Excess Mass

<Ah. I am frightened, too. I don't really like morphing tiny animals. I keep thinking about all the rest of my mass.>

<Your what?> I asked, not really caring. I was focused on the morphing ahead.

<My mass. When you morph something smaller than yourself, your body mass must go somewhere. So it goes into Zero-space. Zero-space is the space that ships travel through when they are going faster than light. It's not very likely to happen, but sometimes a ship traveling in Z-space will intersect with a temporarily parked mass.>

This got my total, complete attention.

<Wait a minute. Are you telling me that when we get small, all the leftover . . . stuff . . . all the extra flesh and guts and bones go bulging into Zero-space like some big balloon of human tissue?>

<Of course. Where did you think all the mass went?>

I shuddered. <I really didn't think about it.>

Jake was no more thrilled than I was. <So right now there's a big bag of Jake floating in Zero-space? And it's possible some spaceship will zoom along and hit it and splatter it all over?>

<No, no, of course not,> Ax said.

I breathed a huge sigh of relief. Too soon, it turned out.

<Of course no ship would actually hit a floating mass,> Ax said, talking to us like we were nitwits. <The ship's shielding systems would disintegrate the mass. That's what troubles me about doing small morphs. It very seldom happens. The odds are millions to one. But it could happen.>




(This is also elaborated on in Book 21, Chapter 10...)

"This can't even be possible," David said. "I mean, a flea? Look how big we are! The flea is like . . . like a grain of sand."

<It is possible,> Ax said. <The extra mass is extruded into Zero-space. Our own minds and brains are pushed into Zero-space and maintain contact with the morph by means of a ->

"What is he talking about?" David asked.

Rachel shrugged. "We don't have any idea. But he's right: It works. So just relax with it."

"I'm going to become a flea and I should just relax. A flea!"