VII

We were lifted upward toward the limits of the atmosphere by the jets

of our rods, aided by natural updrafts, which we sought out. Joined

together as a group by the floss cable, we were certainly far heavier

than any of Arrhenius' theoretical spores; but we had the advantage of

intelligence to seek out forces to help us. We were not inert particles

to be buffetted by chance impulses of nature.

We attained the high ionosphere of Ganymede where the sky was almost as

black as space, where accelerated residual molecules beat against us,

giving us some of their upward motion, and where sound had almost been

smothered by the vacuum. There, Doc clutched mine and Jan's hands for

sonic contact, and said thinly:

"Last chance for vocal speech. We'd better know how we all feel. In

the parchments we carry we have about the greatest possible material

gift to man, a dream of his from his beginnings. Practical freedom

from death, from physical affliction. Immensely increased range of

possibilities. The universe, in almost all of its phases, can truly

become his stamping ground, now. It's a treasure that men would kill

to have. To me it is an inevitable and wonderful step of progress.

But there's a confusion in it, based on a split in human nature.

You've seen and felt how it works. The mistrust of old instincts for

the completely different and revolutionary. Fear and even horror

that invokes a savage compulsion to fight back. There's trouble

ahead--between the two halves of man's character--represented by

eagerness and revulsion. We know how it is from our own feelings. The

android bodies we now have are the substance of the treasure, the gift.

We exult at its legendary advantages; yet we have a terror of a strange

exile, if we can't get back to our weak, natural flesh! The answer, on

Earth, when the Big Change really comes, will be emotional adjustment,

acclimation, time. Right?"

I answered Doc quickly: "You're looking for possible treachery in our

nerves--opposition. Don't worry, Doc. I know every feeling you've

mentioned. But the balance is all on the side of belief that progress

is inevitable and good. I say this as a pretty average guy, Doc. Let

Jan speak for herself."

My wife smiled. "Charlie knows I agree," she said. "So let's get the

show on the road...."

We rose still higher in the atmosphere, to a place where the rising

sun's rays were like a thin wind blowing against us. It was the

pressure of light, the same thing that makes the vanes of an antique

photometer spin. Gently, but with increasing speed, we were urged

into space. One thing was wrong. Our Earthward course was to sunward,

against that minute thrust of solar light. But there was a way to

correct part of this.

Accelerating with the help of the pressure, we swept around Ganymede in

an orbit; we waited until our direction reversed itself, as must always

happen in circular motion. Then we really built up velocity with long

bursts from our rods, and tangented sunward, breaking our last tie with

the Jovian moon. We were on our way.

I felt my hide stiffening defensively. Over long periods we were not

entirely without need of shelter in the awful spatial dryness, so

we kept watch. The void is not completely empty. It contains many

scattered hydrogen and helium atoms, and a rarer sprinkling of cosmic

dust. We were lucky. Gleaming like a planet reflecting solar light, we

saw a lump of rock moving with us toward the sun. We jetted to it and

clung, laughing silently in the vacuum.

Doc's lips formed the words: "More speed. Time is short. Use up the

cartridges of the rods. We have more."

Any object, broken clear of the gravity of a planet or large moon,

is free in space. Acceleration is resisted then only by inertia. A

relatively small force can build velocity enormously.

We were traveling at many miles per second when Doc mouthed: "Not too

much. Eventually we must apply the brakes."

We fused our way into the meteor with our rods, and hollowed it out.

We closed the exit with the slag of our excavations. True, the sun's

radiations were a source of energy to our android tissues; but they

also hastened drying--our worst enemy here since our body fluid was

water.

As time went on, our skins hardened further, forming a kind of shell

around the moisture in our vitals. And we had a small supply of water

in steel cylinders. In a pinch, we needed little. We had food, too,

similarly packed--Xian gelatins containing the radioactive and other

minerals necessary to sustain protoplastic flesh, and give it a sure

energy source in space.

While we were burrowing into the meteor Jan did a whimsical thing. With

a diamond-chip tool she inscribed over the entrance of our cave:

"Dr. Shane Lanvin and Charles and Janice Harver traveling to Earth in

the Miniature--2037 A.D."

"There," she said in silent lip motion, for the reading of which we

were gaining practice. "Maybe the inscription on that quartz-grain

meteor you used to carry, Doc, was just as casual. Maybe it was carved,

just on the spur of the moment, recording a journey of little Xians."

