Fantastic Voyage - By Isaac Asimov Page 0,76

up, "It means an emergency exit I hadn't thought of. They're heading for the eye and out through the lachrymal duct. They may make it. They might just get away with it, damaging one eye at most. Get a microscope slide, someone. Carter, let's get down there."

The optic nerve was a bundle of fibers, each like a string of sausages.

Duval paused to place his hand on the junction between two of the "sausages."

"A node of Ranvier," he said, wonderingly, "I'm touching it."

"Don't keep on touching it," gasped Grant. "Keep on swimming."

The white cells had to negotiate the close-packed network and did it less easily than the swimmers could. They had squeezed out into the interstitial fluid and were bulging through the spaces between the close-knit nerve fibers.

Grant watched anxiously to make sure that the white cell was still in pursuit. The one with the Proteus in it. He could not make out the Proteus any longer. If it existed in the white cell nearest, it had been transferred so deep into its substance that it was no longer visible. If the white cell behind was not the white cell, then Benes might be killed despite everything.

The nerves sparked wherever the beam from the helmet-lights struck and the sparkles moved backward in rapid progression.

"Light impulses," muttered Duval. "Genes' eyes aren't entirely closed."

Owens said, "Everything's definitely getting smaller. Do you notice that?"

Grant nodded. "I sure do." The white cell was only half the monster it had been only moments before; if that. "We only have seconds to go," said Duval.

Cora said "I can't keep up."

Grant veered toward her. "Sure you can. We're in the eye now. We're only the width of a tear-drop from safety." He put his arms around her waist, pushing her forward, then took the laser and its power-unit from her.

Duval said. "Through here and we'll be in the lachrymal duct."

They were large enough almost to fill the interstitial space through which they were swimming. As they grew, their speed had increased and the white cells grew less fearsome.

Duval kicked open the membranous wall be had come up against. "Get through," he said, "Miss Peterson, you first."

Grant pushed her through, and followed her. Then Owens and finally Duval.

"We're out," said Duval with a controlled excitement. "We're out of the body."

"Wait," said Grant. "I want that white cell out, too. Otherwise . . ."

He waited a moment, then let out a shout of excitement. "There it is. And, by heaven, it's the right one."

The white cell oozed through the opening that Duval's boot had made, but with difficulty. The Proteus, or the shattered splinters of it, could be seen clearly through its substance. It had expanded until it was nearly half the size of the white cell and the poor monster was finding itself with an unexpected attack of indigestion.

It struggled on gamely, however. Once it had been stimulated to follow, it could do nothing else.

The three men and a woman drifted upward in a well of rising fluid. The white cell, barely moving, drifted up with them.

The smooth curved wall at one side was transparent. It was transparent not in the fashion of the thin capillary wall, but truly transparent. There were no signs of cell membranes of nuclei.

Duval said, "This is the cornea. The other wall is the lower eyelid. We've got to get far enough away to deminiaturize fully without hurting Benes, and we only have seconds to do it in."

Up above, many feet above (on their still tiny scale) was a horizontal crack.

"Through there," said Duval.

"The ship's on the surface of the eye," came the triumphant shout.

"All right," said Reid. "Right eye."

A technician leaned close with the microscope slide at Benes' closed eye. A magnifying lens was in place. Slowly, with a felted clamp, the lower eyelid was gently pinched and pulled down.

"It's there,". said the technician in hushed tones. "Like a speck of dirt."

Skillfully, he placed the slide to the eye and a tear-drop with the speck in it squeezed on to it.

Everyone backed away.

Reid said, "Something that is large enough to see is going to get much larger very quickly. Scatter!"

The technician, torn between hurry and the necessity for gentleness, placed the slide down on the floor of the room,, then backed away at a quick trot.

The nurses wheeled the operating table quickly through the large double-door and with a startlingly accelerated speed, the specks on the slide grew to full size.

Three men, a woman, and a heap of metal fragments, rounded and eroded,