no, Natalya," said Kaliinin. "Glucose -- or any other simple sugar in the body -- belongs to a certain molecular configuration, so that we call it D-glucose. I've simply altered the pattern to its mirror image. We have become L-glucose and there isn't an enzyme that will touch us now, any more than any of us are likely to put a right shoe on a left foot. -- Now we can move about freely."

The vesicle which had formed on their introduction to the cellular interior had broken up and Morrison gave up as hopeless any attempt to follow what was going on. Fragments around him were enveloped by much larger enzyme molecules that seemed to embrace them and then relax. Presumably, an altered victim of the enzymatic squeeze was set free to be embraced again by another enzyme.

It was all happening at once and, Morrison knew, this was only the anaerobic portion of the process (in which no molecular oxygen was used.) It would end by breaking up the glucose molecule, with its six carbon atoms, into two three-carbon fragments.

A little energy would be produced in this fashion and the fragments would be shunted to the mitochondria for the completion of the process with the use of oxygen; a process in which the universal energy-transfer molecule, adenosine triphosphate (or ATP, for short) would be invested in order to get things started and, in the end, be produced once more in quantities substantially greater than the investment.

Morrison felt the urge to drop everything and to find a way into a mitochondrion, the small energy factory of the cell. After all, the fine details of mitochondrial processes had still not been worked out -- but then he pulled away almost angrily at the thought. The skeptic waves came first. He shouted that to himself, as though trying to force a realization of priorities onto an overly curious brain that was threatening to diffuse its interests.

Apparently, the same thought occurred to Konev, for he said, "We're finally inside the neuron, Albert. Let's not be tourists. What do you find in the way of skeptic waves now?"

CHAPTER 14 -- AXON

Those who say "A penny for your thoughts" are usually being overgenerous.

-- Dezhnev Senior

60.

Morrison bristled at Konev's order. (It had definitely been that.)

He indicated his resentment by refusing to respond at all for a while. He continued to stare out into the interior of the neuron and could distinguish nothing he recognized. He could see fibers, convoluted plates, hulks of uncertain size and of no clear shape. What's more, he had a strong feeling that there was a skeletal presence in the cell that held the larger objects -- the organelles -- in place, but that the ship was slipping past it all too quickly, as though it were in a river racing downstream. The feeling of motion was far stronger here than in the bloodstream, for though there were small objects (debris?) that moved along with them, there were larger objects that apparently remained in place and that they passed rapidly.

Finally Morrison said, "Look, Yuri, we're moving so quickly that the motion is likely to distort the skeptic waves badly."

Konev snarled, "Are you mad? We're not moving quickly at all. We're just drifting with the intracellular stream that serves to make certain that the small molecules are all made available to the organelle structure of the cell. The movement is very slow on the normal scale; it seems fast only on our miniaturized scale. Do I have to teach you cellular physiology?"

Morrison bit his lips. Of course. He had again forgotten how miniaturization distorted his perception. And again Konev was completely right.

"It might be better, though," said Morrison, fighting for self-respect, "if we changed back to D-glucose and allowed an enzyme to snatch us up. The combined size would slow us down and make it easier to pick up the waves."

"We don't have to slow down. The nerve impulse travels at a minimum of two meters per second in real velocity and in apparent velocity at our size that's about seventy times the real speed of light. As compared with that, our speed, however great it seems, is trivial. Even if we are moving at the apparent speed of a rocket ship, to the nerve impulse we seem virtually motionless."

Morrison lifted his arm in surrender and felt furious with Konev. There was such a thing as being too right. He cast a quick sidewise glance at Kaliinin, with the uncomfortable feeling that she would be showing her contempt. She met his glance soberly and with no trace of a sneer. In fact, her shoulders lifted slightly as though to say (Morrison imagined), "What do you expect of a savage?"

Boranova (Morrison glanced over his left shoulder) seemed oblivious to the exchange. She was busy with her instrument and Morrison wondered what she could be so intent on, considering that the ship's engines were off and they were merely drifting with the current.

As for Dezhnev -- with the engines off -- he was the one crew member who, in truth, had nothing to do at the moment (except to keep half an eye at the material up ahead in case of an unexpected emergency).

He said, "Come, Albert, study the skeptic waves and give us some answers. Then we can leave this place. It's extremely exciting being inside a cell for those who like it, but already I am quite certain I have seen enough. My father used to say: 'The most exciting part of any trip is reaching home again.'"

Boranova said, "Arkady --"

"Yes, Natasha."

"Save a few words for tomorrow." Morrison noticed the trace of a smile on her lips.

"Certainly, Natasha. I suspect an attempt at sarcasm, but I shall do as you say." And though he snapped his mouth shut with an exaggerated click of his teeth, he began to hum very quietly to himself, a tune in the minor mode.

Morrison felt a little astonished. They had been in the ship now for a little less than five hours -- but it felt the equivalent number of days, perhaps years. Yet, unlike Arkady and despite his earlier feelings of terror, he was not ready to leave Shapirov's body. He felt a strong urge to explore the cell and his thoughts rested on the possibility.

Kaliinin must have been thinking along similar lines, for she said in a soft, introspective tone, "What a shame to be the first people inside the most complex of all living cells and to do nothing at all about investigating it properly."

"That is exactly --" began Morrison, then thought better of it and let the words dangle.

Konev swung his arm as though he were driving off hordes of insects. "I can't understand this. We are in the cell and we came here for a specific purpose. Albert, focus on the skeptic waves."

"I am doing so," said Morrison sharply. "In fact, I have done so. -- Look!"

Konev twisted his head, then unclasped himself, so that he could turn around and peer over the back of his seat. He stared at Morrison's small screen and said, "The waves seem sharper."

"They are sharper. They're more intense and they show finer oscillations than I've ever seen. Come to think of it, I wonder how fine they can get. Sooner or later, an oscillation, if fine enough, will represent the wobbling of a single electron -- and then we have to take into account the uncertainty principle."

"You forget. We're miniaturized and Planck's constant is nine orders of magnitude smaller for us than it is under standard conditions."

"You forget," protested Morrison, eager to catch the other in a misstep this time, "that the waves are reduced by that much before they reach us. Those waves are exactly where they should be relative to the uncertainty principle, therefore."

Konev hesitated a bare moment. "It doesn't matter. We're looking at something now and there's no perceptible uncertainty blurring. What does it mean?"

"It supports my theory," said Morrison. "This is exactly what I ought to see inside a cell if my interpretation of skeptic wave activity is correct --"

"That's not what I mean. We began with the assumption that your theory was correct. Now it's no longer an assumption, it's a demonstrated fact, and I congratulate you. But what does it mean? What do those skeptic waves show Shapirov to be thinking?"

Morrison shook his head. "I have no data -- zero data -- on the correlation of such waves and specific thoughts. It would take years to gather such a correlation, if it could be done at all."

