Isaac Asimov - Fantastic Voyage II - Destination Brain

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Boranova said dryly, "If you lost seven kilograms, Arkady, so much the better. And we would consume less energy in the miniaturization."

"The thought has occurred to me at times, Natasha," replied Dezhnev coolly. "I will now test the controls of the ship and if all responds properly, as I'm sure it will, we will be ready to begin."

There was what seemed to Morrison to be a tense wait in utter silence, except for a soft whistle between the teeth on the part of Dezhnev, as he bent over his controls.

Then Dezhnev sat up, wiped his forehead with his sleeve, and said, "All is well. Comrade ladies, Comrade gentleman, and Comrade American, the fantastic voyage we face is about to begin." He fixed an auditor in his left ear, raised a tiny microphone before his mouth, and said, "All is operational within. Is all operational outside? - Very well, then, wish us good fortune, comrades all."

Nothing seemed to happen and Morrison cast a quick look at Kaliinin. She was still immobile, but she seemed to be aware of Morrison's head turning toward her, for she said, "Yes, we are miniaturizing."

The blood roared in Morrison's ears. This was the first time he was consciously miniaturizing.

Morrison's eyes remained, for the most part, focused on the recess before him, on the computer, and on the software he had inserted. The software - the one material object of the long ago.

Long ago? It was less than a hundred hours ago that he was half-dozing his way through a dull talk on his last day at the conference and wondering whether there was any way to save his position at the university. And now a hundred subjective years had passed in those hundred objective hours and he could no longer clearly visualize the university at all or the life of sad frustration he had been leading there toward the end.

He would have given a great deal to have broken out of the dull cycle of useless striving a hundred hours ago. He would give a great deal more - a great deal more - to break back into it now, to wake up and to find the last hundred hours (or years) had never taken place.

He glanced through the transparent wall of the ship, there at his right elbow, his eyes half-closed as though he were really reluctant to see anything. He was reluctant. He did not want to see anything larger than it should be. It would interfere with his wild hope that the miniaturization process had broken down or that the whole thing had - somehow - been an illusion.

But a man walked into his view - tall, over two meters tall. But then, perhaps he was actually that tall.

Others appeared. They couldn't all be that tall.

He shrank down into his seat and looked no more. It was enough. He knew that the miniaturization process was going its inexorable way.

The silence inside the ship was oppressive, unbearable. Morrison felt he had to hear a voice, even if only his own.

Kaliinin, at his left side, was the one to whom he could speak most easily and she might be the best of a difficult choice, perhaps. Since Morrison did not want Dezhnev's misplaced jocularity, or Boranova's one-dimensional concentration, or Konev's dark intensity, he turned to Kaliinin's frozen sorrow.

He said, "How will we get into Shapirov's body, Sophia?"

It took a while, it seemed, for Kaliinin to hear him. When she did, her lips moved pallidly and she said in a whisper, "Injection."

Then, as though with a supreme effort, she apparently decided that she must be companionable, so she turned to him and said, "When we are small enough, we will be placed into a hypodermic needle and injected into Academician Shapirov's left carotid artery."

"We'll be shaken up like dice," said Morrison, appalled.

"Not at all. It will be complex, but the problems have been thought through."

"How do you know? This has never been done before. Never in a ship. Never in a hypodermic needle, Never into a human body."

"True," said Kaliinin, "but problems like this - much simpler ones, of course - have been planned for a long time and we have had extended seminars over the last few days on this mission. You don't think that Arkady's announcements before miniaturization began - the ones about toilet tissue and so on - were new to us, do you? We have heard it all before, over and over. It was for your benefit, actually, since you have attended no seminars, and for Arkady's, too, since he loves his moment in the sun."

"Tell me, then, what will happen?"

"I will explain events as they occur. For now we do nothing until we are in the centimeter range. It will take another twenty minutes, but not everything will be so slow. The smaller we get, the faster we can miniaturize, in proportion. - Have you felt any bad effects yet?"

Morrison mentally subtracted the rapid beating of his heart and the panting of his lungs and said, "None." Then, feeling that to be an unduly optimistic remark, he added, "At least so far."

"Well, then?" said Kaliinin and closed her eyes as though to indicate that she was tired of talking.

Morrison thought that might not be such a bad idea and closed his as well.

He might have actually fallen asleep or he might simply have gone into a protective state of semi unconsciousness, withdrawing from reality, for it seemed that no time had passed when he was brought to by a slight jar.

He opened his eyes wide and found himself a centimeter or so above the seat. He had the odd sensation of drifting with each vagrant puff of wind.

Boranova had moved over to the seat behind him and placed her hands on his shoulders. She pushed down gently and said, "Albert, put on your seat belt. Sophia, show him how. I'm sorry, Albert - we should have gone over all of this - everything - before we started, but we had little time and you were nervous enough as it was. We did not wish to reduce you to utter helplessness by flooding you with information."

To his own surprise, Morrison had not been feeling helpless. He had rather enjoyed the sensation of sitting on air.