VII

The colossi were piling Mitchell Prell's movable equipment into a

corner, where Midas Touch pistols, turned low, could play neutron

streams against it. Then they would no doubt scour walls, floors and

ceilings with the same corpuscular beams. The air itself would heat

up considerably. Combustible floating dust, would burn to finer dust.

Drafts would seem blasting hurricanes.

"There's a way out--if we hurry," Mitchell Prell said. "Imitate my

movements."

And so they swam in the atmosphere. But without other aid it would have

been slow going indeed. But the motion of dust particles revealed the

direction of air currents that could be gotten into and used to cover

distance.

Still, progress back to the shelf and the microscopes, and the tiny

workshop from which they had been blown but a few minutes before, was

agonizingly slow. By luck and scanty concealment offered by the jar,

this paraphernalia had not yet been discovered or moved by Loman and

his men.

Ed and his companions came to rest at last on the rough glass surface

where little machines were arranged around the vats and their apparatus.

"Tools that we can use," Ed said. "And materials that we can work.

We've got to try to take some things along. To make weapons. Could we

contrive Midas Touch pistols that we could hold?"

"Maybe," Prell answered. "I hope so. Take this, and that--and that over

there. Hurry."

Creatures of vitaplasm, with its complex combinations of silicon

compounds paralleling the hydrocarbons, and its internal metabolism

that could even involve transmutation and subatomic energy release,

still could die under sufficiently violent conditions.

The three tiny androids scrambled to gather supplies and to equip

themselves. Ed was awkward in the new conditions, where even the

atmosphere tried to tear him away from any firm foothold. But he loaded

himself down.

Before they were finished gathering all that they could use, the rattle

and flare of Midas Touch weapons, turned low so as not to damage

Mitchell Prell's various apparatus, but strong enough to destroy any

clinging speck of synthetic life that Carter Loman might suspect

the presence of, began behind them. Prell's experimental plant life

withered slowly.

"Lead on!" Ed Dukas shouted.

And so, though hurricanes had begun for them, they crept across the

glazed surface beneath the barrel of the little electron microscope

and dropped into the air at its edge. It was like leaping from a

cliff. But it was different, too. For if they had not been so heavily

burdened, they might not even have fallen. Being such small objects,

they had a greater exposed surface than large objects, in proportion to

their bulk. This greater surface, like a sail presented to the wind,

offered a larger area for speeding molecules to hit; hence, without the

equipment, they would have been as buoyant as dust particles.

Still lashed together by their joining strand of floss, the three

fugitives drifted slowly down to the rear of the shelf.

"An inch more to go," Prell shouted, in grim humor. "A rather long one,

I'm afraid."

Again they crept. Rough stone of the cupboardlike compartment rose

around them, seemingly taller than buildings they had known. And it

glowed reddish-violet. Fluorescence, it must be, from the scattered

radiations of the Midas Touch weapons. Tediously the three crawled

toward escape, as if through a night of fire and violence. Finally they

reached a minute steel door in the corner of the cupboard, half hidden

in the roughness of the stone.

They closed the door behind them and refastened its crude bolt. The

space around them now was narrower--more in proportion to their own

size. And there was a glow here--at least to their final eyesight.

Perhaps there was a trace of radioactive ore in the rock causing the

glow. The walls were as rough as a cave's.

"Just a chink in the stone," Barbara commented.

"Yes," Prell replied. "A crevice leading out to the face of the rock

formation. Feel the draft of Martian night air? It would smother

and freeze you if you were as you were born. But our flesh not only

resists cold, it can create plenty of warmth within itself. We will be

perfectly comfortable here, and safe--I think. Do you want to rest?"

"No," Barbara told him. "We don't really need that, either, do we? So

let's begin what must be done. What are our plans, Ed?"

"We'll make a few things, if we can," Ed replied. "Then get to a

spaceport somehow. I suppose that if we pick the right wind at the

right time, it will blow us there--eh, Uncle Mitch? Then we'll do as

you did--drift into a space liner and get a free ride back home to

Earth. There--well, we'll see. If we're very, very lucky, we might

even get our old selves back."