"But perhaps the skeptic waves, when this clear and intense, produce an inductive effect on your brain. Are you getting any of your famous images?"

Morrison thought for a moment, then shook his head, "None!"

From behind him came a quiet voice, "I'm getting something, Albert."

Morrison turned. "You, Natalya?"

"Yes, it's odd -- but I am."

Konev demanded, "What are you getting, Natalya?"

Boranova hesitated, concentrating. "Curiosity. Well, it's not exactly an image of anything. Just an impression. I feel curiosity."

"And so you might," said Morrison. "It needs no impression from outside to produce such a feeling under these circumstances."

"No no. I know what my own thoughts and impressions are like. This is imposed from outside."

Morrison said, "Do you feel it right now?"

"Yes. It comes and goes a little, but I feel it right now."

"All right. What about now?"

Boranova looked surprised. "It stopped suddenly. -- Did you turn off your machine?"

"I turned it down. Now, you tell me when you feel the sensation and when you don't." He turned to look at Kaliinin, intending to tell her to say or do nothing that would indicate when he turned the machine down or up, but she was staring out at the cell, obviously lost in the marvel of watching the interior of a neuron. He wondered if, at the moment, she heard -- or cared -- what was going on.

He turned away and said, "Natalya, close your eyes and concentrate. Just say 'on' when you get the sensation and 'off` when you don't."

For several minutes, she complied with his suggestion.

Morrison said to Konev, "Does the machine make a noise when it is turned down or up? Is there anything you can hear or sense?"

Konev shook his head. "I'm not aware of anything."

"Then there's no mistake. She's getting the sensation only when the machine is on."

Dezhnev, who, unlike Kaliinin, had followed everything, said. "But why?" His eyes narrowed. "The brain waves are there whether your machine detects them or not. She should get the feeling of curiosity all the time."

"No no," said Morrison. "My device filters out all the components but the actual skeptic waves. Without the machine, she just gets a confused mass of sensations, responses, correlations, and miscellany of all kinds. With the machine, she gets only the skeptic waves, which further demonstrates the usefulness of my theory."

"I don't get anything at all," said Dezhnev, frowning. "Doesn't that destroy your theory?"

Morrison shrugged. "Brains are complicated mechanisms. Natalya gets it. You don't. For that matter, neither do I. Maybe this particular skeptic wave component fits something in Natalya's brain, not in ours. I'm not going to be able to explain everything at once. -- Do you get anything, Konev?~

"No," he answered, as discontented as Dezhnev had been. "Yet I obtained impressions when we were outside the neuron."

Morrison shook his head and said nothing.

Konev burst out, "Can't you get anything but just a vague feeling of curiosity, Natalya?"

Boranova, "No, Yuri, I can't. Not at this moment. But you remember Pyotr Shapirov. He was curious about everything."

"I remember, but that doesn't help. Albert, in what direction are we moving?"

Albert said, "Downstream. It's the only direction in which we can move."

"No no." Then, in sudden anger, "Is that a joke? Are you trying to be funny?"

Morrison said, "Not at all. You asked in what direction we were going. What other answer could I have given you? Surely the compass directions have no meaning here."

Konev said, "All right. Sorry. The stream goes this way here. On the other side of the cell, it goes the other way. It's a circulation. But the nerve impulse goes one way only, from the dendrites to the axon. Are we on the side of the cell that's taking us in the same direction as the nerve impulse or in the other direction?"

"Does it matter?" said Morrison.

"I think it does. Can your device tell you in which direction the impulse is traveling?"

"Yes, certainly. There should be a slight shift in the shape of the waves, depending on whether they are meeting the device head-on or from the rear."

"And?"

"And we're moving in the direction of the impulse."

"Good! A stroke of luck. We're heading for the axon, then."

"So it would seem."

Boranova said, "And if we are heading for the axon?"

Konev said, "Natalya, think! The skeptic waves travel along the surface of the cell. The cell here is wide and relatively large. The skeptic waves spread out over a large surface and are weakened in intensity. As the cell approaches the axon, it narrows. The axon itself is long, a very long tube compared to the cell -- and very narrow. The waves must concentrate enormously as they race along that tube and they must grow more intense. What's more, the axon is insulated by a thick myelin sheath, so that the wave energy will not be lost to the outside, but will be kept tightly within the axon."

Boranova said, "You think, then, that we can receive more effectively in the axon?"

"Much more effectively. If you can detect curiosity now, it should be overwhelming in the axon. And you might be able to detect what Shapirov is curious about."

"It may turn out to be totally unimportant," said Morrison thoughtfully. "What if he's curious about why he should be lying there and not moving?"

"No," said Konev sharply, "that would not interest him. I knew Shapirov well. You didn't."

Morrison nodded. "That's true enough."

"All his waking time was consumed with the miniaturization process," said Konev. "All his dreams, too, I suspect. And toward the end, in the last few weeks before the -- the accident took place, he was working, thinking, dreaming of the connection between quantum and relativity, thinking of how to make miniaturization and deminiaturization energy-free and stable."

"Surely," said Morrison, "if that were the case, he must have given some hints as to some of the details of his thinking."

"No, he was a child in some ways. We knew what he was thinking of, but not whether he was making progress or in what direction. What he loved to do was to present it to us whole, complete. -- Remember, Natalya, how he loved to do that? He did that with miniaturization itself. When he finally wrote his paper -- it was a young book --"

Morrison said casually, "Where was it published?"

Konev sneered. "You know it wasn't published. It had a limited circulation to those who had to know. It's nowhere where you're likely ever to see it."

Boranova said, "Yuri, don't be needlessly insulting. Albert is a fellow crew member and a guest. He is not to be treated as a spy."

Konev said, "If you say so, Natalya. Nevertheless, if Shapirov is curious, so intensely curious that Natalya gets that message, it can be only about the quantum-relativity connection. If we can get some details about that, any details at all, we'll have a starting point and can continue."

"And you think we'll get those details in the axon?"

"Yes, I'm sure of it." Konev clenched both fists as though preparing to get a stranglehold on the facts.

Morrison looked away. He was not sure of it. Increasingly, it was beginning to look to him as though matters were moving in another direction altogether and that that was just as well--

He tried not to show it, but he was as excited as Konev was.

61.

Dim objects to either side loomed up ahead, drifted to one side, left or right, and fell behind. Ribosomes? Golgi apparatus? Fibrils of one sort or another? Morrison could not tell. From the vantage point of small molecule size, nothing, not even the sharpest, most familiar intracellular object, would look familiar, let alone recognizable.

They were racing through a strange land of indefiniteness and Morrison could not, no matter how he tried, picture his surroundings as those with which he was familiar from electron micrography.

He wondered if, somewhere beyond where the light of the ship's beam extended, there would be the endless volume of the cell's nucleus. Imagine being within submicroscopic distance of it and yet never seeing it.

