Isaac Asimov - Fantastic Voyage II - Destination Brain

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

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

Morrison was silent.

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

Morrison shook his head. "No."

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

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

"And you weren't at all apprehensive?"

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

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

"Natalya."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I mean, with Natalya."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"That's right."

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

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

Morrison persisted. "But damage is possible."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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