Fantastic Voyage: Microcosm (3 page)

Chapter 3

Thursday, 8:05
a.m
. (Proteus Facility)

The densely packed integrated circuit was only a few millimeters wide, but it looked as large as Nebraska to Tomiko Braddock and her miniaturized team.

The metal wall stood before her like a sheer cliff ten times her height. The circuit path's face had been sheared off using state-of-the-art processing efforts to smooth its edges, which still left microscopic imperfections, lumps, and curves.

Insurmountable.

No problem.

Garrett Wilcox, the designated pilot and commander of the upcoming mission, would probably try to leap it in a single bound just to show off in front of her. The twenty-eight-year-old captain kept himself in shape, drank orange juice by the gallon, and never complained about Proteus mess-hall food; he often even asked for seconds.

Now, standing on the intricate pathways of the computer chip, Tomiko assessed the straight walls of gold, copper, and germanium dodging right and left at sharp angles, racetracks through a convoluted maze. It was a new-design ULSI chip, or Ultra-Large-Scale Integrated circuit. The light seemed grainy at her minuscule size, shimmering as if in anticipation of a thunderstorm.

For a last-minute proficiency exercise, Director Hunter had sent them into this unknown scenario, just to see how the candidates responded. Tomiko and Wilcox were accompanied by the medical specialist assigned to the upcoming mission.

Dr. Sergei Pirov had participated in the initial Soviet miniaturization research at the height of the Cold War decades before. Although he now had trouble keeping up with the younger members of the team, his skills were vital to the mission. Pirov's techniques for studying cellular damage and pathogens would be crucial to understanding the alien body on a micro-level.

Unfortunately, his expertise wasn't terribly useful here on substrates and nonhomogeneously deposited layers of metal films.

In fact, Tomiko was the only one of the three who knew her way around an electronic map. When she'd been younger, her indulgent parents, busy celebrities, had smiled upon everything she wanted to do. One of her hobbies at age thirteen had been building circuit boards in a little garage workshop in Sausalito.

Improvise,
she thought.
Now.

Tossing her shoulder-length black hair away from her face, she rapped her knuckles on the gold wall, felt the solid metal, then looked down the twisted circuit lines. Somewhere, in all that mess, one tiny pathway was broken.
Shouldn't be hard to find it—if we have a million years or so.

“I'll go first.” Wilcox gave her a cocky grin. “Just like in one of your dad's movies. Remember
Terrorist Tower?”

Her parents were martial-arts film star Nolan Brad-dock and Japanese Olympic ice skater Kira Satsuya, but Tomiko had never wanted anything to do with living in the public eye. “Garrett, you're so full of yourself, you should've brought an extra backpack to carry your leftover ego.”

“That's what you like about me, Tomiko—my self-confidence and my total assurance.” He raised his eyebrows.

“What I
like
about you is you're the only person available,” she said. “Not like I have much choice around here.”

“You bet. That's the drawback of working inside a secret mountain complex.” Wilcox sprang high and released a squirt from his compressed-gas jetpack. Within moments, he cleared the top of the barrier and landed on the upper surface. “King of the mountain!”

Over the suit radio, Dr. Pirov said, “Amusing, Captain Wilcox, but it does not help us complete our mission. The clock is running. Our miniaturization field is set to dissipate in fifty-three minutes.” His voice sounded paper-dry.

Tomiko removed several pieces of equipment from her belt. “Okay, let's move it. Taking a test reading.” She placed sonic inducers against the rippled gold wall and tucked a receiver pickup into her left ear. Concentrating, Tomiko sent a pulse into the metal. When it rang out like a gong, she studied the scrambled oscilloscope screen in front of her, noting acoustical wave patterns that showed the homogeneity of the circuit path. “No voids or impurities.”

“Then this is not the trouble spot,” Pirov said with an exhausted sigh. “We will have to check someplace else. Do you have suggestions, Ms. Braddock?”

Wilcox leaned over the abrupt edge and waved. “Hey, come on up!”

Tomiko stared up at the sheer gold wall like a mountain climber ready for a challenge. “Let's get a gnat's-eye view, Doctor P. Like Captain Wilcox suggests.”