He concentrated on the immediate surroundings. It seemed to him, once again, that he ought to make out the water molecules that made up 98 percent of all the molecules in the cell, that huge percentage being the direct consequence of the fact that they were just about the smallest molecules there.

He could not be sure. Focus his eyes though he did and as tightly as he could, what he saw was only a faint glitter -- a photon, perhaps, bouncing off such a molecule and flashing back toward his eye. At best, he would only see one or two from any given water molecule.

He was suddenly aware of Kaliinin's head, bending toward his. Her hair brushed his face and he noticed, as he had once or twice before, the fresh scent of her shampoo.

She said, "This is terrible, Albert."

Her breath was a little strong and Morrison flinched before he could stop himself.

She noticed, for her fingers came up sharply, covering her mouth, and she mumbled, "I'm sorry."

Morrison shook his head slightly, "My own breath isn't exactly a bed of roses. -- Tension, nothing much to eat. A drink of water might help, Natalya."

One drink set off everybody, of course, in a chain reaction.

Kaliinin fingered a small white pellet. "Peppermint drop?"

Morrison held out his hand and smiled. "Is it permitted?"

Kaliinin's eye flickered back toward Boranova and she gave a Who-cares shrug. Having passed the drop to Morrison, Sophia popped another in her mouth.

Then she said again, "This is terrible, Albert."

"What is, Sophia?"

"How can we pass through this cell without examining it in detail?"

"We have a specific mission."

"Yes, but no one may be back within a brain cell for many years. Perhaps, never. When, in the future, someone will read that this ship and this crew merely raced through, looking neither to right or left, what barbarians they will think we must have been."

She was whispering very softly and their heads were bent close together. Morrison found himself rather enjoying it.

Had he grown so calloused to the threat of the situation -- the constant skirting along the edge of the abyss of spontaneous deminiaturization, the possibility of split-second death at any moment -- that he could take joy from the trivial fact that his lips were so close to the pretty face of a woman?

Well, why quarrel with that? Let the nearness anesthetize him, so that he might for a moment forget.

Morrison remembered the sharp image he had had so brief a time before of a happy, smiling, beautiful girl. He had not recognized the thought as his own, so unexpectedly had it come out of nowhere, and it didn't return, even now, but he remembered it distinctly and the memory squeezed at his heart with a warm feeling.

He had the momentary impulse to kiss her lightly, just a touch upon the cheekbone with his lips -- and fought it down. If she decided to take it amiss, he would feel like an incredible fool.

Morrison said gently, "The people of the future will know we have a mission. They will understand."

"I wonder," Sophia said, then paused and sent a quick and almost fearful look in the direction of Konev, who as always sat stiff and detached at ally sign of speech or even motion from Kaliinin.

She turned to her computer, switched it to the word-processor mode, and tapped out in rapid Russian: YURI IS A FANATIC WHO SACRIFICES EVERYTHING TO HIS MANIA. THERE IS NO CHANCE OF READING THOUGHTS, BUT HE PERSUADES EVERYONE. She blanked it, then tapped out: WE ARE HIS VICTIMS and blanked it at once.

For "we," read "I," thought Morrison sadly. He looked at his own instrument hesitantly. It seemed to him that the thought waves, which he had dimmed to low, were growing more intense. Morrison looked out as though he might be able to tell just how near the axon they now were, but, of course, there was no way of knowing.

He blanked the radiation, switched to word-processing, and printed out in Roman-lettered Russian: HE, TOO, IS HIS VICTIM.

Kaliinin at once printed savagely: NO. I DON'T BELIEVE PEOPLE ARE THEIR OWN VICTIMS.

Morrison thought sadly of his one-time wife, his two children, his own inability to present his theory persuasively, or, alternatively, to walk away from it, and tapped out: I BELIEVE WE ARE EACH OF US MORE A VICTIM OF OURSELVES THAN OF ANYONE ELSE and returned it quickly to the thoughtwave mode.

He sucked in his breath sharply. The waves on his screen had risen high in intensity despite the fact that the device was still at low.

Morrison opened his mouth to comment on the fact, but Dezhnev made that unnecessary. "Yuri," he said, "the cell membrane is curving in and we're curving in with it."

That would account for it, thought Morrison. The cell was narrowing in toward the axon and the skeptic waves were being enormously concentrated. His device, having filtered out everything else, would radiate the wave function of the skeptic waves throughout the interior of the ship. And with what results?

Konev said with delight, "We'll see what happens now. Albert, keep your machine working at top intensity."

Boranova said, "I hope that whatever happens gives us our answer or at least a start to our answer. I have grown tired waiting."

"I don't blame you," said Dezhnev. "As my father used to say: 'The longer it takes to get to a point, the blunter it turns out to be.'"

It seemed to Morrison that every line of Konev's stiff body now betokened excitement and expectant triumph -- but Morrison did not join in that expectation.

62.

Morrison stared outward. They were well into the axon now and being carried along it by the fluid stream within the cell.

In the real world, the axon was an excessively thin fiber, but in the microminiaturized world of the ship, it might be the equivalent of a hundred kilometers across. As for its length, it was much, much longer than the cell itself. Going from one end to the other of the axon might very well be the equivalent of a trip from the Earth to the moon and back a couple of dozen times over. On the other hand, their apparent speed on the microminiaturized scale must seem, to themselves, to be a respectable faction of the speed of light.

There was no indication of that incredibly rapid speed, however. The ship was moving with the current and there was far less in the way of macromolecules or organelles in the axon than there had been in the cell body. If there were structural fibers withstanding the current and remaining motionless with respect to the cell membrane, the current swept them past those too rapidly for them to be visible, even if a sizable number of photons were reflected from them -- which, of course, they were not.

So he gave up. There was nothing to look at outside.

He ought, in any case, to be looking at his screen. The skeptic waves were becoming even more intense, he could see. It had grown difficult to wipe out the nonskeptic material. It was so strong that it flooded the computer's receiving capacity.

What's more, the tight, elaborate vibration of the skeptic waves had become a series of irregular spikes. Even at full expansion, it was clear he wasn't getting all the detail that existed. Morrison had a clear vision of the necessity of a laser printout clear enough to be placed under a microscope.

Konev had unclasped himself and had half-lifted himself over the back of his seat so that he might stare at the screen.

He said, "I haven't seen it like that before."

Morrison replied, "Nor have I and I have been studying skeptic waves for nearly twenty years. Nothing like this."

"I was right, then, about the axon?"

"Absolutely, Yuri. The waves have concentrated themselves beautifully."

"And the meaning, then?"

Morrison spread out his hands helplessly. "There you have me. Since I have never seen anything like this, I obviously can't interpret it."

"No no," said Konev impatiently. "You keep concentrating on the screen and I keep thinking about induction. Our own minds are the true receptors -- by way of your machine. What do you receive? Images? Words?"

"Nothing," said Morrison.

"That's impossible."

"Are you getting anything?"

"It's your machine. Adjusted to you."

