CHAPTER. II

As we whizzed along, Dr. Lanvin smirked at me like a sly elf. "To what our poor friend complained about, I owe much," he remarked. "Consider my birth-date, January 23rd, 1932. It's now 2033. Yes, I'm a hundred and one, though I look and feel fifty by old standards. It's common enough. Wizardry? No. Let's face facts, Charlie. Something like immortality has been sneaking up on the human race for well over a century. First, diseases were conquered one by one. Meanwhile, surgery, replacing worn out organs with new ones grown artificially, went far ahead. Hormone therapy was developed. The final degenerative disease, senility, is proving to be just as conquerable as cancer. Remove its causes—accumulation of minerals and certain fatty acids among other things, and tone up the machine—and it just isn't there anymore!"

Doc paused for breath, then went on:

"Yes, there's plenty that we don't yet know about the wonderful mechanism of the human body. But we don't need to know everything to keep it living on and on. Because, with a little help, it restores itself. The trouble with our viewpoint is that death has been the destiny of all life on Earth for so long that it seems like an inviolable tradition. A silly attitude, don't you think? Now, have I disoriented you some more, Charlie? Don't be embarrassed. I feel somewhat that way myself. Maybe your mood is right for me to go a step further into the murky Destiny of Man, eh?"

My hide was tingling with something like dread. But I was eager. "I'm ready for anything, Doc."

We got back to his old house under the trees of the campus. From a cabinet in his quiet living room he took a plastic box. In it was a small, oblong bar of pinkish substance that wriggled slightly, as if it were animated.

"Touch it," Dr. Lanvin commanded.

I obeyed. The stuff was warm, and in response to contact with my finger, it writhed violently. "Unh—what in hell!" I grunted.

"It's something a big commercial laboratory managed to produce for abstract reasons," he answered. "It isn't any one substance, but its structure does include quite a few complex silicone compounds. Chemically it's not static. Processes and structural changes are going on inside it constantly. Its microscopic texture is cellular, like animal tissue. Pour, say, sugar dissolved in water on it, with the addition of certain salts, and it absorbs the solution slowly, along with oxygen from the air, to produce a kind of tissue-combustion, heat and movement. But it can convert sunlight, or simple heat from an outside source, or electricity, into motion, too. And it grows. Cut a piece of it off, and that will grow, too, as if reproduction had occurred. So—would you call it life of a sort? It's a lot more rugged than common life. Here, I'll show you, Charlie...."

Doc picked up a small soldering tool. When its point glowed red hot he held it close to that pinkish oblong. It did not recoil from the heat. Instead, as if impelled by some inherent automatism or instinct, it curled itself around the tool, and, hissing softly, seemed to enjoy the warmth. When Doc switched off the current, it uncoiled itself as if in disappointment. It wasn't burned. "Cold it is equally resistant," Doc remarked. "Especially when its vital fluid, moistening it inside and out, is changed to something with a lower freezing temperature than water. Alcohol, for example, or liquefied air or ammonia gas. Then its chemistry, and the flow of energy continue on a different temperature plane, for it is supremely adaptable, Charlie."

Dr. Lanvin's sly expression matched the chill along my back.

"Okay," I growled. "Now tell me what you're really thinking."

He shrugged. "Oh, nothing definite, Charlie. Someday reaching the stars in another figurative sense, maybe. As is, this stuff isn't of much use. Call it 'protoplast' as its creators do—a tougher, upstart brother of protoplasm—life. It isn't molded. But what if, in a vastly improved form, if could be someday?"

I frowned. "An animal?" I questioned. "Artificially made? Or—a man? An android, that is? Pure fantasy, of course, yet. A robot, with a robot's ruggedness, but made completely in human form. Servants maybe?"

Doc Lanvin's mild grin turned crooked. "Servants?" he challenged. "Is that all? What if we were living the last century of man's existence as original man? No, I don't necessarily mean the often dreamed-up possibility of a robot conquest of humanity by force! But what of the 'improved model' principle, applied by humans to themselves, with the transfer of mind and ego to a body that could live without harm in the cold vacuum between the planets, or in an inferno; a body unaging, and destructible only by absolute violence? No, Charlie, this development must normally be a long ways ahead. But what if?"

