Pun Salad

But, as it turned out, I owned the paperback. I didn't remember buying it, but there it was on the shelf. So, why not?

It's a cold-war story: Benes, a scientist defecting from Their Side to Our Side (this is actually how Asimov refers to them), is critically brain-injured during Their one last attempt to assassinate him. A small clot is blocking a critical pathway in his brain, too deep for normal surgery. But without getting rid of the clot, Benes is a goner, as is the vital information his brain carries.

Fortunately, Benes's work involves the new technology of ultra-miniaturization. Which allows a small submarine, the Proteus, and its crew of five to be shrunk down to the size of a cell, injected into Benes, where a very small surgeon will dissolve the clot with his tiny laser. The time limit for the procedure is one hour; longer than that, and the sub will enlarge to its normal size automatically, killing Benes (and probably the crew) anyway.

But the Proteus is beset by bad luck; only minutes after they're injected into a brain-bound artery, they're set off course by a fistula, sending them the wrong way down the jugular vein toward the heart. Various technical mishaps also threaten the mission. Could there be a traitor amongst them? (Spoiler: yep.)

It's all pretty silly, but Asimov did a pretty good job of papering over the totally implausible scenario with an impressive display of scientific mumbo-jumbo.

I first read this as a fifteen-year-old kid in the old Saturday Evening Post, to which my parents subscribed. I watched the movie multiple times. (It was nominated for a Hugo Award, but lost out to a very good Star Trek episode.) So while this was not great literature, reading it brought on a pleasant nostalgia attack.