Fantastic Voyage - By Isaac Asimov Page 0,30

to the upper bubble and said, "How does it look, Captain Owens?"

Owens shook his head. "It's hard to say. The readings on the dials lack significance. They were designed with a real ocean in view. Darn it, I never designed the Proteus for this."

"My mother never designed, me for this, either, if it comes to that," said Grant. They were completely submerged now. Duval had closed both valves and Grant returned to his seat.

He put on his harness once again with an almost luxurious feeling. Once beneath the surface the erratic rise and fall of the tiny swell was gone, and there was a blessed motionlessness.

Carter tried to unclench his fists. So far, it had gone well. The ALL WELL had sounded from within the ship, which was now a small capsule glimmering inside the saline solution.

"Phase Three," he said.

The miniaturizer, the brilliance of which had remained subdued through all the second phase, lifted into white glory again, but only from the centermost sections of the honeycomb.

Carter watched earnestly. It was hard to tell at first if what he saw were objectively real, or the straining of his mind. -No, it really was shrinking again.

The inch-wide beetle was reducing in size and so, presumably, was the water in its immediate vicinity. The focus of the miniaturizing beam was tight and accurate and Carter expelled another held breath. At each stage, there was a danger peculiar to itself.

Glancingly, Carter imagined, what might happen if the beam had been slightly less accurate; if half the Proteus had miniaturized rapidly, while the other half, caught at the boundary of the beam, had miniaturized slowly or not at all. But it hadn't happened and he strove to put it out of his mind.

The Proteus was a shrinking dot now, smaller, smaller, down to the barest edge of sight. Now the entire miniaturizer sprang into brilliance. It wouldn't do to try to focus the beam on something too small to see.

Right, right, thought Carter. Do the whole thing now.

The entire cylinder of liquid was now shrinking, more and more quickly, until finally it was a mere ampule, two inches high and half an inch thick, with somewhere in the miniaturized fluid an infra-miniaturized Proteus, no larger than the size of a large bacterium. The miniaturizer dimmed again.

"Get them," said Carter, shakily. "Get some word from them."

He breathed through a tightened throat until the ALL WELL was once more announced. Four men and a woman who, not many minutes before, had stood before him in full size and life, were tiny bits of matter within a germ-sized ship-and were still alive.

He put out his hands, palms downward, "Take out the miniaturizer on the double."

The last dim light of the miniaturizer flicked out as it moved rapidly away.

A blank circular dial on the wall above Carter's head now flashed into a dark 60.

Carter nodded to Reid. "Take over, Don. We've got sixty minutes from this instant."
Chapter 8 : ENTRY

The light of the miniaturizer had flashed on again after submergence and the fluid all about had turned into a glimmering opaque milk, but nothing followed that could be observed from within the Proteus.- If the opacity were spreading out and the ship shrinking further, there was no way of telling.

Grant did not speak in 'that interval of time, nor did anyone else. It seemed to last forever. And then the light of the miniaturizer went out and Owens cried out, "Is everyone all right?"

Duval said, "I'm fine." Cora nodded. Grant lifted a reassuring hand. Michaels shrugged slightly and said, "I'm all right."

"Good! I think we're at full miniaturization now," said Owens.

He flipped a switch which hitherto he had not touched. For an anxious moment, he waited for a dial to come to life. It did, with a dark and sharp 60 outlined- upon it. A similar dial, lower in the ship and visible to the other four, recorded the same.

The wireless rattled harshly and Grant sent back the ALL WELL. For a moment, it was as though some climax -had been reached.

Grant said, "They say outside we're at full miniaturization. You guessed correctly, Captain Owens."

"And here we are," said Owens, sighing audibly.

Grant thought: Miniaturization is complete but the mission isn't. -It's just beginning. Sixty. Sixty minutes.

Aloud, he said, "Captain Owens. Why is the ship vibrating? Is there anything wrong?"

Michaels said, "I feel it. It's an uneven vibration." "I feel it, too," said Cora.

Owens came down from the bubble, mopping his forehead with a large handkerchief.

"We can't help this.