Her dark eyes narrowed with grim concentration, Tomiko opened fire like a machine-gunner, slicing down rows of the oozing attackers. Her lasers decapitated the nearest structures and cleared a path to the crater-sized pore, but others flowed over and took their places. Like molten drops of solder, the chopped pedicels extruded new heads and opened fresh mouths.
Gritting his teeth, Devlin rocketed forward, dodging whenever he could. At the edge of the pore, the Mote smashed into a pedicel that made a last attempt to stop them. With a clip of their wing, it splattered.
Then the ship plunged into the opening.
Several defeated pedicels drooped over the edge, stretching on absurdly long shafts like Dobermans on bungee cords. One chomped on the casing of the starboard impeller, but Devlin ripped the ship free with a sickening scrape.
The Mote shot out of the pedicels' reach, into the depths of the skin.
Devlin switched on the front beams again, shining white cones of light into the unexplored maze of cells. He tried to slow his breathing and cool the prickly thrill-sweat that burst from his skin.
“I hate to raise this possibility,” Freeth spoke from the main compartment, gripping his seat with white-knuckled hands, “but what we find inside the alien's body might be even worse…”
Chapter 18
Mission clock: 4:08 remaining
Within the containment room, the alien astronaut lay prone—completely enclosed, airtight, protected. Team Proteus was inside now, their strange journey under way, but nothing had moved, nothing had changed.
Sergei Pirov was relieved to be out here, where it was safe. Where he belonged. After so much rushed activity in the past day, he felt weary and on edge. Each breath echoed in his ears, hot against the faceplate. Though his suit's circulation system kept his body cool, he could not make himself comfortable.
Beside him, Rajid Sujatha seemed content to do his work, despite all the constraints imposed upon them. The Bengali doctor went through the procedures, making diligent notes… and waiting.
The Russian doctor peered through the lifepod's hazy windows, seeing only tantalizing glimpses of the humanoid body. The alien's egg-shaped head was smooth and infantlike, its large eyelids closed slits with extensive epicanthic folds. Pirov could just see one long arm, a naked shoulder, but not much of the chest or legs. Maybe the alien had tentacles instead of feet?
As a medical researcher, he wanted to feel the alien's skin, its muscles, the hardness of its bones. He wished he could pry open the eyelids and stare into pupils that had seen the light of distant suns. He wanted to pull back the lips to see teeth that had eaten food from another world, the mouth that spoke an alien language, or recited poetry written under other constellations.
This extraterrestrial specimen could be a biological Rosetta Stone, unlocking amazing secrets. Perhaps if he stared at it long enough, even with his weak and burning eyes, Pirov might solve the mystery of life itself, break the code… and understand why this creature had come to Earth.
When he'd been a young boy in Vladivostok, Sergei Pirov had been fascinated with science. Because his family was poor, he'd contented himself with a clunky old microscope discarded by the local university. His father, a hardworking fisherman who barely knew how to read, had obtained it for him because he loved his son. Though he did not understand the mysteries of the universe, the man understood what would make the boy happy.
With voracious curiosity, Sergei had sat with his microscope by the kitchen window, pointing the little mirror to a bright spot in the cloudy skies, while his mother hand-sewed traditional clothes to sell to tourists and rich Party members.
Peering through the eyepiece, he scrutinized a hair-shaft, which looked like a fallen tree under high magnification. He'd pricked a finger and observed his blood, then stained and scrutinized epithelial cells scraped from inside his cheek.
In a drop of murky water taken from a green-scummed meadow pool, Sergei could see a bustling metropolis of strange creatures: coiled green tubes of spirogyra or green algae, amoebas, euglena, protozoans. Blurring, furry feet propelled the ovoid ciliates like aimless bumper cars; when they struck an obstacle, they backed up and puttered off in another direction. He'd kept a little sketchbook, trying to observe and identify as many as possible.
And now, deep inside a mountain installation, he was again an outside observer, still detached and still curious.