"You've had images before, Yuri."

Dezhnev's voice broke in dryly, "My father used to say: 'If you want to hear, you must begin by listening.'"

Boranova said, "Dezhnev Senior is correct. We can receive nothing if we fill our minds with contention and shouts."

Konev drew a deep breath and said with a softness that was most uncharacteristic of him, "Very well, then, let us concentrate."

An unnatural quiet fell over the ship's crew.

Then Kaliinin said, breaking the silence rather timidly, "There is no time."

"No time for what, Sophia," said Boranova.

"I mean that's the phrase I sensed: 'There is no time.'"

Morrison said, "Are you saying that you received it from Shapirov's skeptic waves?"

"I don't know. Is that possible?"

Boranova said, "A moment before I had the same thought. It occurred to me that a better way of tackling the problem might be to study the recorded skeptic waves on the screen and to wait for sudden changes. It might be the change of pattern rather than the pattern itself that would produce an image. But then I thought that the waiting might be an enormously long drawn-out affair and for that we lacked the time."

"In other words," said Morrison, "you thought, 'There is no time.'

"Yes," said Boranova, "but it was my own thought."

"How can you know, Natalya?" said Morrison.

"I know my own thoughts."

"You also know your own dreams, but sometimes dreams arise out of external stimuli. Suppose you receive the thought 'There is no time.' Because you are not accustomed to receiving thoughts, you quickly build up a line of free association that makes it reasonable for you to feel that you have had the thought yourself."

"That may be so, but how does one tell, Albert?"

"I'm not sure, but Sophia apparently sensed the same phrase and we might ask if she were thinking something independently that would give rise to the phrase as a matter of course."

"No, I was not," said Kaliinin. "I was trying to keep my mind empty. It just came in."

"I didn't sense anything," said Morrison. "How about you, Yuri?"

Konev shook his head, frowning ferociously at his failure. "No, I didn't."

"In any case," said Morrison thoughtfully, "it needn't mean anything. Natalya felt it might be an idle thought that arose out of a series of previous thoughts in a natural way and with none but the most superficial meaning. Even if the thought had arisen in Shapirov's mind, it might be equally superficial there."

"Perhaps," said Konev, "but perhaps not. His whole life and mind were bound up in the problems of miniaturization. He would be thinking of nothing else."

"You keep saying that," said Morrison, "but, actually, that is romantic nonsense. No one thinks of nothing else. The most lovesick Romeo in history could not concentrate on his Juliet forever. A twinge of colic, a distant sound, and he would be distracted at once."

"Nevertheless, we must take anything Shapirov says as possibly significant."

"Possibly," said Morrison. "But what if he were trying to work out the extension of the miniaturization theory and decided to moan he had no time, that there was insufficient time to complete his work?"

Konev shook his head, more, it seemed, to brush off distraction than in a clear negative. He said, "How about this? What if it seemed to Shapirov that any miniaturization that involved an increase in the speed of light proportional to the decrease in Planck's constant would involve a change that was instantaneous, that took no time. And, of course, as the speed of light increased vastly, so would the inevitable speed of a massless -- or nearly massless -- object. He would, in effect, abolish time and could say to himself proudly, 'There is no time.'"

Boranova said, "Very farfetched."

"Of course," said Konev, "but worth thinking about. We must record every impression we get, however dim, however apparently meaningless."

"I plan to do precisely that, Yuri," said Boranova.

Konev said, "Then quiet again. Let's see if we can get anything more."

Morrison concentrated fiercely, his eyes half-buried under jutting eyebrows, but those same eyes were fixed on Konev, who sighed and said in a whisper, "I get something over and over -- 'nu times c equals m sub s.'"

Morrison said, "I got that, too, but I thought it was 'm times c square.'

"No," said Konev tightly. "Try again."

Morrison concentrated, then, quite abashed, said, "You're right. I get it, too: 'nu times c equals m sub s.' What does it mean?"

"Who can say at first glance? However, if this is in Shapirov's mind, it means something. We can assume that nu is radiational frequency, c the speed of light, and m sub s is the standard mass -- that is, the mass at rest under ordinary conditions. In the light of --"

Boranova's arms lifted with an admonitory forefinger upraised. Konev stopped short and said uncomfortably, "But that is neither here nor there."

Morrison grinned, "Classified material, eh, Yuri?"

And then Dezhnev's voice sounded with an unaccustorned petulance to it. "How is it," he said, "that you are hearing all these things about time and standard mass and whatnot and I sense nothing? Is it that I am not a scientist?"

Morrison said, "I doubt that that has anything to do with it. Brains are different. Maybe they come in different types the way blood does. Blood is blood but you can't always transfuse one person's blood into another. Your brain may be sufficiently different from Shapirov's so that there is no sensory crossover."

"Only mine?"

"Not only yours. There may be billions of minds that can pick up nothing from Shapirov. You'll notice that Sophia and Natalya can pick up the same things, which Yuri and I cannot -- and vice versa."

"Two men and two women," grumped Dezhnev, "and I am what?"

Konev said impatiently, "You are wasting our time, Arkady. Let's not endlessly discuss every tiny thing we pick up. We have more to hear and little time to do it in. If you concentrate a little harder, Arkady, you, too, may sense something."

Silence!

It was broken occasionally by a soft murrnur from one or another who reported sensing an image or a scrap of words. Dezhnev contributed only one thing: "I sense a feeling of hunger, but it may be my own."

"Undoubtedly," said Boranova dryly. "Console yourself with the thought, Arkady, that when we get out of here, you will be allowed seconds and thirds of every dish and unlimited vodka."

Dezhnev grinned almost lasciviously at the thought.

Morrison said, "We don't seem to come across anything mathematical or even out of the ordinary. I insist that even Shapirov must have the great majority of his thoughts concerned with trivia."

"Nevertheless," grunted Konev under his breath, "we listen."

"For how long, Yuri?"

"Till the end of the axon. Right down to the end."

Morrison said, "Do you then intend to run into the synapses or will you double back?"

"We will go as close to the synapses as possible. That will bring us into the immediate neighborhood of the adjoining nerve cell and the skeptic waves may be even more easily sensed at that crucial point of transfer than anywhere else."

Dezhnev said, "Yes, Yuri, but you are not the captain. -- Natasha, little flower, is that what you wish, too?"

Boranova said, "Why not? Yuri is right. The synapse is a unique spot and we know nothing about it."

"I ask only because half our power supply has now been consumed. How long dare we continue to remain within the body?"

"Long enough," said Boranova, "to reach the synapse, certainly."

And silence fell once more.

63.

The ship continued to move along the enormous length of the axon and Konev dictated the actions of the others more and more.

"Whatever you get, report. It doesn't matter whether it makes sense or not, whether it's one word or a paragraph. If it's an image, describe it. Even if you think it's your own thought, report it if there's the slightest doubt."

"You'll have meaningless chatter," said Dezhnev, apparently still annoyed at his nonreceiving brain.

