Micro - Michael Crichton [45]
“Oh, really?” Karen said.
Kinsky didn’t answer.
The bigger problem was that they didn’t know what Vin or Alyson were up to. They had been driven around in a car, but where had the car ended up? It made no sense. Then Vin and Alyson seemed to reach an agreement (their exact conversation was impossible to follow) and Alyson carried the bag outdoors. Into darkness.
“What’s this?” Karen King said, alarmed, as they were carried along. “What’s going on?”
They heard a booming sound. It was a snuffle. Alyson Bender.
“I have the feeling she wants to save us,” Peter Jansen said.
“Vin will never allow it,” Karen said.
“I know.”
“I think we better take things into our own hands,” Karen said. She produced her knife, unfolded it.
“Now hold on,” Danny Minot said. “This is a decision we have to reach together.”
“I don’t know about that,” Karen said. “ ’Cause I’ve got the knife.”
“Don’t be a child,” Minot said.
“Don’t be a coward. We act, or they act on us and they kill us. Which is it?” She didn’t wait for Danny to answer. She turned to Peter. “How far above ground do you think we are, right now?”
“I don’t know, maybe four and a half feet…”
“Hundred and thirty-seven centimeters,” Erika Moll said. “And what’s our mass?”
Peter laughed. “Not very much.”
“You’re laughing,” Danny Minot said, amazed. “You people are insane. Compared to our normal size, a drop of four and a half feet is the equivalent of, uh—”
“Four hundred and fifty feet,” Erika said. “Say, the height of a forty-five-story building. And no, this would not be the equivalent of a fall from a forty-five-story building.”
“Of course it would,” Danny said.
“Isn’t it great when the science studies people don’t know any science?” Erika said.
Peter explained, “It’s a little issue of air resistance.”
“No, that doesn’t matter,” Danny said through clenched teeth, clearly stung by the criticism, “because objects fall in a gravitational field at the same rate irrespective of mass. A penny and a piano fall at the same rate, hit the ground at the same time.”
“Nothing can be done for him,” Karen said. “And we have to make a decision now.”
The jostling in the bag had slowed; Alyson was making up her mind to do something.
“I don’t think the distance we fall matters very much,” Peter Jansen said. He had been trying to figure out the physics of being very small.
It was all about gravity. And inertia.
Peter said: “What’s important is Newton’s equation for—”
“Enough! I say we jump,” Karen interrupted.
“Jump,” Jenny said.
“Jump,” Amar said.
“Oh God,” Danny moaned. “But we don’t know where we are!”
“Jump,” Erika said.
“This is our only chance,” Rick Hutter said. “Jump.”
“Jump,” Peter said.
“Okay,” Karen said. “I’m going to run along this seam at the bottom, and cut it open. Try to stay close together. Imagine you’re skydivers. Arms and legs wide, a human kite. Here we gooo—”
“But just a minute—” Danny yelled.
“Too late!” Karen shouted. “Good luck!”
Peter felt her brush past him, the knife in her hand, and a moment later the paper bag tilted beneath his feet, and he fell into darkness.
The air was surprisingly cool and wet. And the night was brighter, now that he was outside the bag: he could see the trees around him, and the ground below as he fell toward it. He fell surprisingly fast—alarmingly fast—and for a moment he wondered if they had collectively made a calculation error, out of their shared dislike for Danny.
They knew, of course, that air resistance was always a factor in the speed of falling objects. In daily life, you didn’t think about it, because most things in life presented similar air resistance. A five-pound barbell and a ten-pound barbell would fall at the same rate. Same thing for a human being and an elephant. They’d fall at pretty much the same rate.
But the students were now so small that air resistance did matter, and they had collectively guessed that the effect of air resistance would overcome the effect of mass. In other words, they would not fall at their full-size speed.
They hoped.