She coiled her muscular legs and jumped. At this size, with virtually no body weight, gravity had only the tiniest hold. Using her jetpack, she skimmed along the endless cliff face until she reached the golden plateau.

Exhilarated, Tomiko swiveled around and added another spurt of gas to counteract her motion. Wilcox reached out to catch her, but she didn't need his help. She landed on all fours on the sprawling surface.

Wilcox scanned the electronic blueprint. “I'm making sure we're in the right place. The technicians set us down within a very small error tolerance… but I don't like that word 'error.' ”

On the hand-held screen, he displayed the complex ULSI circuit map. A blip showed their location. Unfortunately, the dot itself was larger than several blocks of circuit paths. Not much help there. He tried to align the blueprint with parallel lines and intersecting overpasses, connected metal pathways doped with impurities to create semiconductor switches and electron gates.

“This place looks like the L.A. freeway system, only designed by someone on hallucinogenic drugs.'

“Figure it out, Garrett. Just think of it as a video game.”

Tomiko knew the basic principles of large-scale integrated circuits. A thin metal film was deposited on a slice of semiconductor, usually germanium or silicon. Shining through a mask, short-wavelength x-ray lithography exposed the circuit pattern, which was then etched away, leaving only a dense lace of microscopic wires, finer than split hairs. The whole circuit, smaller than a thumbnail, contained millions of transistors and linking wires in a complete super-processing and memory unit.

The team was supposed to discover why the pattern didn't work, but it was just a practice exercise. Their real mission into the alien capsule would begin that afternoon. They had to prove themselves
here
first, one last time.

Wilcox finally pinpointed their position. He frowned. “Two paths from where we're supposed to be. We need to cross over to the right circuit line.”

“Okay, let's move it.” She gestured over the edge to the old medical specialist standing like an ant below. “Come on up, Doctor P, and drop down your guy wire. I might need to catch you.” She knew how tough it could be to maneuver against air currents and random molecular motion at their tiny size.

Far below, the elderly Russian man leaped into the air with a burst of compressed gas. As she'd feared, the doctor shot past the plateau edge, tumbling without slowing. “Come on, Garrett—grab him.” Tomiko reached out with acrobatic grace to snag the dangling rope and gave it a short, hard yank. The Newtonian counter-motion lifted her off the surface, but Wilcox caught her just as Pirov landed hard.

All three studied the maze looping across the silicon plain. Holding up his illuminated circuit map, Wilcox pointed out the lines and corners they'd need to follow. “There, and then there. Turn right and take that forty-five-degree cross-connector and we'll find ourselves in the right spot.”

“All right, Garrett, you've convinced me you're qualified to be a navigator.”

“And
a pilot, among my many skills. Just wait until we get inside that alien body, and I'll dazzle you.”

Pirov squinted along the line Wilcox indicated. “I believe I see a dark discontinuity along the path.” From his belt, he removed a small pair of Soviet-made high-powered binoculars. “That flaw may be what we were sent to find.”

“Let's go have a look. We'll go faster using the jetpacks, and we need to learn how to maneuver with them anyway.” Wilcox looked over at Tomiko. “Want to race?”

Pirov looked at his watch, concerned. “Forty-four minutes remaining.”

“Plenty of time.” Tomiko fired her jets and sailed along, the barest fraction of a millimeter above the intricate surface. “Follow the yellow-brick road.”

Cruising along like remoras, the three of them approached the blemish Pirov had spotted. It looked like two twisted hairs as big as telephone poles embedded within the gold wall, pitch black and with an outer structure of layered scales, like fossilized trees.

“Whoa, what is that?” Wilcox asked.

At the age of eight, Tomiko had spent a week in Petrified Forest National Park, while her father filmed his classic
Desert Ninjas.
Between takes, Tomiko had climbed fossil tree trunks that were thousands of years old. These blackened stumps before her were less than a billionth the size of those ancient trees…

“Carbon fibers,” Tomiko said. “A dust speck contaminant left in the deposition process. Let's do a little excavating, see if that improves the conductivity.”

Tomiko uncoiled her ropes, kneeling at the edge of the soft metal cliff. With a few smacks from her geological specimen hammer, she pounded grappling hooks into the gold surface, one line for her, one for Wilcox.

