We became acquainted with the vats in which readied substances were held in solution. Next, under Kobolah and Nintan, his superior, we studied the shaper grids and power sources, and the intricate regulating devices attached.
Finally, an insect-like animal of natural protoplasm, native to these bubble caverns, was made the subject of a demonstration. He was bigger than we were, and tolerant to the radioactive poisons of his environment. Otherwise, he was of the same vital principle as humans.
Anesthetized, he was immersed in a gelatin-like solution. Power flowed. Slowly, the substance and chemistry of his tissues was altered, cell by cell, without change of form, and never losing the inner motion of living. It was a process remotely akin to electrolysis.
This was the simplest change that could happen. But there were others. A body, or its three-dimensional simulacra made in any size, could be used as a pattern for a protoplastic form, and made to grow in another vat. But necessary alterations could be interjected too.
The nature of consciousness remained obscure to me, even under instruction. But the idea of a special indivisible spark or node of energy seemed to remain an at least tolerable analogy. Doc Lanvin's comprehension here was a lot better than mine.
"About the awareness, the philosophers were almost right, Charlie and Jan," he said one day. "But science can touch it too, reverently, as it touches a beating heart, which is a pump, easily understandable by physical law. So it is with the awareness, too. Who would want it any different? Who would want the soul to be merely a formless miracle of command, when Divinity must be logic and order, and completeness of understanding?"
VI
Somewhere along the way, this and other matters became too profound for me. I absorbed what I could; but my field is action and feeling, not deep penetration, like Dr. Lanvin's. He pursued androidal conversion down to its last secret. Drawings and formulae, changed to Earthly terms, went down on parchment, and into his head. He toyed with the wondrous slimes of another kind of life, and at last understood them.
Jan and I were lesser beings. Buffaloed and a little dazed, we would wander off from the labs. Often we swam and laughed. Part of our personalities was adjusting to the fantastic region of The Small. But we worried, too. About our original bodies, and about a reticence before questioning, on the part of even Kobolah. Then Jan expressed another thing: