Fantastic Voyage: Microcosm (26 page)

The screech of tearing metal and the drumbeat of

articulated limbs outraged Devlin. “Come on, come on,” he repeated, like a mantra. He hoped the straining impeller engines would carry them to the pinhole, where it
might
be safe. Seconds ticked away.

Gritting her teeth and growling, Tomiko swiveled the rear laser cannon, aiming at two nanomachines, but Devlin reached over to stay her trigger finger. “Whoa, we've got to save enough power to blast through the glass.”

Her tight expression showed her frustration. “Maybe I should just go out and throw a few punches.”

A continuous rain of nanomachines fell around the vessel like huge mechanical piranha. Several more attached themselves to the hull.

With the fading miniaturization field, the
Mote
had already grown large enough that the nanocritters looked much smaller, like vultures tearing at a carcass. Therefore, more of the destructive devices could crowd onto the
Mote
's hull and cause further damage.

“I see the window up ahead,” Devlin said, gritting his teeth. “And the beacon.”

The giant Lexan cliff rose before them. At their still-microscopic size, the glass looked anything but smooth, with numerous pits and scratches and crystalline notches. The bore-hole tunnel looked like the X on a treasure map.

With a groaning screech, two of the Mote's outer hull plates fell away. Twisted pieces of the plating dropped off like dead leaves.

Arnold Freeth shouted as nanomachines sliced through the roof of the main compartment. A crack of daylight and whistling air burst through.

Buckytube arms reached in, bending the plates back, chewing through the support framework. Whining pyridine-tipped saws cut into the ship's body.

Devlin closed his ears to the destruction going on behind him, though his hazel eyes stung with tears of frustration. “There's the tunnel right now. On our way.” No matter how much he fought with the controls, the Mote's engines could propel them no faster.

In the main compartment, Cynthia Tyler detached one of their chairs and used the shaft to jab at the nanomachines. “Freeth, help me!” She clanged the chair back and forth, trying to beat back the articulated limbs like a lion tamer facing a wild beast.

To her astonishment, the nanocritter grabbed the seat and tore it from her grip. With a blur of metal limbs, the machine hauled the chair through the widening breach in the ship's roof. Outside, a pair of nanomachines ripped the seat to shreds.

Intent on flying, Devlin jockeyed them into position with no time for finesse or delicate moves. He set the groaning impeller motors to hover at the sealed mouth of the tunnel.

Tomiko wasted no time. She fired a blast with her forward laser cannons. The waning power was sufficient to melt away the last micron of glass, opening their escape route. Silica crystals and polymer strands dripped away from the shaft that led outside—their only hope of escape.

With her weapon's last sparks of energy, she scoured away four other nanomachines that made their way along the rugged vertical glass surface, climbing down toward the tunnel and its signal.

“All clear in front, Marc! Let's move it.”

The dying laser cannons sputtered, too weak to vaporize the remaining devices on the ship's outer hull, but the energy was sufficient to knock off a few of their mechanical attackers. The dislodged critters tumbled into the open air, their segmented limbs flailing.

Devlin nudged the ship toward the tunnel opening—only to find that the
Mote
had already grown too large to fit into the hole.

They could not get out.

Chapter 41

Mission clock: + 7 minutes

Wincing at every clash and spark and groan as the brutal nanomachines tore his beautiful vessel apart, Devlin struggled to hold the
Mote
steady—but they had no place to go.

It was a losing battle, and he knew it. His heart wrenched as he made the decision. He had worked for years on designing and building and testing this innovative exploration craft. It was almost a part of him. Now he felt as if he'd let the
Mote
down on her first and only real mission.

“We'll have to abandon ship.”

Dr. Tyler said, “And the longer we hesitate, the smaller our chances become.”

Freeth steeled himself, obviously not eager to climb outside with the nanocritters around them. “Believe me, that's the
only
thing getting smaller around here.”

Moment by moment, the miniaturization field continued to degrade. Their prolonged mission slowed the enlargement process, but still the Team was losing the race against time. While the vessel and crew began to grow imperceptibly at first, they would soon expand much faster, by orders of magnitude. They had to get out of the nanotech-infested room before it was too late.

Even if it meant leaving the
Mote
behind.

“Let's go,” Devlin said. “On foot. A fifty-millimeter dash—once we get across the opening.” He studied the tunnel through the window, a cave below the wavering ship, seemingly out of reach.

He felt sick at the prospect of casting his lovely vessel to the microscopic wolves. Creating this ship had saved him from wallowing in ever deeper depression after his wife's death. He knew the tiny craft better than he knew his own hand.

But he didn't intend to be one of those captains who went down with his ship in a foolish display of bravery.

Devlin adjusted the shuddering impellers to hold the vessel in position above the drill hole, as close to the window as possible. “That's the best I can do. Tomiko, get everybody to the airlock. We've got to climb across. Every second counts.”

