The Web Between the Worlds

Charles Sheffield
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.


Copyright (c) 1979 by Charles Sheffield.

Revised edition copyright (c) 2001 by Charles Sheffield.


All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.


A Baen Book


Baen Publishing Enterprises

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ISBN: 0-671-31973-6


Cover art by Bob Eggleton


First revised printing, February 2001




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Printed in the United States of America



To Ann and Brock

Baen Books by Charles Sheffield

The Spheres of Heaven

The Mind Pool

My Brother's Keeper

The Compleat McAndrew

Convergent Series

Transvergence

Proteus in the Underworld

borderlands of Science

The Web Between the Worlds


An open letter to the Bulletin of the Science Fiction Writers of America
 

Early in 1979 I published a novel,The Fountains of Paradise , in which an engineer named Morgan, builder of the longest bridge in the world, tackles a far more ambitious project—an "orbital tower" extending from a point on the equator to geostationary orbit. Its purpose: to replace the noisy, polluting and energy-wasteful rocket by a far more efficient electric elevator system. The construction material is a crystalline carbon filter, and a key device in the plot is a machine named "Spider."

A few months later another novel appeared in which an engineer named Merlin, builder of the longest bridge in the world, tackles a far more ambitious project—an "orbital tower," etc. etc. The construction material is a crystalline silicon fiber, and a key device in the plot is a machine named "Spider" . . .

A clear case of plagiarism? No—merely an idea whose time has come. And I'm astonished that it hasn't come sooner.

The concept of the "space elevator" was first published in the West in 1966 by John Isaacs and his team at La Jolla. They were greatly surprised to discover that a Leningrad engineer, Yuri Artsutanov, had anticipated them in 1960; his name for the device was a "cosmic funicular." There have since been at least three other independent "inventions" of the idea.

I first mentioned it in a speech to the American Institute of Architects in May 1967 (see "Technology and the Future" inReport on Planet Three ) and more recently (July 1975) in an address to the House of Representatives Space Committee (seeThe View From Serendip ). However, although I had been thinking aboutThe Fountains of Paradise for almost two decades, it was not until a very few years ago that I decided to use the orbital tower as its theme. One reason for my reluctance was, I suspect, an unconscious fear that,surely , some science-fiction writer would soon latch on to such a gorgeous idea. Then I decided that I simply had to use it—even if Larry Niven came out first . . .

Well, Charles Sheffield (currently President of the American Astronautical Association and V/P of the Earth Satellite Corporation) only missed by a few months with his Ace novelThe Web Between the Worlds . (Incidentally, that would have been a good title for Brian Aldiss' marvellous fantasyHothouse , [a.k.a.The Long Afternoon of Earth ] which hadspiderwebs linking Earth and Moon!) I am much indebted to Dr. Sheffield for sending me the ms. of his novel; and if you want another coincidence, I had just started reading hisfirst novel,Sight of Proteus (Ace), when the second one arrived . . .

Anyone reading our two books will quickly see that the parallels were dictated by the fundamental mechanics of the subject—though in one major respect we evolved totally different solutions. Dr. Sheffield's method of anchoring his "Beanstalk" is hair-raising, and I don't believe it would work. I'm damn sure it wouldn't be permitted!

I'm writing this letter to put the record straight, and to divert any possible charges from Dr. Sheffield. But I'd also like to satisfy my own curiosity.

It still seems inconceivable to me that, in the eighteen years since it's been circulating, no one has used this idea in fiction—especially now that it is being taken more and more seriously innon -fiction, with a rapidly expanding literature. (I expect to give a survey paper on the subject at the annual International Astronautical Federation Congress, Munich, 20 September 1979). I no longer—alas—have the time to read the S.F. magazines, or more than even a tenth of thegood books published. So I'd appreciate any information on this point, beforeI get charged with plagiarism.

As for the rest of you—go right ahead. Charles Sheffield and I have just scratched the surface. The Space Elevator (and its various offspring, some even more fantastic) may be the great engineering achievement of the Twenty-first century, making travel round the solar system no more expensive than any other form of transportation.

