Fantastic Voyage - By Isaac Asimov Page 0,75

head violently, "It's not he I'm thinking of. It's the ship."

Owens said, sadly, "You can't save the ship, either."

"But we might be able to get it out, where it can expand safely. -Listen, even if it is crushed by the white cell; even if it is separated into atoms, each miniaturized atom will de-miniaturize; it is de-miniaturizing right now. It doesn't matter whether Benes is killed by an intact ship or by a pile of splinters."

Cora said, "You can't get the ship out. Oh, Grant, don't die. Not after all this. Please."

Grant smiled at her. "Believe me, I have every reason not to die, Cora. You three keep on going. Let me make just one college try."

He swam back, heart beating in an almost unbearable revulsion at the monster he was approaching. There were others behind it, farther off, but he wanted this one; the one that was engulfing the Proteus, only this one.

At closer quarters, he could see its surface; a portion in profile showed clear, but within were granules and vacuoles, an intricate mechanism, too intricate for biologists to understand in detail even yet, and all crammed into a single microscopic blob of living matter.

The Proteus was entirely within it now; a splintering dark shadow encased in a vacuole. Grant had thought that for a moment he had seen Michaels' face in the bubble but that might have been only imagination.

Grant was at the heaving mountainous surface now, but how was he to attract the attention of such a thing? It had neither eyes nor sense; neither a mind nor purpose.

It was an automatic machine of protoplasm designed to respond in certain fashion to injury.

How? Grant didn't know. Yet a white cell could tell when a bacterium was in its vicinity. In some cellular way, it knew. It had known when the Proteus was near it and it had reacted by engulfing it.

Grant was far smaller than the Proteus, far smaller than a bacterium, even now. Was he large enough to be noticed?

He had his knife out and sank it deeply into the material before him, slitting it downward.

Nothing happened. No gush of blood, for there is no blood in a white cell.

Then, slowly, a bulging of the inner protoplasm appeared at the site of the ruptured membrane and that portion of the membrane drew away.

Grant struck again. He didn't want to kill it; he didn't think he could at his present size. But was there some way of attracting its attention.

He drifted off and, with mounting excitement, noticed a bulge in the wall, a bulge pointing toward him.

He drifted further away and the bulge followed.

He had been noticed. The manner of the noticing he could not say, but the white cell with everything it contained, with the Proteus, was following.

He moved away faster now. The white cell followed but (Grant hoped fervently) not quickly. Grant had reasoned that it was not designed for speed; that it moved like an amoeba, bulging out a portion of its substance and then pouring itself into the bulge. Under ordinary conditions it fought with immobile objects, with bacteria and with foreign inanimate detritus. Its amoeboid motion was fast enough for that.

Now it would have to deal with an object capable of darting away.

(Darting away quickly enough, Grant hoped.)

With gathering speed, he swam toward the others who were still delaying, still watching for him.

He gasped, "Get a move on. I think it's following."

"So are others," said Duval, grimly.

Grant looked about. The distance was swarming with white cells. What one had noticed, all had noticed.

"How..."

Duval said, "I saw you strike at the white cell. If you damaged it, chemicals were released into the blood-stream; chemicals that attracted white cells from all the neighboring regions."

"Then, for God's sake, swim!"

The surgical team was gathered round Benes' head, while Carter and Reid watched from above. Carter's mood of black depression was deepening by the moment.

It was over. All for nothing. All for nothing. All for ... "

"General Carter! Sir!" The sound was urgent, strident. The man's voice was cracking with excitement.

"Yes?"

"The Proteus, sir. It's moving."

Carter yelled. "Stop surgery!"

Each member of the surgical team looked up in startled wonder.

Reid plucked at Carter's sleeve. "The motion may be the mere effect of the ship's slowly accelerating de-miniaturization. If you don't get them now, they will be in danger of the white cells."

"What kind of motion?" shouted Carter. "Where's it heading?"

"Along the optic nerve, sir."

Carter turned fiercely on Reid. "Where does that go? What does it mean?"

Reid's face lit