A cold tingling had started around my heart, spreading inexorably to the tips of my fingers, toes, and tongue. "Doc, I don't know," I said slowly. "To the flexible of viewpoint—wonderful. But it might be the ultimate shock to those who want tomorrow to be understandably and reliably like today and last year. To them it might be a hell; the death of everything reasonable, and a catastrophe to resist with all the weapons in the modern armory, and with the last fury of dying brain and muscle."

"I thought you'd react something like that," Doc sighed.

My laugh was unsteady. "Then why don't scientists stop digging? Nature can bite back."

"We can't stop, Charlie. Like everything, man is part of nature. He was given wits and curiosity to know the whys and wherefores of everything. It's like a religion—trying to learn a little more about, and get a little closer to, Whatever It Is That Keeps The Cosmos Running. Or you can say that all of man's works are works of nature, with him as the tool. That is our oneness with the universe which we've got to grow with. The fears are often childish. I feel the scare, too, Charlie, but I think you're like me."

"I hope I am," I stated.

"Thanks. Go to bed, Charlie. We've gabbed enough for now."

"Nix," I answered. "I think that maybe you have been leading up to some mention of your own work, Doc."

Dr. Lanvin's fingers tightened on the arm of his chair. "All right, Charlie," he said. "Down at dust-grain size is my own segment of the universe—my miniature region to explore—as others mean to explore the planets of the stars. It's a weird zone where familiar physical laws are curiously altered in their effects by relativity. Humans can't go there in their own flesh, at least not yet. But I believe that there may be a simple if difficult way to build a tiny metal proxy, operated the same as you operated that fire robot. Then, perhaps some compelling mysteries will be solved."

"For instance?" I prompted.

Doc nodded toward a photograph on the wall beside the old fashioned picture of his former wife. The first photograph showed his tiny pink meteor. Its much magnified hieroglyphics seemed to wink at us enigmatically.

"How that writing got there," Doc answered. "And now, more. Government authority has asked me to help, Charlie. From Ganymede, largest moon of Jupiter, comes a report of a cache of tools in a chest that itself is of almost microscopic dimensions. Finding it, several men were afflicted with dizziness and fainting. One died. Autopsy revealed many little seared, reddish lines crisscrossing inside the cortex of his brain. Also, in the asteroid belt, several space ships have gone out of control, the finest parts of their most delicate control mechanisms severed as if by intense heat."

"Beings," I breathed awedly. "The implication is clear but crazy. Why, a being no smaller than a rat couldn't have human intelligence. The molecules of matter remain of the same size. Building a truly sentient brain at such an extreme of smallness, using those same molecules, would be like trying to make fine pottery out of coarse sand!" "Who said anything about molecules?" Doc demanded almost angrily. "When—just for instance—the flow of far smaller electrons has been the soul of complicated calculating devices for a century? But who knows anything? Maybe, before long, I'll let you in on my project, if you have the courage and interest. But you need more general education. Now, not another word. Go to bed. Answering your whys and whats, I'd be mostly guessing, too."

I went to my room where I lay for hours with a tingle in my guts, aware of the frosty stars, the squawking katydids, the universe big and little, and buzzes from Doc's workroom. And I thought of how the human body conformed to the laws of machines. Hence it was a natural robot. It was near dawn before I slept.

Thereafter, life went on in the sunshine and shadow of a campus, idyllic and gentle, masking unrest. There were my instructors and the classrooms and labs, and the faces of my contemporaries, easy going young faces, matching a languid attitude of body coupled with latent strength, as a cat's languidness is coupled with the capacity to galvanize into lightning speed. For them the times held a pleasant spark of fright, and the rich red meat of coming triumph. In all fairness, I was one of them.

Minden, Fellows, Bowhart, Griswold, Scharber, and the others—the rhythm and meaning of their voices and words was usually the same:

"Hi, Charlie! How was the astrogation quiz?" Or: "Yesterday, I rocketted the training ship two thousand kilometers over Lake Michigan, and it was a cinch!..." Or: "Could any course be dopier than this 'Suggested Techniques For Establishing Friendly Relations With Possible Extra-Terrestrial Intelligences?'" Or: "So long, Charlie! I'm going out to help build Pallas City for the asteroid miners!..."

Or it might be Mars, Venus, Mercury, or the well remembered Moon, where huge, fantastic starcraft were already in the blueprint stage. Yes, all this was my life, too; though already it seemed half diverted to another, much stranger destiny. And there was Janice Randall whom I first spotted in Astrogation Lecture.