 

Arthur C. Clarke

17 January 1979

 


Introduction to This Edition
The idea of a space elevator, a load-bearing cable that extends from the surface of the earth to high orbit and beyond, is an old one. It was first suggested by Tsiolkovsky in 1895, as a passing comment and with no analysis of the idea. Sixty-five years later, in 1960, the concept was rediscovered and explored in more detail by another Russian, Artsutanov. His work in turn remained unknown in the West until 1966, when the idea was rediscovered by Isaacs, Vine, Bradner, and Bachus. Since then it has been "discovered" at least three more times.

However, the notion of the space elevator, also known as a skyhook, a heavenly funicular, an anchored satellite, an orbital tower, and my own favorite name, a beanstalk, was still new to science fiction in 1978. When I sent a short story about beanstalks, "Skystalk," to the science fiction magazines, the response was not encouraging. The editor ofAsimov 's magazine, George Scithers, in an unusually frank rejection slip, said, "Neither I nor anyone on my staff understands this story." The editor ofAnalog magazine, Stan Schmidt, was more encouraging, asking, "Is the idea in this story really feasible?" But he still rejected it. And when it was finally bought by Jim Baen, in December, 1978, for publication inDestinies magazine, he suggested that I write an accompanying article, explaining the dynamics and physics behind what might otherwise seem an outrageous idea.

All this made me feel somewhat insecure. At the time I was busy writing a whole novel centered on beanstalks. Suppose that the readers and reviewers rejected the whole thing as scientifically impossible?

And then, in the fall of 1978, I heard from Fred Durant. He was and is a friend of mine, and Arthur Clarke's oldest friend in the United States. Fred lived just a couple of miles away from me, and he spoke with Clarke frequently by telephone. Arthur, he told me, was finishing a new novel—a novel in which a space elevator was a main element.

I won't say I was pleased. Nervous is a better word. I had never met Arthur Clarke, but at Fred Durant's suggestion, not to say insistence, I took my completed manuscript and sent a copy to Clarke in Sri Lanka. I had no idea what to expect; what I certainly didn't expect was what came: first, a very friendly letter from Arthur Clarke, and, soon after, an open letter from him to the Science Fiction Writers of America, stating that coincidence, not plagiarism, lay behind the fact that two books were to be published in 1979 with strikingly similar themes. Not just the space elevator, but each book had as main character the world's leading bridge-builder; each one employed a device known as a Spider.

The fear that the idea would be mocked disappeared. All that was left were questions that remain to this day. If Clarke had not published hisThe Fountains of Paradise , how would myThe Web Between the Worlds have been received? Would my book have been hailed, as the source of a big idea new to science fiction? Or would it have suffered instant obscurity, as a piece of science fantasy?

I'll never know.

 

 


PROLOGUE Goblin Night
The voice began again in her ear as she hurried into the airport. It was the merest thread of sound, carrying through the implanted receiver.

"I hope you're on the plane by now, Julia. It looks as though it was the right decision. I'm still here in the lab, but all the exits are covered. I still can't get any messages out over the standard com-links. I'm going to see if I can signal Morrison, over in Building Two. Keep going, and take care."

Gregor's voice ceased in her ears as she entered the main Christchurch terminal and looked about her. It was almost two A.M. There were few flights out at this hour, and few people around. That might be both good and bad. She ought to be able to spot anyone seeking her, but perhaps no one would be there to save her and her burden from harm. She walked cautiously over to the ticket desk and looked at the departure display board. One flight was listed in the next hour. It was the one she wanted—and it was running on time. She went slowly up to the counter, where one tired young clerk was on duty.

He yawned at her. "Yes, ma'am?"

"Do you have a reservation for Merlin, Julia Merlin?"

Had she and Gregor made a mistake, booking the flight under her real name? She glanced around. The terminal was empty, except for two young men stretched out asleep on the long couch by the far wall.