Just then that recovery seemed to be his greatest, most desperate

yearning, with many, many obstacles in its way. Even their personal

recordings were in enemy hands now. Small though those cylinders were,

they were far too huge for them to move or to think of recapturing.

"Where can we start to work?" Ed said to his uncle.

"Farther along the cleft," Prell told him. "I've already cached some

supplies there. And there's a level space in a side cleft protected

from these constant air currents."

Now they leaped upward and let the draft carry them. The muted quivers

of destruction in the chambers from which they had just escaped, they

left behind them. They arrived in the work area and got busy at once.

* * * * *

Near dawn they felt the quiverings of unusual sounds. So they followed

air currents, betrayed by drifting particles of fluorescent dust, to a

crack that showed starshot sky and the undulating desert. Thus they saw

Carter Loman's caravan start back toward Port Karnak, with its booty

of all that Mitchell Prell had made here: the fruit of a man's mind.

But to Loman it was also the worst of the world's inventions. Loman was

an android and also, obviously, a central figure, a personage of some

importance, or he would not have been sent on this mission. But his

mind remained that of a bigot.

Just then Ed Dukas found a savage pleasure in shaking one of the

smallest fists ever to exist at the three retreating tractor vehicles.

"Loman, Granger and the rest of you," he said, "there'll come a time.

You've been fools. You were born too late."

The work went on for days--more tediously than Ed could have imagined,

even with only hand tools to use. The same old metals seemed

unbelievably hard at this size level--and coarse in texture--as if the

atoms themselves had expanded. Barbara could scrub and scrub with a

bit of abrasive mineral, achieving only what seemed a poor excuse for

a polish. Hammering did little good in shaping such metals, though Ed

Dukas and Mitchell Prell were relatively so much stronger than they had

been. Only cutting and pressure tools were effective, when aided by

the softening heat of a forge--a tiny speck of nuclear incandescence

maintained by a neutron stream and carefully screened, though

vitaplasm, being actively or latently radioactive itself, was far less

endangered by radiation than protoplasm.

But at last they produced three rough, cylindrical devices and their

fittings.

Ed Dukas began to adjust to littleness. But to see boulders with their

stratified layers of mica floating lazily through the thin air never

lost its wonder. Crazy beauty was all around: strange, rich colors;

keening musical notes--fine overtones of normal sounds. Sometimes, in

the daylight, near cracks open to the outdoors, you saw living things

seldom bigger than yourself: Martian life; little pincushions of

deep, translucent purple veined with red and pronged with cilia of an

indescribably warm hue. These were Martian microorganisms blown in by

the breeze.

And once there was something else that Ed and Barbara both saw:

something like the smallest of Earthly insects, but not that, either.

A thing of steel-blue filaments and great eyes, and vibrating vanes as

glossy as transparent plastic. Ed knew that he could shatter it with

his hands. It rested in the sunshine for a moment; then it was gone.

"I suppose that there are star worlds as odd as this," Barbara

commented.

She was strange herself--an elfin being that floated in the air, her

form dimly aglow whenever there was shadow or darkness. To Ed, she

was part of his vast separation from Earth. In accustoming himself to

an environment where even the simple act of walking was a memory, it

seemed that Earth dimmed away, easily yet frighteningly, like a dream,

until Ed knew that, degree by degree, his mind was becoming different

than it had been, and he not quite the same person. And it seemed more

so with Babs.

"Bacon and eggs for breakfast, Eddie," she teased once, lightly. "Walks

under old trees beside a river. The Youth Center. Teachers I used to

know. Yes, I remember. But the memory tries to get dim. And I want to

hold on. Got to, because there are things to be done. But sometimes I

wonder if I shouldn't regret the duty. I think of swimming in raindrops

or floating high over trees--being as whimsical as children and poets

can imagine. We could do it! It's part of being super, isn't it? And I

used to be scared of becoming an android!"

