Isaac Asimov (18 page)

“What of it?” said Grant, shortly. He had a firm grip on the snorkel now and he put his back into moving with it toward the capillary wall, disregarding the soreness of his left biceps. “Grab hold, will you, and help pull.”

Michaels said, “There’s no point to it. Don’t you understand? It should have occurred to me sooner, but the air won’t go through that thing.”

“What?”

“Not quickly enough. Unminiaturized air molecules are quite big compared to the opening in that snorkel. Do you expect air to leak through a tiny tube barely large enough to see through a microscope?”

“The air will be under lung pressure.”

“So what? Ever hear of a slow leak in an automobile tire? The hole through which air leaks in such a tire is probably no smaller than that and is under considerably more pressure than the lung can generate, and it’s a
slow
leak.” Michaels grimaced lugubriously. “I wish I had thought of this sooner.”

Grant roared, “Owens!”

“I hear you. Don’t crack every eardrum in existence.”

“Never mind hearing me. Did you hear Michaels?”

“Yes, I have.”

“Is he right? You’re the nearest thing to a miniaturization expert we have. Is he right?”

“Well, yes and no,” said Owens.

“And what does that mean?”

“It means, yes, the air will go through the snorkel only very slowly unless it is miniaturized and, no, we need not
worry if I can succeed in miniaturizing it. I can extend the field through the snorkel and miniaturize the air on the other side and suck that through by …”

“Won’t such a field extension affect us?” put in Michaels.

“No, I’ll have it set for a fixed maximum of miniaturization and we’re there already.”

“How about the surrounding blood and lung tissue?” asked Duval.

“There’s a limit to how sharply selective I can make the field,” admitted Owens. “This is only a small miniaturizer I have here but I can confine it to gas. There’s bound to be some damage, however. I just hope it won’t be too much.”

“We’ll have to chance it, that’s all,” said Grant. “Let’s get on with it. We can’t take forever.”

With four pairs of arms encircling the snorkel and four pairs of legs pumping away, it reached the capillary wall.

For a moment, Grant hesitated. “We’re going to have to cut through. —Duval!”

Duval’s lips curved in a small smile. “There’s no need to call on the surgeon. At this microscopic level, you would do as well. There is no skill needed.”

He drew a knife from a small scabbard at his waist, and looked at it. “It undoubtedly has miniaturized bacteria on it. Eventually, they will de-miniaturize in the bloodstream but the white cells will take care of them, then. Nothing pathogenic in any case, I hope.”

“Please get on with it, doctor,” said Grant, urgently.

Duval slashed quickly with his knife between two of the cells that made up the capillary. A neat slit opened. The thickness of the wall might be a ten-thousandth of an inch in the world generally, but on their own miniaturized scale the thickness amounted to several yards. Duval stepped into the slit and forced his way through, breaking stands of intercellular cement and cutting further. The wall was perforated at last and the cells drew apart, like the lips of a gaping wound.

Through the wound could be seen another set of cells, at which Duval slashed neatly and with precision.

He returned and said, “It’s a microscopic opening. There’ll be no loss of blood to speak of.”

“No loss at all,” said Michaels emphatically. “The leakage is the other way.”

And, indeed, a bubble of air seemed to bulge inward at the opening. It bulged further and then stopped.

Michaels put his hand to the bubble. A portion of its surface pushed inward, but the hand did not go through.

“Surface tension!” he said.

“What now?” demanded Grant.

“Surface tension, I tell you. At any liquid surface there is a kind of skin effect. To something as large as a human being, an unminiaturized human being, the effect is too small to be noticed, but insects can walk on water surfaces because of it. In our miniaturized state, the effect is even stronger. We may not be able to get beyond the barrier.

Michaels drew his knife and plunged it into the fluid-gas interface as, a moment before, Duval had operated on the cells. The knife forced the interface forward into a point, then broke through.

“It’s like cutting thin rubber,” said Michaels, panting a bit. He sliced downward and an opening appeared briefly but closed almost at once, healing itself.

Grant tried the same thing, forcing his hand through the opening before it closed. He winced a bit as the water molecules closed in.

“It’s got a grip on it, you know.”

