Isaac Asimov (24 page)

“Faster, Cora!”

“But I can’t …”

“But you can. Hang on to me, will you?”

They shot upward, over the lip of the precipice, to the waiting
Proteus
.

Duval helped Michaels up through the hatch.

“What’s happening out there?”

Michaels pulled off his helmet, gasping. “Miss Peterson was trapped in the cells of Hensen. Grant is trying to get her loose but antibodies are swarming over her.”

Duval’s eyes widened. “What can we do?”

“I don’t know. Maybe he can get her back. Otherwise, we’ve got to go on.”

Owens said, “But we can’t leave them there.”

“Of course not,” said Duval. “We’ve got to go out there, all three of us and …” Then, harshly, “Why are you back here, Michaels? Why aren’t you out there?”

Michaels looked at Duval hostilely, “Because I wouldn’t have done any good. I haven’t got Grant’s muscles or his reflexes. I’d have been in the way. If you want to help, get out there yourself.”

Owens said, “We’ve got to get them back, alive or—or—otherwise. They’ll be de-miniaturizing in about a quarter of an hour.”

“All right, then,” shouted Duval. “Get into your swimsuit and let’s get out there.”

“Wait,” said Owens. “They’re coming. I’ll get the hatch ready.”

Grant’s hand was clutching firmly at the wheel of the hatch, while the signal light flashed redly above it. He
picked at the antibodies on Cora’s back, pinching the wool-like fibers of one between thumb and forefinger, feeling its soft springiness give and then become a wiry core that gave no further.

He thought: This is a peptide chain.

Dim memories of college courses came back. He had once been able to write the chemical formula of a portion of a peptide chain and here was the real thing. If he had a microscope could he see the individual atoms? No, Michaels had said those would fuzz into nothing no matter what he could do.

He lifted the antibody molecule. It clung tightly at first then gave, sucking free. Neighboring molecules, clinging to it, pulled loose, too. An entire patch came free and Grant swung it away, batting at it. They remained together and came back, seeking a place to cling to again.

They had no brains, not even the most primitive, and it was wrong to think of them as monsters, or predators, or even fruit flies. They were merely molecules with atoms so arranged as to make them cling to the surfaces that fit theirs through the blind action of interatomic forces. A phrase came back to Grant from the recesses of memory—”Van der Waals forces.” Nothing more.

He kept pulling at the fuzz on Cora’s back. She cried out, “They’re coming, Grant. Let’s get into the hatch.”

Grant looked back. They were finding their way, sensing their presence. Links and chains of them were swooping high above the lip of the precipice and coming down in the general direction like blinded cobras.

Grant said, “We’ve got to wait …” The light turned green. “All right. Now.” He whirled at the wheel, desperately.

The antibodies were all about them, but making chiefly for Cora. For her they had already been sensitized and there was far less hesitation now. They clung and joined, spanning her shoulders and making their woolly pattern across her abdomen. They hesitated over the uneven three-dimensional curve of her breasts as though they had not figured that out yet.

Grant had no time to aid Cora in her ineffectual clutchings at the antibodies. He pulled the hatch door open, thrust Cora into it, antibodies and all, and followed after her.

He pushed forcefully against the hatch door while
antibodies continued to pour in. The door closed upon their elasticity but the basic wiriness of hundreds of them clogged the door at the end. He bent his back against the pressure of that wiriness and managed to turn the wheel that locked the door in place. A dozen little balls of wool, so soft and almost cuddly when viewed separately and in themselves, wriggled feebly in the crack where the hatch door met the wall. But hundreds of others, untrapped, filled the fluid about them. Air pressure was pushing the fluid out and the hissing filled their ears but at the moment, Grant was concerned only to pull the antibodies loose. Some were settling on his own chest, but that didn’t matter. Cora’s midriff was buried in them, as was her back. They had formed a solid band about her body from breast to thigh.

She said, “They’re tightening, Grant.”

