"What is, Sophia?"
"How can we pass through this cell without examining it in detail?"
"We have a specific mission."
"Yes, but no one may be back within a brain cell for many years. Perhaps, never. When, in the future, someone will read that this ship and this crew merely raced through, looking neither to right or left, what barbarians they will think we must have been."
She was whispering very softly and their heads were bent close together. Morrison found himself rather enjoying it.
Had he grown so calloused to the threat of the situation - the constant skirting along the edge of the abyss of spontaneous deminiaturization, the possibility of split-second death at any moment - that he could take joy from the trivial fact that his lips were so close to the pretty face of a woman?
Well, why quarrel with that? Let the nearness anesthetize him, so that he might for a moment forget.
Morrison remembered the sharp image he had had so brief a time before of a happy, smiling, beautiful girl. He had not recognized the thought as his own, so unexpectedly had it come out of nowhere, and it didn't return, even now, but he remembered it distinctly and the memory squeezed at his heart with a warm feeling.
He had the momentary impulse to kiss her lightly, just a touch upon the cheekbone with his lips - and fought it down. If she decided to take it amiss, he would feel like an incredible fool.
Morrison said gently, "The people of the future will know we have a mission. They will understand."
"I wonder," Sophia said, then paused and sent a quick and almost fearful look in the direction of Konev, who as always sat stiff and detached at ally sign of speech or even motion from Kaliinin.
She turned to her computer, switched it to the word-processor mode, and tapped out in rapid Russian: YURI IS A FANATIC WHO SACRIFICES EVERYTHING TO HIS MANIA. THERE IS NO CHANCE OF READING THOUGHTS, BUT HE PERSUADES EVERYONE. She blanked it, then tapped out: WE ARE HIS VICTIMS and blanked it at once.
For "we," read "I," thought Morrison sadly. He looked at his own instrument hesitantly. It seemed to him that the thought waves, which he had dimmed to low, were growing more intense. Morrison looked out as though he might be able to tell just how near the axon they now were, but, of course, there was no way of knowing.
He blanked the radiation, switched to word-processing, and printed out in Roman-lettered Russian: HE, TOO, IS HIS VICTIM.
Kaliinin at once printed savagely: NO. I DON'T BELIEVE PEOPLE ARE THEIR OWN VICTIMS.
Morrison thought sadly of his one-time wife, his two children, his own inability to present his theory persuasively, or, alternatively, to walk away from it, and tapped out: I BELIEVE WE ARE EACH OF US MORE A VICTIM OF OURSELVES THAN OF ANYONE ELSE and returned it quickly to the thoughtwave mode.
He sucked in his breath sharply. The waves on his screen had risen high in intensity despite the fact that the device was still at low.
Morrison opened his mouth to comment on the fact, but Dezhnev made that unnecessary. "Yuri," he said, "the cell membrane is curving in and we're curving in with it."
That would account for it, thought Morrison. The cell was narrowing in toward the axon and the skeptic waves were being enormously concentrated. His device, having filtered out everything else, would radiate the wave function of the skeptic waves throughout the interior of the ship. And with what results?
Konev said with delight, "We'll see what happens now. Albert, keep your machine working at top intensity."
Boranova said, "I hope that whatever happens gives us our answer or at least a start to our answer. I have grown tired waiting."
"I don't blame you," said Dezhnev. "As my father used to say: 'The longer it takes to get to a point, the blunter it turns out to be.'"
It seemed to Morrison that every line of Konev's stiff body now betokened excitement and expectant triumph - but Morrison did not join in that expectation.
Morrison stared outward. They were well into the axon now and being carried along it by the fluid stream within the cell.
In the real world, the axon was an excessively thin fiber, but in the microminiaturized world of the ship, it might be the equivalent of a hundred kilometers across. As for its length, it was much, much longer than the cell itself. Going from one end to the other of the axon might very well be the equivalent of a trip from the Earth to the moon and back a couple of dozen times over. On the other hand, their apparent speed on the microminiaturized scale must seem, to themselves, to be a respectable faction of the speed of light.
There was no indication of that incredibly rapid speed, however. The ship was moving with the current and there was far less in the way of macromolecules or organelles in the axon than there had been in the cell body. If there were structural fibers withstanding the current and remaining motionless with respect to the cell membrane, the current swept them past those too rapidly for them to be visible, even if a sizable number of photons were reflected from them - which, of course, they were not.
So he gave up. There was nothing to look at outside.
He ought, in any case, to be looking at his screen. The skeptic waves were becoming even more intense, he could see. It had grown difficult to wipe out the nonskeptic material. It was so strong that it flooded the computer's receiving capacity.
What's more, the tight, elaborate vibration of the skeptic waves had become a series of irregular spikes. Even at full expansion, it was clear he wasn't getting all the detail that existed. Morrison had a clear vision of the necessity of a laser printout clear enough to be placed under a microscope.
Konev had unclasped himself and had half-lifted himself over the back of his seat so that he might stare at the screen.
He said, "I haven't seen it like that before."
Morrison replied, "Nor have I and I have been studying skeptic waves for nearly twenty years. Nothing like this."
"I was right, then, about the axon?"
"Absolutely, Yuri. The waves have concentrated themselves beautifully."
"And the meaning, then?"
Morrison spread out his hands helplessly. "There you have me. Since I have never seen anything like this, I obviously can't interpret it."
"No no," said Konev impatiently. "You keep concentrating on the screen and I keep thinking about induction. Our own minds are the true receptors - by way of your machine. What do you receive? Images? Words?"
"Nothing," said Morrison.
"That's impossible."
"Are you getting anything?"
"It's your machine. Adjusted to you."
"You've had images before, Yuri."
Dezhnev's voice broke in dryly, "My father used to say: 'If you want to hear, you must begin by listening.'"
Boranova said, "Dezhnev Senior is correct. We can receive nothing if we fill our minds with contention and shouts."
Konev drew a deep breath and said with a softness that was most uncharacteristic of him, "Very well, then, let us concentrate."
An unnatural quiet fell over the ship's crew.
Then Kaliinin said, breaking the silence rather timidly, "There is no time."
"No time for what, Sophia," said Boranova.
"I mean that's the phrase I sensed: 'There is no time.'"
Morrison said, "Are you saying that you received it from Shapirov's skeptic waves?"
"I don't know. Is that possible?"
Boranova said, "A moment before I had the same thought. It occurred to me that a better way of tackling the problem might be to study the recorded skeptic waves on the screen and to wait for sudden changes. It might be the change of pattern rather than the pattern itself that would produce an image. But then I thought that the waiting might be an enormously long drawn-out affair and for that we lacked the time."