She was already out of her seat, clipping the thermal grenades to her belt. Atmospheric currents made the vessel rock and sway.

The clatter of fullerene limbs and pyridine-clawed feet drummed on the outer hull. Another section of the wall plates bent apart from its seams, pried away by powerful nanomachines.

Devlin took one last longing glance around the cockpit. Then he quickly peeled the snapshot of Kelli off the window and tucked it into his jumpsuit pocket before he rushed to join the others at the hatch.

The vulture-sized nanocritters had stripped off the
Mote's
metal armor as if skinning their prey alive. Like pigs at a trough, the tiny robots crammed against each other, swarming at the roof breach. With diamond-edged jaws, the devices chewed through the hull supports, widening the hole. Trying to get inside. Claws and pincers clacked, scrambled, and poked.

On her way past the laboratory benches, Tomiko snatched a sampling pole from the analysis station. Under normal circumstances, Dr. Tyler might have used it to investigate organic tissue. But Tomiko wielded it like a spear, jabbing at the nanocritters through the ceiling hole.

Just like action hero Nolan Braddock. Her mouth formed a grim smile at the irony. But she had to get it right on the first take.

The machines thrashed with their sharp, jointed limbs. One pincer grabbed the sampling pole and twisted, but Tomiko heaved backward, ripping the machine's buckytube limb out of its socket. She swung again, hard as a ninja warrior this time, driving the others back with a clang of metal against carbon matrix. With a furious thrust, she skewered one device through its optical sensor, then blinded a second one.

She shouted, “Dr. T, bring the other anchoring rope to the airlock and open the bottom hatch. We'll need it to get across.”

Her face pinched but determined, Tyler disconnected the metal coils of the anchor cable and hurried with it to the central airlock. Freeth had already opened the hatch, and he helped her drop the barbed end out the open lower hatch.

As even more machines settled on the
Mote,
Tomiko poked the pole repeatedly through widening gaps in the ship's structure. The side hull and windows cracked and split open from the relentless pressure.

Devlin staggered across the main compartment as the ship shuddered in the air, a faithful beast of burden heaving in its death throes. He tried not to think about it. “Tomiko, you're the best athlete around here. You go first. Down the rope, swing across, then anchor it for us on the edge of the drill hole. Now's the time to show off your gymnastics skills.”

“Garrett's the show-off,” she said with a quick smile. “I'm just a shy girl.”

She gave up her battle against the attacking devices. Throwing the spear to the deck, she took the loose end of the anchor cable from Freeth. She jumped into the airlock chamber and squatted at the edge of the floor hatch.

She saw only an infinite sea of empty air at her feet, as if she were about to jump out of a high-flying jet aircraft. Tomiko grabbed the anchored end of the rope, held on, and dropped through the hatch…

Devlin stood with Freeth and Tyler at the airlock door. “Get ready. We've only got a few seconds.”

One of the nanomachines ripped out a side window and tried to force its way through the hull opening. Its optical sensors glowed like the eyes of a giant crab. Freeth yanked a laptop computer from its dock on the laboratory desk and tossed it at the tiny robot, knocking the blocky device away into space.

“Mr. Freeth, you next. Then Dr. Tyler.” Devlin stood grimly. “I'll go last. She's my ship.”

Air currents howled through the peeled-apart wreckage, and the
Mote
pitched about in the wind. The patchwork miniaturization field was failing even faster now. He could see that they were already bigger than when they'd first arrived at the escape hole.

Beneath the ship, Tomiko dangled on the cable. Her muscular legs wrapped around the strand as she swung back and forth. The pinhole in the window glass looked as big as the Eisenhower Tunnel. But the
Mote
filled a space far larger. Had they really been so small only a few moments before?

She twisted her hips to increase the pendular arc. Like Tarzan on a vine, but as light as a dust mote, she swayed closer to the window. Holding the cable below her, she thrashed the end like a whip, trying to strike the opening. The anchor's metal tip brushed against the crystalline glass like fingernails on slate, then slipped away.

Far in the distance, she saw shadowy titans, the looming aliens trying to prevent their escape. Right now even a centimeter gap was a huge distance for Team Proteus to traverse.

Nanocritters crawled like mechanical beetles all over the vessel, dozens of them working frantically, crawling down, trying to exploit any hull breach. They had no intention of using the material to assemble more copies of themselves; they wanted only to destroy. Soon they would reach the undercarriage of the
Mote.

If the machines severed the cable from the airlock hatch, Tomiko was doomed… and so was everyone else.

She swung again, practicing her aim, and finally the anchor hook clanked on the rugged glass, which looked like an iceberg cliff that extended to infinity. The hook bounced across the pitted surface, skidded, clacked against the tunnel opening, but fell again without finding purchase.

With a gust of air, the
Mote
jolted away, yanking her and the cable back out of reach. She clung desperately, maintaining her grip with strong fingers.