It was fun, and relief from grimness, to hear her talk like that. And

now, too, he half agreed that being of synthetic substance was not so

bad. Yet part of him still ached savagely for his old dimensions. And

here in smallness he sometimes felt that she was changing so much that

he was losing her--that she would let herself be blown away into the

vastness, never to be seen again.

They ate a food-jelly, which Prell had prepared long ago for his

sojourn here, and radioactive silicates. In it you could see the

thready molecular chains and the beads of moisture between. Viscosity

complicated etiquette. Everything tried to stick to you. You laughed

and shook it off as best you could.

But even in fantastic moments grim facts didn't truly fade. Hard work

helped sustain them. Murder and loss were too new. The danger on Earth

was still too plain--perhaps poised on hours or weeks of time. Speed

was the keynote.

Only once the three micro-beings peeped back into the lab that had

belonged to Mitchell Prell, colossus. It was empty now, glowing with

the taint of radiation left by the Midas Touch pistols. No one had

troubled to neutralize it, as had surely been done with the removed

equipment.

Mitchell Prell had built a radio, like one he had owned before. A flake

of quartz dust, a few rough strands of metal, an insignificant power

supply. Simple, compact. Certain crystals were sensitive to radio

waves. And at these tremendously reduced dimensions, they could convert

tiny induced electric currents almost directly into fine sound waves

that infinitely refined ears could hear.

So Ed Dukas heard the interplanetary newscast again: "... Android

groups are still massing in large numbers to seek safety among

their own kind and perhaps to carry out their own plans. There is a

superficial calm. Fear of consequences so far seems to have kept both

sides in check. We hope that it can hold."

Later there was a broadcast from Port Smitty: "... This information was

withheld but has now been released. The mystery of Mitchell Prell's

disappearance is believed solved after ten years. What is claimed to

be his body--much damaged, since he and his confederates, one of whom

is supposed to be a close relative, resisted capture and had to be

shot down--was brought in to Port Smitty and is now en route to Earth,

along with some mysterious equipment. The man who tracked Prell down

is Carter Loman, a scientist in his own right, who has had a brief

but brilliant career in Interworld Security. Detailed information is

under seal, but Prell, a known advocate of 'improved mankind,' has been

wanted for questioning and possible indictment for a long time. It has

been suggested that his researches had gone further than most would

dare to imagine."

Mitchell Prell, micro-being, chuckled. "The funny part," he remarked,

"is that I never became a full-size android myself. My old carcass

seemed good enough. Or I didn't get around to a change."

But Ed didn't smile at this. And he looked savage when one of Tom

Granger's speeches was rebroadcast: "Prell ended? Can we believe it?

There is an evil that could restore him in known ways. Now are there

unknowns, too? Haven't we had enough? Some things from drunken visions

are destroyed, but others come, to make our nights hideous. A creature

with a fifty-foot wingspread swoops down on a house, and people die.

Are androids any different from what they create? But we are fortified,

armed. If we must, we'll fight to the last."

No doubt there was truth behind the melodramatic oratory--at least as

far as the horror was concerned. Barbara smiled sadly.

"He's earnest, I think," she offered. "So there's that much glory and

courage in him, if there isn't any control. And you keep wondering, Is

he half right?"

"I know," Ed answered with some contrition. "But I'd rather have what

he considers a scientific hell than nothing. Well, we'll soon be en

route back to Earth--unseen. Then maybe we'll find out and accomplish

something. Lack of sense, like Granger's, or the muddled way in which

laws are often interpreted now, will never work. That's one fact I'm

sure of, even in a booby-trapped situation."

Ed was trying to be optimistic. In three weeks they had made equipment

that they thought they could use. The three cylinders were Midas Touch

pistols--neutron blast guns that could explode a few of the atoms of

any solid or liquid that their beams touched. They also had a dozen

grenades of the same principle and tubes to carry scant rations. There

was a radio for each of the three--for reception, but also limitedly

useful as transmitters. And there were knapsacks and clothing made from

linten fiber pounded and divided as Prell had never bothered to do.

"We'll catch the first Earth-bound ship that we can," Prell said.