Through her mask he could see the agony in her face, and he could hear the effort it took her to speak.

The water was sinking rapidly, but they couldn’t wait. Grant hammered at the inner door.

“I—I—can’t brea—” gasped Cora.

The door opened, the fluid it still held pouring into the main body of the ship. Duval’s hand thrusting through, seized Cora’s arm and pulled her in. Grant followed.

Owens said, “Lord help us, look at them.” With an expression of distaste and nausea, he started plucking at the antibodies as Grant had been doing.

A strand tore, then another, then still another. Half laughing, Grant said, “It’s easy, now. Just brush them off.”

All were doing so now. They fell into the inch or so of fluid on the floor of the ship and moved feebly.

Duval said, “They’re designed to work in body fluid, of course. Once they’re surrounded by air, the molecular attractions alter in nature.”

“As long as they’re off. Cora …”

Cora was breathing in deep, shuddering gasps. Gently, Duval removed her headpiece, but it was to Grant’s arm she clung as she suddenly burst into tears.

“I was so
scared
,” she sobbed.

“Both of us were,” Grant assured her. “Will you stop thinking it’s a disgrace to be frightened. There’s a purpose to fear, you know.” He was stroking her hair slowly. “It makes the adrenalin flow so that you can swim that much faster and longer and endure that much more. An efficient fear mechanism is good basic material for heroism.”

Duval pushed Grant impatiently to one side, “Are you all right, Miss Peterson?”

Cora took a deep breath and said—with an effort—but in a steady voice, “Quite all right, doctor.”

Owens said, “We’ve got to get out of here.” He was in the bubble. “We have practically no time left.”

In the control room, the television receivers seemed to spring back into life. “General Carter …”

“Yes, what now?”

“They’re moving again, sir. They’re out of the ear and heading rapidly for the clot.”

“Hah!” He looked at the Time Recorder, which read 12. “Twelve minutes.” Vaguely, he looked about for the cigar and found it on the floor where he had dropped it and then stepped on it. He picked it up, looked at its flatly mangled shape and threw it away in disgust.

“Twelve minutes. Can they still make it, Reid?”

Reid was crumpled in his chair, looking miserable. “They can make it. They can even get rid of the clot, maybe. But …”

“But?”

“But I don’t know if we can get them out in time. We can’t probe into the brain to pull them out, you know. If we could do that, we would have been able to probe into it for the clot in the first place. That means they’ve got to get to the brain and then proceed to some point where they
can
be removed. If they don’t …”

Carter said, querulously, “I’ve been brought two cups of coffee and one cigar and I haven’t had one sip or one puff …”

“They’re reaching the base of the brain, sir,” came the word.

Michaels was back at his chart. Grant was at his shoulder, staring at the complexities before him.

“Is that the clot here?”

“Yes,” said Michaels.

“It looks a long distance off. We only have twelve minutes.”

“It’s not as far away as it looks. We’ll have clear sailing now. We’ll be at the base of the brain in less than a minute and from there, in no time at all …”

There was a sudden flood of light pouring in all about the ship. Grant looked up in astonishment and saw, outside, a tremendous wall of milky light, its boundaries invisible.

“The eardrum,” said Michaels. “On the other side, the outside world.”

An almost unbearably poignant homesickness pulled at Grant. He had almost forgotten that there was an outside world. It seemed to him at that moment that all his life he had been travelling endlessly through a nightmare world of tubes and monsters, a Flying Dutchman of the circulatory system …

But there it was, the light of the outside world, filtering through the eardrum.

Michaels said, bending over the chart, “You ordered me back into the ship from the hair cells, didn’t you, Grant?”

“Yes, I did, Michaels. I wanted you on the ship, not at the hair cells.”

“You tell that to Duval. His attitude …”

“Why worry. His attitude is always unpleasant, isn’t it?”

