Isaac Asimov - Fantastic Voyage II - Destination Brain

Kaliinin touched a spot on her seat edge between her knees and a belt around her waist flipped away. It had not been there, Morrison was sure, when he had closed his eyes and now it was again no longer there, for it disappeared, with a snap, into a recess in the seat to her left. She twisted toward Morrison and said, "This, here to your left, is your belt ejector." Morrison couldn't help noticing that, now unbound, she lifted up from her seat slightly as she moved toward him.

She pressed the ejector - a somewhat darker circle in a light background - and a flexible network of clear plastic shot out with a faint hiss, wrapped itself about him, and buried its triple tip into the seat at his other side. He found himself held, elastically, in a kind of lacework.

"If you want to free yourself, there is the belt release there, just between your knees." Kaliinin leaned farther toward him to indicate the place and Morrison found the pressure of her body against his to be pleasurable.

She did not seem to be aware of it and, having completed her task, she pulled herself back into her chair and re-belted herself.

Morrison glanced quicky around, squeezing upward and forward as far as the belt would let him, and peered, with difficulty, over Konev's shoulder. All five were belted.

He said, "We've miniaturized to the point where we have very little weight, is that it?"

"You only weigh about twenty-five milligrams now," said Boranova, "so that you might as well consider yourself weightless. Then, too, the ship is being lifted."

Morrison looked at Kaliinin accusingly and Kaliinin shrugged slightly and said, "I told you I'd describe things as they happened, but you seemed to be asleep and I thought it wiser to let you stay that way. The jar of the clamp woke you and lifted you out of the seat."

"The clamp?" He looked to one side. He had been conscious of a shadow on both sides, but walls were supposed to be opaque and he had dismissed the sensation. Now he suddenly remembered that the ship's walls were transparent and realized that the light on either side was blocked.

Kaliinin nodded. "A clamp is gripping us and helping to keep us steady so that we are not shaken up unnecessarily. It looks enormous, but it is a very small and delicately padded clamp. And we are being put into a small tank of saline solution. We are also being held steady by an airstream being sucked upward into a blunt nozzle. That pushes us against the nozzle so that, with the clamps, we are held three ways."

Morrison looked out again. Objects outside the ship that might have been visible through portions of the wall not blocked by the clamp or by the overhead nozzle were, nevertheless, not visible. Morrison could see occasional shifting of light and shadow and realized that whatever existed out there was too large to make out clearly with his tiny eyes. If the photons that approached the ship were not themselves miniaturized as they entered the field, they would behave as though they were long radio waves and he would have seen nothing at all.

He felt the ship suddenly jar again as the clamps withdrew, although he couldn't actually see them withdraw. One moment they were there and the next they weren't. The movement - on his scale - was too rapid to see.

Then he felt himself rising slightly against the belt that bound him in and he interpreted that as a downward movement of the ship. There followed a slow bobbing sensation.

Dezhnev pointed to a dark horizontal line that moved slowly up and down against the wall of the ship and said with satisfaction, "That's the surface of the water. I thought the motions would be worse. Apparently, there are engineers in this place who are almost as good as I am."

Boranova said, "Actually, engineering has little to do with it. We're being held in place by surface tension. That will only work while we're at the surface of a fluid. It will not affect us once we're in Shapirov's body."

"But this ripple effect, Natasha? This up-and-down movement. Is that affecting it at all?"

Boranova was studying her instruments and, in particular, a small screen on which a horizontal line seemed to be playing out forever, without budging from the center. Morrison, twisting and lifting until his back ached, could just make it out.

Boranova said, "It's as steady as your hand when you are sober, Arkady."

"No better than that, eh?" Dezhnev's laugh boomed out.

(He sounds relieved, thought Morrison uneasily and wondered what the "it" was that Dezhnev had felt might be affected.)

"What happens now?" asked Morrison.

Konev spoke for the first time, as far as Morrison could remember, since miniaturization had begun. "Must everything be explained to you?"

Morrison answered with spirit. "Yes! You have had everything explained to you. Why should I not have it explained as well?"

Boranova said quietly, "Albert is perfectly correct, Yuri. Please hold your temper and be reasonable. You will need his help soon enough and I hope he will not be so discourteous as to snap at you."

Konev's shoulders twitched, but he said nothing in reply.

Boranova said, "The cylinder of a hypodermic syringe will pick us up, Albert. It will be under remote control."

And, as though that cylinder were waiting to hear her say so, a shadow encased them from behind, swallowing them almost at once. Only in front was there a circle of light visible for a moment and then that disappeared, too.

Boranova said calmly, "The needle has been clamped on. Now we will have to wait a while."

The interior of the ship, which had become quite dark, was suddenly suffused with a white light, rather softer and more restful than before, and Boranova said, "From now on there will be no more light from the outside until our journey is over. We will have to rely on our own internal illumination, Albert."

Puzzled, Morrison looked around for the source of the light. It seemed to be in the transparent walls themselves.

Kaliinin, interpreting his glance, said, "Electroluminescence."

"But what is the source of power?"

"We have three microfusion engines." She looked at him proudly. "Of a type that's the best in the world." Then she repeated, "In the world."

Morrison let it go. He had the impulse to talk of the American microfusion engines on the latest space vessels, but what would be the point? Someday the world would be freed of its nationalist fervors, but that day had not yet arrived. Still, as long as those fervors did not express themselves in violence or threat of violence, matters were bearable.

Dezhnev, leaning back in his seat with his arms behind his neck and apparently addressing the gently illuminated wall before him, said, "Someday what we will do is expand a hypodermic syringe, place that around a full-sized ship, and miniaturize the whole thing. Then we won't have this small-scale maneuvering."

Morrison said, "Oh, can you do the other thing, too? What do you call it? Maximization? Gigantization?"

"We don't call it anything," said Konev crisply, "because it can't be done."

"Maybe someday, though."

"No," said Konev. "Never. It is physically impossible. It takes a lot of energy to miniaturize, but more than an infinite amount to maximize."

"Even if you hooked it up to relativity?"

"Even so."

Dezhnev made an inelegant sound with his lips. "That for your physically impossible. Someday you will see."

Konev relapsed into indignant silence.

Morrison said, "What is it we are waiting for?"

Boranova said, "The last-minute preparation of Shapirov and then the moving up of the needle and its insertion into the carotid."

As she spoke, the ship was jarred forward.

"Is that it?" asked Morrison.

"Not yet. They were merely removing the air bubbles. Don't worry, Albert. We'll know."