Duval said somberly, “If you calculated the size of those water molecules on our scale you’d be astonished. You could make them out with a hand lens. In fact …”

Michaels said, “In fact, you’re sorry you didn’t bring a hand lens. I’ve got news for you, Duval, you wouldn’t see much. You would magnify the wave properties as well as the particle properties of atoms and subatomic particles. Anything you see, even by the reflection of miniaturized light, would be too hazy to do you much good.”

Cora said, “Is that why nothing really looks sharp? I thought it was just because we were seeing things through blood plasma.”

“The plasma is a factor, certainly. But in addition, the general graininess of the universe becomes much larger as we become much smaller. It’s like looking really closely at an old-fashioned newspaper photograph. You see the dots more clearly and it becomes hazy.”

Grant was paying little attention to the conversation. His arm was through the interface and with it he was tearing away to make room for his other arm and his head.

For a moment the fluid closed about his neck and he felt strangled.

“Hold my legs, will you?” he called.

Duval said, “I’ve got them.”

Half his body was through now and he could look through the crevice Duval had made through the walls.

“All right. Pull me down again.” He came down and the interface closed behind him with a popping sound.

He said, “Now let’s see what we can do about the snorkel. Heave-ho.”

It was quite useless. The blunt end of the snorkel made not a dent on the tightly knit skin of water molecules on the air bubble. Knives cut that skin to shreds so that parts of the snorkel got through but the instant the interface was left to itself, surface tension would reassert itself and the snorkel would pop out.

Michaels was panting with effort. “I don’t think we’re going to make it.”

“We’ve got to,” said Grant. “Look, I’m getting in; all the way in. When you push the snorkel through, I’ll grab whatever part makes it and pull. Between pushing and pulling …”

“You can’t go in there, Grant,” said Duval. “You’ll be sucked in and lost.”

Michaels said, “We can use a lifeline. Right here, Grant.” He indicated the neatly nested line at Grant’s left hip. “—Duval, take this back to the ship and attach it and we’ll get Grant through.”

Duval took the end handed him, rather uncertainly, and swam back toward the ship.

Cora said, “But how will you get back? Suppose you can’t push through the surface tension again?”

“Sure, I will. Besides, don’t confuse the situation by taking up problem number 2 while problem number 1 is still with us.”

Owens, within the ship, watched tensely as Duval swam up. “Do you need another pair of hands out there?” he asked.

Duval said, “I don’t think so. Besides, your pair are needed at the miniaturizer.” He hitched the safety line to a small ring on the ship’s metal skin and waved his arm. “OK, Grant.”

Grant waved back. His second penetration of the interface was more quickly done for he had the knack now. First a slit, then one arm (ouch, the bruised bicep), then the other; then a strenuous push against the interface with his arms, and a kick with his finned legs and he popped out like watermelon seed from between finger and thumb.

He found himself between the two sticky walls of the intercellular slit. He looked down at Michaels’ face, clearly visible but somewhat distorted through the curve of the interface.

“Push it through, Michaels.”

Through the interface, he could make out a thrashing of limbs, the swing of an arm holding a knife. And then the blunt metal end of the snorkel made a partial appearance. Grant knelt and seized it. Bracing his back against one side of the crevice and his feet against the other, he pulled. The interface rose with it, clinging to it all about. Grant worked his way upward ahead of it, gasping out, “Push! Push!”

It broke through, clear at last. Inside the tube of the snorkel was fluid, clinging motionlessly.

Grant said, “I’m going to get it up through now, into the alveolus.”

Michaels said, “When you get to the alveolus, be careful. I don’t know how you’ll be affected by inhalation and exhalation but you’re liable to find yourself in a hurricane.”

Grant was moving upward, yanking at the snorkel as he found purchases in the soft yielding tissue for gripping fingers and kicking feet.

His head rose beyond the alveolar wall and quite suddenly, he was in another world. The light from the
Proteus
penetrated through what seemed to him a vast thickness of tissue and in its muted intensity, the alveolus was a tremendous cavern, with walls that glinted moistly and distantly.

About him were crags and boulders of all sizes and colors, sparkling iridescently, as the inefficient reflection of miniaturized light gave them all a spuriously beautiful luster. He could see now that the edges of the boulders remained hazy even without the presence of slowly swirling fluid to account for it.

