Fantastic Voyage II: Destination Brain fv-2

by Isaac Asimov

  Click. Anchored now by his right hand, he pulled at his left. Nothing happened. He clung to the hull, crucified there.

  Drops of perspiration rolled down his forehead and collected in his armpits.

  He shouted uselessly, wiggling his legs in an ecstasy of effort.

  They were looking at him, but how could he gesture to his trapped hands? The red corpuscle that had been companion to the ship since he had emerged from it drifted closer and nudged him against the hull. His chest, however, did not cling. Luckily, it was not up against a positively charged region.

  Kaliinin was looking toward him. Her lips were moving, but he could not lip-read - not Russian, at any rate. She did something with her computer and his left arm pulled free. Presumably, she had weakened the intensity of the charge.

  He nodded his head in what he hoped would be interpreted as a gesture of thanks. Now it would only be necessary to work his way back, positively charged area by positively charged area, until he reached the rear of the ship.

  He began the motion and found himself more or less pinned, but not so much this time by the harsh pull of the electromagnetic interaction as by the soft, pillowy push of the red corpuscle.

  "Get back!" shouted Morrison, but the red corpuscle knew nothing of shouts. Its role was purely passive.

  Morrison thrust at it with his hands and used his leg flippers to push harder. The elastic surface film of the red cell gave and bellied inward, but resisted more strongly, the more it gave until, finally, Morrison was pushing uselessly and, as he tired, was forced back against the ship.

  He paused to catch his breath, which was difficult, hot and sweat-drenched as he was. He wondered whether he would be disabled first by dehydration or by the fever which would surely come over him if he could not get rid of the heat his own body was producing - and all the more so because of the effort he was making to free himself of the red corpuscle.

  He lifted his arm again and brought it down, the plastic flipper held edgewise. It sliced through the pellicle of the corpuscle, puncturing it like a balloon. The surface tension of the film pulled the opening wider and wider. Matter exuded - a thin cloud of granules - and the red corpuscle began to shrink.

  Morrison felt as though he had killed an inoffensive living creature and experienced a pang of guilt - then decided that there were trillions of others in the circulatory system and that a red corpuscle only had 120 days of functioning anyhow.

  Now he could pull back toward the rear.

  No fog collected on the inner surface of his suit. Why should it? The surface was as warm as he was and nothing would cling to the plastic anyway. What would have been fog was probably collecting as little pools of sweat in this corner and that of the suit, rolling around as he did.

  He was back at the rear now, back where the ship's streamlining failed because the jets of each of the three microfusion engines broke the smooth lines. Here he was as far from the center of gravity of the ship as possible. (With luck, the other four would move as close to the front of the ship as they could. - He wished he had thought to make that explicit before getting into the suit.) What he had to do was to find positively charged areas that would hold his hands back and then - push!

  He was feeling a little dizzy. Physical? Psychological? The effect was the same, either way.

  He took another deep breath and blinked his eyes as perspiration leaked into them (there was no way he could brush it away and again he felt a spasm of fury against the fools who had designed a suit only microscopically better than none at all).

  He found the handholds against the hull and paddled his feet. Would this work? The mass he was trying to turn was only micrograms in quantity, but he had at his disposal - what? Microergs? He knew that the square-cube law gave him a tremendous advantage, but how much efficiency could he put into his push?

  But the ship moved. He could tell that by the motions of the tiling on the capillary wall. He could now reach that wall with his feet, so the ship must be lying across the capillary. He had turned it 90 degrees.

  When his feet touched the capillary wall, he pushed with perhaps injudicious savagery. If he were to punch a hole in the wall, the results might be incalculably bad, but he was aware he had little time left and he could not think beyond that. Fortunately, his feet rebounded as though they had sunk into spongy rubber and the ship turned a bit faster.

  Then stuck.

  Morrison looked up blearily, squinting and willing himself to see. (He was almost past the ability to breathe in the squalid damp heat of the suit's interior.) It was another red corpuscle. Surely it was another red corpuscle. They were as closely spaced in capillaries as - as cars on a busy city street.

  This time he did not wait. The flipper on his right hand came down at once, carving open a vast swath, and this time he did not spend a microsecond of worry over the murder of an innocent object. His legs worked again and the ship moved.

  He hoped it was shifting in the same direction as before. What if he had managed to twist himself upside down in his mad attack on the red corpuscle and he was simply pushing the ship back into the wrong direction? He was almost beyond caring.

  The ship was now parallel to the long axis of the capillary. Gasping, he tried to study the tiles. If they were moving forward toward the prow of the ship, then the ship was moving backward with the current and it was facing the junction of the arteriole.

  He decided it was. No, he didn't care. Right way, wrong way, he had to get back into the ship.

  He was not ready to sell his life for success.

  Where? Where?

  His hands were sliding along the walls of the ship. Sticking here. Sticking there.

  Vaguely he saw the dim figures on the other side of the wall. Motioning. He tried to follow the gestures.

  They were fading out.

  Up? Signaling up? How could he clamber up? He had no strength.

  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 fo
ught 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 sna
p 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.