"We can't stop, Charlie. Like everything, man is part of nature. He was given wits and curiosity to know the whys and wherefores of everything. It's like a religion—trying to learn a little more about, and get a little closer to, Whatever It Is That Keeps The Cosmos Running. Or you can say that all of man's works are works of nature, with him as the tool. That is our oneness with the universe which we've got to grow with. The fears are often childish. I feel the scare, too, Charlie, but I think you're like me."
"I hope I am," I stated.
"Thanks. Go to bed, Charlie. We've gabbed enough for now."
"Nix," I answered. "I think that maybe you have been leading up to some mention of your own work, Doc."
Dr. Lanvin's fingers tightened on the arm of his chair. "All right, Charlie," he said. "Down at dust-grain size is my own segment of the universe—my miniature region to explore—as others mean to explore the planets of the stars. It's a weird zone where familiar physical laws are curiously altered in their effects by relativity. Humans can't go there in their own flesh, at least not yet. But I believe that there may be a simple if difficult way to build a tiny metal proxy, operated the same as you operated that fire robot. Then, perhaps some compelling mysteries will be solved."
"For instance?" I prompted.
Doc nodded toward a photograph on the wall beside the old fashioned picture of his former wife. The first photograph showed his tiny pink meteor. Its much magnified hieroglyphics seemed to wink at us enigmatically.
"How that writing got there," Doc answered. "And now, more. Government authority has asked me to help, Charlie. From Ganymede, largest moon of Jupiter, comes a report of a cache of tools in a chest that itself is of almost microscopic dimensions. Finding it, several men were afflicted with dizziness and fainting. One died. Autopsy revealed many little seared, reddish lines crisscrossing inside the cortex of his brain. Also, in the asteroid belt, several space ships have gone out of control, the finest parts of their most delicate control mechanisms severed as if by intense heat."
"Beings," I breathed awedly. "The implication is clear but crazy. Why, a being no smaller than a rat couldn't have human intelligence. The molecules of matter remain of the same size. Building a truly sentient brain at such an extreme of smallness, using those same molecules, would be like trying to make fine pottery out of coarse sand!"