"The air lock," said Dezhnev, ignoring Morrison's comment, "is modeled on the type we have in our lunar surface enclosures. The inner layer of the lock will peel back, then move around you and seal. Most of the air between the layers will be sucked out - we can't afford to waste air - which will give you a strange feeling, no doubt. Then the outer layer will peel open and you will be outside. Simple! - Now, let me close your helmet."
"Wait! How do I get back?"
"The same way. In reverse."
Now Morrison was closed in completely and a definite claustrophobic sensation helped unsettle him, as the coldness of fear began to wipe out the saving sensation of anger.
Dezhnev was pushing him against the hull and Konev, having managed to turn about in his seat, was helping. The two women remained calmly in their seats and were staring intently.
Morrison did not for a moment feel that they were staring at his body; he wished they were, in fact. That would be relatively benign. He was absolutely certain they were watching to see if the air lock would work, if his suit would work, if he himself would remain alive for more than a few minutes once he was outside the ship.
He wanted to cry out and call off everything, but the impulse to do so remained only an impulse.
He felt a slippery motion behind him and then the whipping of a transparent sheet before him. It was like the seat belt clasping itself around his waist and chest, but here the sheet enclosed him entirely, head to toe, side to side.
It clung to him more and more tightly, as the air between was pumped out. The material of his suit seemed to strain outward as the air inside it pushed against the developing vacuum outside.
And then the outer layer of the hull behind him whipped away and he felt a soft thrust that sent him tumbling outward and into the blood plasma within the capillary.
He was out of the ship and on his own.
Chapter 11. Destination
Going there may be most of the fun - but only if you get there in the end.
Immediately, Morrison felt the enveloping warmth and gasped. As Konev had said - the temperature was 37 degrees Celsius. It was the heat of a sweltering summer day and there was no escape. No shade, no breeze.
He looked around, getting his bearings. Clearly, Boranova had miniaturized the ship further while he had clumsily clambered into the suit. The tiled wall of the capillary was farther away. He could see only a bit of it, for between himself and the wall was a huge cloudy object. A red corpuscle, of course. Then a platelet went slipping between the red corpuscle and the wall, but very slowly.
All of them - red corpuscle, platelet, himself, the ship - were moving along with the small creeping current within the capillary, if one judged by the slow drifting motion of the tilings in the wall.
Morrison wondered why he felt the Brownian motion as little as he did. There was indeed the sensation of movement and the other objects in sight appeared to tremble. Even the tile marks of the capillary walls seemed to shift somehow, in a rather peculiar manner.
But there was no time to be keenly analytical. He had to get things done and get back within the ship.
He was a meter or so from the ship. (A meter? Purely subjective. How many micrometers - how many millionths of a meter was he separated from the ship in real measurements? He didn't pause to try to work out an answer to the question.) He twiddled his flippers to get back to the ship. The plasma was distinctly more viscous than seawater - unpleasantly so.
The heat continued, of course. It would never stop while the body he was in remained alive. Morrison's forehead was getting moist. - Come, he had to get started.
His hand reached out to the place where he had left the ship, but it touched nothing. It was almost as though it were pushing into a soft rubbery cushion of air, although his eyes told him there was nothing between that portion of the hull of the ship and his suited hand except, at best, a film of fluid.
A moment of thought and he saw what was happening. The outer skin of his suit carried a negative electric charge. So did that portion of the hull he was touching. It was repelling him.
There were other portions of the hull, however. Morrison slid his hands along until he was aware of touching the plastic. That was not in itself enough, however, for his hands moved along the area as though it were infinitely slippery.
And then, almost with a click, his left hand froze. It had passed a region of positive charge and remained in place. He tried to pull free first by a gentle backward push and then more frantically. He might as well have been riveted to the spot. He felt farther along with his right hand. Anchor that and he might be able to pull his left hand free.
Click. Anchored now by his right hand, he pulled at his left. Nothing happened. He clung to the hull, crucified there.
Drops of perspiration rolled down his forehead and collected in his armpits.
He shouted uselessly, wiggling his legs in an ecstasy of effort.
They were looking at him, but how could he gesture to his trapped hands? The red corpuscle that had been companion to the ship since he had emerged from it drifted closer and nudged him against the hull. His chest, however, did not cling. Luckily, it was not up against a positively charged region.
Kaliinin was looking toward him. Her lips were moving, but he could not lip-read - not Russian, at any rate. She did something with her computer and his left arm pulled free. Presumably, she had weakened the intensity of the charge.
He nodded his head in what he hoped would be interpreted as a gesture of thanks. Now it would only be necessary to work his way back, positively charged area by positively charged area, until he reached the rear of the ship.
He began the motion and found himself more or less pinned, but not so much this time by the harsh pull of the electromagnetic interaction as by the soft, pillowy push of the red corpuscle.
"Get back!" shouted Morrison, but the red corpuscle knew nothing of shouts. Its role was purely passive.
Morrison thrust at it with his hands and used his leg flippers to push harder. The elastic surface film of the red cell gave and bellied inward, but resisted more strongly, the more it gave until, finally, Morrison was pushing uselessly and, as he tired, was forced back against the ship.
He paused to catch his breath, which was difficult, hot and sweat-drenched as he was. He wondered whether he would be disabled first by dehydration or by the fever which would surely come over him if he could not get rid of the heat his own body was producing - and all the more so because of the effort he was making to free himself of the red corpuscle.
He lifted his arm again and brought it down, the plastic flipper held edgewise. It sliced through the pellicle of the corpuscle, puncturing it like a balloon. The surface tension of the film pulled the opening wider and wider. Matter exuded - a thin cloud of granules - and the red corpuscle began to shrink.
Morrison felt as though he had killed an inoffensive living creature and experienced a pang of guilt - then decided that there were trillions of others in the circulatory system and that a red corpuscle only had 120 days of functioning anyhow.
Now he could pull back toward the rear.
No fog collected on the inner surface of his suit. Why should it? The surface was as warm as he was and nothing would cling to the plastic anyway. What would have been fog was probably collecting as little pools of sweat in this corner and that of the suit, rolling around as he did.
He was back at the rear now, back where the ship's streamlining failed because the jets of each of the three microfusion engines broke the smooth lines. Here he was as far from the center of gravity of the ship as possible. (With luck, the other four would move as close to the front of the ship as they could. - He wished he had thought to make that explicit before getting into the suit.) What he had to do was to find positively charged areas that would hold his hands back and then - push!