"Of course, but two or three meaningful hints will pay all. And we won't know what's meaningful until we examine everything."

Dezhnev said, "If I sense something I think isn't mine, do I throw it in, too?"

"You, especially," said Konev. "If you're as insensitive as you seem to think, anything you do get may be particularly important. Now, please, no more talk. Every second of conversation may mean we miss something."

And there began a period of disjointed phrases out of which, in Morrison's opinion, it was impossible to make sense.

One surprise came when Kaliinin said suddenly, "'Nobel Prize!'"

Konev looked up sharply and almost responded -- then, as though realizing who had said it, he subsided.

Morrison said, trying not to sound mocking, "Did you get that, too, Yuri?"

Konev nodded. "At almost the same time."

"That's the first crossover between a man and woman," said Morrison. "I suppose Shapirov had his mind on it in connection with his extension of miniaturization theory."

"Undoubtedly. But his Nobel Prize was sure for what he had already done in miniaturization."

"Which is classified and therefore unknown."

"Yes. But once we perfect the process, it will no longer be unknown."

"Let's hope so," said Morrison sardonically.

Konev snapped, "We are no more secretive than you Americans."

"All right. I'm not arguing," but Morrison grinned broadly at Konev, who was peering over his shoulder at him, and that seemed to irritate the younger man even further.

At one point, Dezhnev said, "'Hawking.'"

Morrison's eyebrows lifted in surprise. He had not expected this.

Boranova said, looking displeased, "What is this, Arkady?"

"I said, 'Hawking,'" said Dezhnev defensively. "Out of nowhere it popped into my mind. You told me to tell you anything that did."

"It is an English word," said Boranova, "that means 'spitting.'

"Or 'selling,'" said Morrison cheerfully.

Dezhnev said, "I don't know enough English to know that word. I thought it was someone's name."

"So it was," said Konev uncomfortably. "Stephen Hawking. He was a great English theoretical physicist of over a century ago. I was thinking of him, too, but I thought it was my own thought."

Morrison said, "Good, Arkady. That might be useful."

Dezhnev's face split with a grin. "I'm not altogether useless, then. As my father used to say: 'If the words of a wise man are few, they are nevertheless worth listening to.'"

An interminable half hour later, Morrison said gently, "Are we getting anywhere at all? It seems to me that most of the phrases and images tell us nothing. 'Nobel Prize' tells us, reasonably enough, that Shapirov thought of winning one, but we know that. 'Hawking' tells us that that physicist's work was significant, perhaps, in connection with the extension of miniaturization, but it doesn't tell us why."

It was not Konev who rose to the defense, as Morrison would have expected, but Boranova. Konev, who might have been readying himself for a response, seemed willing, on this occasion, to let the captain bear the weight.

Boranova said, "We are dealing with an enormous cryptogram, Albert. Shapirov is a man in a coma and his brain is not thinking in a disciplined or orderly fashion. It is sparking wildly, those parts of it that remain whole, perhaps randomly. We collect everything without distinction and it will all be studied by those of us with a deep understanding of miniaturization theory. They may see meaning where you see none. And a bit of meaning, in one corner of the field, may be the start of an illumination that will spread to all parts of it. What we are doing makes sense and it is the proper thing to do."

Konev then said, "Besides, Albert, there is something else we can try. We are approaching a synapse. This axon will end eventually and split up into many fibers, each of which will approach but not join with the dendrite of a neighboring neuron."

"I know that," said Morrison impatiently.

"The nerve impulse, including the skeptic waves, will have to jump the tiny gap of the synapse and, in doing so, the dominant thoughts will be less attenuated than the others. In short, if we jump the synapse, too, we will reach a region where we may, for a while at least, detect what we want to hear with less interference from trivial noise."

"Really?" asked Morrison archly. "This notion of differential attenuation is new to me."

"It's the result of painstaking Soviet work in the area."

"Ah!"

Konev fired up at once, "What do you mean, 'Ah!'? Is that a dismissal of the value of the work?"

"No no."

"Of course it is. If it's Soviet work, it means nothing."

"I just mean that I haven't read or heard anything about it," Morrison said in defense."

"The work was done by Madame Nastiaspenskaya. I presume you've heard of her."

"Yes, I have."

"But you don't read her papers, is that it?"

"Yuri, I can't keep up with the English-language literature, let alone with --"

"Well, when this is over, I'll see that you get a collection of her papers and you may educate yourself."

"Thank you, but may I say that on the face of it I think the finding is an unlikely one. If some types of mental activity survive a synapse better than others, then, considering that there are many hundreds of billions of synapses in the brain, all constantly in use, the final result would be that only a tiny proportion of thoughts would survive at all."

"It's not as simple as that," said Konev. "The trivial thoughts are not wiped out. They continue at a lower level of intensity and don't decline indefinitely. It's just that, in the immediate neighborhood of a synapse, the important thoughts are, for a time, relatively strengthened."

"Is there evidence for this? Or is it only a suggestion?"

"There's evidence of a subtle nature. Eventually, with miniaturization experiments, that evidence will be hardened, I'm sure. There are some people among whom this synapse effect is much stronger than average. Why else can creative individuals concentrate so hard and so long, if they are not less distracted by trivia? And why, on the contrary, are brilliant scholars traditionally absentminded?"

"Very well. If we find something, I won't quarrel with the rationale."

Dezhnev said, "But what happens when we come to the end of the axon? The stream of fluid we're riding will just make a U-turn at that point and carry us back again against the opposite wall of the axon. Do I force my way through the membrane?"

"No," said Konev. "Of course not. We'd damage the cell. We'll have to take on the electric charge pattern of acetylcholine. That carries the nerve impulse pattern across the synapse."

Boranova said, "Sophia, you can give the ship an acetylcholine pattern, can't you?"

"I can," said Kaliinin, "but aren't the acetylcholine molecules active on the outside of the cell?"

"Nevertheless, the cell may have a mechanism for ejecting them. We'll try."

And the trip along the seemingly endless axon continued.

64.

Suddenly the end of the axon was in sight. There was no hint, no warning. Konev noticed it first. He was watching and he knew what he was watching for, but Morrison gave him full credit. He himself was watching, too, and knew what he was watching for, and yet did not see it when it came.

To be sure, Konev was in the front seat, while Morrison had to stare past Konev's head. That was not much of an excuse either.

In the curiously ineffective light of the ship's beacon, it was clear that there was a hollow ahead and yet the current was beginning to veer away from it.

The axon was beginning to break off into branches, into dendrites like those at the other end of the neuron, at the end where the nucleated cell body was. The axonian dendrites at the far end of the cell were fewer and thinner, but they were there. Undoubtedly, a portion of the cellular stream flowed into it, but the ship was in the main stream that curved away and they could take no chances.

They would have to push into the first dendrite encountered -- if it could be done.

