Fantastic Voyage - By Isaac Asimov Page 0,67

practically no time left."
Chapter 16 : BRAIN

In the control room, the television receivers seemed to spring back into life.

"General Carter ... "

"Yes, what now?"

"They're moving again, sir. They're out of the ear and heading rapidly for the clot."

"Hah!" He looked at the Time Recorder, which read 12. "Twelve minutes." Vaguely, he looked about for the cigar and found it on the floor where he had dropped it and then stepped on it. He picked it up, looked at its flatly mangled shape and threw it away in disgust.

"Twelve minutes. Can they still make it, Reid?"

Reid was crumpled in his chair, looking miserable. "They can make it. They can even get rid of the clot, maybe.

"But..."

"But?"

"But I don't know if we can get them out in time. We can't probe into the brain to pull them out, you know. If we could do that, we would have been able to probe into it for the clot in the first place. That means they've got to get to the brain and then proceed to some point where they can be removed. If they don't ... "

Carter said, querulously. "I've been brought two cups of coffee and one cigar and I haven't had one sip or one puff ..."

"They're reaching the base of the brain, sir," came the word.

Michaels was back at his chart. Grant was at his shoulder, staring at the complexities before him.

"Is that the clot here?"

"Yes," said Michaels.

"It looks a long distance off. We only have twelve minutes."

"It's not as far away as it looks. We'll have clear sailing now. We'll be at the base of the brain in less than a minute and from there, in no time at all ... "

"There was a sudden flood of light pouring in all about the ship. Grant looked up in astonishment and saw, outside, a tremendous wall of milky light, its boundaries invisible.

"The ear-drum," said Michaels. "On the other side, the outside world."

An almost unbearably poignant homesickness pulled at Grant. He had almost forgotten that there was an outside world. It seemed to him at that moment that all his life he had been travelling endlessly through a nightmare world of tubes and monsters, a Flying Dutchman of the circulatory system ...

But there it was, the light of the outside world, filtering through the ear-drum.

Michaels said, bending over the chart, "You ordered me back into the ship from the hair cells, didn't you, Grant?"

"Yes, I did, Michaels. I wanted you on the ship, not at the hair cells."

"You tell that to Duval. His attitude ... "

"Why worry. His attitude is always unpleasant, isn't it?"

"This time, he was insulting. I don't pretend to be a hero . . ."

"I'll bear witness on your behalf."

"Thank you, Grant. And-and keep an eye on Duval."

Grant laughed. "Of course."

Duval approached, almost as though he realized he was being discussed and said, brusquely, "Where are we, Michaels?"

Michaels looked at him with a bitter expression and said, "We're about to enter the sub-arachnid cavity. -Right at the base of the brain," he added, in Grant's direction.

"Okay. Suppose we go in past the oculomotor nerve."

"All right," said Michaels. "If that will give you the most favorable shot at the clot, that's how we'll go in."

Grant backed away, and bent his head to get into the storage room where Cora was lying on a cot.

She made as though to get up, but he lifted his hand. "Don't. Stay there." And he sat on the floor beside her, knees up and enclosed in his arms. He smiled at her.

She said, "I'm all right now. I'm just malingering, lying here."

"Why not? You're the most beautiful malingerer I've ever seen. Let's malinger together for a minute, if you don't think that sounds too improper."

She smiled in her turn. "It would be difficult for me to complain that you were too forward. After all, you seem to make a career of saving my life."

"All part of a shrewd and extraordinarily subtle campaign to place you under an obligation to me."

"I am! Most decidedly!"

"I'll remind you of that at the proper time."

"Please do. -But Grant, really, thank you."

"I like your thanking me, but it's my job. That's why I was sent along. Remember. I make decisions on policy and I take care of emergencies."

"But that's not all, is it?"

"It's quite enough," protested Grant. "I plug snorkels into lungs, pull seaweed out of intakes and most of all I hold on to beautiful women."

"But that's not all, is it? You're here to keep an eye on