Of all the specimens he'd seen in his career, this one required the most objectivity. Just like his old Soviet mentor, Alexei Rokov, had taught him to do. Without imagining the impossible, Rokov never could have developed the miniaturization apparatus back in the 1960s. …
If he were allowed to crack open the containment vessel, Pirov might find a thousand answers in only a few minutes. But Hunter had forbidden that. Above, the Director sat alone in the VIP observation deck. Pirov looked forward to seeing Vasili Garamov again, but the Deputy Foreign Minister hadn't arrived yet, which made him even more uneasy.
Had the diplomat been detained on his way into the secure facility? Or had Garamov been held by the Russian government, after they discovered how he'd arranged for the capsule to be brought here in a blatant abridgment of bureaucratic procedures?
Years after Dr. Rokov had defected from the Soviet Union, bringing with him the secret prize of his technology, young Vasili Garamov had been instrumental in cementing a cooperative agreement between the American and Russian miniaturization work, under the aegis of Project Proteus. Garamov had made it possible for Pirov himself to come here.
Guards stood at the armored chamber doors. Technicians moved in the upper levels and outside in the corridor. Taking care of maintenance details while Team Proteus continued their fantastic explorations, Sujatha busied himself disconnecting the now-useless laser-drilling apparatus.
They would have to wait four more hours, trusting the crew would emerge from the alien body with pictures, samples, and more raw information than Pirov could dream of. He wanted to spend the rest of his life in his laboratory office, simply examining the data.
The Russian placed his gloved hands on the impenetrable lifepod, pressing hard to stop his trembling fingers. “They cannot learn everything about the alien in one mission.”
Sujatha smiled, content with his assignment. “Nevertheless, that is all the time they have.”
Chapter 19
Mission clock: 4:07 remaining
The Mote continued into the deep pore surrounded by soft walls slick with secretions. The womblike shaft was curved, lined with what looked like a mosaic of gelatinous tiles. The surrounding light turned reddish orange, then blacker as they followed the serpentine tunnel into the extraterrestrial's dermal layers.
“Now that we're finally inside, we've got four hours to explore and get back out,” Devlin said. “Take a lot of notes, Doc.”
Cruising at moderate speed, he piloted the ship around curves and organic obstacles. He had always liked to poke his nose where no one had gone before. To him, leaving fresh footprints on an uncharted beach counted for more than all of his degrees and awards. No other place was as unexplored as the microscopic universe, especially here inside an alien body.
Shafts branched out, but he never hesitated, assessing his options in a split second and choosing a direction. Nobody had a map anyway.
Unsettled by the unexpected viciousness of the skin pedicels, Arnold Freeth rebuckled his seat belt and wiped sweat off his forehead. “I hope you're leaving a trail of breadcrumbs behind, Major Devlin, so we can find our way back out.”
“That's what the navigation computer is for.” Devlin took another sharp turn as the pore twisted. “Even if we get completely lost inside this alien's body, what's the worst that could happen?” Freeth didn't answer.
Intent on the astonishing world around her, Dr. Tyler took meticulous notes about changes in the wall texture. On either side of the Mote, small mouths like culverts emptied into the shaft. Viscous liquid seeped out, running up the cellular surface in de
fiance of gravity. “Those openings must be glandular outlets, releasing pheromones or sebaceous fluids,” she said.
Standing at the opposite side window, Freeth added, “Maybe our passage irritates the pore lining and triggers the production of lubricant. Should we go inside one of those glands and have a look around?”
“Any time you want to take a side trip, let me know,” Devlin said.
Tyler shook her head. “They're likely to be dead ends, terminating in a pool of fluids waiting to be released.”
“Then I definitely don't want to take my nice clean ship in there.”
With engines thrumming comfortably now that they had passed the nightmarish skin guardians, Devlin stabilized the ship, then rode through the turbulence as he transmitted a burst to the outside. “Project Proteus, we're proceeding deeper into the alien. You guys should see this. It's like a funhouse at an amusement arcade.”
“Yeah, a new theme park—Glandular World,” Tomiko said.
With a crackle, Director Hunter's voice came over the Mote's comm system. “Team Proteus, your transmissions are being distorted by increasing static.”