"Queer, isn't it? If we could truly walk, going a mile would seem

impossible. But the prevailing winds and a little jockeying will get us

to Port Karnak. The tube train will take us to the space ships."

Prell had spoken too soon. Within that same hour, listening to the

newscast, they learned: "For security reasons, interplanetary traffic

has been indefinitely suspended."

Ed Dukas winced as if in pain. He and Barbara and Prell looked at one

another. In Ed's strange, small body, frustration and bitter anger

fairly hummed.

"Security reasons." That could be a blanket excuse--minus

explanations--for almost anything. Loman, knowing of something inimical

and microscopic, and guessing at an intended journey from Mars, could

well have had a hand in the suspension order. He was wary, and not sure

that he had destroyed his hidden enemies.

The three stared down at the equipment that they had toiled so hard

to produce. But Ed, like many another man before him who had been

cornered, couldn't have quit even if he had willed it. Stubborn spunk,

fear, need to regain losses, self-preservation and the awareness of the

danger of millions of well-intentioned individuals, both android and

human, all took part in the reason. And you could add the ancient and

primal lust for revenge.

Ed crouched with the others on the rough floor of their chink in

the rock. "Wait," he said at last. "Haven't small objects crossed

space naturally--at least in hypothesis? Yes! Spores--living dust,

their vital functions suspended. The old Arrhenius Theory of the

propagation of life from world to world and solar system to solar

system--throughout the universe. A spore, drifting high in an

atmosphere, achieves escape velocity through molecular impacts and

perhaps the pressure of solar light. It's driven into space, and

onward. Uncle Mitch, couldn't the same thing happen to us far more

readily, since we're not inert and we have minds to help direct our

movements? Since we have beams of massive neutrons from the Midas Touch

weapons? And aren't we more rugged than the first androids? Wouldn't we

have a middling chance to endure raw space itself?"

Mitchell Prell eyed him quietly. Perhaps even his android cheeks

blanched a trifle. "Something like that occurred to me once--a long

time ago, Ed," he remarked at last, his voice very calm. "I didn't

think it through. I guess it seemed just too out of the ordinary even

for me. And there wasn't any need to try it. Perhaps I was scared."

"There's need now," Ed said.

Barbara's expression was a study of eagerness and half fear. "Eddie,

have you maybe discovered something?" she exclaimed. "Uncle Mitch, if

there is any chance that it would work, I'm game to try it!"

After a moment the scientist nodded. "I believe that there's a good

chance it will work," he said.

* * * * *

Before the next sunup they were ready. Clothed in garments of linten

fiber, they looked like savages from fifty thousand years before. Yet

their present condition could have belonged to no primitive era. They

were united by a tough line of twisted strands, and their equipment was

lashed to their backs. To human eyes they would have been as invisible

as spirits. Were they to demonstrate, even unintentionally, android

superiority in yet another field? Maybe, maybe not.

From the outlet of the crevice in the rock, they flung themselves into

the atmosphere above the gray desert. Their great advantage at this

stage was that, at the Martian dawn fringe, there were many updrafts,

for the air, chilled fearfully at night, was already warming. At

once they were sucked upward, as if by a vertical wind. Still, the

first phase of their climb took many hours. They kept watching for

upward-moving motes to guide them. Short, rocketlike bursts of heavy

neutrons from their Midas Touch cylinders provided the reaction or kick

to get them into the swiftest vertical currents.

Mars dropped far below, a dun plain marked here and there by the

straight, artificial valleys or "canals." The relative vastness of a

world to beings of pinpoint dimensions was nullified by the distance of

altitude, until it looked no more extensive than it would have to the

eyes that used to be theirs. Mars developed a visible curvature and a

rim of haze, fired to redness by the rising sun. The sky above darkened

from hard, deep blue toward the blackness of space, and the stars

sharpened. The sun blazed whitely, and the frosty wings of its corona

began to show. The thinning atmosphere seemed to develop a definite

surface far beneath the three voyagers.

They had spoken little in their ascent; but now the free movement of

sound was smothered by the increasing vacuum, and there were only

gestures and lip movements to convey meanings.

