Read Online Fantastic Voyage: Microcosm by Kevin J. Anderson - Free Book Online

tedious procedures. When the processing guard finally handed him a laminated badge on a thin chain, Freeth slipped it over his head and looked unexpectedly pleased with himself.
    Devlin led the way along the painted floor, following bright pools from caged fluorescent lights set into the rugged ceiling. The air in the entryway had the damp, chalky smell of caves. Deeper inside, the passages were lined with painted concrete and color-keyed power conduits and pipes. Three-wheeled white Cushman electric carts hummed along, carrying packages, supplies, or technicians.
    Freeth seemed to be floating with excitement as they passed laboratories and high bays. Airlocks sealed experimental rooms with a hiss of compressed air. Though intimidated by the size of the complex, he looked as if he'd seen the culmination of his life's work. “Believe me, I knew places like this existed. I knew it. This is like the secret hangars at Edwards Air Force Base in the Mojave Desert.”
    “Actually, the Mojave is where we grow our giant tarantulas and our mutant radioactive ants,” Devlin said with mock seriousness. “Here, we work on something… smaller.”
    Big Science had always enthralled Devlin. Even during his Academy days, when he was just dating Kelli Hunter, he'd loved to tinker beyond the prescripted class experiments, often at the expense of old equipment.
    Once, Devlin had modified a C 0 2 laser and accidentally bumped a spinning mirror, which bounced a reflection around the room, scribing black streaks on the cinderblock walls. The sour-tempered professor—a civilian who was counting the years until he could move to the Bahamas and sip piña coladas all day—had banned Devlin from the optics laboratory. After waiting until the professor went off to a physics conference, Devlin had filled hundreds of plastic cups with water late one night and built an immense pyramid in front of the man's office door. He added a note, “Can I buy you a drink, Professor?”
    When the professor returned from his conference, it took him and his secretary hours to dismantle the barricade, drenching themselves in the process. Lucky for young Marc Devlin, the professor had made so many enemies among the underclassmen that he'd never been able to identify the real prankster…
    Now, as Devlin led Freeth past security checkpoints, the man's expression changed to barely covered anger. “It's amazing what the government keeps hidden from the taxpayers. Do they think we can't handle knowing about this?”
    “Project Proteus is a collaborative effort with American and Russian scientists, a few Europeans, a few Japanese. It's too big”—he smiled at the irony— “and too important for one country to handle alone.”
    Freeth continued to speculate about international conspiracies and military industrial conglomerates. “I've heard there's an engine that runs by burning distilled water, and another one that gets a hundred miles per gallon of gas. But, believe me, the oil companies don't want us to have them. Every one of those inventors was killed in a mysterious accident.”
    His muddy eyes showed an edge of panic, as if he was afraid a similarly mysterious accident would befall him. “And you know that pharmaceutical companies found a simple cure for cancer a long time ago, but they'll never release it because they make too much money on all those expensive treatments.”
    “Negative, Mr. Freeth.” Devlin's voice grew suddenly cold. He had watched the heroic efforts the oncologists had performed on Kelli, and certainly not because they wanted to keep any miracle pills hidden for their own private use. “You have been misinformed.”
    Though his wife had worked as a medical technician, she was the last to suspect that something was wrong. She would have chided patients for ignoring such symptoms, but she hadn't seen a doctor until the ovarian cancer had progressed too far. From that point, she and Devlin had had very little time left together. Far too