“This time, he was insulting. I don’t pretend to be a hero …”

“I’ll bear witness on your behalf.”

“Thank you, Grant. And—and keep an eye on Duval.”

Grant laughed. “Of course.”

Duval approached, almost as though he realized he was being discussed and said, brusquely, “Where are we, Michaels?”

Michaels looked at him with a bitter expression and said, “We’re about to enter the sub-arachnoid cavity. —Right at the base of the brain,” he added, in Grant’s direction.

“All right. Suppose we go in past the oculomotor nerve.”

“All right,” said Michaels. “If that will give you the most favorable shot at the clot, that’s how we’ll go in.”

Grant backed away, and bent his head to get into the storage room where Cora was lying on a cot.

She made as though to get up, but he lifted his hand. “Don’t. Stay there.” And he sat on the floor beside her, knees up and enclosed in his arms. He smiled at her.

She said, “I’m all right now. I’m just malingering, lying here.”

“Why not? You’re the most beautiful malingerer I’ve
ever seen. Let’s malinger together for a minute, if you don’t think that sounds too improper.”

She smiled in her turn. “It would be difficult for me to complain that you were too forward. After all, you seem to make a career of saving my life.”

“All part of a shrewd and extraordinarily subtle campaign to place you under an obligation to me.”

“I am! Most decidedly!”

“I’ll remind you of that at the proper time.”

“Please do. —But Grant, really, thank you.”

“I like your thanking me, but it’s my job. That’s why I was sent along. Remember, I make decisions on policy and I take care of emergencies.”

“But that’s not all, is it?”

“It’s quite enough,” protested Grant. “I plug snorkels into lungs, pull seaweed out of intakes and most of all I hold on to beautiful women.”

“But that’s
not
all, is it? You’re here to keep an eye on Dr. Duval, aren’t you?”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because it’s true. The higher echelons at the CMDF don’t trust Dr. Duval. They never have.”

“Why is that?”

“Because he is a dedicated man; completely innocent and completely involved. He offends others not because he wants to, but because he honestly doesn’t know he’s offensive. He doesn’t know that anything exists besides his work …”

“Not even beautiful assistants?”

Cora flushed. “I suppose—not even assistants. But he values my work; he really does.”

“He’d keep right on valuing your work, wouldn’t he, if someone else valued
you?
”

Cora looked away, then went on firmly, “But he’s
not
disloyal. One trouble is he favors free exchange of information with the Other Side and says so because he doesn’t know
how
to keep his views unobtrusive. Then, when others disagree with him he tells them how foolish he thinks they are.”

Grant nodded. “Yes, I can imagine. And that makes everybody love him because people just adore being told how foolish they are.”

“Well, that’s the way he is.”

“Look. Don’t sit there and worry. I don’t mistrust Duval, any more than I do anyone else.”

“Michaels does.”

“I know that. Michaels has moments where he mistrusts everyone, both in this ship and outside. He even mistrusts me. But I assure you I give that only the weight I think it deserves.”

Cora looked anxious. “You mean Michaels thinks I deliberately damaged the laser? That Dr. Duval and I—together …”

“I think he thinks of that as a possibility.”

“And you, Grant?”

“I think of it as a possibility, too.”

“But do you believe it?”

“It is a possibility, Cora. Among many possibilities. Some possibilities are better than others. Let me worry about that end of it, dear.”

Before she could answer, both heard Duval’s voice raised in anger: “No, no, no. It’s out of the question, Michaels. I won’t have a jackass tell me what to do.”

“Jackass! Shall I tell you what you are, you …”

Grant was out front, Cora directly behind him.

Grant said, “Hold it, both of you. What’s up?”

Duval turned and said, fuming, “I have the laser back in order. The wire is shaved to the proper size; it’s joined to the transistor; and it’s back in place. I’ve just told that to this jackass here …” He turned his face toward Michaels and clipped out, “Jackass, I said,” then went on, “because he asked me about it.”