"There, Arkady, there," cried Konev, pointing, and it was only then that all the rest realized they were reaching the end of the axon. "Use your motors, Arkady, and push over."

Morrison could make out the soft throbbing of the motors as they edged the ship toward the side of the stream. The dendrite toward which they aimed was a tube that was slipping sideways, a huge tube at their size scale, so huge they could only see a small arc of its circumference.

They continued to edge closer to it and Morrison found himself leaning toward the dendrite, as though adding body English could improve matters.

But it was not a matter of reaching the tube itself, merely moving over an eddying section of fluid, a rushing of water molecules that quieted into gentle circles and then slipped beyond into another stream that was curving off in another direction.

The ship made the transition and was suddenly plunging forward into the tube opening.

"Turn off the motors," said Konev excitedly.

"Not yet," grumbled Dezhnev. "We may be too near the countercurrent emerging from this thing. Let me slip over a bit closer to the wall."

He did so, but that did not take long. They were now essentially moving with the current, not against it. And when Dezhnev did finally shut off the engine and pushed back his damp, graying hair, he heaved a great breath and said, "Everything we do consumes a ton of energy. There's a limit, Yuri, there's a limit."

"We'll worry about that later," said Konev impatiently.

"Will we?" said Dezhnev. "My father always said: 'Later is usually too late.' -- Natalya, don't leave all this to Yuri. I don't trust his attitude toward our energy supply."

"Calm yourself, Arkady. I will take care to override Yuri if it becomes necessary. -- Yuri, the dendrite is not very long, is it?"

"We will come to the ending in short order, Natalya."

"In that case, Sophia, please see to it that we are ready to adopt the acetylcholine pattern at a moment's notice."

"You'll give me the signal, then?" said Kaliinin.

"I will not have to, Sophia. I'm sure that Yuri will whoop like a Cossack when the end is in sight. Shift the pattern to acetylcholine at that moment."

They continued sliding along the final tubular remnant of the neuron they had entered a considerable time before. It seemed to Morrison that, as the dendrite continued to narrow, he could see the wall arc above him, but that was illusion. Common sense told him that even at its narrowest, the tube would appear to be a few kilometers across at their present molecular size.

And, as Boranova had foreseen, Konev lifted his voice in a great cry, probably quite unaware that he was doing so. "The end is ahead. Quick. Acetylcholine before we're swept around and back."

Kaliinin's fingers flickered over the keyboard. There was no indication from inside the ship that anything about it had changed, but somewhere up ahead was an acetylcholine receptor -- or, more likely, hundreds of them -- and the patterns meshed, positive to negative and negative to positive, so that the attraction between ship and receptor was sharp and great.

They were pulled out of the stream and melted into and through the wall of the dendrite. For a few minutes they continued to be pulled through the intercellular medium between the dendrite of the neuron they had just left and the dendrite of the neighbor neuron.

Morrison saw almost nothing. The ship, he felt, was sliding along -- or through -- a complex protein molecule and then he noticed the formation of a concavity, as when the ship had first entered the first neuron.

Konev had unclasped himself so that he could stand up. (Quite obviously, he was too excited to feel this was something he could do sitting down.)

He said, almost stuttering, "Now, according to the Nastiaspenskaya hypothesis, the filtering out of the important thoughts is most evident immediately after the synapse. Once the cell body is approached, the difference fades. So once we are in the neighboring dendrite, open your minds. Be ready for anything. Say whatever you hear out loud. Describe any images. I'll record everything. You, too, Arkady. Albert, you, too. -- We're in now. Begin!"

CHAPTER 15 -- ALONE!

Good company robs even death of some of its terrors.

-- Dezhnev Senior

65.

Morrison watched what followed with a certain detachment. He did not intend to participate actively. If something forced itself into his mind, he would respond and report it. It would be unscientific not to.

Kaliinin, at his left, looked grim and her fingers were idle. He leaned toward her and whispered, "Have you got us back as L-glucose?"

She nodded.

He said, "Are you aware of this Nastiaspenskaya hypothesis?"

She said, "It's not in my field. I've never heard of it."

"Do you believe it?"

But Kaliinin was not to be trapped. She said, "I'm not qualified either to believe or disbelieve, but he believes it. -- Because he wants to."

"Do you sense anything?"

"Nothing more than before."

Dezhnev was, of course, silent. Boranova occasionally produced a crisp word or two, which, however, seemed to Morrison's ears to lack conviction.

Only Konev seemed to maintain enthusiasm. At one point, he cried out, "Did anyone get that? Anyone? 'Circular rhythm.' 'Circular rhythm.'"

There was no direct answer and, after a while, Morrison said, "What does that mean, Yuri?"

Konev did not answer. -- And even he grew quiet after a while and was reduced to staring blankly ahead as the ship moved onward in the fluid stream.

Boranova asked, "Well, Yuri?"

Konev said rather hoarsely, "I do not understand it."

Dezhnev said, "Yuri, little son, it may be this is a bad neuron and isn't doing much thinking. We'll have to try another and maybe another. The first one may have been simply beginner's luck."

Konev looked at him angrily. "We don't work with single cells. We're in a group of cells -- a million of them or more -- that are a center of creative thought by Albert's theory. What one of them thinks, they all think -- with minor variations."

Morrison said, "That's what I believe I have shown."

Dezhnev said, "Then we don't go looking from cell to cell?"

"It would be no use," said Morrison.

"Good," said Dezhnev heavily, "because we don't have the time and we don't have the energy. So what do we do now?"

In the silence that followed, Konev said again, "I do not understand it. Nastiaspenskaya could not be wrong."

And now Kaliinin, with great deliberation, unclasped herself and stood up.

She said, "I want to say something and I don't want to be interrupted. Natalya, listen to me. We have gone far enough. This is an experiment that perhaps had to be done, even though, in my opinion, it was sure to fail. Well, it has failed."

She pointed a slim finger briefly at Konev, without looking at him. "Some people want to alter the Universe to their liking. Whatever is not so, they would make so by sheer force of will -- except that the Universe is beyond any person's will, squeeze he ever so hard.

"I don't know if Nastiaspenskaya is correct or not. I don't know if Albert's theories are correct or not. But this I know-what they think, and what any neuroscientist thinks about the brain generally, must be about a reasonably normal brain. Academician Shapirov's brain is not reasonably normal. Twenty percent of it is nonfunctioning-dead. The rest must be distorted in consequence and the fact that he has been in a coma for weeks shows that.

"Any reasonable human being would realize that Shapirov cannot be thinking in normal fashion. His brain is an army in -- in disarray. It is a factory in which all the equipment has been jarred loose. It is sparking randomly, emitting broken thoughts, scattered pieces, splinters of memory. Some men" -- she pointed again -- "won't admit it because they believe that if they only insist loudly enough and strongly enough, the obvious will retreat and the impossible will somehow come into being."