"Right here." The clerk keyed in her confirmation for the flight. "Flight 157, transpolar to Capetown. Pre-paid ticket for one." He looked at her swelling belly and smiled. "I guess that's really for two, right?"

She nodded and forced an answering smile. "One more month. Don't ever believe anybody who tells you a pregnancy is nine months. It feels like five times that."

He was nodding, not listening closely. "You'll be boarding in about twenty minutes. Flight time will be three and a half hours." He looked apologetic. "It's not the fastest equipment on this run, less than Mach Three all the way. People who fly in the middle of the night don't seem to be in much of a hurry, I guess. There'll only be about fifty of you on this one—at least you'll be able to stretch out, maybe take a nap. Now, what about luggage? Checking both of them?"

"No." Her reply had been too fast, too urgent. "I'll check the case, but I need to keep this box with me." She was clutching it hard against her chest, unable to prevent her reaction.

"All right." He looked it over with an experienced eye. "I don't think you'll quite get it under the seat. That's all right, though, you'll have lots of spare room fore and aft." He glanced at the display of her reservation, checking it for dates. "I see your ticket was paid by the Antigeria Labs. You're with them, are you?"

A mistake. If their fears were real, she and Gregor should never have used the lab's name in booking the ticket.

"Yes." She swallowed. "My husband is the Director."

She hesitated, wondering whether to add more, but he was nodding absently. It must just be a bored midnight conversation to him. Surely he had no real interest in an unkempt, eight-months-pregnant woman? She picked up her ticket and turned to leave.

"Just a second, Mrs. Merlin."

She froze, as the clerk's voice rang out behind her. She turned slowly. He was smiling and holding out a yellow square of paper. "You're forgetting your boarding pass."

She took it from him without speaking and walked on slowly to the gate. As she passed the security checks, Gregor's voice began again in her ear.

"Julia. Julia, I don't know if you can still hear me, but it's worse than we thought. I got through to Morrison in Building Two, and he completed the first test on the other Goblin. He agrees with your analysis, there's conclusive evidence of induced progeria. We were only two minutes on the video, then the link failed at his end."

His voice was thin and reedy through the tiny implant, but she could hear the tension. "I'm standing at the window now," he went on. "There's a fire across in Building Two and the exits are being watched here. I don't see any way of getting out. You have to get the other Goblin over to the Carlsberg Lab, and let McGill take a look at it."

She clutched the oblong box closer. Inside her, the unborn child stirred restlessly, responding to the adrenaline that was running in her bloodstream.

"I'm going to try and get out of here," continued Gregor's voice. "I'll take the transmitter with me, but it doesn't have enough range to reach you once you get a few miles out of the airport. According to our schedule, you should be about ready for takeoff. I wish there was some way you could send to me. Look, tell McGill a couple of other things. The Goblin that Morrison was working on died the same way as the one you have with you. Vacuum exposure. That suggests they both died in the same place—in a non-pressurized plane compartment. Morrison came up with an age estimate, twelve months or so. Body mass was five and a half kilos. Length a little under half a meter, about the same as the one you have with you. I hope you're somewhere where you can hear all this. We still have no idea how they got to the lab, but I'm sure now that they only died a couple of days ago."

Julia Merlin was through the boarding lounge now and walking along the connecting tunnel to the aircraft. She was vaguely aware of the steward smiling at her and gesturing towards the box she carried. She shook her head, walked heavily back to her seat and sat down in it. Gregor's voice had ceased in her ears. She leaned forward and tried to push the oblong box under the seat, but it would not fit. Leaning far forward was a great effort. She straightened up, gasping at the sudden jab of pain.

"It won't go there, ma'am," said the steward. He was standing beside her, holding out his hand. "Here, let me stow it in the rear, where there's room. No need for you to come with me," he added, as she began to rise from her seat. "Look, see that space in the back? I'll just tuck it in there."

He lifted the box lightly from her hands and carried it aft. She strained round in her seat, watching until it was safely placed in position. Gregor was speaking through the implant again, but his voice was almost unintelligible through the interference.

