Morrison, entranced, asked, "Can you show me how it works, Yuri?"

Konev studied the computer - which was turned on, as one could tell by the soft whisper of its cooling mechanism - then pushed the necessary keys. On the screen there appeared the side view of a human brain.

Konev said, "This can be viewed at any cross-section." He pressed a key and the brain began to peel as though it were being continually sliced by an ultrathin microtome some thousands of slices per second. "At this rate," he said, "it would take an hour and fifteen minutes to complete the task, but I could stop it at any chosen point. I could also cut off thicker slices or cut off one thick calculated slice to bring me at once to any wanted cross-section."

As he spoke, he demonstrated. "Or I could orient it in another direction or rotate it along any axis. Or I can magnify it to any extent down to the cellular level, either slowly or, as you see, quickly." As he said this, the material of the brain spread outward in all directions from a central point - dizzyingly - so that Morrison was forced to blink his eyes and then look away.

Konev said, "This is now at the cellular level. Those small objects are individual neurons and if I expanded the image still further, you would see the axons and dendrites. If one wishes, we could follow a single axon through the cell into a dendrite and across a synapse to another neuron and so on, traveling, by computer, through a brain three-dimensionally. Nor is the matter of three demensions just a manner of speaking. The computer is outfitted for holographic imaging and it can present a three-dimensional appearance quite literally."

Morrison said challengingly, "Then why do you need miniaturization? Why do you need to send ships into the brain?"

Konev briefly allowed a look of contempt to cross his face. "That is a foolish question, Albert, and I suppose it is inspired only by your fear of miniaturization. You are groping for any excuse to eliminate it. What you see here on the screen is a three-dimensional mapping of the brain, but only three-dimensional. It has caught it at what is, essentially, an instant of time. In effect, we see unchanging material - dead material. What we want to be able to detect is the living activity of the neurons, the changing activity with time. We want a four-dimensional view of the electric potentials that rise and fall, the microcurrents that travel along the cells and cell fibers, and we want to interpret them into thoughts. That's your task, Albert. Arkady Dezhnev will manipulate the ship along the routes I have chosen and you will give us the thoughts."

"On what basis have you chosen the routes?"

"On the basis of your own papers, Albert. I have chosen the regions you had decided must represent the neuronic network for creative thought and, using this book, with its coded representation of Shapirov's brain as my initial guide, I calculated centers where more or less direct pathways could be found to several portions of the network. I then located them more accurately on the computer and it is to one or more of those centers that we will penetrate tomorrow."

Morrison shook his head. "I'm afraid I can't guarantee that we will be able to determine actual thoughts, even if we find the centers in which thinking takes place. It's as though we might reach a place where we can hear people's voices, but if we don't know the language, we are still left in ignorance of what they are saying."

"We can't know that in advance. The varying electric potentials in Sbapirov's mind must resemble those in ours and we may simply be aware of his thoughts without knowing how we are aware. In any case, we can't tell unless we go in and try."

"In that case, you will have to be ready for possible disappointment."

"Never," said Konev with the utmost seriousness. "I intend to be the person to whom the human brain will finally yield its secrets. I will solve, completely, the ultimate physiological mystery of humanity, perhaps of the Universe - if we are the most advanced thinking devices that exist anywhere. So we will work together, you and I, tomorrow. I want you to be ready for it, to help guide me by studying carefully the brain waves we encounter. I want you to interpret Shapirov's thoughts and, most particularly, his thoughts on combining quantum theory and relativity so that trips such as ours tomorrow can become routine and we can begin the study of the brain in all earnestness."

He stopped and stared at Morrison intently, then said, "Well?"

"Well, what?"

"Does none of this impress you?"

"Of course it impresses me, but… I have a question. Today when I watched the rabbit being miniaturized, there was a pronounced whine during the process - and a rumble when it was deminiaturized. There was nothing of the sort when I was subjected to it - or I would have known what was happening."

Konev raised a finger, "Ah. The noise is apparent when you are in real space, but not when you are in miniaturized space. I was the first to realize that was so when I was miniaturized and I reported it. We still don't know why the miniaturization field seems to stop sound waves when it doesn't stop light waves, but then we expect to learn new aspects of the process as we go on."

"As long as we don't discover fatal aspects," muttered Morrison. "Are you afraid of nothing, Yuri?"

"I'm afraid of not being able to complete my work. That would be true if I died tomorrow or if I refused to undergo miniaturization. Being stopped by death, however, is only a small possibility, but if I refuse to undergo miniaturization, then I am stopped certainly. That is why I much prefer to risk the former than take the latter way out."

"Does it bother you that Sophia will be undergoing miniaturization with you?"

Konev frowned. "What?"

"If you don't remember her first name, it may help if I refer to her as Kaliinin."

"She is part of the group and will be on the ship. Yes."

"And you don't mind?"

"Why should I?"

"After all, she feels you have betrayed her."

Konev frowned darkly and a dull flush rose to his face. "Has her madness gone so far as to force her to confide her incoherencies to strangers? If she weren't needed on this project -"

"I'm sorry. She didn't sound incoherent to me."

Morrison didn't know why he was pushing the matter. Perhaps he felt diminished at fearing a task the other so ardently welcomed and he therefore wished to dirninish in turn. "Were you never her - friend?"

"Friend?" Konev's face mirrored his contempt. "What is friendship? When I joined the project, I found her here; she had joined a month earlier. We worked together, we were new and untried together. Of course, there was what one might call friendship, a physical need for intimacy. What of it? We were young and unsure of ourselves. It was a passing phase."

"But it left something behind. A child."

"That was not my doing." And his mouth closed with a snap.

"She says -"

"I have no doubt she would like to saddle me with the responsibility, but it won't work."

"Have you considered genetic analysis?"

"No! The child is adequately cared for, I imagine, and even if genetic analysis seemed to indicate I might be the parent, I would refuse all efforts to tie me to the child emotionally, so what would the woman have to gain?"

"Are you so coldhearted?"

"Coldhearted! What do you imagine I have done - corrupted a young, innocent virgin? She took the initiative in everything. In the sad story that I suppose she told you, did she happen to mention that she'd been pregnant before, that she had had an abortion some years before I met her? I don't know who the father was then or who it is now. Perhaps neither does she - either time."

"You are being unkind to her."

"I am not. She is being unkind to herself. I have a mistress. I have a love. It is this project. It is the human brain in the abstract, its study, its analysis, and all that that might lead to. The woman was, at best, a distraction - at worst, a destruction. This little talk we are having - that I did not ask for - that she goaded you into undertaking, no doubt -"