Konev had now also unclasped and was also standing. He turned slowly and looked at Kaliinin. (Morrison was astonished. Konev was actually looking at her. And on his face there was no visible sign of anger or hatred or contempt. It was a hangdog look, with a touch of self-contempt in it. Morrison felt sure of this.)

Yet Konev's voice was steady and hard as he looked away from Kaliinin and turned to Boranova, addressing her.

"Natalya, was this point made before we embarked on this voyage?"

"If you mean, Yuri, did Sophia say all this to me before this moment? She did not."

"Is there any reason we should be plagued with crew members who have no faith in our work? Why should such a person have agreed to come on this voyage?"

"Because I am a scientist," shot back Kaliinin and she, too, addressed Boranova. "Because I wanted to test the effect of artificial electrical patterns on biochemical interaction. That has been done, so that for me the voyage was a success, and for Arkady, since the ship has handled as it should, and for Albert, since the evidence for his theories is stronger now, I gather, than it was before we came here, and for you, Natalya, since you brought us down here and, presumably, will bring us back safely again. But for one" -- pointing at Konev -- "it has been a failure and the mental stability of he who has failed would be greatly helped by the frank admission of that failure."

(She's getting back at him with a vengeance, thought Morrison.)

But Konev did not crumple under Kaliinin's forceful attack. He remained surprisingly calm and he said, still to Boranova, "That is not so. That is the reverse of what is true. It was clear from the start that we could not expect Shapirov to think as he did when he was in full health. It was entirely likely we would get bits and pieces of meaning intermingled with meaninglessness and trivialities. That we did. I was hoping to get a higher percentage of meaning in this new neuron immediately past the synapse. There we failed. That makes the task before us more difficult, but not impossible.

"We've got well over a hundred phrases and images we've salvaged from Shapirov's thinking. Don't forget 'nu times c equals m sub s,' which must be significant. There's no possible reason to think of that simply as a triviality."

Boranova said, "Have you thought, Yuri, that it is possible that that fragment of a mathematical expression represents something Shapirov tried and found wanting?"

"I have thought of it, but why should it stick in his mind, in that case? It is certainly worth investigating. And how much of what seems to be trivial or meaningless would not be so if even one phrase or image gave us a necessary hint. With each step forward, other things might more easily fall into place. We certainly have no reason as yet to declare this voyage a failure -- or any part in it."

Boranova nodded slightly. "Well, let's hope you're right, Yuri, but, as Arkady has already asked, what do we do now? What, in your opinion, ought we to do now?"

With great deliberation, Konev said, "There's one thing we haven't tried yet. We've tried detection outside the neuron, inside the neuron, inside the axon, inside the dendrites, past the synapse, but, in every single case, we have tried it inside the ship, inside its presumably insulating walls."

"In that case, then," said Boranova, "are you suggesting that we make the attempt outside the ship and within the cell fluid itself? Remember, such an observer would still be inside a plastic suit."

"A plastic suit is not as thick as a plastic ship and the insulating effect would presumably be less. Besides, the computer itself need not be inside the suit."

Morrison said with gathering alarm, "Who do you have in mind for this?"

Konev looked at him coolly. "There is only one possibility, Albert. The computer is your design and is made to match your brain. You are, of necessity, the most sensitive to Shapirov's thoughts. It would be foolish in the highest degree to send out anyone else. I have you in mind for this, Albert."

66.

Morrison's stomach clenched tightly. Not that! He couldn't be asked to do it again!

He tried to say so, but his mouth seemed to have dried completely and instantaneously and he could make no sound other than a throaty hiss. It flashed through his mind that he had been beginning to enjoy the feeling of not being a coward, of wandering, by ship, through the brain cell fearlessly -- but he was a coward, after all.

"Not that!" he cried out, but it wasn't his voice; it was higher by an octave. It was Kaliinin.

She had turned around to face Boranova, holding herself down in her seat with knuckles standing out whitely.

"Not that, Natalya," she cried again passionately, her chest heaving in excitement. "It's a cowardly suggestion. Poor Albert has been out there once already. He nearly died and if it hadn't been for him we might still be lost in the wrong capillary and we might never have reached this cell block at all. Why should he have to do that again? It is surely someone else's turn and since he wants it done" -- no one questioned who "he" was -- "let him do it. He should not ask it of someone else."

Morrison, beneath his own fright, wondered faintly if Kaliinin's emotion was due to a growing affection for him or a determination to oppose at every point any strong wish of Konev's. There was a corner of Morrison's mind that was pragmatic enough to be certain it was the latter.

Konev's face had grown slowly redder as Sophia spoke. He said, "There's no cowardice here." (He spat out the word, making it quite plain that that was what had most offended him.) "I am making the only possible suggestion. If I go out there, which I am perfectly willing to do, it can only be with Albert's device, which won't work as well for me as it would for him. We cannot choose this one or that one according to whim. It must be the one who can get the best results and there is no question, in that case, who it must be."

"True," said Morrison, finding his voice now, "but there is no reason to suppose that reception will be better outside the ship than inside."

Konev said, "There is no reason to think the reverse, either. And as Dezhnev will tell you, our energy supply -- and therefore our time -- is decreasing. There is no room for delay. You'll have to leave the ship as you did before -- and now."

Morrison said in a low voice, which he hoped would make the remark final, "I'm sorry. I will not leave the ship."

But Boranova had apparently made up her mind. "I'm afraid you'll have to, Albert," she said gently.

"No."

"Yuri is right. Only you and your device can give us the information we need."

"I am certain there'll be no information."

Boranova held out her two hands, palms upward. "Perhaps not, but we can't leave that a matter of conjecture. Let us find out."

"But --"

Boranova said, "Albert, I promise you that if you do this one thing for us, your part in all this will be reported honestly when the time comes for open publication. You will be known as the man who worked out the correct theory of thought, the man who developed the device that could exploit that theory properly, the man who saved the ship in the capillary, and the man who detected Shapirov's thinking by bravely venturing into the neuron, as earlier he had ventured into the bloodstream."

"Are you implying that the truth will not be told if I refuse?"

Boranova sighed. "You force me to play the role of villainess openly. I would rather you had been satisfied with the implication. -- Yes, the truth need not be told. That, after all, is the only weapon I hold against you. We cannot very well turn you out of the ship by force, since there is no advantage in your merely being outside. You must also sense poor Shapirov's thought and for that we must have your willing cooperation. We will reward you for that, but only for that."

Morrison looked around at his crewmates' faces, searching for help. Boranova -- steadily studying him. Konev -- staring him down imperiously. Dezhnev -- looking awkward, not willing to commit himself either way. And Kaliinin ... his only hope.

Morrison gazed at her thoughtfully and said, "What do you think, Sophia?"

Kaliinin hesitated, then said in a voice that did not tremble, "I think it is wrong to threaten you in this way. A task like this should be performed voluntarily and not under duress."