“Not to worry, Felix. We can take care of ourselves. Devlin out.”
They descended beyond what, in a human, would have been the gray stratum corneum and into the subcutaneous layers. Tyler pointed out analogies to fatty adipose tissue, sweat ducts, sebaceous glands, recording each one with photographs from hull-mounted cameras, videotapes, and her own verbal commentary.
“Everything you say sounds reasonable, Dr. Tyler,” Freeth said, trying to keep the challenging tone out of his voice, “but any conclusions drawn from terrestrial biology could be completely wrong. Human anatomy developed on this planet and evolved in this environment for millions of years.” He tapped on the window. “Believe me, this creature might play by an entirely different set of rules.”
“I'm doing my best, Freeth, based on sound scientific principles.”
Devlin asked, “What about the theory that mankind was star-seeded, our genetic material dropped onto Earth by extraterrestrials?”
Freeth sounded surprisingly skeptical. “If you swallow that, then yes, we would all have a common biological basis.”
“Some people will believe anything,” Tyler said with a trace of bitterness.
Devlin swerved the vessel around threads of stretchy scarlet fibers that hung down like stalactites. Thick silvery-white liquid traced patterns on the pore wall, glistening like dew-moist spiderwebs in the ship's front lights. Tyler continued to analyze the gridlocked cells that lined the shaft.
Freeth peered from window to window like an anxious puppy. He looked behind them, saw something move, and froze. “Uh, Major Devlin? We've got company!”
A strange shape emerged from an opening in the organic wall—a living blob that bristled with spines and colored masses. The self-contained sack of milky fluid writhed… and oozed closer.
“Perhaps it's some kind of glandular secretion.” Tyler rolled her eyes. “Nothing to be alarmed about.”
As the flexible shape bore down upon them, it grew as large as the Mote, a rubbery organic bag filled with gelatinous slime. At its center hung a darker sphere, like the yolk of an egg, surrounded by organelles—rods, spheres, coiled wormlike things.
“That's one mean-looking glandular secretion, Dr. T,” Tomiko said.
Tyler reconsidered, her face looking even sharper. “Part of the extraterrestrial's immunodefenses, perhaps analogous to a leukocyte?”
Freeth shook his head. “No, no, I disagree. More likely a single-celled organism, an ameboid creature—either a parasite or a symbiote.” He pressed his freckled face closer to the window, watching how the shifting mass changed, then grinned in amazement. “A genuine microorganism from another planet. The very first xenozoan ever observed by human beings.”
Devlin relaxed at the piloting console. “Mr. Freeth, you saw it first. In my book, that means you have the privilege of naming it for the future of science.”
“There'll be plenty of things to name on this voyage,” Tyler responded sourly. “We're all going to have a chance to add Latin suffixes to our names.”
“Let's write the technical papers later, okay?” Tomiko reached across the control panel to tap the glass coverplate on the mission chronometer. “Got a ticking clock here, three hours and fifty minutes.”
The xenozoan drifted closer, a living container of protoplasm and subcellular matter. At first, the organism moved like an amoeba, pouring nutrient liquid from one pseudopod to the other. Then the protoplasmic mass sprouted a hairy mane of whipping cilia, like the oars on a slave galley, which pushed the single-celled creature toward the Mote.
“Think it's a threat, Marc?” Tomiko said.
“You're the security officer.”
Tyler took furious notes as she watched the ominous xenozoan close the distance. “Let's be reasonable. It can't possibly consider us food of any kind.”
As the microorganism came alongside their ship, its cellular membrane extruded fibrous whips like the tentacles of a giant squid. Seven strands reached toward the Mote, as if in an effort to grab the ship.
“Uh, let me point out that those skin pedicels shouldn't have reacted to us either,” Freeth said. “Let's not take anything for granted.”
Tomiko powered up the laser cannons. “Maybe we just need to show it who's boss.” She fired a low-power warning shot into the ameboid creature. The thin red laser pierced the rubbery envelope, leaving a foaming trail of vaporized protoplasm. But the blast did no serious damage. The xenozoan kept coming.
