Fantastic Voyage - By Isaac Asimov Page 0,25

he had himself designed was consoling. He, more than anyone, must know the strength - or the weakness - of the bubble that would keep them surrounded by a microscopic bit of normality.

Grant looked away and found his eye stumbling over Duval, whose thin lips were faintly stretched into a smile.

"You look uneasy, Mr. Grant. Is it not your profession to be in uneasy situations without being uneasy?"

Darn it! For how many decades had the public been fed fairy-tales about undercover agents?

"No, doctor," said Grant, levelly. "In my profession to be in an uneasy situation without being uneasy is to be quickly dead. We are expected only to act intelligently, regardless of the state of our feelings. You, I take it, do not feel uneasy."

"No. I feel interested. I feel saturated with-with a sense of wonder. I am unbearably curious and excited. -Not uneasy."

"What are the chances of death, in your opinion?"

"Small, I hope. And in any case, I have the consolations of religion. I have confessed, and for me death is but a doorway."

Grant had no reasonable answer to that and made none. For him, death was a blank wall with but one side, but he had to admit that however logical that seemed to his mind, it offered little consolation at the moment against the worm of uneasiness that (as Duval had correctly noted) lay coiled inside that same mind.

He was miserably aware that his own forehead was wet, perhaps as wet as that of Michaels, and that Cora was looking at him with what his sense of shame immediately translated into contempt.

He said, impulsively, "And have you confessed your sin Miss Peterson?"

She said, coolly, "Which sins do you have in mind, M Grant?"

He had no answer for that either, so he slumped in his chair and looked up at the miniaturizer which was no exactly overhead.

"What do you feel when you are being miniaturized, Dr Michaels?"

"Nothing, I suppose. It is a form of motion, a collapsing inward, and if it is done at a constant rate there is no more sensation in that than in moving down an escalator at constant speed."

"That's the theory, I suppose," Grant kept his eyes fixed on the miniaturizer. "What is the actual sensation.,

"I don't know. I have never experienced it. However, animals in the process of miniaturization never act in the slightest bit disturbed. They continue their normal actions without interruption, as I have personally noted."

"Animals?" Grant turned to stare at Michaels in sudden indignation. "Animals? Has any man ever been miniaturized?"

"I'm afraid," said Michaels, "that we have the honor of being the first."

"How thrilling. Let me ask another question. How far down has any living creature-any living creature at all-been miniaturized?"

"Fifty," said Michaels, briefly.

"What?"

"Fifty. It means the reduction is such that the linear dimensions are one-fiftieth normal."

"Like reducing me to a height of nearly one and a half inches."

"Yes."

"Only we're going far past that point."

"Yes. To nearly a million, I think. Owens can give you the exact figure."

"The exact figure does not matter. The point is it's much more intense a miniaturization than has ever been tried before."

"That is correct."

"Do you think we can bear up under all the honors we are being showered with in the way of pioneering?"

"Mr. Grant," said Michaels, and from somewhere he dredged up the touch of humor that marked his words, "I'm afraid we must. We are being miniaturized now; right now; and obviously you don't feel it."

"Great guns!" muttered Grant, and looked up again with kind of frozen and fixed attention. The bottom of the miniaturizer was glowing with a colored light that blazed without blinding. It did not seem to be used with the eyes, but with the nerves generally so that lien Grant closed his eyes, all actual objects blanked out but the light was still visible as a general, featureless radiance.

Michaels must have been watching Grant close his eyes pointlessly, for he said, "It's not light. It's not electromagnetic radiation of any sort. It's a form of energy that is not part of our normal universe. It affects the nerve-endings and our brain interprets it as light because it knows of no other way of interpreting it."

"Is it dangerous in any way?"

"Not as far as is known, but I must admit that nothing has ever been exposed to it at this intense a level."

"Pioneering again," muttered Grant.

Duval cried out, "Glorious! Like the light of creation!" The hexagonal tiles beneath the vessel were glowing in response to the radiation and the