"You happen to be right," Doc answered. "I knew those hieroglyphics by

heart. I drew them once for Kobolah. He translated. Four micro-Xians

were traveling the short distance from one of their inhabited asteroids

to another."

Later, the three of us fell into a kind of sleep. Or was it creeping

death? It scared me. Our metabolism slowed. Consciousness left us. And

so, time went very quickly. Maybe our tissues actually froze. I know

now that this hibernation is a natural android function, conserving

physical forces during long periods of inactivity. And it could not

stop for good our rugged vitality. We revived when the sun was nearer,

and warmed us more. Stiff with dryness, we drank water, and loosened up

our muscles.

* * * * *

We cleared the exit of our burrow, and crept out on the surface of the

meteor. Rushing on in its elongated eclipse around the sun, it had come

close enough to Earth to make the latter a disc of about one-quarter

the apparent diameter of the Moon, as seen from Chicago on a clear

night.

"Our meteor probably won't get much closer," I mouthed. "So we might as

well jump soon. No use wasting the energy of our rods, decelerating a

meteor mass, too."

Doc nodded.

"Where will we be most likely to find our old selves?" we read from

Jan's lips.

"At the Space Medicine Research Hospital, near Chicago, I'd guess," Doc

answered. "They send them nearest our homes. Or--peek over a shoulder

at a newspaper, or into somebody's television. I think we are news. Are

you both sure you know just what to do if that old protoplasm of ours

hasn't got tired of waiting for us?"

"Yes," Jan replied.

"Fine," Doc commented. "So we'll drink some water, eat a little, limber

up, and then start for home without the meteor."

Much of our physical forces had returned with the prospect of activity.

Like any awakening, it was a natural tuning up of body. But I think

that even our android chemistry had suffered in our vast journey. Doc

and Jan both looked thinned down. I hugged Jan in appreciation of her

unwavering spirits.

"Good kid," I said. "It shouldn't be long, now, with luck."

We all jumped, then, and broke our velocity in one direction with our

rod-blasts, bending our course toward Earth, now only hours away, even

at steadily declining speed. And so, as unheralded as ghosts, but as

significant as a new dawn of history, we came in.

Yes, we still hit the fringes of the atmosphere a bit too fast.

The floss bond, holding us joined, burned in the heat of friction.

Thereafter, there was no keeping together in tumultuous vastness, that,

though it was just the Earth's air, seemed infinite to our tininess. I

could cry out for Doc, and more especially for Jan; but there could be

no answer. Really, it was the first bad break we had had.

I was high over a coastline. And a circumstance, particularly effective

in The Small, helped me to orient myself. I found a bit of quartz-dust

floating near me. I clung to it. Yes, I had heard of quartz crystals

functioning sometimes as natural radio receivers. But my tiny ears were

much better designed than the human to pick up minute sounds.

For more than an hour I listened to overlapping broadcasts. But the

most powerful station I heard was in Frisco. So that was the city

beneath me. I heard several newscasts. Parts of them were significant:

"... Dr. Shane Lanvin, micrologist, and the Harver couple, his

associates, seem near death now in Chicago. For almost five months

a spark of life has been sustained by intravenous feeding and other

therapy. Dr. Lanvin's party was sent to investigate certain threatening

micro-phenomena in the vicinity of Jupiter. Should any credence be

given to a fantastic radiogram sent from Ganymede by another member

of the party about a micro-race of supermen? Perhaps not; but it has

been the thing that sparked the special effort to sustain life in these

three during the past six weeks."

* * * * *

I was already jetting, riding the prevailing winds high in the

stratosphere, and at last grabbing a lift on the skin of a passenger

rocket-plane. From high up Chicago looked almost as it did from normal

human eyes. There was no feeling of being lost in enormity, at least.

That was how I found the Experimental Hospital, and descended toward

it. The rest was easy. I had only to follow the newscast men to the

three rooms.

Hovering in the air, I felt the thunderous vibration of a doctor

explaining wearily for perhaps the thousandth time:

"Tissues and organs have no fundamental defect; some repair and

replacement has even been made. There should be consciousness, but

there is not. The rest is mystery."

I went to Jan's room first. How long had it been since I had seen

her real face? It was waxen, now. All the color faded, as in an old

painting. Never mind how I felt; it was bad enough. I drifted to Doc's

room. His eyes and cheeks were sunken. Hovering high over him, I could

not tell that he breathed. Then I saw myself, gigantic and pallid. The

embarrassment of seeing this corpselike thing was lessened by the fact

that it resembled my former lusty self only slightly.

