Fantastic Voyage: Microcosm (23 page)

Sujatha could never replace his wife and his young children, could never erase all the things he had accomplished in his life. Looking at Pirov, knowing that the old man had become a member of a different species bent on the destruction of the human race, the Bengali doctor understood that he must never leave this containment room. And neither could his colleague.

Sujatha knew he would not survive this. He could never go home.

He clenched his hands inside the gloves of his useless anti-contamination suit and wondered how long he could remain
himself.

Chapter 37

Mission clock: 12 minutes remaining

Towed behind the
Mote,
the cannibalized nanotransmitter broadcast its “friendly” signal, sputtering and then starting again. The ever-increasing numbers of nanocritters ignored them and instead concentrated on their own activities, reproducing, spreading, building.

Time was running out for Team Proteus.
Twelve minutes.

Using his best instincts, Devlin tried to navigate toward the alien's skin surface. He had to find a route that led to a skin pore or a glandular opening. Anything.

As he searched, Devlin pondered the alien's incredible self-defense mechanisms: saber-jawed pedicels covering the skin surface, xenozoan microorganisms, even relentless nanomachine hunters. Though the extraterrestrial astronaut had looked peaceful and benign in its lifepod, the evidence at a microscopic level implied horrific struggles on the alien's home world, warfare unlike anything even the most violent nations on Earth had conceived.

Instead of using competing armies, battles must have been fought through nanotechnology. Clashing genotypes and physical designs must have struggled for supremacy, enemy factions developing defenses down to their very cellular structure. The alien's pedicels, xenozoans, and nanomachines had probably taken the
Mote
for an unrecognized enemy nano-invader that had to be destroyed.

What if such a threat were unleashed on an unsuspecting Earth?

The nanocritters had not yet discovered Devlin's ruse with the IFF signal, but the sea of jamming signals threw off his navigation computer and compass alignment. Amber warning lights flickered on the Mote's control boards, and the power flux jittered.

“She was never designed for this,” he muttered. When the IFF signal broke off, Devlin scrambled with his tools and his intuition to coax their stolen signal generator back to life.

Swarms of busy nanomachines worked on the cell structure around them, modifying and rejuvenating the dormant alien body like a vast urban-renewal project. Tomiko tensed at her weapons, but Devlin got the false identifier signal started again, casting just enough ambiguity that the
Mote
was out of range before the nanomachines could rally.

Two lumbering devices blocked the racing ship's passage, by accident rather than by organized ambush. Tomiko destroyed them without a second thought. She frowned at her gauges, saw that she had power for only a few dozen shots more. “Laser cannons running low, Marc.”

He flicked a few switches. “I expected the lasers to be used once or twice on a whole mission, for surgical strikes only.”

“Been a blast, though, hasn't it?” she said with a smile.

Eavesdropping from the main compartment, Arnold Freeth said, “You're very strange, Ms. Braddock.”

Devlin didn't try to cover his smile. “I bet Mr. Freeth doesn't often get the opportunity to call anybody else strange.” He soared past a sheet of fatty tissue impregnated with corkscrewing blood vessels. Tense, he looked at the dwindling time on the chronometer, at the snapshot of Kelli, then flew onward.

“Recognize anything yet, Doc?” He looked back at Cynthia Tyler, who sat tense in the main compartment, strapped into her seat for the final rough ride out of the alien body. “Give me good news.”

She continued to stare out at the wilderness of cells and vascular systems. “This looks similar to our initial entry through the epidermis. These walls and the fibrous structure remind me of the hypodermis, and the reticular layer should be the next section.”

“Just point me to the nearest hair follicle, or sweat pore, or whatever.” He glanced at the mission clock again.
Nine minutes left.

Impellers whirring, the ship approached a tissue discoloration, a yellowish window like a billboard advertising a particularly fine brand of mucous. “There, Major Devlin.” Tyler pointed her slender hand. “Through that barrier. I think it's the bulbous end of a sebaceous gland.”

“Exactly what I wanted to hear.” Devlin aimed the Mote's prow toward the center of the rubbery wall, then accelerated to ramming speed. “On our way.”

