She smiled, but there was a definite trace of perspiration glistening at her hairline.
The surface of the glial cell still stretched out as far as the eye could see into the dimness beyond the reach of the ship's light, but it had changed in character. The domes and ridges had faded out into a fine texture. The ropes that had extended from between the domes had become threads nearly impossible to see as the ship sped along the surface.
Morrison's attention was, for the most part, on his computer, as he watched to see that the skeptic waves did not decline in intensity, but, periodically, he could not help but drift away from that and gaze at the panorama outside.
Occasionally, there would emerge from the surface of the cell the typical dendritic processes of a nerve cell - even one that was merely a subsidiary glial cell. They branched and sub-branched like a tree in winter, growing out of the cell membrane.
Even at the new and larger size of the ship, the dendrites were large when they emerged from the cell. They were like tree trunks, which, however, narrowed rapidly and were clearly flexible. Lacking the rigidity of the cartilage fibers, they swayed in the eddies set up by the ship's progress through the extracellular fluid. They swayed, indeed, at the ship's approach and Dezhnev rarely had to do anything to avoid them. They would bend out of line and the ship would pass them safely.
Collagen fibers were fewer in the immediate neighborhood of the cell and, thanks to the larger size of the ship, were much thinner and more fragile. On one occasion, Dezhnev either did not see one looming directly ahead of the ship or did not care that it was. The ship brushed past it in a way that brought it just outside Morrison's seat. He flinched at the grating collision, but the ship was in no way damaged. It was the collagen fiber that bent, then snapped and dangled free. Morrison's head turned and his eyes followed the broken fiber for the second or so that it remained in view before floating away.
Boranova must have seen it, too, and watched Morrison's reaction, for she said, "There's no reason for concern. There are trillions of those fibers scattered through the brain, so that one more or less doesn't matter. Besides, they heal - even in a brain as badly damaged as poor Shapirov's."
"I suppose so," said Morrison, "yet I can't help but think we are crashing without any right through an infinitely delicate mechanism not meant for technological invasion."
"I appreciate your feeling," said Boranova, "but hardly anything in the world seems to have been brought into being by geological and biological processes with any apparent pre-vision of human interference. Humanity does a great deal of wrong to Earth and to life, some of it wittingly. - Incidentally, I'm thirsty. Are you?"
"Definitely," said Morrison.
"You'll find a cup in the little recess under your right armrest. Pass it back."
She distributed water to all five, saying matter-of-factly, "There's no shortage of water, so if you want seconds, say so."
Dezhnev looked at his cup distastefully, while keeping one hand on the controls. He sniffed at it and said, "My father used to say: 'There is no drink like pure water, provided one realizes that it is alcohol that is the purifying agent.'"
"Yes, Arkady," said Boranova. "I am quite sure your father purified his water frequently, but here on the ship, with your hands on the controls, you will have your water unpurified."
"We must all go through privations now and then," said Dezhnev, who then downed his water and made a face.
It might have been the taste of the water that caused Kaliinin to fumble between her legs. It took a moment for Morrison to realize that it was her turn to urinate and he turned his head toward the window and waited to see if another collagen fiber might go flying.
Boranova said, "I suppose, strictly speaking, it's lunchtime, but we can do without. Still -"
"Still what?" asked Dezhnev. "A good plate of piping hot borscht with sour cream?"
Boranova said, "What I have smuggled in against regulations are bits of chocolate - high-calorie, zero-fiber."
Kaliinin, who had disposed of her small damp paper towel and was shaking her hands to dry them, said, "It will rot our teeth."
"Not immediately," said Boranova, "and you can rinse your mouth with a little water to reduce the sugar residue. Who wants one?"
Four hands went up, Kaliinin's not the last. Morrison welcomed his gladly. He was fond of chocolate in any case and sucked at it to make it last longer. The taste reminded him poignantly of his boyhood in the outskirts of Muncie.
The chocolate was gone when Konev said to Morrison in a low voice, "Have you sensed anything while we've been skimming past the glial cell?"
"No," said Morrison. (He hadn't.) "Have you?"
"I thought I did. The phrase 'green fields' crossed my mind."
Morrison could not prevent himself from saying "Hmm" and for a while remained lost in thought.
"Well?" said Konev.
Morrison shrugged. "Phrases go through one's mind all the time. You hear something out of the corner of your ear, so to speak, and sometime later it penetrates your consciousness; or some stream-of-consciousness thoughts invade your mind and one phrase surfaces; or you can have an auditory hallucination of some sort."
"It crossed my mind when I was looking at your instrument and concentrating."
"You wanted to be aware of something, I suppose, and something promptly obliged by flitting through your mind in response. You get the same effect in dreams."
"No. This was real."
"How can you tell, Yuri? - I didn't sense any such thing. Did anyone else sense it, do you suppose?"
"They wouldn't. No one else was concentrating on your machine. Perhaps no one else in the ship had a brain sufficiently like yours to sense on your wavelength, so to speak."
"You're just guessing. Besides, what does the phrase mean?"
"Green fields? Shapirov had a house out in the country. He would remember the green fields."
"He might have merely supplied the image. You would supply the words."
Konev frowned, paused a moment, then said in a clearly hostile manner, "Why are you so opposed to the possibility of getting a message?"
Morrison allowed himself to be equally hostile. "Because I've been burned by reporting such sense perceptions. I've been ridiculed long enough and I have become cautious. An image of a woman and two children doesn't tell us anything. Neither does a phrase like 'green fields.' If you report it, how can you possibly tell it from a self-generated image or phrase? Now listen, Yuri, a hint, to be useful, must, however vaguely and indirectly, tie in with the quantum-relativity relationship. That we can report. Anything less than that is not compelling; it won't force belief. It will only succeed in hurting us. I speak from experience."
Konev said, "What, then, if you succeed in hearing something vital, something that bears on our project? Will you perhaps keep it to yourself?"
"Why should I? If I sense something in physics relating to miniaturization, I would lack the background to understand it and keeping it to myself would get me nowhere. If some useful result is shared between us, this computer remains my machine and it is activated by my theory. I am the one who will get the major share of the credit. I won't keep it to myself, Yuri. Both my self-interest and my honor as a scientist will keep me from doing that. - And what about you?"
"Of course I'll share whatever I sense. I have been doing so just now."
"I don't mean 'green fields.' That is nonsense. Suppose you sense something very significant and I don't. Might it not occur to you that the knowledge would be a state secret, as miniaturization itself is? Would you then tell me that knowledge and risk the wrath of your Central Coordinating Committee."