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And then they were upon it before Morrison had a true chance to realize what he was looking at. It was not a very large room and the object within it was not of impressive bulk. Indeed, Morrison's first impression was that it was a piece of artwork.
It was a streamlined object not much larger than an automobile, certainly shorter than a stretch limousine, though taller. And it was transparent!
Automatically, Morrison reached out to feel it.
It was not cold to the touch. It felt smooth and almost moist, but when he removed his hand, his fingertips were perfectly dry. He tried it again and as he ran his fingertips across the surface, they seemed to stick slightly, but they left no sweaty mark. On impulse, he breathed upon it. There was the shadow of condensing moisture on the transparent material, but it disappeared quickly.
"It is a plastic material," said Kaliinin, "but I don't know its composition. If I knew, it would probably come under the head of classified information anyway, but whatever it is, it is stronger than steel - tougher and more resistant to shock - kilogram for kilogram."
"Weight for weight, perhaps," said Morrison, for the moment his scientific curiosity drowning his uneasiness, "but such a thickness of plastic material could not possibly be as strong as the same thickness of steel. It could not be as strong, volume for volume."
"Yes, but where are we going?" said Kaliinin. "There will be no pressure differential inside and outside the ship; there will be no meteroids or even cosmic dust against which we must protect ourselves. There will be about us nothing but soft cell structure. This plastic will be ample protection and it is light. The two of us could perhaps lift it if we tried. That is what is important. As you can well understand, we must be sparing of mass. Every additional kilogram consumes considerable electromagnetic energy in miniaturization and delivers considerable heat in deminiaturization."
"Will it hold a large enough crew?" said Morrison, peering inside.
"It will. It is very compact, but it can hold six and we will only be five. And it contains a surprising amount of unusual gadgetry. Not as much as we would like, of course. The original plans - But what can we do? There are always pressures for economy, even unwarranted ones, in this unjust world."
Morrison said with a twinge of strong uneasiness, "How much pressure for how much economy? Does everything work?"
"I assure you it does." Her face had lit up. Now that the settled melancholy had left (temporarily only, Morrison felt sure), Kaliinin was unmistakably good-looking. "Everything in it has been tested exhaustively, both singly and all together. Zero risk is impossible of attainment, but we have a reasonably close to zero risk here. And all with virtually no metal. What with microchips, fiber optics, and Manuilsky junctions, we have all we want in a total of less than five kilograms of devices all together. That is why the ship can be so small. After all, voyages into the microcosm are not expected to last for more than some hours, so we don't need sleeping arrangements, cycling equipment, elaborate food and air supplies, anything other than quite simple devices for excretory functions, and so on."
"Who'll be at the controls?"
"Arkady."
"Arkady Dezhnev?"
"You seem surprised."
"I don't know why I should. I presume he's qualified."
"Completely. He's in engineering design and he's a genius at it. You can't go by the way he sounds - No, you can go by the way he sounds. Do you suppose any of us could endure his crude humor and affectations if he weren't a genius at something? He designed the ship - every part of it - and all its equipment. He invented a dozen completely new ways of lowering mass and introducing compactness. You have nothing like it in the United States."
Morrison said stiffly, "I have no way of knowing what the United States may have or may not have in unusual devices."
"I am sure they don't. Dezhnev is an unusual person, for all his love of presenting himself as a boor. He is a descendant of Semyon Ivanov Dezhnev. You have heard of him, I suppose."
Morrison shook his head.
"Really?" Kaliinin's voice turned icy. "He is only the famous explorer who, in the time of Peter the Great, explored Siberia to its easternmost centimeter and said there was a stretch of sea separating Siberia and North America decades before Vitus Bering, a Dane in Russian employ, discovered the Bering Strait. - And you don't know Dezhnev. That's so American. Unless a Westerner did it, you never heard of it."
"Don't see insults everywhere, Sophia. I haven't studied exploration. There are many American explorers that I don't know - and that you don't, either." He shook his finger at her, again remembering her slap and rubbing his check once more, "This is what I mean. You find things to feed hate on - inconsequential things you should feel ashamed to grub up."
"Semyon Dezhnev was a great explorer - and not inconsequential."
"I'm willing to admit that. I am glad to learn of him and I marvel at his achievement. But my not having heard of him is not a fit occasion for Soviet-American rivalry. Be ashamed of yourself!"
Kaliinin's eyes fell, then lifted to his cheek. (Had she left a bruise there? Morrison wondered.) She said, "I'm sorry I struck you, Albert. It need not have been that hard, but I didn't want you to faint. At that moment, I felt I would have no patience to deal with an unconscious American. I did let unjustified anger guide me."
"I'll grant you meant well, but I, too, wish you had not struck so hard. Still, I will accept your apology."
"Then let us get into the ship,"
Morrison managed a smile. Somehow he felt a little better dealing with Kaliinin than he would have with Dezhnev or Konev - or even Boranova. A pretty woman, still quite young, does somehow distract a man's mind from his troubles more effectively than most things would. He said, "Aren't you afraid I might try to sabotage it?"
Kaliinin paused. "Actually, I'm not. I suspect you have enough respect for a vessel of scientific exploration to avoid doing it any damage whatever. Besides - and I say this seriously, Albert - the laws against sabotage are excessively severe in the Soviet Union and the slightest mistake in handling anything in the ship will set off an alarm that will have guards here in a matter of seconds. We have strict laws against guards beating up saboteurs, but sometimes they tend to forget themselves in their indignation. Please don't even think of touching anything."
She put a hand on the hull as she spoke and presumably closed a contact, though Morrison didn't see how it was done. A door - a rectangle curved at the edge - opened. (The door's own edge seemed to be double. Would it also act as an air lock?)
The opening was compact. Kaliinin, entering first, had to stoop. She held out a hand to Morrison. "Careful, Albert."
Morrison not only stooped, but turned sideways. Once inside the ship, he found that he could not quite stand upright. When he bumped his head gently, he looked up at the ceiling, startled.
Kaliinin said, "We'll be doing our work sitting down for the most part, so don't be concerned about the ceiling."
"I don't think claustrophobes would like this."
"Are you claustrophobic?"
"No."
Kaliinin nodded her relief. "That's good. We have to save space, you know. What can I tell you?"
Morrison looked around. There were six seats, in pairs. He sat down in the one nearest the door and said, "These are not exactly roomy, either."
"No," admitted Kaliinin. "Weight lifters could not be accommodated."
Morrison said, "Obviously, this ship was built long before Shapirov went into his coma."
"Of course. We've been pla