" . . . get to the lower floor . . . standing next to the street light . . . again . . ."

His final words were lost in the increasing noise of the engines. The aircraft, wide-bodied and squat, began to move along the runway. There was a sudden acceleration that pressed her back hard into the seat. They left the ground rapidly and began to climb at an angle of about thirty degrees, powering up to the cruising altitude of ninety thousand feet and a cruising speed above Mach Two.

Julia lay back in her seat, exhausted. She could not relax, but sheer physical and mental strain were taking their toll. She sat there, silent, as the liner reached its assigned altitude and set a great circle route for Capetown. The pain that she had felt when she stretched forward in her seat had not gone away. It was a dull, sullen ache in her belly, rising from time to time to a fierce cramp. But she had escaped. Whatever it was that Gregor feared so much could not reach her now.

An hour into the flight they were approaching Commonwealth Bay, on the shore of Antarctica. The pilot's voice had just come over the passenger address system, pointing out that they were about to fly over the South Magnetic Pole. The violent explosion in the cargo hold at the extreme rear of the craft obliterated his words.

The on-board computer did its best. Milliseconds after the internal pressure dropped below a quarter of an atmosphere, radio signals were sent to the Search and Rescue satellites that monitored the Earth constantly from low polar orbit. At the same time, the computer assessed the damage to the structure of the aircraft and decided that it was not possible to make a powered descent. The planted bomb in the cargo hold had destroyed the rear assembly completely. Three passengers sitting in the rear had been sucked out of the ship by the aerodynamic pressure. With them had gone Julia Merlin's oblong box with the body of the Goblin packed inside it. Passengers and box dropped together towards the dark wastes of the Antarctic Ocean.

The computer took the seating plan of the remaining passengers, computed total maximum survival probability for the group, and slid the rear set of emergency doors out of the fuselage walls and across the width of the cabin. Three crew members were trapped aft of the seal.

Oxygen was released into the forward part of the cabin from the emergency supply. The tough plastic of the emergency doors bellied under the pressure, but it held easily. Four seconds after the explosion, the atmosphere was again able to support life. While the surviving passengers gulped in oxygen and held their ears against the agony of the sudden pressure changes, the computer began Stage Two.

The rear control surfaces were gone. The computer switched off all flight power, jettisoned the self-contained nuclear reactor unit a fraction of a second before the captain could do it, and flashed an estimated landing location to the Search and Rescue System.

The rear braking chute had gone, too. Computed impact speed, even with the deployment of the forward chute, would still be too high. The computer trimmed all surfaces to minimize descent speed. It prepared to deploy the forward chute, and positioned the air-bags to release the instant before ground impact. The craft would hit inland, seven thousand feet above sea level on the polar ice cap. The Search and Rescue Satellite also computed a trajectory and sent back a confirmation of the estimated arrival point. Messages had already gone out to the nearest ground-based Search and Rescue teams, telling them the number of passengers and crew, their ages and physical condition.

There had been no time to think. Julia Merlin and the other passengers lay helplessly back in their seats while the aircraft dropped like a stone through the long day of an Antarctic November. The fall from ninety thousand feet with chute deployed took six minutes; long enough to breathe again, to despair, and finally to hope.

They almost made it. If the impact had been into soft new snow, instead of old and hard-packed ice, the hull would have remained intact. Instead, it split along its length, spilling some of the passengers and fixtures outside onto the hard ice. The air bags absorbed most of the momentum, so the more fortunate passengers found themselves lying dazed but unharmed inside the ruined hull as it slipped and scraped to a halt down the steep ice-slope.

Julia Merlin was one of the unlucky ones. The portion of the craft where she sat was squeezed vertically as the right wing collapsed and the vessel rolled hard over to the right. A metal brace from the cabin roof above her moved down hard, caught her square on the forehead, and thrust her out of her seat through the gaping side of the hull. The plane skidded on. Julia's body slithered to a halt almost a quarter of a mile short of the place where the ruin of the aircraft stopped its downward career.

