“Magnification two hundred,” said Conway. “Instrument motion reduction down one-five percent.”
Even the tiny movements of his hands and fingers, rendered incredibly minute by the reduction mechanism, looked like the awkward, barely coordinated motions of a twitching convulsive. “Motion step down to one-fifty,” he said. On the screen the movements of the strand with the cutting head at its tip became smoother and more assured as it burrowed a path through the inner ear membrane and into the tissue beyond. It was closely followed into the narrow, fleshy tunnel it was creating by the light source, the vision pickup, and the instruments that would gather tissue and fluid samples for analysis. The tiny tunnel was beginning to look crowded.
“There is some collateral tissue damage,” said Thornnastor. “The reduced size of the instruments has rendered it minimal, and allowable.”
“This is new territory,” said Conway quietly. “We don’t know what is allowable. Ah, we’re in.”
The split-screen images from the external scanner and of Conway’s hands in the reduction gauntlets was replaced by the tremendously magnified view from the internal vision pickup that was moving through what appeared to be a series of interconnecting, submerged caverns. In the strong light their convoluted walls showed pink with patches of yellow and they were covered with plantlike growths whose tight clusters of slender stems were topped by single, crystalline flowers that were pale blue or red verging on black. The majority of the stems were headless and on the few that weren’t the crystals looked deformed or damaged. Pieces of crystalline debris stirred in the eddies created by the motion of the invading instruments.
“I’ll need a specimen of the fluid for analysis,” said Thornnastor. “Also samples of that floating debris, which appears to be fragmented crystalline material, and a few complete crystals if you can detach them from their stalks. I’ll need stalk samples as well, complete with their crystal flowers.”
“Right,” said Conway. “Increase the magnification to two hundred.”
A tiny amount of the fluid which included the debris was withdrawn. Then the cutter and grabs, looking like gigantic earth-moving machinery under the high magnification, moved in to harvest the required stalks and crystals.
“I have enough for the analyzer, now,” said Thornnastor. “But the fluid is something more than a simple saline solution. This will take a little time.”
“I feel your concern, friend Conway,” Prilicla’s voice joined in, “but it is unnecessary. There is no change in the patient’s emotional status even at the subconscious level, which is the most accurate guide to anything going wrong. The invasive procedure is so delicate that I doubt that it would have felt anything even if it had been fully conscious.”
There was a faint, rustling sound that might have been Conway sighing with relief, and then he said, “Thank you for the reassurance, little friend, you must have felt I needed it. But what we’re seeing here is an organic telepathic transmitter and receiver that is damaged and inoperative. Dammit, in primary-school science class I couldn’t even build a homemade radio that worked.”
It was Thornnastor who looked up with one eye from its analyzer to break the lengthening silence.
“This is interesting,” it said. “The fluid is a complex of metallic salts, predominantly copper, with a large number of other minerals in trace quantities that have yet to be identified. It seems that the crystals, which are very faintly radioactive, grow within the fluid and attach themselves to the clusters of stalks only when they are fully formed. Apart from providing cup-shaped attachment points at their tips and serving as a protective sheath for the connective nerve pathway to the central brain, they are merely the supports for their individual crystals.”
“We can reproduce the fluid,” it went on, “and seed it with fragments of the damaged crystals and regrow and re-irradiate them. Pathologist Murchison is standing by in the lab and it tells me. that the crystals form so quickly that it should be able to complete the process in just over an hour. This would give us enough time for lunch.”
“What?” said Conway.
“Friend Thornnastor is a massive and energy-hungry life-form,” said Prilicla, “but it is simply making a pleasantry aimed at reducing emotional tension.”