He twisted the mirror around as far as it would adjust, until it was aimed at a point a couple of meters below the capsule. For a moment, he stared with astonishment, and more than a twinge of fear. Then he called the mountain.
“I’ve got company,” he said. “I think this is in Professor Sessui’s department. There’s a ball of light—oh—about twenty centimeters across, running along the tape just below me. It’s keeping a constant distance, and I hope it stays there. But I must say it’s quite beautiful—a lovely bluish glow, flickering every few seconds. And I can hear it on the radio link.”
It was a full minute before Kingsley answered, in a reassuring tone of voice.
“Don’t worry. It’s only St. Elmo’s fire. We’ve had similar displays along the tape during thunderstorms. They can make your hair stand on end aboard the Mark I. But you won’t feel anything; you’re too well shielded.”
“I’d no idea it could happen at this altitude.”
“Neither did we. You’d better take it up with the Professor.”
“Oh—it’s fading out—getting bigger and fainter. Now it’s gone. I suppose the air’s too thin for it. . . . I’m sorry to see it go—”
“That’s only a curtain raiser,” said Kingsley. “Look what’s happening directly above you.”
A rectangular section of the star field flashed by as Morgan tilted the mirror toward the zenith. At first he could see nothing unusual so he switched off all the indicators on his control panel and waited in total darkness.
Slowly, his eyes adapted, and in the depths of the mirror a faint red glow began to burn, and spread, and consume the stars. It grew brighter and brighter and flowed beyond the limits of the mirror. Now he could see it directly, for it extended halfway down the sky. A cage of light, with flickering, moving bars, was descending upon the Earth. Seeing it, Morgan could understand how a man like Sessui could devote his life to unraveling its secrets.
On one of its rare visits to the equator, the aurora had come marching down from the poles.
47
Beyond
the Aurora
Morgan doubted if even Professor Sessui, five hundred kilometers above, had so spectacular a view. The storm was developing rapidly. Short-wave radio, still used for many nonessential services, would by now have been disrupted all over the world. Morgan was not sure if he heard, or felt, a faint rustling, like the whisper of falling sand or the crackle of dry twigs. Unlike the static of the fireball, it certainly did not come from the speaker system, because it was still there when he switched off the circuit.
Curtains of pale-green fire, edged with crimson, were being drawn across the sky, and shaken slowly back and forth as if by an invisible hand. They were trembling before the gusts of the solar wind, the million-kilometer-an-hour gale blowing from sun to Earth, and far beyond. Even above Mars, a feeble auroral ghost was flickering now; and sunward, the poisonous skies of Venus were ablaze.
Above the pleated curtains, long rays like the ribs of a half-opened fan were sweeping around the horizon. Sometimes they shone straight into Morgan’s eyes like the beams of a giant searchlight, leaving him dazzled for minutes. There was no need, any longer, to turn off the capsule illumination to prevent it from blinding him; the celestial fireworks outside were brilliant enough to read by.
Two hundred kilometers. Spider was climbing silently, effortlessly. It was hard to believe that he had left Earth exactly an hour ago. Hard even to believe that Earth still existed, for he was now rising between the walls of a canyon fire.
The illusion lasted only for seconds. Then the momentary unstable balance between magnetic fields and incoming electric clouds was destroyed. But for that brief instant, Morgan could truly believe that he was ascending out of a chasm that would dwarf even Valles Marineris, the Grand Canyon of Mars. Then the shining cliffs, at least a hundred kilometers high, became translucent and were pierced by stars. He could see them for what they really were—mere phantoms of fluorescence.
And now, like an airplane breaking through a ceiling of low-lying clouds, Spider was climbing above the display. Morgan was emerging from a fiery mist, which was twisting and turning beneath him. Many years ago he had been aboard a tourist liner cruising through the tropical night, and he remembered how he had joined the other passengers on the stern, entranced by the beauty and wonder of the bioluminescent wake. Some of the greens and blues flickering below him now matched the plankton-generated colors he had seen then, and he could easily imagine that he was again watching the by-products of life—the play of giant, invisible beasts, denizens of the upper atmosphere. . . .
He had almost forgotten his mission, and it was a distinct shock when he was recalled to duty.
“How’s power holding up?” Kingsley asked. “You’ve only another twenty minutes on that battery.”
Morgan glanced at his instrument panel.
“It’s dropped to ninety-five percent—but my rate of climb has increased by five percent. I’m doing two hundred ten klicks.”
“That’s about right. Spider’s feeling the lower gravity. It’s already down by ten percent at your altitude.”
That was not enough to be noticeable, particularly if one was strapped in a seat and wearing several kilos of spacesuit. Yet Morgan felt positively buoyant, and he wondered if he was getting too much oxygen.
No, the flow rate was normal. It must be the sheer exhilaration produced by that marvelous spectacle beneath him—though it was diminishing now, drawing back to north and south, as if retreating to its polar strongholds. That, and the satisfaction of a task well begun, using a technology that no man had ever before tested to such limits.
