Fantastic Voyage: Microcosm (21 page)

Chapter 34

Mission clock: 53 minutes remaining

When Sergei Pirov turned into a wild man, Garamov couldn't believe what he was seeing.

In a blur, the Russian doctor grabbed Sujatha's protective suit and backhanded him with a resounding crack that sent the Bengali sprawling. Then he went into a frenzy, snarling and screaming as if with some kind of seizure.

Congressman Durston leaped to his feet. “What the hell is he doing down there?”

Hunter pounded on the intercom button. “Dr. Pirov!”

No one could see the old man's altered face inside the hooded suit.

Garamov yelled into the microphone, this time in Russian. Pirov responded by thrashing about, reversing direction, and hurling himself at the far wall like a rabid dog in a cage.

“Get that man up here right now,” Durston demanded. “I want to know the meaning of this.”

“You are welcome to go inside and get him, Congressman,” Garamov said with harsh sarcasm. “He needs medical attention, a sedative at least.”

“Impossible. They're sealed in the chamber, and I can't let them out.” Hunter spoke rapidly, in control. “This could be a reaction to an extraterrestrial disease. If they're contaminated somehow, we can't risk the contact. No one else goes inside, either. Not until we get some answers about what's going on.”

Huddled on the floor, Sujatha scrambled like a beetle to find some sort of shelter. “Director Hunter, help me, please.” His faceplate was cracked.

The old Russian doctor ran amok in the containment room. He grabbed trays and flung them at the thick Lexan windows with a clatter. He knocked over an instrument stand and slammed his body against the armored wall, pounding with gloved fists. The sound from his voice pickup warbled up and down, an inhuman wail without comprehensible words.

On the control deck, Hunter used his overrides to activate the facility's full alarm and lockdown procedures. “Standby alert.” Magenta lights whirled at corridor intersections in the mountain complex.

Already sealed, the Class IV chamber became armed, systems in place to prevent unauthorized entry or escape—with deadly force, if necessary. An ominous blinking red light indicated the sterilization-burst device powering up.

Hunter wasn't prepared to consider that option. Not yet.

Armed guards rushed to the observation deck, ready to whisk Durston and Garamov to safety. Boots clomping like muffled gunfire, Marines ran along the outside corridors, surrounding the containment chamber at floor level. They held rifles in front of them, their faces stony and grim. A piercing tone signaled that the chamber had reached full emergency status.

Hunter tried the chamber intercom again. “Sergei Pirov, can you hear me?” He maintained a deep, calm voice. “We can't help you unless you explain what's happening.”

Unaware of his surroundings, Pirov threw forceps and diagnostic equipment at the unbreakable windows. The instruments bounced off, leaving only nicks on the glass. With the same tools, he could easily have killed Sujatha, but he ignored the other doctor.

“He is…
changed,
Director, sir,” the Bengali gasped into his suit microphone. “Dr. Pirov is no longer human.”

The transformed Russian turned his hooded head and raised his bulky arms, clenching and unclenching gloved fists.

In the flickering emergency lights and the weird shadows, Hunter could barely make out the old doctor's features, a bizarre distortion, before he turned away and grabbed another tray of instruments. Roaring, Pirov hurled it at the sealed door.

No longer human?

Scalpels, battery-powered laser incision tools, a rotary bone-cutting saw, and medical diagnostic equipment clattered and bounced. Then he turned to the massive laser drill and wrestled with its anchor stand, trying unsuccessfully to uproot the machine from the floor. Sujatha hunched out of the way, trying to avoid the furious, inhuman storm.

Outside the window, Marines extended their rifles. They flinched uneasily, but dared not fire.

Lurching over to the chamber's airlock hatch, Pirov worked with the controls, trying to force the locking wheel, but it would not budge. Then he hammered on the armored autoclave door, to no effect.

Perplexed as well as horrified, Garamov glanced at Hunter in awe. “What is this? Director Hunter, do you have any explanations?”

“I don't think any of us understands, Vasili.” Out of nervous habit, Hunter brushed down his mustache. More sweat trickled from his forehead.

