"No no," said Morrison. "My device filters out all the components but the actual skeptic waves. Without the machine, she just gets a confused mass of sensations, responses, correlations, and miscellany of all kinds. With the machine, she gets only the skeptic waves, which further demonstrates the usefulness of my theory."
"I don't get anything at all," said Dezhnev, frowning. "Doesn't that destroy your theory?"
Morrison shrugged. "Brains are complicated mechanisms. Natalya gets it. You don't. For that matter, neither do I. Maybe this particular skeptic wave component fits something in Natalya's brain, not in ours. I'm not going to be able to explain everything at once. - Do you get anything, Konev?~
"No," he answered, as discontented as Dezhnev had been. "Yet I obtained impressions when we were outside the neuron."
Morrison shook his head and said nothing.
Konev burst out, "Can't you get anything but just a vague feeling of curiosity, Natalya?"
Boranova, "No, Yuri, I can't. Not at this moment. But you remember Pyotr Shapirov. He was curious about everything."
"I remember, but that doesn't help. Albert, in what direction are we moving?"
Albert said, "Downstream. It's the only direction in which we can move."
"No no." Then, in sudden anger, "Is that a joke? Are you trying to be funny?"
Morrison said, "Not at all. You asked in what direction we were going. What other answer could I have given you? Surely the compass directions have no meaning here."
Konev said, "All right. Sorry. The stream goes this way here. On the other side of the cell, it goes the other way. It's a circulation. But the nerve impulse goes one way only, from the dendrites to the axon. Are we on the side of the cell that's taking us in the same direction as the nerve impulse or in the other direction?"
"Does it matter?" said Morrison.
"I think it does. Can your device tell you in which direction the impulse is traveling?"
"Yes, certainly. There should be a slight shift in the shape of the waves, depending on whether they are meeting the device head-on or from the rear."
"And?"
"And we're moving in the direction of the impulse."
"Good! A stroke of luck. We're heading for the axon, then."
"So it would seem."
Boranova said, "And if we are heading for the axon?"
Konev said, "Natalya, think! The skeptic waves travel along the surface of the cell. The cell here is wide and relatively large. The skeptic waves spread out over a large surface and are weakened in intensity. As the cell approaches the axon, it narrows. The axon itself is long, a very long tube compared to the cell - and very narrow. The waves must concentrate enormously as they race along that tube and they must grow more intense. What's more, the axon is insulated by a thick myelin sheath, so that the wave energy will not be lost to the outside, but will be kept tightly within the axon."
Boranova said, "You think, then, that we can receive more effectively in the axon?"
"Much more effectively. If you can detect curiosity now, it should be overwhelming in the axon. And you might be able to detect what Shapirov is curious about."
"It may turn out to be totally unimportant," said Morrison thoughtfully. "What if he's curious about why he should be lying there and not moving?"
"No," said Konev sharply, "that would not interest him. I knew Shapirov well. You didn't."
Morrison nodded. "That's true enough."
"All his waking time was consumed with the miniaturization process," said Konev. "All his dreams, too, I suspect. And toward the end, in the last few weeks before the - the accident took place, he was working, thinking, dreaming of the connection between quantum and relativity, thinking of how to make miniaturization and deminiaturization energy-free and stable."
"Surely," said Morrison, "if that were the case, he must have given some hints as to some of the details of his thinking."
"No, he was a child in some ways. We knew what he was thinking of, but not whether he was making progress or in what direction. What he loved to do was to present it to us whole, complete. - Remember, Natalya, how he loved to do that? He did that with miniaturization itself. When he finally wrote his paper - it was a young book -"
Morrison said casually, "Where was it published?"
Konev sneered. "You know it wasn't published. It had a limited circulation to those who had to know. It's nowhere where you're likely ever to see it."
Boranova said, "Yuri, don't be needlessly insulting. Albert is a fellow crew member and a guest. He is not to be treated as a spy."
Konev said, "If you say so, Natalya. Nevertheless, if Shapirov is curious, so intensely curious that Natalya gets that message, it can be only about the quantum-relativity connection. If we can get some details about that, any details at all, we'll have a starting point and can continue."
"And you think we'll get those details in the axon?"
"Yes, I'm sure of it." Konev clenched both fists as though preparing to get a stranglehold on the facts.
Morrison looked away. He was not sure of it. Increasingly, it was beginning to look to him as though matters were moving in another direction altogether and that that was just as well-
He tried not to show it, but he was as excited as Konev was.
Dim objects to either side loomed up ahead, drifted to one side, left or right, and fell behind. Ribosomes? Golgi apparatus? Fibrils of one sort or another? Morrison could not tell. From the vantage point of small molecule size, nothing, not even the sharpest, most familiar intracellular object, would look familiar, let alone recognizable.
They were racing through a strange land of indefiniteness and Morrison could not, no matter how he tried, picture his surroundings as those with which he was familiar from electron micrography.
He wondered if, somewhere beyond where the light of the ship's beam extended, there would be the endless volume of the cell's nucleus. Imagine being within submicroscopic distance of it and yet never seeing it.
He concentrated on the immediate surroundings. It seemed to him, once again, that he ought to make out the water molecules that made up 98 percent of all the molecules in the cell, that huge percentage being the direct consequence of the fact that they were just about the smallest molecules there.
He could not be sure. Focus his eyes though he did and as tightly as he could, what he saw was only a faint glitter - a photon, perhaps, bouncing off such a molecule and flashing back toward his eye. At best, he would only see one or two from any given water molecule.
He was suddenly aware of Kaliinin's head, bending toward his. Her hair brushed his face and he noticed, as he had once or twice before, the fresh scent of her shampoo.
She said, "This is terrible, Albert."
Her breath was a little strong and Morrison flinched before he could stop himself.
She noticed, for her fingers came up sharply, covering her mouth, and she mumbled, "I'm sorry."
Morrison shook his head slightly, "My own breath isn't exactly a bed of roses. - Tension, nothing much to eat. A drink of water might help, Natalya."
One drink set off everybody, of course, in a chain reaction.
Kaliinin fingered a small white pellet. "Peppermint drop?"
Morrison held out his hand and smiled. "Is it permitted?"
Kaliinin's eye flickered back toward Boranova and she gave a Who-cares shrug. Having passed the drop to Morrison, Sophia popped another in her mouth.
Then she said again, "This is terrible, Albert."