Grant said, “This place is full of rocks.”

“Dust and grit, I imagine,” came Michaels’ voice. “Dust and grit. The legacy of living in civilization, of breathing unfiltered air. The lungs are a one-way passage; we can take dust in but there’s no way of pushing it out again.”

Owens put in, “Do your best to hold the snorkel over your head, will you? I don’t want any fluid plugging it. —Now!”

Grant heaved it high. “Let me know when you’ve had enough, Owens,” he panted.

“I will.”

“Is it working?”

“It sure is. I have the field adjusted strobophilically so that it acts in rapid spurts according to the … Well, never mind. The point is the field is never on long enough to affect liquids or solids significantly but it is miniaturizing gases at a great rate. I’ve got the field extended far beyond Benes into the atmosphere of the operating room.”

“Is that safe?” asked Grant.

“It’s the only way we can get enough air. We have to have thousands of times as much air as all of Benes’ lungs contain, and miniaturize it all. Is it safe? Good Lord, man, I’m sucking it in right through Benes’ tissues without even affecting his respiration. Oh, if I only had a larger snorkel.” Owens sounded as gay and excited as a youngster on his first date.

Michaels’ voice in Grant’s ear said, “How are you being affected by Benes’ breathing?”

Grant looked quickly at the alveolar membrane. It seemed stretched and taut under his foot, so he guessed he was witnessing the slow, slow end of an inhalation. (Slow in any case; slower because of the hypothermia; slower still because of the time distortion induced by miniaturization.)

“It’s all right,” he said. “No effect at all.”

But now a low rasp made itself felt in Grant’s ear. It grew slowly louder and Grant realized an exhalation was beginning. He braced himself and held on to the snorkel.

Owens said jubilantly, “This is working beautifully. Nothing like this has ever been done before.”

The motion of air was making itself felt about Grant, as the lungs continued their slow but accelerating collapse and the rasp of exhalation grew louder. Grant felt his legs lifting from the alveolar floor. On an ordinary scale, he knew, the air current in the alveolus was indetectably gentle but on the miniaturized scale, it was gathering into a tornado.

Grant gripped the snorkel in desperation, flinging both arms about it and both legs. It strained upward and so did he. The very boulders—dust boulders—came loose and rolled slightly.

The wind slowly died then as the exhalation came to its slow halt and Grant released the snorkel with relief.

He said, “How’s it doing, Owens?”

“Almost done. Hang on for a few seconds, will you, Grant?”

“Okay.”

He counted to himself: twenty—thirty—forty. The inhalation was starting and air molecules were impinging upon him. The alveolar wall was stretching again and he stumbled to his knees.

“Full!” cried Owens. “Get back in.”

“Pull down on the snorkel,” yelled Grant. “Quickly. Before another exhalation comes.”

He pushed downward and they pulled. Difficulty arose only when the lip of the snorkel approached the interface. It held tight there for a moment as though in a vice—and then pulled through with a small thunderclap of joining surface film.

Grant had watched too long. With the snorkel safely in, he made a motion as though to plunge into the crevice and through the interface at its bottom, but the beginning of the exhalation surrounded him with wind and caused him to stumble. For a moment, he found himself wedged between two dust boulders and in wrenching free found that he had slightly barked one shin. (Hurting one’s shin against a particle of dust was surely something to tell one’s grandchildren.)

Where was he? He shook his lifeline, freeing it from some snag on one of the boulders, and pulled it taut. It would be easiest to follow it back to the crevice.

The lifeline snaked over the top of the boulder and Grant, bracing his feet against it, climbed rapidly upward. The strengthening exhalation helped him do so and there was scarcely any sensation of effort in the upward striving. Then still less. The crevice, he knew, was just the other side of the boulder and he might have gone around it but for the fact that the exhalation made the route over it the simpler and because (why not admit it?) it was more exciting this way.

The boulder rolled beneath his feet, at the peak of the exhalation wind, and Grant lifted free. For the moment he found himself high in the air, the crevice just beyond, exactly where he had expected it to be. It was only necessary to wait a second or two for exhalation to cease and he would lunge quickly for the crevice, the bloodstream, and the ship.