Securing a laser cutter to his hip, the captain commandeered a rope and lowered himself over the edge, as light as a bit of fluff on the wind. “I'll take the big one.” Grinning, he swayed out over the chasm and let himself drop.

Wilcox had gotten himself a high-level security clearance on a whim. Tomiko suspected the young captain fantasized about covert operations and Black Program secrets. Being isolated inside a mountain lab was perhaps not the commando work Wilcox had been imagining, but being one of the world's first micro-explorers was certainly exciting enough.

Moving with meticulous slowness, Dr. Pirov busied himself with his own equipment, setting up leads and contacts. “I will check it from up here.”

Tomiko rappelled down the circuit cliff, holding her weight with just a finger touch on the guy wire. She swung across, widening her arc, until she could grab the second Sequoia-sized carbon fiber with her feet.

Ready to get to work, she unslung her laser and pulled a dust mask over her nose and small chin. Narrowing her almond eyes, she pointed the cutter beam and melted gold around the embedded carbon fiber. Yellow metal flowed like butter, loosening its hold around the containment. Then, feeling like a lumberjack, she sliced into the crystalline charcoal.

When Pirov was ready to test, he sent another sonic boost rippling through the circuit path. Dislodged ebony flakes floated in the air. As the echoes and tremors died down, Wilcox's big chunk of carbon impurity broke free. He nearly lost his balance, but caught on to a rugged hunk of dust, then swung on his guy rope. Crumbling black diamonds fell away like black snow, leaving a scar in the gold. The tiny fiber tumbled ever so slowly toward the substrate far below.

“First one's clear.” He sounded as if he had been racing her. Tomiko kept working on the second protrusion.

Pirov's voice came over the suit radio. “My sonic trace picked up those inclusions, but they are too small to hinder current flow.”

“Great,” Tomiko said. “Now that we've already done the work.”

“Think of it as practice, Tomiko,” Wilcox said.

“Secure yourself and keep grounded, both of you,” Pirov warned. “Stay away from the metal. I am sending an electron pulse to map surrounding terrain.”

Wilcox swung out on his rope and straddled the blackened carbon trunk of the second impurity next to Tomiko. The carbon smeared his pant legs with soot, but the microscopic particles could not penetrate the miniaturization field and would vanish as soon as he regrew to proper size.

“Hey, Tomiko, I've seen you making eyes at Major Devlin whenever he isn't looking.” Wilcox leaned close with what he thought was his irresistible smile.
Give the guy an inch…
“Trying to make me jealous, I think.”

“Not a chance.”

He misunderstood her answer. “What's wrong with Devlin? He's Air Force, and so was his dad— he's okay.”

Tomiko marveled at how simple and straightforward the man's life must be.
“Retired
Air Force, and I wouldn't make a move on him. Not until he's ready.”

“Ready? How many years is he going to wait? His wife died… what, five years ago? I don't see him moping around and grieving for her all the time.”

Tomiko rolled her dark eyes. “You don't see much of
anything,
Garrett. Obviously, you've never had a genuine emotional attachment.”

“Thank you.”

“That's why I'm only passing time with you.” “Clear, please!” Pirov yelled from above, his voice raspy.

Tomiko held on to the carbon pillar. An electrical burst surged along the circuit line, glowing like heat lightning. After the shimmers flooded past, she crawled to the end of the impurity and went back to work extracting the black stump, though it wasn't the primary problem. She just hated to leave a job unfinished.

“I have additional readings now,” Pirov said over the suit radio. “There is some kind of discontinuity up ahead. A major defect. We must fix that in order to accomplish our objective.”

Tomiko used the laser's intense, microfine light on the carbon trunk until the second bundle broke away. The black cylinder rolled against the wall, bounced on random air currents, then slid to the substrate. “For aesthetic reasons,” she said to Wilcox.

The two scrambled up rappelling ropes to the top. The Russian doctor checked his mission chronometer. “Twenty-three minutes remaining.”

“Then let's not wait around.” Wilcox jetted off, and Tomiko shot after him. The three team members traveled toward a shimmering change of color and light reflectance in the distance.

When they crossed a boundary between different metal tracks laid down in opposing film layers, Tomiko saw the reason the prototype ULSI chip had failed.

She stared. “Now that's what I'd call a big problem.”