“Ms. Braddock, please don't just shoot everything,” Tyler chided.
“Damage assessment, Doc. At our size, I can't possibly harm more than one or two cells at a time. Shouldn't cause any problems at all for Big Boy.” She gestured out the cockpit window.
Cylindrical organelles in the xenozoan glowed with bluish light, like storage batteries discharging energy. The tentacles crackled like electric whips.
“I've seen enough,” Freeth said.
“I hate to say, 'uh-oh,' but I'll say it anyway. Uh-oh.” Devlin peered through the cockpit windows into the shadowy distance ahead of the ship. An identical xenozoan emerged from a glandular duct farther down the pore. Extruding electrical cilia, the second extraterrestrial organism climbed toward them.
The Mote was blocked from behind and ahead.
“Somebody must have rung the dinner bell,” Tomiko said. “Can't figure out why they think we're so appetizing.”
“You better aim for the nucleus,” Freeth suggested. “That's likely to be the organism's control center, the closest thing to its 'brain.' ” Tyler did not contradict him.
Tomiko centered her targeting cross on the spherical nucleus of the first microorganism. “Shooting germs in a barrel. Ready… aim—”
Before she could fire, two of the xenozoan's crackling flagellae slapped the Mote's metal hull. A burst of discharged power surged through the frame like a thunderbolt, sending the crew reeling.
Devlin yelled as sparks flew from his control panel. Suddenly, half of the Mote's power systems went dead, and the controls sparked and froze. The deck lurched at a steep angle as their stabilizers shifted. The impeller engines died. A small fire curled up from the cockpit banks. Devlin grabbed for a small fire extinguisher.
The ship's front lights sputtered, then went dark, leaving the crew inside the blackness of the alien's tissue. All systems went off-line.
Devlin searched the diagnostic panel, trying to coax some kind of response from the ship. Anything. But the Mote wouldn't move.
The two crackling xenozoans closed in to engulf them.
Chapter 20
Mission clock: 3:34 remaining
Helpless, the Mote drifted, dead in microscopic space.
Devlin, who knew every system aboard his ship, scrambled to figure out how he could get the vessel functioning again. Their air would begin to get stuffy in half an hour, but he had far more immediate
problems.
With brushing, scrubbing sounds on the outside of the hull, the two xenozoans continued their slow, ominous attack. The creatures pressed against the walls until the Mote's frame groaned.
“Come on, talk to me,” he called to the ship. “Snap out of it.”
Cynthia Tyler backed away from the side window. The sinuous xenozoan tendrils, made from reinforced protein chains, crackled with blue lighting. The glitter shed an eerie illumination in the dark confines of the pore. The tentacle drew back, like a slave-master's whip. “It's going to hit us again!”
Another surge slammed through the ship, sending a new skitter of sparks from the control panels. Oily smoke oozed from the rear engine compartment.
“Floating out of control, no maneuverability, no defenses.” Devlin felt sick at heart. He thought fast. “I'll have to reset all our frozen systems, do a full shutdown and bring us back online from the zero point.”
“A restart is good,” Freeth said. He stepped back from the microorganisms pushing hard against the window, seeking a way in. “If we can last that long.”
“Damn, and I was just about to fire.” Tomiko slumped in her seat and frowned at her dark weapons panel. Garrett Wilcox would have chided her for hesitating at the wrong moment. “Maybe I should just swim out there with a baseball bat.”
Devlin slammed shut an access panel against the smell of burnt circuits. “You might be better off using one of the sampling rods as a spear.”
The second xenozoan approached from above, flagellae extended. The cylindrical organelles inside its body mass pulsed with an energy buildup.
Freeth's brow furrowed as he furiously tried to think of an explanation. “All right, some larger animals on Earth use electric shock as a method to stun their prey, but I've never heard of anything on a microscopic scale. Those cylindrical organelles must be the mitochondria, the powerhouses of the cell, where ATP is generated.”
Fantastic Voyage : Microcosm Page 12