On impact, the cell wall split open, and the ship dove into an ocean of pus-yellow fluid. “Now we're making progress,” Freeth said.

The overheating impellers carried them through thick turbulence, brilliant spotlights shining out as if through dense fog. The engines groaned louder, fighting through the viscous liquid.

Flying blind, Devlin stumbled unexpectedly into a cluttered construction site of partially assembled nanomachines. “Great, a nanocritter convention.” He rolled sideways to avoid ramming several carbon-matrix devices that loomed in front of them.

The nanomachines crowded together, like a large marching band flowing toward the exterior of the alien.

“It's a mass exodus,” Tyler said.

“Or a concerted invasion,” Freeth said.

Another machine drifted into their path, and the Mote's hull scraped against the multi-armed device. Devlin overcompensated, and on the rebound they crashed into a second machine that was sifting raw materials out of the organic mucous. The wreckage of articulated fullerene arms, imprinted diamond memory flakes, and buckyball gears spun off in separate directions.

Muttering imaginative curses under his breath, Devlin zigzagged through the obstacle course while broken components spanged off the hull.

Long ago, as a test pilot, he'd once flown into a flock of seagulls that had cracked his cockpit windshield, bombarded his plane's sidewalls, and fouled one engine. He'd barely maintained control amidst a spray of feathers and blood.

Now, as he swung around in the thick fluid, the tethered signal generator smashed into the lumbering devices, the loser in a game of crack-the-whip. On Devlin's control screens, the decoy transmitter flickered, and the power flux shut down.

The signal died.

Tomiko reacted instantly. “Step on it, Marc, before they figure out who we are.”

Like shadows in the fog, several curious devices moved forward, suddenly noticing the
Mote.
The nanomachines closed around them like a tightening noose.

“I think they already know.” Throwing caution to the wind, he soared through the glandular fluid. Currents buffeted them, and the viscous slime flowed across the cockpit windshields like a slow downpour. Devlin could barely see where he was going, but he didn't slow.

Working in eerie concert, a battalion of nanomachines linked claw arms and segmented limbs into a mechanical mesh to block the Mote's passage, like a military roadblock. The impellers spun up with an overworked roar, as if the miniaturized ship were voicing her own indignation. “Everybody hold on!”

Conscious of her dwindling weapons, Tomiko fired only two careful shots. Hot lances burned through the milky pus, opening a breach in the linked barricade of nanomachines, and Devlin rammed through the crumbling blockade. The machines dropped away from each other and streaked after the fleeing ship.

With the jury-rigged IFF transmitter knocked out, the sparking tether cable flailed behind them like a scorpion's tail. As more nanocritters closed in, Devlin dodged left and right, barely able to see ahead of him, but he couldn't let up for a second to wipe away the sweat beaded on his brow. “Hey, Doc, where did you say this gland opens?”

“It should be just up ahead,” Tyler said.

The Mote's brilliant beams penetrated the murk, but not far enough.

“I know you'd prefer to deal with one challenge at a time.” Tomiko indicated the mission chronometer. “But we've only got seven minutes to get out of here before we start growing.”

“Then I hope we're close to the skin surface.”

Freeth groaned. “If we don't get out of the lifepod in time, that alien astronaut is going to find an awfully big exploration vessel up his—uh, lap.”

“Felix wouldn't appreciate the mess,” Devlin said.

Thanks to the dense static, the Director hadn't heard a word from them in an hour and a half. He hoped Felix believed they were still alive. At the very least, he'd be extremely agitated, no doubt regretting his decision to send them on this crazy mission.

In the fluid around them, the nanomachines crowded thicker. The devices had reproduced in wave after wave, far beyond what was required to finish reviving the alien astronaut. Now, in masses, they migrated toward the skin surface, from which they could emerge and sweep across the Earth.

A cold lump formed in Devlin's stomach. If his nanotech warfare scenario was true, then simply escaping from the alien's body would not be good enough for Team Proteus.

Two grappling machines collided with the
Mote
and clung to the hull like lampreys, while others approached from all sides. Devlin put the ship into a violent spin, throwing the nanocritters off.