Though it had been neutralized by the emergency lockdown, the keypad exit panel still glowed beside the door. The Russian doctor knew the access code, but he hadn't even bothered to enter it. Why would he try the manual release first? It was as if the man had no memory of who or where he was.

Finally, as if wrestling some sort of control upon himself, Pirov turned to the keypad. Gloved fingers punched buttons with lightning-fast reflexes to enter the code. The panel glowed scarlet, refusing to open the door. Another alarm sounded.

Pirov canceled the entry and stabbed at the buttons again, his fingers an even faster blur than before. When the system denied him a second time, he flew into a rage and punched the panel. His gloved fist smashed it into a sparking eruption of sizzling wires, burned-out indicator lights, and shards of plastic and metal.

“Can't we shoot him with a tranquilizer gun?” Durston said with morbid fascination. “He's like a mad elephant.”

“I'm afraid we didn't install automatic tranquilizer guns as part of our standard security systems, Mr. Congressman.” Hunter was too concerned for his people to pay much attention to Durston's overblown sense of importance. “Funding constraints, you know.”

Garamov glowered at the congressman. “That man is a highly respected researcher and one of the chief medical experts of Project Proteus, Mr. Durston.”

“Not anymore,” Durston said.

Realizing the futility of his efforts to escape, Pirov paced like a tiger in a cage. His arms swayed back and forth with coiled violence, until he reached an internal crisis. As if his anti-contamination suit had begun to burn his skin, the old man tore at the seals and openings with inhuman strength. He yowled out a primal scream and ripped the tape fastenings, splitting zippers with his fingers. Tiny metal teeth sprayed out like raindrops. The polymer-reinforced fabric dropped into rags.

With an enormous heave, Pirov yanked off his flexible hood, tearing the lapped seams that joined it to his collar. He threw the flopping hood like a projectile up at the observation gallery, where it struck the window with a loud thump.

The hybrid creature that had once been Dr. Sergei Pirov stood fully revealed in the harsh light.

The man's skin was smooth and grayish. Most of his short, salt-and-pepper hair had fallen out like bristly dust. Pirov's eyes bulged, enlarged beyond what Hunter had thought a human skull could accommodate. His nose had melted into the slab of his face, his ears atrophied until they were streamlined nubs against the side of his head.

“On the bright side, now we have
two
specimens.” Durston drew in a quick breath, and his eyes narrowed. “And this one's alive and kicking.”

Garamov frowned at him in disgust, concerned for both the original alien in the lifepod and the transformed Russian doctor. “Are you certain your security field will hold, Director Hunter?”

“It'll hold.” His mind reeled as he tried to formulate explanations, something he could accept. He turned to the Deputy Foreign Minister. “Now I am even more relieved that you didn't let any curious soldiers or local Azerbaijani doctors crack open the lifepod.”

“I fear that even this security might not be enough.” Garamov couldn't tear his eyes from Dr. Pirov's behavior. “If Sergei gets his way.”

The transformed Russian looked up at the men in the observation deck. His narrow shoulders sagged, and he spoke in an unearthly tenor with a newly lipless mouth. “Let… me… out.” He selected each word as if pulling it from an unfamiliar database. “I need … to get… out.”

Hunter didn't answer. The Pirov creature took two long, heaving breaths, and seemed to rediscover his inner emotions. He added a desperate plea, sounding almost human again. “Director Hunter, I have to get out. Please let me. You don't understand what's happening here, what's happening to me.” His voice became a mewling cry.

Now that the Pirov-alien could communicate using human words again, Hunter tried to get some answers. “Sergei, you know I can't let you out. Are you able to explain what's happened to you? Do you know what—”

As soon as Hunter denied his request, Pirov became a whirlwind again, smashing equipment, throwing himself against anchored tables. He seemed careful not to harm the lifepod, where the original alien astronaut lay, still motionless. Hunter realized that Dr. Pirov was the alien's counterpart now.

Crouched in a corner under an equipment rack, Rajid Sujatha drew his legs up to his chest. Trying to remain unseen, he touched his cracked faceplate in horror, knowing he must be contaminated, too.

