Isaac Asimov by Fantastic Voyage Read Free Book Online

I’ll take your word for everything.”
    They had arrived at the foot of an escalator. Michaels got out of the scooter with a small, weary grunt. Grant vaulted the side.
    He leaned against the railing as the staircase moved majestically upward. “And what has Benes got?”
    “They tell me he claims he can beat the Uncertainty Principle. Supposedly, he knows how to maintain miniaturization indefinitely.”
    “You don’t sound as though you believe that.”
    Michaels shrugged, “I am skeptical. If he extends both miniaturization intensity and miniaturization duration that can only be at the expense of something else, but for the life of me I can’t imagine what that something else might be. Perhaps that only means I am not a Benes. In any case, he says he can do it and we cannot take the chance of not believing him. Neither can the Other Side, so they’ve tried to kill him.”
    They had come to the top of the escalator and Michaels had paused there briefly to complete his remark. Now he moved back to take a second escalator up another floor.
    “Now, Grant, you can understand what we must do—save Benes. Why we must do it—for the information he has. And how we must do it—by miniaturization.”
    “Why by miniaturization?”
    “Because the brain clot cannot be reached from outside. I told you that. So we will miniaturize a submarine, inject it into an artery, and with Captain Owens at the controls and with myself as pilot, journey to the clot. There, Duval and his assistant, Miss Peterson, will operate.”
    Grant’s eyes opened wide. “And I?”
    “You will be along as a member of the crew. General supervision, apparently.”
    Grant said, violently, “Not I. I am not volunteering for any such thing. Not for a minute.”
    He turned and started walking down the up-escalator, with little effect. Michaels followed him, sounding amused. “It is your business to take risks, isn’t it?”
    “Risks of my own choosing. Risks I am used to. Risks I am prepared for. Give me as much time to think of miniaturization as you have had and I’ll take the risk.”
    “My dear Grant. You have not been asked to volunteer. It is my understanding that you have been assigned to this duty. And now its importance has been explained to you. After all, I am going too, and I am not as young as you, nor have I ever been a football player. In fact, I’ll tell you. I was depending on you to keep my courage up by coming along, since courage is your business.”
    “If so, I’m a rotten businessman,” muttered Grant. Irrelevantly, almost petulantly, he said, “I want coffee.”
    He stood still and let the escalator carry him up again. Near the top of the escalator was a door marked “Conference Room.” They entered.
    Grant grew aware of the contents of the room in stages. What he saw first was that at one end of the long table that filled the center of the room was a multi-cup coffee dispenser and that next to it was a tray of sandwiches.
    He moved toward that at once and it was only after downing half a cup of it hot and black and following that by a Grant-sized bite of a sandwich, that item two entered his awareness.
    This was Duval’s assistant—Miss Peterson, wasn’t that her name?—looking down in the mouth but very beautiful and standing terribly close to Duval. Grant had the instant feeling that he was going to find it difficult to like the surgeon and only then did he begin to absorb the rest of the room.
    A colonel sat at one end of the table, looking annoyed. One hand twirled an ashtray slowly while the ashes of his cigarette dropped to the floor. He said emphatically to Duval, “I’ve made my attitude quite clear.”
    Grant recognized Captain Owens standing under the portrait of the president. The eagerness and smiles he hadseen at the airport were gone and there was a bruise on one cheekbone. He looked nervous and upset and Grant sympathized with the sensation.
    “Who’s the colonel?” Grant asked Michaels in a low