The two visitors sat down on a large couch and leaned toward Morrison. Rodano smiled a bit tentatively. "I can't promise you much relaxation, Dr. Morrison. At least for a while. Incidentally, we have just received word from Ashby. Do you remember her?"

"The waitress who turned the tables? Yes, indeed. Without her -"

"We know the essentials of the story, Morrison. She wants you to know that your two friends have recovered and are apparently fond of each other still."

"And Ashby, herself? She told me she was ready to leave if Washington thought it best. I reported that last night."

"Yes, we'll get her out one way or another. - And now I'm afraid we must bother you again."

Morrison frowned. "How long will this keep up?"

"I don't know. You must take it as it comes. - Professor Friar, won't you take over?"

Friar nodded. "Dr. Morrison, do you mind if I take notes. - No, let me rephrase that. I am going to take notes, Morrison."

He plucked a small computer keyboard of advanced design out of his briefcase.

Rodano said mildly, "Where will these notes go, Professor?"

"To my recording device, Mr. Rodano."

"Which is where, Professor?"

"In my office at Defense, Mr. Rodano," Then, with some irritation under the other's continuing stare, "Into my safe in my office at Defense and both the safe and the recording device are well-coded. Does that satisfy you?"

"Proceed, Professor."

Friar turned to Morrison and said, "Is it true that you were miniaturized, Morrison. You, personally?"

"I was. At my smallest, I was the size of an atom while part of a ship the size of a glucose molecule. I spent better than half a day inside a living human body, first in the bloodstream, then in the brain."

"And this is true? No chance of an illusion or trickery?"

"Please, Professor Friar. If I were tricked or hypnotized, my testimony now would be worthless. We can't proceed unless you recognize the fact that I am in my right mind and can be relied on to report events that correspond reasonably well with reality."

Friar's lips pressed together and then he said, "You are right. We must make assumptions to begin with and I will assume you are sane and reliable - without prejudice to further reconsideration of such assumptions."

"Of course," said Morrison.

"In that case" - and Friar turned to Rodano - "we begin with one great and important observation. Miniaturization is possible and the Soviets do indeed have it and make use of it and can miniaturize even living human beings without apparent harm to them."

He turned back to Morrison. "Presumably, the Soviets claim to miniaturize by reducing the size of Planck's constant."

"Yes, they do."

"Of course they do. There's no other conceivable way of doing it. Did they explain the procedure by which that was done?"

"Certainly not. You might as well make the assumption that the Soviets scientists I dealt with are as sane as we are. They wouldn't carelessly give away anything they don't want us to know."

"Very well, then. Assumption made. Now tell us exactly what happened to you in the Soviet Union. Do not tell it as an adventure story, but only as the observations of a professional physicist."

Morrison began to talk. He was not entirely sorry to do so. He wanted to exorcise it and he didn't want the responsibility of being the only American to know what he knew. He told the story in detail and it took hours. He did not finish until they were sitting at a lunch delivered by room service.

Over dessert, Friar said, "Let me summarize, then, as best I can from memory. To begin with, miniaturization does not affect time flow, nor the quantum interactions - that is, the electromagnetic, weak and strong interactions. The gravitational interaction is affected, however, and decreases in proportion to mass, as it naturally would. Is that so?"

Morrison nodded.

Friar went on. "Light - and electromagnetic radiation, generally - can cross into and out of the miniaturization field, but sound cannot. Normal matter is weakly repelled by the miniaturization field but, under pressure, normal matter can be made to enter it and be itself miniaturized, at the expense of the energy of the field."

Morrison nodded again.

Friar said, "The more miniaturized an object becomes, the less energy is required to miniaturize it further. Do you know if the energy requirement decreases in proportion to the mass remaining at any particular stage of miniaturization?"

"That would certainly seem logical," said Morrison, "but I don't recall anyone mentioning the quantitative nature of that phenomenon."

"To go on, then. The more miniaturized an object, the greater the chance of its spontaneous deminiaturization - and that refers to the entire mass within the field, rather than to any component part. You, as a separated individual, were more likely to deminiaturize spontaneously than you would as part of the ship. Is that right?"

"That was my understanding."

"And your Soviet companions admitted that it was impossible to maximize and to make things more massive than they are in nature."

"Again, that was my understanding. You must realize, Professor Friar, that I can only repeat what I was told. They might have deliberately misled me or they may have been wrong because they had insufficient knowledge themselves."

"Yes yes, I understand. Do you have any reason to believe they were deliberately misleading you?"

"No. It seemed to me they were being honest."

"Well, perhaps. Now, the most interesting thing to me is that Brownian motion was in balance with miniaturization oscillation and that the greater the degree of miniaturization, the greater the shift in balance toward oscillation and away from ordinary Brownian motion."

"That is an actual observation of my own, Professor, and doesn't rest merely on what I was told."

"And that shift of balance has something to do with the rate of spontaneous deminiaturization."

"That is my own thought. I cannot state it as fact."

"Hmm." Friar sipped thoughtfully at his cofFee and said, "The trouble is that all this is superficial. It tells us about the behavior of the miniaturization field, but nothing about how the field is produced. - And in decreasing the value of Planck's constant, they leave the speed of light untouched, you say?"

"Yes, but that, as I emphasized, means that maintaining the miniaturization field costs enormously in energy. If they can couple Planck's constant with the speed of light, increasing the latter as they decrease the former - But they don't have that yet."

"So they say. It was in Shapirov's mind, supposedly, but you were unable to get it out."

"That's right."

Friar remained lost in thought for a few minutes, then shook his head. "We'll go over everything you've said and deduce what we can from it, but I fear it won't help."

"Why not?" asked Rodano.

"Because none of it goes to the heart. If someone who had never seen a robot or heard anything about any of its component parts were to report a robot in operation, he could describe how the head and limbs moved, how the voice sounded, how it obeyed orders, and so on. Nothing he could observe would tell him how a positronic brainpath works or what a molecular valve is. He would not even have an inkling that either exists, nor would those scientists who would work from his observations have any.

"The Soviets have some technique to produce the field and we know nothing about it, nor does anything Morrison can tell us help us there. They might have published material that led up to it, not aware that something crucial was in the making - that was what happened in the mid-twentieth century, when early work on nuclear fission was published before it was understood that it ought to be kept secret. The Soviets didn't make that mistake with miniaturization, however. Nor have we succeeded in retrieving information concerning the matter through espionage or by the luck of having some key personnel on the other side defect and come to us.