Panting, she swung back toward the glass wall at the end of her arc again. This time the hook struck the melted ridges of the bore hole. The grapple held just long enough for her to shimmy down the cable. Rope burn was the least of her worries.

When she finally thumped onto the uneven bottom of the tunnel, Tomiko kept her grip on the cable and secured the anchor into a cavity. She wished she had some kind of rock hammer, anything to gouge the hole a little deeper. She set the grappling hook as best she could and then pulled on the rope to test it.

Tomiko hunched against a gale-force wind that pushed through the tunnel—the positive-pressure flow Director Hunter had applied to keep the nanomachines from spreading outward. She suspected the ruthless alien devices could still fight their way through the tunnel.

She certainly knew how determined those machines were.

Tomiko dug her feet into the rippled side of the tunnel, held the cable taut, and shouted at the top of her lungs to be heard over the microscopic wind. “Arnold, come on over! Let's move it!”

High above, the UFO expert poked his head out of the hatch. Frightened resignation written on his face, he hesitated, then grasped the cable with sweaty palms. Behind him in the airlock. Dr. Tyler looked ready to give him a push if he didn't move faster.

Tomiko held the rope as steady as she could; luckily, at their size, gravity had little effect. Freeth began to work his way down the rope…

Inside the
Mote,
Devlin swung the sampling spear Tomiko had dropped, using it as a club to batter the nanomachines. The devices looked smaller and smaller, vermin now instead of monsters. His blows dented bead-lattice body cores, bent articulated limbs, smashed optical sensors. But an inexhaustible supply of nanocritters continued to stream down from the full-sized alien bodies. The struggling ship would be completely overwhelmed soon.

Dr. Tyler, looking out an intact window, watched Tomiko grab the UFO expert by the collar and drag him over the rippling glass ledge. She looked strangely relieved to see him safe. “All right. Freeth is secure.”

“Go, Doc!” Devlin pummeled two more nanocritters into lumps of carbon mesh.

With a nod, Tyler wrapped her arms and legs around the cable. As if scorning her instinctive fear, she inched downward, clinging to the cable.

The
Mote
dropped with a sickening lurch, and Tyler clutched the anchor rope, nearly jarred loose. Her legs dangled free for a moment, but she caught an ankle around the strand again and pulled her knee over the cable. She hung steady, sickly pale and afraid to move. Devlin yelled at her to hurry.

Inside the besieged engine compartment, the stuttering impellers strained to hold the vessel in place, but gusts of air from the pinhole pushed the hulk farther from the glass wall and down. The cable stretched against the anchor hook until it thrummed with the strain. A random swirl of wind shoved the
Mote
in another direction, closer to the window.

The cable drooped with slack, and Tyler could barely hold on, hanging below the hole now. Slowing her pace with her feet, she tried to scramble up the dangling rope. Standing at the edge of the tunnel, both Tomiko and Freeth reached out for her, calling encouragement.

More nanomachines skittered along the exterior of the doomed
Mote.
The miniaturized vessel had expanded enough in size that the tiny robots could easily squeeze through gaping rips in the hull, crawling between the support framework. Devlin smashed one after another.

Holding on for dear life, Cynthia Tyler made it halfway across the gap.

Several nanomachines dropped onto the connecting cable from the outer hull of the
Mote.
In a rush, the devices worked their way along the rope like big spiders climbing a web, scuttling after the medical specialist.

“Faster, Dr. Tyler!” Freeth shouted. “They're coming!”

The doctor looked behind her to see the mechanical monstrosities closing the distance. With slippery palms, she hauled herself higher, toward the tunnel. The glass wall and the safety of the opening looked very far away.

A draft snatched the
Mote
upward again. One hand slipped, and Tyler dangled, barely holding on until she secured her grip again and pulled herself along.

Tomiko reached out, but her arms could not reach the other woman's. “Just a little farther!”

“Come on, please, come on!” Freeth shouted, his face agonized.

One of the Mote's engines failed at last, its impeller turbine torn out, and the mangled vessel tilted at a horrible angle. Inside the main compartment, Devlin had to grab a side wall just to maintain his footing on the buckled deck. Wind roared through the holes in the hull.

Another five nanocritters broke into the ship.

More attacking devices dropped away and snagged the anchor cable, as if they knew it was their link to the tunnel, their escape route outside. Three nanomachines raced up the rope in the opposite direction, back toward the Mote's airlock.

Back toward Devlin.

Trapped inside, he knew he couldn't wait any longer. But when he looked out through the bottom hatch, he saw another six nanomachines clambering toward him, claw arms clacking.

To his dismay, he watched their claws work at the cable, chewing, cutting. Severing it. “No!” he shouted.

Strands of the anchor rope parted, and the tether broke away from the crippled
Mote.
The long cable fell from the ship, leaving him stranded aboard.

Now he had no way to get across…

As the severed rope dropped away, Tyler swung like a wrecking ball into the vertical wall. Dozens of the dog-sized nanocritters climbed after her from the ragged end of the tether.