Fantastic Voyage - By Isaac Asimov Page 0,69

clear that clot," said Cora, "if the laser works."

"If it works," said Michaels. "And if it does, I wouldn't be surprised if he kills Benes. And not by accident."

Carter had his jacket off and his sleeves rolled up. He was slumped in his chair on the base of his spine and a second cigar, freshly-lit, was in his mouth. He wasn't puffing.

"In the brain?" he said.

Reid's mustache seemed bedraggled at last. He rubbed his eyes. "Practically at the clot. They've stopped."

Carter looked at the Time Recorder, which read 9.

He felt used up, out of juice, out of adrenalin, out of tension, out of life. He said, "Think they'll make it?"

Reid shook his head. "No, I don't."

In nine minutes, maybe ten, the men, ship and all, would be standing full-size before them-exploding Benes' body, if they hadn't gotten out in time.

Carter thought of what the newspapers would make of CMDF if this project failed. He heard the speeches from every politician in the land, and from those on the Other Side. How far would CMDF be set back? How many months-years-would it take it to recover?

Wearily, he began to write his letter of resignation in his mind.

"We've entered the brain itself," announced Owens, with controlled excitement.

He doused ship's lights again and all of them looked forward in a moment of wonder that put everything else, even the climax of the mission, out of their minds for a moment.

Duval murmured, "How wonderful. The supreme peak of Creation."

Grant, for the moment, felt that. Surely the human brain was the most intensely complicated object crowded into the smallest possible volume in all the universe.

There was a silence about their surroundings. The cells they could see were jagged, uneven, with fibrous dendrites jutting out here and there, like a bramble-bush.

As they drifted through the interstitial fluid along passageways between the cells, they could see the dendrites tangling overhead and for a moment they were passing under what seemed the twisted limbs of a row of ancient forest tress.

Duval said, "See, they don't touch. You can see the synapses clearly; always that gap which must be jumped across chemically."

Cora said, "They seem to be full of lights."

Michaels said, an edge of anger still in his voice, "A mere illusion. The reflection of miniaturized light plays tricks. It bears no relation to reality."

"How do you know?" demanded Duval, at once. "This is an important field for study. The reflection of miniaturized light is bound to vary subtly with the structure of the molecular contents of the cell. This sort of reflection, I predict, will become a more powerful instrument for studying the micro-details of the cell than any now existing. It may well be that the techniques arising out of this mission of ours will be far more important than what happens to Benes."

"Is that how you're excusing yourself, doctor?" asked Michaels.

Duval reddened. "Explain that!"

"Not now!" said Grant, imperiously. "Not one more word, gentlemen."

Duval drew a deep breath and turned back to the window.

Cora said, "But anyway, do you see the lights? Watch up above. Watch that dendrite as it comes close."

"I see it," said Grant. The usual glittering reflections did not, as had been generally true elsewhere in the body, sparkle from this point and that randomly, making the whole look like a dense cloud of fire-flies. Instead, the sparkle chased itself along the dendrite, a new one beginning before the old one had completed its path.

Owens said, "You know what it looks like. Anyone ever see films of old-fashioned advertising signs with electric lights? With waves of light and dark moving along?"

"Yes," said Cora. "That's exactly what it's like. But why?"

Duval said, "A wave of depolarization sweeps along a nerve fiber when it is stimulated. The ion concentrations change; sodium ion enters the cell. This changes the charge intensity inside and out and lowers the electric potential. Somehow that must affect the reflection of miniaturized light-which is exactly the point I was making-and what we see is the wave of depolarization."

Now that Cora had pointed out the fact-or perhaps because they were moving ever deeper into the brain, the moving wave of sparkles could be seen everywhere; moving along the cells, climbing and descending fibers, twisting into an unimaginably complex system which seemed, at first glance, without any form of order, and yet which gave the sense of order, anyway.

"What we see," said Duval, "is the essence of humanity. The cells are the physical brain, but those moving sparkles represent thought, the human mind."

"Is that