Fantastic Voyage - By Isaac Asimov Page 0,28

disengaged the, claws and, making sure the individual wires would clear the ship, lifted them free of the solution.

With a subdued, "Yahoo," he ran up the arm and unclamped the waldo. "Okay, let's get it out of here," he said to the two on either side and then, remembering, barked out in altered, official tones, "Ship in ampule, sir!"

Carter said, "Good! Check on the crew!"

The transfer from Module to Ampule had been dainty enough from the standpoint of the normal world, but had been anything but from within the Proteus.

Grant had radioed back the ALL WELL signal and then, overcoming the initial moment of nausea, at the sudden lurch upward as the Zero Module began to rise, said, "What now? More miniaturization? Anyone know?"

Owens said, "We'll have to submerge before the next stage of miniaturization."

"Submerge where?" but Grant received no answer to that. He looked out again into the dim universe of the miniaturization room and caught his first glimpse of the giants.

They were men, moving toward them-towers of men in the dim outer light, men foreshortened downward, foreshortened upward, as though viewed in giant distorting mirrors. A belt-buckle was a square of metal, a foot either way. A shoe, far below, might have been a railroad car. A head far above seemed a mountainous nose surrounding the twin tunnels of the nostrils. They moved with odd slowness.

"Time-sense," muttered Michaels. He was squinting upward and then looking at his watch.

"What?" asked Grant.

"Another one of Belinski's suggestions; that the time-sense alters with miniaturization. Ordinary time seems to lengthen and stretch so that right now, five minutes seems to last, I should judge, ten minutes. The effect grows more intense with extent of miniaturization but exactly what the relationship is, I can't say. Belinski needed the kind of experimental data we can now give him. -See." He.held out his wristwatch.

Grant looked at it, then at his own. The sweep secondhand did seem to be crawling at that. He held the watch to his ear. There was only the faint whirr of its tiny motor but the tone of that whirr seemed to have deepened.

"This is good," said Michaels. "We have an hour, but it may seem like several hours to us. A good number, perhaps."

"Do you mean we will move more quickly?"

"To ourselves we will move normally; but to an observer in the outer world, I suspect we will seem to be moving quickly - to be squeezing more activity into a given time. Which would, of course, be good, considering the limited time we have."

"But..."

Michaels shook his head, "Please! I can't explain better than that. Belinski's bio-physics I think I understand, but his mathematics is beyond me. Maybe Owens can tell you."

Grant said, "I'll ask him afterward. If there is an afterward."

The ship was suddenly in the light again; ordinary white light. Motion caught Grant's eyes and he looked up. Something was descending; a giant pair of prongs moved down on either side of the ship.

Owens called out. "Everyone check their body harness."

Grant did not bother. He felt a yank behind him, and twisted automatically as far as the harness would allow.

Cora said, "I was checking to see if you were being tightly held."

"Only by the harness," said Grant, "but thanks."

"You're welcome." Then, turning to her right, she said, solicitously, "Dr. Duval. Your harness."

"All right. Yours."

Cora had loosened the harness so that she might reach Grant. She tightened it now and barely in time. The prongs had moved below eye-level now and were coming together like a gigantic crushing jaw. Grant automatically stiffened. They halted, moved again, and made contact.

The Proteus jogged and jarred and all aboard were thrown violently to the right and then, less violently, to the left. A harsh, reverberating clang filled the ship.

There was then silence and the clear sensation of suspension over emptiness. The ship swayed gently and trembled even more gently. Grant looked down and saw a vast red surface sinking and growing dim and dark-and vanishing.

He had no way of knowing what the distance to the floor was, on their present size-scale, but the sensation was like that he would have had if he had leaned out a window on the twentieth floor of an apartment building.

Something as small as the ship now was, falling that distance, ought not to sustain serious damage. Air resistance would slow them to safe velocities. -At least, if their smallness were all there were to it.

But Grant had a lively remembrance of the point made by Owens during