He saw what had become of Dr. Pirov and feared that the same fate lay in store for him.

Chapter 35

Mission clock: 46 minutes remaining

The battered
Mote
accelerated toward the opposite end of the long bone shaft. Reproducing blood cells and geometric platelets crowded the fatty globules in the yellow marrow, but Devlin found enough room to maneuver.

With time running out, he kept the ship racing at full speed. He was relieved to have a clear path ahead, yet disconcerted that he had no idea where they were going, or how the team would get out of the alien's body.

In forty-six minutes they would start to grow.

Dr. Tyler looked up from her crude diagrams on the analysis table. “Obviously, bone marrow doesn't offer any egress from the body. We have to work our way outward, through blood vessels and fatty tissue, to the epidermis and another pore.”

Devlin noted the dwindling time left on the chronometer. “Roger that, but I'd be more comfortable if we knew we were making progress in the right direction. With all that nanocritter-generated static, it's been a long time since I've gotten a decent reading from the navigation computer.”

The vessel rushed along, buffeted by currents in the marrow fluid, the hiss of thick plasma sounding like a waterfall against the windows. After so many hours, the atmosphere inside the craft had grown warm and stuffy.

Devlin spared a glance to check the Mote's power levels: batteries low but within acceptable limits, impellers operating with sufficient fuel. The laser charges were diminished; Tomiko had used her weaponry far more than any scenario had anticipated.

At last, given a moment of reflection in the constant tension, Devlin remembered that he had promised himself to buy her a nice dinner after they had survived the pedicel ordeal. “Are you free Saturday night?” By now, he probably owed her a month of fine cuisine…

She looked at him quickly, pleased and surprised by the offer. “You mean, can I break away from the wide range of leisure activities available inside the Proteus Facility? Gee, I'll have to check my social calendar.” She returned her attention to her weapons control. “But let's get out of here first.”

Traveling the length of the bone shaft, they encountered only one nanoscout, which Tomiko blasted before it could send out an alarm signal. “There'll be more of those things when we get to the other end, Marc.”

“Affirmative. I'm counting on it.” He enjoyed her startled glance.

Ahead he could see a Swiss-cheese webwork of bone, calcified curtains that turned the marrow into a factory maze, where human red blood cells would have been produced. The bone passages looked like wormholes in rotted wood. Devlin selected his spot at a juncture of tunnels with overhanging calcium fibers. “Here's where we'll go to ground.” He rotated the
Mote,
reversed the impellers, and backed into the meager shelter. Waiting, like a spider in a hole.

Devlin flicked a switch on the comm system. “Keep a lookout, everybody. I just turned our SOS signal back on.”

Freeth gaped at him. “But we know that attracts the nanocritters.”

“Precisely. But
I
want to choose the time and place for an ambush.” Devlin cracked his knuckles, limbering up for action. “I plan to capture a nanomachine. Once we disable it, I'm hoping I can extract its IFF. Then we'll be perfectly camouflaged, a sheep in wolf's clothing.”

It would have been so simple to play back recorded alien signals, but the carrier pulse was in a complex, variable code that shifted at random. With so little time remaining, Devlin could not separate out a predictable pattern. He'd have to snatch a transmitter with its programming already built in.

Marrow fluid swirled around them, gently rocking the deck. He shut down their bright spotlights. The SOS beacon fluttered like a matador's red cape for the marauding nanocritters.

“My finger's on the firing button, Marc,” Tomiko said.

“Wait for it. Try not to cause too much damage.”

The first prowling machines arrived without warning, a hunting pair that streaked out of a side passage toward the miniaturized ship.

Tomiko shifted the targeting cross, then fired a brief burst at the first one, ripping open its chain-link underbelly and shorting out the diamond memory wafer. Then she punched through the fullerene wall of the second device to burn out its power source. The flailing, clacking carbon-lattice claws of the oncoming machines drooped.

Devlin shut down the SOS signal. “Nice shooting. You can hang one as a trophy on your wall.”

“I'd need an awfully small taxidermist.”