But there was not much that really needed to be said. The plan remained

simple: get into trains of upward-jetting molecules, marked by small

blurs or warpings of light. Absorb some of that upward surge into

yourselves. How often had this same thing happened, without conscious

design? Molecules move fast in a high vacuum. Molecular velocity was

heat, wasn't it? But here it could not burn. For heat is chained to

matter, and here there was just not enough matter to be hot.

Ed thought that they must be getting close to the Martian velocity of

escape now. Only three-point-two miles per second. They might have

attained it more simply by making greater use of their Midas Touch

cylinders. There was scarcely any reactive thrust more efficient than

that of neutrons hurled at almost the speed of light. But there was a

pride in accomplishing it in a more difficult way. Besides, the energy

supply for the weapons must be conserved.

But now Prell signaled with his hand, and they began to use the

cylinders in earnest, shifting their course little by little from the

vertical and in the direction of the sun. For it was time to curve

inward--earthward. Swiftly now, there was no molecular distortion

around them at all. Sense of motion faded out. Their high velocity was

demonstrated only by the rapid shrinking of Mars behind them; unless,

from sunward there came a minute, resisting thrust. Light pressure? But

it would take a longer time in space than they meant to be to slow them

down at all.

"We've done this much!" Ed said with his lips, but without a voice.

Barbara nodded and tried to smile, and he reached out and pressed her

hand. Prell looked awed and bemused.

Ed tried then to read part of their fortunes in the reactions of his

strange, minute body to the rigors of space. It was an atomic mechanism

more than it was a chemical one. Therefore, it needed no breath. And

the strong, radiant energy of the sun warmed it a little, so he did

not feel cold. Hard ultraviolet light seemed not to harm it. There was

only a sensation as of the shrinking of its hide--perhaps an adaptive

reaction of its demoniac vitality--to protect the trace of moisture

within it against the dryness of space. The fluid within vitaplasm

could be alcohol or liquid air--it was that adaptable. Prell had said

this recently. Such fluids did not freeze easily. But they evaporated.

So water remained the best body fluid in dry space. For in the full

light of the sun, and with a nuclear metabolism, freezing was not a

great danger.

* * * * *

Several days out from Mars the three contacted a small meteor

swarm--maybe a fragment of a comet moving sunward and earthward. They

moved with the swarm and landed on a chunk of whitish rock perhaps

eight inches through at its largest diameter. But to them it was an

airless world into which they could burrow, blocking the entrance to

their shelter with chalky dust--a fortunate thing, for in the open the

sun's glare and aridity of space were drying out even their android

tissues and blurring their minds.

The meteor proved not quite lifeless, for on it clear crystalline

needles crumbled and rose again. Call it silicon biology, proving that

one could never know where something might thrive. In a fall into any

atmosphere, such growth would surely be burned away without a trace.

Ed and Barbara and Prell learned to understand silent speech by

watching lip movements. The need for hurry still beat in their minds,

but drowsiness crept over them--perhaps another androidal adaptability

was functioning here, related to the hibernation of animals in winter.

It lessened loss of vitality when conditions were not too favorable.

But you could resist its compulsions if you applied your will.

The meteor moved on swiftly in the general direction of Earth. The

journey would take weeks, and though Ed felt that never had there been

a crossing of distance as eerily strange as this one, still the passage

of time, and the events it held, was always with him and his companions.

There was a way for them still to experience real sounds, even here.

The quartz-flake radio sets, pressed tight to their ears, transmitted

vibrations through their own substance, when there was no air. They

heard fragments of broadcasts coming from Earth. Pictures of what was

happening there came to mind:

A score of monsters destroyed by hunting parties. A side issue, really.

For in guard post and sketchily fortified line, man faced the hardier

likeness that his knowledge had produced. When there were no clearly

defined geographical boundaries to separate the poised forces, you

never knew just where those lines would be.

But the scared, the pleading, the exhorting voices, faint in the

distance, gave the mood, if not the clear view. Tom Granger was there,

and others like him. The latest claim was that vitaplasm gave off

poisonous radioactive radiations--not very true on Earth, where its

vital energy remained mainly chemical.