But I really met her in the company of George who had a special room up in the top of the University Library. It was an eerie place, suitable for such an entity. George was more than an electronic calculator; he was a Giant Brain. He was also a student's and research worker's oracle. You could ask him questions. One day, with Doc Lanvin's remarks sharply in mind, I went up there and waited my turn at George's microphone.

"Can a true android, with all the human attributes of mind and feeling, be made, George?" I asked.

George rustled inside his unpretentious black cabinet and replied in a bass voice:

"I believe that it can and will be done. Like space travel, it is part of the natural course of history."

"What is the most difficult phase of doing so?" I enquired further. "Building the brain?"

"No. Building the brain should be relatively simple. Giving an android a consciousness, an awareness of self, should be much more difficult. Philosophers have had trouble even defining consciousness."

I chanced a third question, the answer to which I already knew: "Don't you have a consciousness, George?"

"It is understood that no means yet exists to provide Earthly mechanisms with such a thing," George replied evenly. "I am no more aware than the first crude adding machine thinking out the sum of five and seven. A question to me merely sets a search and a reasoning process for a reply in motion. It is not necessary that I know that I do this."

Someone spoke from behind me: "Unaware thought. It even happens in our own subconscious minds. But it's hard to believe that George doesn't know his own reality. He's so human."

I turned. It was Jan Randall, coloring a little. "Oh, I'm sorry Mr. Harver. I didn't mean to eavesdrop," she said.

"Eavesdrop?" I chuckled. "There was nothing private about my question. Go ask yours. I'll wait out of earshot."

"I haven't any," she answered with a smile. "I come here often just for the mood. This place feels like a temple; as if God and all nature were here. George isn't much of all that, but he seems the best contact. Now, shall we both laugh?"

"Let's feel awed and humble, instead," I replied.

After a pause, I asked lightly: "George, is it all right for Janice Randall and I to have dinner together?"

George was small. Always, he refused to give out social advice. "This, I am not permitted to answer," he rumbled.

Jan and I laughed gayly together as we turned to leave. Jan was unobtrusive, but very pretty. Her hair was light brown, her features were fine, her nose turned up, her height reached to the center of my chest. And she had her eyes on a spacewoman's career.

From beside the door a pair of slightly fanatical eyes under a high forehead smirked at us. The jaw was strong; the smile was crooked, humorous, gentle.

"Hi, Cope," I greeted. "What brings you here?"

"This I have to watch, Harver," he answered. "The machine telling the man—already. Screwballs! Where will it end?"

"Who was that?" Jan asked as we were going down stairs.

"An English-Lit classmate of mine," I answered. "One who believes that all virtue is the past's. Call him the conscience of the human race. Armand Cope."

Little hard glints showed in Jan's eyes before she said, "Oh," mildly, and laughed.

After dinner I took her to meet Dr. Shane Lanvin. Six months later he said to both of us:
"Like a hiring officer picking a starship crew, I have to look for guts, wits, and certain other qualities, in prospective helpers for what I am attempting. There may be danger. And I wouldn't want anyone to go soft and back out later. So here's your chance—part-time for the present. But I want a final yes or no."

Mild Doc Lanvin could be hard. But he knew Jan's quality. She had taken courses of study and training, of which nine-tenths of the students were masculine. Her reactions to tests for quick thinking, emotional ruggedness, and physical stamina, were all good. Moreover, she had excelled in the study of instrument making, with which we had both occupied much time. Her manual precision was better than mine.

"On your terms, count me in, Dr. Lanvin," she said quietly.

"Even without Jan, I think I'd be a foregone conclusion, Doc," I told him.

So, with every minute that we could spare from our regular studies, we were working with the great specialist of the miniature, trying to push another frontier downward into The Small. Doc had his duties to the University, but he had his nights and weekends, and the additional drive of the odd and grim reports which had already come from deep in space.

Do you know what a micro-manipulator is? It begins with a simple, high powered microscope. But in its field of view are mounted little slide rods, fitted with hand operated vernier screws, by which they can make movements so fine that a gesture of a thousandth of a centimeter may seem the widest of swings. Attached to the slide rods are forceps, and measuring and cutting instruments, some too small to be visible to the unaided eye.

Under one microscope Doc had even set up a real, power driven lathe, a quarter-inch long. Under another was a sort of assembly area. There, a shiny robot, half an inch high, with all the intricate control and circuits combined into it, was taking form. Cables were as fine as spiderwebs.