The explanation was perfectly reasonable, but he was not satisfied with it. It did not wholly account for his sense of happiness—even of joy. Kingsley, who was fond of diving, had often told him that he felt such an emotion in the weightless environment of the sea. Morgan had never shared it, but now he knew what it must be like. He seemed to have left all his cares down there on the planet hidden below the fading loops and traceries of the aurora.
The stars were coming back into their own, no longer challenged by the eerie intruder from the poles. Morgan began to search the zenith, not with any high expectations, wondering if the Tower was yet in sight. But he could make out only the first few meters, lit by the faint auroral glow, of the narrow ribbon up which Spider was swiftly and smoothly climbing.
That thin band upon which his own life, and the lives of seven others, now depended was so uniform and featureless that it gave no hint of the capsule’s speed. Morgan found it difficult to believe that it was flashing through the drive mechanism at more than two hundred kilometers an hour. And with that thought, he was suddenly back in his childhood, and knew the source of his contentment.
He had quickly recovered from the loss of that first kite, and had graduated to larger and more elaborate models. Next, just before he had discovered Meccamax and abandoned kites forever, he had experimented briefly with toy parachutes.
Morgan liked to think that he had invented the idea himself, though he might well have come across it somewhere in his reading or viewing. The technique was so simple that generations of boys must have rediscovered it.
First he had whittled a thin strip of wood about five centimeters long, and fastened a couple of paper clips to it. He had hooked these around the kite string, so that the little device could slide easily up and down.
He had next made a handkerchief-sized parachute of rice paper, with silk strings. A small square of cardboard served as payload. When he had fastened that square to the wooden strip by a rubber band—not too firmly—he was in business.
Blown by the wind, the little parachute would go sailing up the string, climbing the graceful catenary to the kite. Then Morgan would give a sharp tug, and the cardboard weight would slip out of the rubber band. The parachute would float away into the sky, while the wood-and-wire rider came swiftly back to his hand, in readiness for the next launch.
/> With what envy he had watched his flimsy creations drift effortlessly out to sea! Most of them fell into the water before they had traveled even one kilometer, but sometimes a little parachute would be bravely maintaining altitude when it vanished from sight. He liked to imagine that these lucky voyagers reached the enchanted islands of the Pacific; but though he had written his name and address on the cardboard squares, he never received any reply.
Morgan could not help smiling at these long-forgotten memories; yet they explained so much. The dreams of childhood had been far surpassed by the reality of adult life. He had earned the right to his contentment.
“Coming up to three eighty,” Kingsley said. “How is the power level?”
“Beginning to drop—down to eighty-five percent. The battery’s starting to fade.”
“Well, if it holds out for another twenty kilometers, it will have done its job. How do you feel?”
Morgan was tempted to answer with superlatives, but his natural caution dissuaded him.
“I’m fine,” he said. “If we could guarantee a display like this for all our passengers, we wouldn’t be able to handle the crowds.”
“Perhaps it could be arranged.” Kingsley laughed. “We could ask Monsoon Control to dump a few barrels of electrons in the right places. Not their usual line of business, but they’re good at improvising . . . aren’t they?”
Morgan chuckled, but did not answer. His eyes were fixed on the instrument panel, where both power and rate of climb were now visibly dropping. But this was no cause for alarm. Spider had reached three hundred eighty-five kilometers out of the expected four hundred, and the booster battery still had some life in it.
At three hundred ninety kilometers, Morgan started to cut back the rate of climb, until Spider crept more and more slowly upward. Finally, the capsule was barely moving, and it came to rest just short of four hundred five kilometers.
“I’m dropping the battery,” Morgan reported. “Mind your heads.”
A good deal of thought had been given to recovering that heavy and expensive battery, but there had been no time to improvise a braking system that would let it slide safely back, like one of Morgan’s kite riders. And though a parachute had been available, it was feared that the shrouds might become entangled with the tape. Fortunately, the impact area, just ten kilometers east of Earth Terminal, lay in dense jungle. The wildlife of Taprobane would have to take its chances, and Morgan was prepared to argue with the Department of Conservation later.
* * *
He turned the safety key and pressed the red button that fired the explosive charges. Spider shook briefly as they detonated. Then he switched to the internal battery, slowly released the friction brakes, and again fed power into the drive motors.
The capsule started to climb on the last lap of its journey. But one glance at the instrument panel told Morgan that something was seriously wrong. Spider should have been rising at over two hundred klicks; it was doing less than one hundred, even at full power.
No tests or calculations were necessary. Morgan’s diagnosis was instant, because the figures spoke for themselves. Sick with frustration, he reported back to Earth.
“We’re in trouble,” he said. “The charges blew—but the battery never dropped. Something’s holding it on.”
It was unnecessary to add that the mission must now be aborted. Everyone knew perfectly well that Spider could not possibly reach the base of the Tower carrying several hundred kilos of dead weight.
48
Night at the Villa
Ambassador Rajasinghe needed little sleep these nights; it was as if a benevolent Nature was granting him the maximum use of his remaining years. And at a time like this, when the Taprobanean skies were blazing with their greatest wonder for centuries, who could have stayed abed?