Dezhnev, who had been humming very softly to himself, now said, "My old father used to say: 'There is no duress like one's own conscience and it is that which makes life so needlessly bitter.'"

"My conscience doesn't trouble me in this matter," said Morrison. "Shall we put it to a vote?"

"It wouldn't matter," said Boranova. "I am the captain and in a case like this I alone have the vote."

"If I am out there and sense nothing, would you believe me?"

Boranova nodded. "I would. After all, you might so easily invent something that would sound useful if you wished us to be suitably grateful. If you come back with nothing or with trivia, I believe I would have a greater tendency to believe that than if you instantly claimed you had heard something of great importance."

Konev said, "I am not likely to be fooled. If he comes in with something that seems important, I will be able to tell if it truly is. And now, surely, we have had enough discussion. Let's go!"

And Morrison, his heart beating and his throat tightening, managed to say, "Very well, I will go -- but only for a brief time."

67.

Morrison, of his own accord, stripped himself of his cotton garment. The first time (was it really only a couple of hours before?) it had seemed to be a violation of modesty; this second time it was almost routine.

He was quite aware, as with Kaliinin's help he struggled into the suit, how easily he could suck in his abdomen. Despite a good breakfast, ample water, and a piece of chocolate, his stomach was empty and he was glad it was. He felt a twinge of nausea as the suit enclosed more and more of his body and to throw up, once enclosed, would have been unbearable. Just before enclosure, he refused another piece of chocolate with what was almost a shudder.

They put his computer into his sheathed hands and Boranova said to him loudly, "Can you work it?"

Morrison heard her without too much difficulty. He knew he wouldn't hear her once he was outside the ship. He balanced the essentially weightless computer in one hand and struck the keys carefully and rather gracelessly with the other. He shouted back, "I think I can manage."

Then, rather clumsily, they tied the computer to both his wrists with firm knots of tough plastic twine (probably the same material of which the suit and the ship itself were made).

"So you don't lose it," Boranova called out.

Out into the air lock he went. He felt himself embraced by it, then pressured as the air in it was withdrawn, and then he was outside the ship.

Outside again. For only a brief time, he had warned the rest, but what good was that? How could he enforce that, if the others within the ship refused to let him back in? Already, he was sorry he had let himself be talked out of the ship by any threat, but dared not articulate the thought. It would do him no good.

Morrison tucked the computer under his left arm, partly because he did not entirely trust the plastic twine that secured it and partly because he wanted to protect it from the cellular contents as much as possible. He felt the surface of the ship for some spot where the electric charge on his suit would adhere to a charge of opposite nature on the ship's hull.

Morrison found one that allowed him to keep his back on the ship. The electric field did not hold him tightly and there was considerable give. Still, he was the size of an atom and it might be difficult to concentrate electric charge on a portion of him.

Or would it be? Wouldn't the electrons that were the source of the charge be microminiaturized as well? He felt -- and resented keenly -- his ignorance of miniaturization theory.

He was little aware of his motion along the intracellular stream, for everything was moving along with him. He found himself, however, the center of a shifting and ever-changing panorama. With the thinner plastic of the suit between himself and the scene, with the beacon of his own suit turning here and there as he moved his head and felt the headpiece twist (a little resistantly) with it, he could make out more.

There was the knobbiness of the water molecules rubbing against each other, like dimly seen balloons. He could see them brush past him slowly, this way or that, and largely ignore him. Occasionally, one would cling for a moment, an electric charge meeting an opposite charge on his suit, so that they clutched at him and released their hold only lingeringly. It was almost as though a molecule occasionally yearned for him but couldn't manage to turn the wish into deed.

Among these were larger molecules, some as large as the ship, some far larger still. He could see them only because light glinted off them here and there in changing, prismatic fashion. He did not see them; his mind built them up out of what he could glimpse. That he could do this at all was the result of his knowing a good deal about the contents of the cell to begin with, or thought he did. It might also, he thought, simply be his imagination.

It even seemed to Morrison that he could make out the skeleton of the cellular interior; the large structures that remained in place while the fluid stream passed them and that gave the cell its more or less fixed shape. These structures seemed to go by so quickly he could barely take note of them before they were gone. They alone gave him the impression of the rapid movement of the intercellular stream that carried the ship and him along with it as it weaved in gentle swoops around those fixed structures.

All this observation had not taken very long, but it was enough. It was time that he now turned his attention to his computer.

Why? It would detect nothing. Morrison was sure of it, but he couldn't act on that belief, however strongly he felt it. He might be wrong, perhaps, and he owed it to the others -- and to himself, too -- to make the effort.

He tried clumsily to adjust the computer to maximum sensitivity, barely able to handle the keys correctly and relieved that the self-contained power pack in the computer worked properly. He concentrated hard in order to sense and tap the currents of thought passing by.

The device did its work. The water molecules drifted by it as gently and untouchingly as they drifted by him and, disregarding them, his computer portrayed the skeptic waves more purely etched, more steep and clear, more finely detailed, than he had ever before seen them. But for all that, he sensed nothing but a faint hissing whisper that produced neither words nor images but only sadness.

Wait! How did he know the whisper was sad? Surely that was merely a subjective judgment on his part. Or was he detecting an emotion? Was the partially brain-dead, totally comatose Shapirov sad? Would it be surprising if he were?

Morrison looked over his shoulder, back at the ship. Surely what he was detecting was enough. He was registering sad nothingness and nothing more. Should he signal now to be pulled in? Would they be willing to do so? And if they brought him in and if he told Boranova that he had sensed nothing, would not Konev tell him angrily that he had been out there only two minutes, that he hadn't given it a chance? Would Konev not demand he go out again?

And if he waited longer?

Actually, he could wait longer. At this stage of miniaturization (or for whatever cause), he did not feel any particular heat.

But if he waited longer -- another two minutes, or five minutes, or an hour, for that matter -- Konev would still say, "Not enough."

He could make out Konev looking out toward him, his expression dark and glowering. Kaliinin was directly behind him, since she had unclasped herself and moved over into what had been Morrison's seat. She was staring outward anxiously.

He caught her eyes and she seemed about to signal to him, but Boranova leaned forward and pushed her shoulder firmly. Kaliinin moved back to her own seat at once. (She had to, Morrison told himself, for her job was to keep an eye on the charge patterns of the ship and of himself right now and she could not -- must not -- abandon that job, no matter what her anxiety over him.)

For the sake of completeness, Morrison tried to catch Dezhnev's eye, but the angle required was too great for the twisting ability of his headpiece. He caught, instead, Konev motioning in what seemed, clearly, an interrogative gesture.

Morrison looked away petulantly, making no attempt to give information, and became aware of something in the distance looming toward him at a great speed. He could make out no details, but he automatically winced as he waited for the current to carry the ship and himself around it.

It came straight on like a juggernaut and Morrison cowered toward the hull of the ship.

The ship did evade the object, but not by much and as the looming monster passed him Morrison felt himself drawn outward and toward it.