"Hurry back, Jan, please," I urged aloud, though no one could hear me.

"Hurry back, Doc."

I heard things in that room. Physicians conversing in thunderous

undertones: "I'm getting tired of this. Interesting case, but it has

been too long. Can't last much longer. Yes, sometimes it seems an

unkindness to try to maintain life in something doomed to die."

Now that there was a chance at last, the help of those doctors might be

wavering.

I found an interne writing at a table in the corridor. It occurred to

me that, had it been necessary, I would even have dunked my entire body

in ink from his pen-nib, and written him a message by dragging myself

across the paper of the form he was filling out. But I still had my jet

rod, so I clung to his knuckle, and scribbled on the form in a charred

line left by a needle of atomic fire:

_I have returned. So have the others. Please continue your efforts.

Thanks._

_Charles Harver._

The interne's hand jerked. I was hurled toward the ceiling. But I heard

his bone-jarring roar:

"Hey--Fletch! Dave! Look at this!"

If they didn't understand or believe, still they would be alert and

interested. There would be no breakdown of their struggle to keep those

bodies living.

I went back to the pallid thing that had been I, and did what was

necessary, after I had cached the parchments I carried, and most of my

equipment, in a groove in the molding on the wall. I allowed myself

to be inhaled. Deep in the lungs, I cut my way into a capillary with

a diamond splinter. It was an insignificant wound, really. Then, in a

rushing flood, while dim, reddish light penetrated to my eyes, I was

borne along. I knew by a violent turbulence that I passed through the

heart. Then there was a sense of rising. Absolute gloom meant that I

was inside the skull. There I lodged myself in as small and unimportant

blood vessel as I could find.

The rest was simple after that. I merely relaxed. It seemed that I went

to sleep. But I was in my own brain. Encouraged by a natural affinity,

the little energy-node or whatever it was that was my awareness and my

ego, went home. It was, shall we say, a wanderer's return.

When I awoke it was mid-morning. The mental pictures of recent events

remained vivid, yet they had assumed almost the character of a dream.

Beyond my window were maples and pines. A robin was scolding. It was

very pleasant, indeed, until I thought of Jan and Doc.

"Mr. Harver, you're awake!" a nurse exclaimed. "We knew from last

night's tests that you were suddenly much better! There had been

a message written in an impossible way...." Here, the girl looked

frightened.

"Never mind!" I growled. "How is my wife? And Dr. Lanvin?"

"Mrs. Harver is still asleep. But even her color is far better, and she

smiles to herself. Dr. Lanvin is much improved, too, though he is still

very weak, and has not regained consciousness."

I sighed with relief. They'd gotten back just as I had. Yet, with

what we'd brought back, this was not an end but a tense and wonderful

beginning. The android secret. Improved man, large or small. A

revolutionary fact to be thrust on our mortal race, with all its doubts

and enthusiasms and prejudices; to be pushed into the age-old familiar

sequence of birth, death, happiness, suffering, and decay of our kind!

It was monumental in its possibilities for triumph and disaster; and

for a weak moment I had a mighty wish not to disturb the peace, and to

let all of this sleep forever.

Of course doctors and newscast men talked to me that day:

"... The message? 'I have returned....' Just what, in plain language,

did that mean?... What did you find in your explorations in miniature?

There is a story from somebody named Scharber on the way to Earth

from the Jovian system, now. A yarn about a race that made itself

unbelievably small. Yes--to hide itself, I suppose."

"You might like the story when and if you hear all of it," I answered.

"Let Dr. Lanvin, my superior, talk, when he is able."

Late that day I was on my feet briefly. I held my wife in my arms, saw

her smile, heard her say: "Well, here we are, and what now, Charlie?

I even wonder if folks will be disturbed to know that tiny Xians have

been visiting Earth for ages, unnoticed. It's kind of creepy."

Doc grinned up at us wanly from his bed. "This carcass of mine

seems pretty well spent from the strain of my absence," he laughed.

"Oh, I guess the damned thing could be patched up some more. But

why bother? When I can have another body, same size, same shape,

same organs, including a brain duplicated to the last filament of a

brain-cell--no special principle required, as in The Small--all built

of tough protoplast, and with a few things straightened for a youthful

appearance and advantages? Not a robot any more than a man is a robot,

but a human of firmer flesh, capable of all that a human is capable of,

but much more. Glad to see you two up and around."

Yeah, Doc had always been a progressive. Oh, he'd had his doubts, too;

but now, if the Great Change fazed him at all, he didn't show it.