Partially shielded by the remains of the air-bag, her body lay supine and bleeding on the ice. The frontal and parietal lobes of her brain had been crushed to a grey and oozing pulp by the impact of the hardened aluminum brace. Her clothing had been ripped from her as she was ejected from the cabin. But she was not dead. The most ancient part of her brain still functioned. Somehow, the process that had begun when she first entered the aircraft continued its work. In the bleak light of the Midnight Sun, the ageless rhythm of parturition quickened in Julia Merlin's unconscious body.

Soon the head was born, thrusting naked into the light of the long day. For a highland area of the ice cap, the weather might be regarded as mild. The new-born was emerging into an atmosphere that held thirty degrees of frost, with a stiff breeze to carry the effective temperature twenty degrees lower. Julia Merlin's thighs provided a partial shield, no more.

The Search and Rescue Team had left Porpoise Bay just minutes after the emergency call was received there. They made excellent time flying over to the wreck and they spotted it at once. The first few minutes were spent caring for the passengers who were still inside the hull, then the team fanned out rapidly across the ice, looking for other survivors.

They came to Julia Merlin's body last of all. Even so, they were almost in time.

 

CHAPTER 1: "Praise, my soul, the King of Heaven, to His feet thy tribute bring."
The morning sun, moving slowly higher, cast a broad swath of light around the south-east face of K-2. The bright shaft crept along the steep walls of ice and overhanging rock, up to the tiny figure that hung cocoon-like against the rock face. When the light reached his face mask he stirred in his sleeping bag, fumbling for the dark goggles that would protect his eyes against the fierce ultra-violet. After a couple of minutes he pushed his head out of the bag and looked around him. The weather was holding, with no clouds and with tolerable winds. He glanced up. The summit was invisible past the overhang, but it must be less than two thousand feet above him, standing solitary against the blue-black sky.

Rob Merlin pulled his head back into the shelter of the bag and began his slow, methodical preparation for the day's work, the same procedure that had begun each of the last eleven days. His mind was awake. Now he had to waken his hands. That took fifteen minutes of steady rhythmic exercise, joint by joint and digit by digit, until he was finally satisfied with the coordination. Twenty minutes later he was slipping the clamps loose that held his climbing suit tight to the rock, tucking them into the pack, and beginning a careful ascent. At this height, the appearance of the rock surface was deceptive. Each hand-hold must be carefully tested, each piton placed and checked before any new movement could be made. He had studied the preferred ascent route for so long that the choice of direction and movement had passed below the level of his conscious thoughts. That was dangerous. No amount of prior study could tell of crumbling rocks and moving ice cover. As needed, he made the minor changes to his path, crabbing right and left but always ascending.

By noon he had reached the last, gently-sloping ice field that led to the final summit. He paused there, looking about him at the Karakorum Range. In the clear, thin air, he could see well over a hundred miles. The snow-capped peaks marched endlessly away from him, swelling towards the south-east where Everest stood more than seven hundred miles distant. With his eyes fixed on the jagged peaks he slid down his face mask, loosened the oxygen tube that led from his backpack to the corner of his mouth, and began to eat a cold meal of dry concentrates.

 

To the south, hovering high in the eye of the noonday sun, a small aircraft hung suspended. It would have been invisible to Rob Merlin, even if he had found reason to squint towards the blinding disc—his photo-sensitive goggles would have darkened too much to see anything but the sun itself. The pilot had placed the craft on automatic control while she fine-tuned the electronic magnifier of the telescope. As she corrected the setting, the figure of Rob Merlin, ant-like in the view-finder, sprang suddenly into sharp focus on the display screen. He was crouched forward, leaning to balance the weight of his backpack. Under the thermal clothing his body appeared stocky and powerfully built, with heavy shoulders and a broad back. The woman watched him in silence as he ate the simple meal.