Desperate, he worked the comm system controls and replayed recordings of the original IFF signal. But no longer fooled, the nanocritters came forward in a redoubled attack. Like torpedoes, the devices rammed the
Mote.

Tomiko fired eight more times, scoring hits on five devices, but her lasers were growing weaker. According to her gauges, she had only a few shots left.

And the gathered nanomachines were countless.

At last, the glandular fluid spilled out like a slow-motion Niagara, lubricating the walls of a titanic shaft, a bottomless pit in the alien's skin.

“Emergency exit, right this way.” Devlin shot out into the pore, spraying mucous behind them. Runnels like protein-thick honey trickled off the windows and hull.

A galaxy of nanocritters lined the opening of the glandular duct. Reacting to the proximity of the
Mote,
they dropped like paratrooper saboteurs. Two machines thudded onto the roof, and Devlin saw no choice but to fly straight up. “Hang on.” He scraped the upper hull against the flexible gland wall, knocking the clinging devices off. Crushed carbon-lattice debris tumbled behind them. Devlin didn't glance back.

“Look at them all!” Freeth said.

A horrendous marching army of nanomachines lined the pore, thousands upon thousands of them. Devlin kept the
Mote
in the center of the shaft, out of their reach. He pulled the control stick toward him and shot upward, accelerating so hard that his lips stretched back against his teeth.

A hungry xenozoan moved down the pore wall, a flowing blob. Suddenly a squadron of nanocritters engulfed the monstrous microorganism, tearing it apart like ants on a fat caterpillar. The tiny robots ripped away protein chains, organelles, and genetic material, scavenging the necessary resources to swell their numbers even further. Devlin's stomach twisted with revulsion.

Six minutes remained on the mission chronometer.

Tomiko stared through the scratched cockpit windshield as they rocketed upward. “Is that what I think it is? Genuine outside light, way up there?”

“Roger that, and about time, too.” Devlin punched the impellers in a high-G ascent, as if he were testing a fast jet aircraft. He dodged a few floating nanomachines intent on trapping them, but paid little attention to irrelevant obstacles. He plowed ahead without pause and left battered devices in his wake.

The
Mote
burst out of the skin pore, and Devlin let out a whoop of triumph.

“Watch out for the pedicels, Major Devlin,” Tyler said, wiping long strands of permed blond hair out of her eyes. “It would be embarrassing to be destroyed now, after all our trouble.”

Freeth looked at her, wondering whether she had intended to make a joke. “Believe me, it would be more than embarrassing.”

But as the
Mote
rose above the organic dermal plain, they saw that the waving forests of pedicels had been felled, as if by an onslaught of lumberjacks. The alien's gray skin looked like a battlefield strewn with cadavers.

Vicious nanomachines had trimmed all outer defenses and used the pedicels' raw materials to build more and more copies of themselves. The vast epidermis crawled with billions of the tiny devices, all of them ready to swarm outward in an invasion force too small for the human eye to see.

Devlin soared into the blurry white distance of the “sky.” Time was running out—five minutes now. Luckily, the tiny locator beacon Dr. Sujatha had installed on the outer glass would help them find the pinprick escape hole in the lifepod's covering.

“Something's not right up there. I can't hear the pinger.” He stared through the windowport, searching for the transparent dome far overhead. “And I can't find the ceiling either.”

The
Mote
flew and flew, but encountered no barrier. On their minuscule scale, he could see nothing, had no sense of perspective. “We've gone past where we should have encountered the pod glass.”

Tomiko strained her eyes, but she saw nothing that would help him. “I'd really like to get through the escape hole before we return to normal size.”

Finally, unexpectedly, they reached a metal wall the size of a Grand Canyon cliff. Devlin recognized the outer lip of the lifepod—and understood. “That's why we can't find the ceiling. The pod's been opened.”

“Opened?” Tomiko slumped in her chair, looking sick. “Great, and now the containment room has been exposed to all this alien nanotechnology. Just look.”

Lines of advanced nanocritter scouts trooped across the edge of the lifepod, spilling onto the floor, onto every surface.
Spreading… swarming.

“Billions and billions,” Freeth said. “They must be grabbing raw material from the lifepod itself.”