After switching on the spotlights again, he climbed out of the piloting chair. Tomiko launched the anchor harpoons into the calcified walls. The
thunk
of impact reverberated along the cable.

“Okay, let's suit up. Mr. Freeth, we'll need your help outside. This is going to have to be the fastest jury-rig in history.”

The UFO expert was so startled he took a step backward, bumping into one of the detachable chairs and sitting down heavily. “Me? But I don't know how a nanomachine works.”

Cynthia Tyler looked at him, her eyes flashing. “Just use your imagination, Freeth. You're good at that.”

Devlin clapped him on the shoulder and handed him a slithery suit from the equipment closet. “Here, this one'll fit you.”

He and Tomiko pulled on their suits and adjusted the seals while Freeth struggled into his own garb. The UFO expert flexed his arms, fiddled with his gloves, and adjusted the curved faceplate to make sure he could see properly. Tomiko settled Freeth's airtank onto his thin shoulders, cinched the straps tighter, and whispered, “Don't hyperventilate, Arnold. We need your help.”

“I'll continue to take readings and measurements,” Tyler said. “This will be our last chance. But no heroics out there. Not even you, Freeth.”

“Believe me, no heroics,” he agreed.

With the three of them crowded inside the airlock tube, Devlin operated the manual valves. Alien plasma fluid streamed around them, squeezing its clammy grip around their legs, waists, and chests.

With their respirators and faceplates in place and line-of-sight radios checked, Tomiko pulled up the hatch. Pushing off from the airlock wall and Devlin's shoulder, she swam out first. The two men followed her into the microscopic bone caverns. Cones of harsh light from the tethered ship cast stark shadows, swaying as the
Mote
was nudged by tricky biological currents.

The dead nanocritters drifted like derelict spaceships.

Freeth thrashed in the syrupy, protein-rich liquid, clearly not remembering his training drill with Dr. Wylde. Tomiko turned backward and pulled him along for a few strokes until he adjusted, and the three of them swam to the pair of burned, pitted nanomachines.

Devlin set his jaw, remembering how simple it had been when the nanocritters were deactivated. Though he still had only a partial understanding of their carbon-lattice structure and buckytube piston mechanics, he had to make some guesses. Right now, with only thirty-five minutes left, he would have to take a few shortcuts.

The two gutted machines hung like junk heaps in the sluggish fluid. One barely attached claw arm dangled like an articulated crowbar. Because the signal generator was on such a small scale, Devlin believed its mechanics would be straightforward and comprehensible even to him. The transmitter's instruction-set memory must be far simpler than the full self-replication and mission programming.

Or so he hoped.

There was no time for finesse. He would remove the transmitter component, connect it to a direct power source from the
Mote,
and coax it into sending the appropriate “leave me alone” signal. It wasn't going to be easy.

He took out his toolkit and set to work with a screwdriver. His gloved hands got past molecular connections, shifting matrices of buckyballs and breaking the bonds between extruded components. The bell-shaped transceiver seemed intact, but the laser blast had destroyed the controller chip.

As Devlin worked, he gestured to Tomiko and Freeth. “See if you can remove the control chip from the other one. It's a self-contained module below the signal generator.”

“It better be a separate component, Marc,” Tomiko said over the suit radio. “I sort of fried the main diamond memory wafer on this one.”

Amazed at what he was doing, Freeth reluctantly ran his gloved hands over the slippery side of the second nanomachine, touching the burnt crater where Tomiko's laser had blasted apart the fullerene walls. Hardened graphite spears and whiskers of rearranged carbon broken from the fullerene lattice sprouted like snowflakes around the wound. Tiny bubbles oozed out of the nanomachine's broken side, like leaking blood.

Working together, Freeth and Tomiko removed the intact controller module above the singed diamond memory wafer. They broke the connections holding it to the damaged transmitter and pried it loose. They swam through the murky fluid carrying the delicate black box of impurity-laced carbon webwork back to Devlin.

He lifted the bizarre transmitter construction. Detached buckyballs dropped like marbles, broken out of the structural grid. The clunky, bell-shaped mouth of the device reminded him of a mad scientist's prop from an old movie.

