Fantastic Voyage - By Isaac Asimov Page 0,26

Proteus was itself ablaze from within and without. The chair in which Grant sat might have been made of fire, but it remained solid and cool.

Even the air about him lit up and he breathed cold illumination.

His fellow-passengers and his own hand were frigidly aglow.

Duval's luminous band marked out the sign of the cross in a sparking movement and his shining lips moved.

Grant said, "Are you suddenly afraid, Dr. Duval?"

Duval said softly, "One prays not only out of fear, but out of gratitude for the privilege of seeing the great wonders of God."

Grant acknowledged himself, inwardly, to be the loser of that exchange, too. He wasn't doing at all well.

Owens cried out, "Look at the walls."

They were drifting away in all directions at a visible rate of speed now and the ceiling was moving upward. All ends of the large room were shrouded in thick, increasing gloom, all the thicker for being seen through shining air. The minlaturizer was now an enormous thing, its limits and boundaries not quite visible. In each indentation of its honeycomb there was a fragment of the unearthly light; a regular marching of so many brilliant stars in a black sky.

Grant found himself losing his nervousness in the excitement of it. With an effort, he glanced hastily at the others. All of them were looking upward, hypnotized by the light, by the vast distances that had been created out of nowhere, by a room that had enlarged into a universe, and a universe that had grown out of ken.

Without warning, the light dimmed to a dull red and the wireless signal sounded in staccato bursts with a sharp, echoing ring. Grant started.

Michaels said, "Belinski at Rockefeller said subjective sensations must change with miniaturization. He was largely ignored, but that signal certainly sounds different."

Grant said, "Your voice doesn't."

"That is because you and I are both equally miniaturized. I'm talking about sensations that must cross the miniaturization gap; sensations from out there."

Grant translated and read out the message that had come in: MINIATURIZATION TEMPORARILY HALTED. IS ALL WELL? REPLY AT ONCE!

"Is everyone all right?" Grant called out, sardonically. There was no answer and he said, "Silence gives consent." and tapped out: ALL WELL.

Carter licked lips that remained dry. He watched with painful concentration as the miniaturizer took on its glow and he knew that everyone in the room down to the least essential technician was doing the same.

Living human beings had never been miniaturized. Nothing as large as the Proteus had ever been miniaturized. Nothing, man or animal, living or dead, large or small, had ever been miniaturized so drastically.

The responsibility was his. All responsibility in this continuing nightmare was his.

"There she goes!" came an almost exultant whisper from the technician at the Miniaturization button. The phrase came clearly over the communications system, as Carter watched the Proteus shrink.

It did so slowly at first, so that one could only tell it was happening by the change in the way it overlapped the hexagonal structures that made up the floor. Those that were partially revealed beyond the edge of the ship's structure crept outward, and eventually tiles that had earlier been completely hidden began to show.

All around the Proteus, the hexagonals emerged, and the rate of miniaturization accelerated until the ship was shrinking like a patch of ice on a warm surface.

Carter had watched miniaturization a hundred times, but never with quite the effect upon himself that he was experiencing now. It was as though the ship were hurling down a long, infinitely long, hole; falling in absolute silence and growing smaller and smaller as the distance increased to miles, to tens of miles, to hundreds.

The ship was a white beetle now, resting upon the central hexagon immediately under the miniaturizer; resting upon the one red hexagon in the world of white ones-the Zero Module.

The Proteus was still falling, still shrinking, and Carter, with an effort, raised his hand. The glow of the minaturizer faded to a dull red and miniaturization stopped.

"Find out how they are before we continue."

They might conceivably be dead or, just as bad, unable to perform theirs-tasks with minimum efficiency. In that case, they had lost and it would be well to know now.

The communications' technician said, "Answer returned and reads: ALL WELL."

Carter thought: If they're unable to operate, they might be unable to realize they're unable.

But there would be no way to check that. One had to pretend all was well if the crew of the Proteus said all was well. Carter said,