"Courage?"
"All right. If you want an admission I lack courage, I'll admit it."
Konev turned to look at Boranova. "Natalya. You are the captain. Direct Albert to try once more."
"I don't think I can direct him under these conditions," said Boranova. "As he himself has said, what good will it do if we combine our strength, force him into the suit, and shove him out? If he is incapable of doing anything, we'll get nothing out of it. However, I can ask him. - Albert."
"Save your breath," said Morrison wearily.
"Once more. Not more than three minutes by the clock unless you get a transmission."
"We won't. I'm convinced we won't."
"Then only three minutes to prove the point."
Morrison said, "To what end, Natalya? If I get nothing, Yuri will say I am deliberately misadjusting my computer. If there is no trust between us, we will accomplish nothing in any case. How would it be, for instance, if I displayed Konev's conviction that to disagree is to lie? I say I sensed nothing of either Shapirov's thoughts or emotions when I was alone in the intracellular stream. Konev said he sensed a great deal. Who else did? Did you, Natalya?"
"No. I sensed nothing."
"Sophia?"
Kaffinin shook her head.
"Arkady?"
Dezhnev said in an aggrieved tone, "I do not seem to be able to sense very much."
Morrison said, "Well, then, Yuri stands alone. How are we to know he really sensed anything? I shall not be as unkind as he is. I shall not accuse him of lying - but isn't it possible that his wild desire to sense something caused him to imagine he had?"
Konev's face was white with anger, but his voice, except for a slight tremor, was cool enough. "Forget all that. We have spent hours in this body and I'm asking for one last observation, one last experiment, that may justify all that has gone before."
"No," said Morrison. "Last pays all. I've heard that before."
Boranova said, "Albert, this time there will be no mistake. One last experiment."
Dezhnev said, "It would have to be a last experiment. Our power supply is lower than I would like it to be. Finding you was costly, Albert."
"Yet we did find you," said Konev, "and without counting the cost. I found you." He suddenly smiled tightly and fiercely. "And I wouldn't have found you if I did not detect the transmissions emanating from your device. It would have been impossible. There's the proof that what I sensed was not imaginary. And since I found you, pay me back."
Morrison's nostrils flared. "You came after me because my explosion would have killed you all in a matter of minutes, perhaps. What payment do you expect for your anxiety to save your own li-"
The ship rocked violently without warning. It swayed heavily and Konev, who had been standing, tottered and caught at the back of his seat.
"What was it?" called out Boranova, clutching with one hand at her own control device.
Kaliinin bent over her computer. "I caught a glimpse, but you can't tell in this light. It may have been a ribosome."
"A ribosome," repeated Morrison in astonishment.
"Why not? They're scattered all over the cell. They're the protein-manufacturing organelles."
"I know what they are," said Morrison indignantly.
"So it landed us a blow. Or rather, as we skimmed along, we landed it a blow. It doesn't matter which way you look at it; we just had a giant piece of Brownian motion."
"Worse than that," said Dezhnev, pointing outward in horror. "We're not getting heat transfer, we're getting field oscillation."
Morrison, staring in despair, recognized the phenomenon he had seen when alone in the cell. The water molecules were expanding and contracting - visibly so.
"Stop it! Stop it!" shouted Konev.
"I'm trying to," said Boranova through tight lips. "Arkady, shut off the jets and make all the power available to me. - Shut off the air-conditioning, lights, everything!"
Boranova bent over the tiny glow that marked her battery-powered computer.
Morrison could see nothing except for the light from Boranova's computer and, in the seat next to him, Kaliinin's. He could not see, in the otherwise total darkness of a cell buried in the interior of a brain, the water molecules swelling and subsiding.
There was no uncertainty about it, however. He could feel the jarring in the pit of his stomach. It was not the water molecules that were oscillating, after all. It was the miniaturization field that was - and the objects that were buried in it - and he himself.
Each time the ship expanded (and the water molecules seemed to contract), the field converted some of its energy to heat and he could feel the flush that swept over him. Then, as Boranova forced energy into the field, squeezing it into contraction, the heat vanished. For a while, he could feel the oscillations slow and subside.
But then they began to grow wilder and he knew that Boranova was failing. She could not fend off the spontaneous deminiaturization that was on the way and, in ten seconds, he knew he would be dead. He - and all of them, and the body in which they were buried - would be an exploding puff of water vapor and carbon dioxide.
He felt dizzy. He was going to faint and, in his pusillanimous way, he would thus anticipate death by a second and his last recognizable emotion would be one of intense shame.
The seconds passed and Morrison didn't faint. He stirred a little. He should be dead by now, shouldn't he? (It was inevitable that the next thought should come: Can there be an afterlife after all? - He dismissed the possibility quickly.)
He was aware of someone sobbing. No! It was harsh breathing.
He opened his eyes (he hadn't realized they were closed) and found himself staring at Kaliinin in the dim light. Since all the energy available was being pumped into the effort to keep the ship from deminiaturizing, he saw her only by the glow of her own computer. He could make out her head bent over it, her hair in disarray and her breath whistling sharply through her parted lips.
He looked around in a sudden renewal of hope and thought and life. The ship's oscillations seemed less extreme. They were settling downward into a kind of peace even as he watched.
And then cautiously, Kaliinin stopped and looked up sidewise at him, her face twitching into a painful smile. "It is done," she said in a hoarse whisper.
The light within the ship brightened slowly, almost tentatively, and Dezhnev uttered a huge shuddering sigh. "If I am not dead now," he said, "I hope to live yet a little while. As my father once said: 'Life would be unbearable if death were not worse yet.' - Thank you, Natasha. You may be my captain forever."
"Not I," said Boranova, her face looking very old - to the point where Morrison would not have been surprised to see white streaks in her black hair. "I simply couldn't pump enough energy into the ship. Was it something you did, Sophia?"
Kaliinin's eyes were closed now, but her breasts were still heaving. She stirred a little, as though reluctant to answer, reluctant to do anything but savor life for a time. Then she said, "I don't know. Maybe."
Boranova said, "What did you do?"
Kaliinin said, "I couldn't just wait for death. I made the ship the electric duplicate of a D-glucose molecule and hoped the cell would do the normal thing and interact with a molecule of ATP - adenosine triphosphate. In doing so, it gained a phosphate group and energy. The energy, I hoped, would go into reinforcing the miniaturization field. I then neutralized the ship and the phosphate group fell off. D-glucose again, another gain in energy, then neutral, and so on, over and over." She stopped to pant a bit. "Over and over. My fingers were working so fast, I didn't know if I were hitting the right keys or not - but I must have. And the ship gained enough energy to stabilize the field."