How he wished that Paul Sarath were here to share the spectacle! He missed his old friend more than he would have thought possible. There was no one who could annoy and stimulate him in the way that Paul had done—no one with the same bond of shared experience stretching back to boyhood.
Rajasinghe had never thought that he would outlive Paul, or would see the fantastic billion-ton stalactite of the Tower almost span the gulf between its orbital foundation and Taprobane, thirty-six thousand kilometers below. To the end, Paul had been utterly opposed to the project. He had called it a Sword of Damocles, and had never ceased to predict its eventual plunge to Earth. Yet even Paul had admitted that the Tower had already produced some benefits.
For perhaps the first time in history, the rest of the world actually knew that Taprobane existed, and was discovering its ancient culture. Yakkagala, with its brooding presence and its sinister legends, had attracted special attention. As a result, Paul had been able to get support for some of his cherished projects. The enigmatic personality of Yakkagala’s creator had already given rise to numerous books and video dramas, and the son-et-lumière display at the foot of the Rock was invariably sold out. Shortly before his death, Paul had remarked wryly that a minor Kalidasa industry was in the making, and it was becoming more and more difficult to distinguish fiction from reality.
Soon after midnight, when it was obvious that the auroral display had passed its climax, Rajasinghe had been carried back into his bedroom. As he always did when he had said good-night to his household staff, he relaxed with a glass of toddy and switched on the late news summary. The only item that really interested him was the progress that Morgan was making. By this time, he should be approaching the base of the Tower.
The news editor had already starred the latest development. A line of continuously flashing type announced:
MORGAN STUCK 200 KM SHORT OF GOAL
Rajasinghe’s finger tips requested the details, and he was relieved to find that his first fears were groundless. Morgan was not stuck; he was unable to complete the journey. He could return to earth whenever he wished. But if he did, Professor Sessui and his colleagues would certainly be doomed.
Directly above his head, the silent drama was being played out at this very moment. Rajasinghe switched from text to video, but there was nothing new. The item now being screened in the news recap was Maxine Duval’s ascent, years ago, in Spider’s precursor.
“I can do better than that,” muttered Rajasinghe, and switched to his beloved telescope.
For the first months after he had become bedridden, he had been unable to use it. Then Morgan had paid one of his brief courtesy calls, analyzed the situation, and swiftly prescribed the remedy. A week later, to Rajasinghe’s surprise and pleasure, a small team of technicians had arrived at the Villa Yakkagala, and had modified the instrument for remote operation. Now he could lie comfortably in bed, and still explore the starry skies and the looming face of the Rock. He was deeply grateful to Morgan for the gesture, which had shown a side of the engineer’s personality he had not suspected.
He was not sure what he could see, in the darkness of the night, but he knew exactly where to look, since he had long been watching the slow descent of the Tower. When the sun was at the correct angle, he could even glimpse the four guiding tapes converging into the zenith, a quartet of shining hairlines scratched upon the sky.
He set the azimuth bearing on the telescope control and swung the instrument around until it pointed above Sri Kanda. As he began to track slowly upward, looking for any sign of the capsule, he wondered what Bodhidharma was thinking about this latest development.
Though Rajasinghe had not spoken to the Mahanayake, now well into his nineties, since the order had moved to Lhasa, he gathered that the Potala had not provided the hoped-for accommodation. The huge palace was slowly falling into decay while the Dalai Lama’s executors haggled with the Chinese federal government over the cost of maintenance. According to Rajasinghe’s latest information, the Mahanayake Thero was now negotiating with the Vatican—also in chronic financial difficulties, but at least still master of its own house.
All things were indeed impermanent, and it was not easy
to discern any cyclic pattern. Perhaps the mathematical genius of Parakarma-Goldberg might be able to do so. The last time Rajasinghe had seen him, he was receiving a major scientific award for his contributions to meteorology. Rajasinghe would never have recognized him; he was clean-shaven and wearing a suit cut in the latest neo-Napoleonic fashion. But now, it seemed, he had switched religions again. . . .
The stars slid slowly down the big monitor screen at the end of the bed as the telescope tilted up toward the Tower. But there was no sign of the capsule, though Rajasinghe was sure that it must now be in the field of view.
He was about to switch back to the regular news channel when, like an erupting nova, a star flashed out near the lower edge of the picture. Rajasinghe wondered if the capsule had exploded, but then he saw that it was shining with a perfectly steady light. He centered the image and zoomed to maximum power.
Long ago, he had seen a two-century-old video documentary of the first aerial wars, and he remembered a sequence showing a night attack upon London. An enemy bomber had been caught in a cone of searchlights, and had hung like an incandescent mote in the sky. He was seeing the same phenomenon now, on a hundredfold greater scale; but this time, all the resources on the ground were combined to help, not to destroy, the determined invader of the night.
49
A Bumpy Ride
Warren Kingsley’s voice had regained its control. Now it was merely dull and despairing.
“We’re trying to stop that mechanic from shooting himself,” he said. “But it’s hard to blame him. He was interrupted by another rush job on the capsule, and simply forgot to remove the safety strap.”
So, as usual, it was human error. While the explosive links were being attached, the battery had been held in place by two metal bands. And only one of them had been removed.