Since their vessel was surrounded by a miniaturization field, he couldn't mount the slapdash transmitter directly onto the hull, but he could tow it behind them. He would use the metal-core anchor cable as a tether and power conduit.

It had sounded like a simple and obvious idea, but when he actually attempted his plan, every step in the process seemed improbable. Devlin had no other choice but to try.

Devlin uprooted molecular-chain wires and bent them with great effort, connecting the components cannibalized from the two machines, a controller and a transmitter. Now he only needed a flow of electrons from the Mote's generators.

Stroking backward in the marrow fluid, Devlin lugged the apparatus to where the nearest anchor cable was embedded in the calcium wall. He let the transmitter float free while he planted his booted feet and uprooted the sharp anchor.

Stringing the cable to the alien IFF device, he tried to make proper connections, conductor against conductor. If he could jolt the transmitter with enough power, the system just might operate according to its self-contained programming. If he'd guessed right, the signal might fool the nanomachines. If not, he had just wasted half of their remaining time for getting out of the alien body.

“Company coming, Marc,” Tomiko transmitted.

He thrashed around to see a new machine barreling toward the
Mote,
closing in for the kill. “What have these things got against my ship?”

Overhead, thin bone crumbled away like pieces broken from a glacier. Another nanocritter chewed through the calcium ceiling. This machine had six sharp arms, each one ending in a diamond-edged knife, pyridine-tipped punch, or a sawblade pincer claw.

Sensor lights gleamed like predatory eyes on the wire-mesh body as it scanned the area, then lurched toward the anchored
Mote,
ignoring the miniaturized humans.

Like a bouncer in a biker bar, Tomiko moved to intercept the nanomachines. “I'll handle this little guy. Arnold, you take the other one.” She tore the half-severed arm from the wrecked device and shoved it at him. “Here. Show the thing who's boss.”

Confused, the UFO expert caught the microscopic spear and held it to do battle against a minuscule Goliath.

“Just get that transmitter functioning, Marc, and you'll save us all.”

“Roger that. But no pressure, right?” Devlin worked with fumbling hands, blinking sweat out of his eyes behind the facemask.

With powerful strokes, Tomiko met the multilimbed nanomachine before it could attach itself to the
Mote.
She fought it hand to hand, martial arts in fluid form, using fists and arms to counter the movement of its jointed carbon legs. She grabbed an angular protrusion and twisted it sideways, wrenching the buckytube out of its socket. Sparks glowed in the marrow fluid, and the sheathed-piston limb hung useless.

Now, for the first time, the relentless machine recognized her as a threat.

Tomiko grasped a second pincer, but the nanocritter bore down on her, pushing her backward through the marrow fluid. When she finally found leverage against the curving bone wall, she pressed back, harder this time. The second fullerene limb broke, and she snagged a third as the other arms grabbed for her, sharp tips slashing.

Trying another tactic, Tomiko plunged the attacking machine's spear arm into the porous bone. While the machine strained to disentangle itself, she kicked out, smashing the diamond memory circuit board again and again. Her boot scraped away carefully laid paths of hydrogen and fluorine. Brain damaged, the nanomachine jerked and jittered in a robotic seizure.

The second device swam up from below like a torpedo intercepting a target, and Arnold Freeth jabbed with the jagged end of his spear. He thrust the makeshift crowbar between the clacking components of a pincer claw. He knocked the claw off, then stabbed again. The blunt end of his spear scraped the machine's body core, knocking a few carbon spheres loose, but did no substantial damage.

Freeth struck repeatedly, hindered by the surrounding fluid. Finally, by accident, he smashed an optical sensor. While the disoriented device spun in confusion, he brought the spear down on a second “eye,” then a third, blinding it completely. Within moments, he succeeded in incapacitating the device.

Meanwhile, fingers slippery in the thick fluid, breathing hard inside his suit, Devlin finally finished connecting the tetherwire to the controller module of the makeshift transmitter. “Got it! Let's get back inside and see if this thing works.”