Fantastic Voyage - By Isaac Asimov Page 0,18

see to it that you are in the right place at all times. You will be in, communication with us by radio ... "

"You don't know if that will work," put in Owens. There's a problem in adapting the radio waves across the miniaturization gap, and no one has ever tried this big a gap."

"True, but we will try. In addition, the Proteus is nuclear powered and we will be able to trace its radioactivity, also cross the gap. -You will have just sixty minutes, gentlemen...

Grant said, "You mean we have to complete the job and be out in sixty minutes."

"Exactly sixty. Your size will have been adjusted to that, which should be ample time. If you stay for a longer interval, you will start enlarging automatically. We can't keep you down longer. If we had Benes' knowledge we could keep you down indefinitely but if we had his knowledge ..."

"This trip would be unnecessary," said Grant, sardonically.

"Exactly. And if you begin enlarging within Benes' body, you will become large enough to attract the attention of the body defenses, and shortly thereafter, you will kill Benes. You will see to it that this does not happen."

Carter then looked about. "Any further remarks? -In that case, you will begin preparations. We'd like to make entry into Benes as quickly as possible."
Chapter 5 : SUBMARINE

The level of activity in the hospital room had reached the visual analog of a scream. Everyone was moving at a rapid walk, almost a half-run. Only the figure on the operating table was still. A heavy thermal blanket lay over it, the numerous coils snaking through it, filled with their circulating refrigerant. And under it -was the nude body, chilled to the point where life within it was a sluggish whisper.

Benes' head was now shaven and marked off like a nautical chart in numbered lines of latitude and longitude. On his sleep-sunk face was a look of sadness, frozen deeply in.

On the wall behind him was another reproduction of the circulatory system, enlarged to the point where the chest, neck and head were sufficient in themselves to cover the wall from end to end and floor to ceiling. It had become a forest in which the large vessels were as thick as a man's arm while the fine capillaries fuzzed all the spaces between.

In the control tower, brooding over the operation room, Carter and Reid watched. They could see the desk-level banks of monitors, at each of which a technician sat, each in his CMDF uniform, a symphony in zippered white.

Carter moved to the window, while Reid said softly into a mike, "Bring the Proteus into the Miniaturization Room."

It was customary protocol to give such orders in a quiet voice, and there was quiet on the floor, if absence of sound was the mere criteria. Last minute adjustments were being frantically made at the thermal blanket. Each technician studied his own monitor as though it were his new bride, isolated at last. The nurses hovered about Benes like large, starch-winged butterflies.

With the Proteus beginning the preparation for miniaturization, every man and woman on the floor knew the last stage of the count-down had begun.

Reid pushed a button. "Heart!"

The Heart Sector was laid out in detail on the TV screen' that was rostrumed just under Reid. Within that Sector, the EKG recordings dominated and the heartbeat sounded in a dull double-thump of sorrowful slowness.

"How does it look, Henry?"

"Perfect. Holding steady at thirty-two per minute. No abnormalities, acoustic or electronic. The rest of him should only be like this."

"Good." Reid flicked him off. To a heart man, what could be wrong if the heart was right?

He turned on the Lung Sector. The world on the screen was suddenly one of respiration rates. "All right, Jack?"

"All right, Dr. Reid. I've got the respiration down to six per minute. Can't take it any lower."

"I'm not asking you to. Carry on."

Hypothermia next. This sector was larger than the rest. It had to concern itself with all the body and here the theme was the thermometer. Temperature readings at the limbs, at' various points of the torso, at delicate contacts making readings at definite depths below the skin. There were constantly creeping temperature recordings with each wiggle bearing its own label: "Circulatory," "Respiratory," "Cardiac," "Renal," "Intestinal," and so on.

"Any problems, Sawyer?" asked Reid.

"No, sir. Overall average is at twenty-eight degrees Centigrade-eighty-two degrees Fahrenheit."

"You needn't convert, thank you."

"Yes, sir."

It was as though Reid could feel the hypothermia biting at his own vitals. Sixteen Fahrenheit