Those with sense also tried to be heard. And there were other voices

calling for the retreat to simplicity and the doing of work by hand.

Such a pastoral of white clouds, green hills and sunshine could

have its appeal. But how could its philosophy and inefficiency feed

billions? Even if it were not just a bright vision seen before the last

battle?

And in the midst of all this babble, there was another voice that was

faint thunder: "... Got things of our own now, here in the woods! Even

our own newscast station. Damn, we've taken enough! We Phonies won't go

back no further! Time to be stubborn--even if we all die for it and

never come back! They say folks would like to hang me--which shows how

much wits they've got! Even if they got the chance, it wouldn't work!"

With a faint smile, Barbara's lips formed the name for her companions

to read: "Abel Freeman...."

Ed nodded, watching his uncle's quizzical interest over an individual

and a legend that he had only heard them tell about. And Ed had his own

reactions, compounded of admiration, humor and icy mistrust that came

close to hatred. Whatever else he was, Abel Freeman was also a figure

of power.

Barbara's pixyish mouth--she was more than ever a pixy--shaped other

words as they crouched at the entrance of a tiny cave that they had

excavated into their meteor. Outside, the sunshine blazed.

"I've almost said it before, Ed," she remarked. "All these things

happening on Earth are still important to me--never fear. But I'm

a little too different now to quite belong to it. It gets like a

dream--kind of remote."

Ed had been feeling this himself--almost with panic, because he was

enough the person he had been to ache inside with the importance and

tension of what happened at home. Yet somehow part of him was drifting

away on its own special course.

"Hold on, Babs, a little longer," he urged.

They fell into torpid sleep after they had devised a mechanism to

arouse them with an electric shock at an appointed time. It conserved

their strength and allowed them to pass the long interval quickly.

Ed Dukas's slumber was not altogether dreamless. Like shadows,

people moved in his mind. His parents. His old friend Les Payten,

who perhaps had shown the white feather and had been lost to a small

viewpoint. Schaeffer, one of the greatest scientists, barricaded in

his underground lab in the City. And Harwell, the efficient but daring

adventurer--another legend of his boyhood, who sometime was supposed

to command the first star ship. And perhaps most of all, there was that

fantastic android bigot, Carter Loman, who aroused his black fury.

Perhaps Ed slept lighter than the others and awoke more quickly to the

tingling prickle of electricity, because he had to run the show. The

major burden of responsibility was his.

He shook his wife and his uncle awake and pointed to the blue-green

bead that was the Earth, still several million miles away. Lashing

their equipment to their shoulders and tying onto one another's waists

like Alpine climbers, they leapt back into space one more, pushed by

the neutron thrust of their Midas Touch cylinders. They had to make the

rest of their trip apart from their meteor, which would not pass any

nearer to Earth.

When the home planet was expanded by nearness to a great, mottled,

fuzzy bubble, Ed tugged at the line for attention and spoke without

sound in the stinging silence: "We've talked everything over before,"

he said. "So we know generally what to do--though only generally. We'd

like to stick together. But there is just no way to do that and work

fast--which may be a vital point. So we'll soon have to scatter. But

we'll listen on our receivers. At least one of us should be able to

find a way to communicate back. Failing that, we still know where to

meet. Remember--the oak by my old house. The valley made by the trunk

and the lowest branch."

Prell's brows knitted, his mind probably steeped in the swift, strange

action to come. Barbara gave a soundless laugh.

"The crotch of an oak!" her lips commented. "What a trysting place! But

it seems natural enough. Are we mad, or were we once just dull?"

Was her gaiety just bravado, or was she as cool as she seemed? Ed hoped

that she was cool. Tugging at the linten line that joined them, Ed drew

himself close to her.

"You don't have to speak, Eddie," she told him. "I know what you're

thinking. But why shouldn't I--and all of us--be all right?"

Her face had sobered. She looked strong. And so he was somewhat

relieved. He kissed her. Perhaps it was odd that dust-mote beings still

could do that.