"He's on the final approach," she said at last. "The last piece is no problem, that's why he stopped to eat here. I don't think he'll stay long at the top. He'll want good light to start the descent, especially that chimney about six hundred meters down. Do you want me to keep the viewer on him?"

There was a pause of several seconds. The voice that finally came from the speaker was rough and gravelly, as though the vocal cords were scarred and roughened.

"Keep it on him. I've got Caliban hooked into the circuit. He needs everything, audio and visual. Can you push the gain higher? I want to get a better look at the face."

The woman nodded. She turned a control and the display zoomed in on Rob Merlin's head and shoulders. There was a grunt from the wall speaker.

"I see what you mean. He does look smooth. I wish I could see his eyes."

"Not at this altitude. There's so much UV around, he'll keep the goggles on all the time. But I can tell you what his eyes look like. They're the same as his face—like a blank canvas, waiting for somebody to paint the picture on it."

"That's poetic, but it doesn't carry precision." The voice chuckled, a rough grating sound. "I suppose I can wait until he gets back below twenty thousand before I try my own description. You can back off from high gain now."

The woman nodded. She made two economical movements and the image on the screen returned to a more distant view of Rob Merlin. "I'll keep it like that for Caliban. Any new ideas on how I ought to contact Merlin?"

"No. That's your department, not mine. Do it as soon as you can, though. I need to get back to base, and I don't want to hang around here any longer than I have to."

The woman shook her fringe of chestnut hair away from her eyes and peered again into the view-finder. "I'll get to him as soon as I can, but it may be a while yet. I'd have had a plausible reason to contact him if he'd got into difficulties on the way up, and I can use the same reason if he has problems on the way down. Otherwise, I'm sure he'll want to do the hard parts himself. If things go smoothly you shouldn't expect us for another three days."

"Three days!" The gruff voice was impatient. "Why so long? He's at the top, isn't he, that's all he wanted?"

"He is." The woman sounded amused. "And he'll want to get down in his own way. If I try and contact him now, chances are he'll tell me to get lost. That's my opinion—check it with Caliban, if you don't believe it."

"I did." The voice held grudging agreement. "We couldn't make any sense of his outputs. I'll ask Joseph to try him again, but I doubt if we'll get anything new."

While they were talking, Rob Merlin stood up, adjusted his face mask, and began to make his way to the final summit of K-2. When he reached it he remained there for only a couple of minutes, a tiny figure standing on top of the world. As he turned to begin the laborious descent his total attention was on the sloping ice walls and crevasses below him. They dipped and folded in dizzying complexity, all the way to his planned resting point four thousand feet further down. Full attention was crucial. At this height and pressure the blackened ice would sublime in the sunshine before it would melt—unless it had the force of his weight above it. With that weight, each footstep became perilous.

He never looked back up the mountain, or glanced towards the sun and the silver speck that was hidden in its bright glare. Ascent was the exciting part. Arrival at the summit never matched prior expectations; and descent, as always, would be the most dangerous.

 

At eighteen thousand feet there came a subtle but significant change in the surroundings. He was still well above the top of the vegetation line, but now the surface of the mountain was rougher and more broken. He could even see choices in the paths that lay ahead of him, replacing the insignificant options that faced the climber above twenty thousand feet. Rob paused to disconnect the oxygen booster and loosened his face mask. He moved slowly down, trying to think of the path ahead instead of the luxury of hot food and hot baths that still lay days in the future.

The noise of the aircraft had been muffled by his ear-pieces. He noticed it only when it came into view a hundred meters ahead of him, descending towards the surface of the slope and hovering there on its air columns. It was a two-passenger model, and an expensive one. As it drifted smoothly towards him, Rob could see the pilot, calmly aligning the exit port with a level patch of scree. He stood and waited as she switched to automatic pilot, opened the port, and stepped out onto the rocky surface twenty meters in front of him.

"Want a ride for the rest of the way? You've finished all the hard part." She was dressed in a quilted snow-suit, with head and forearms bare. Her face was thin and brown, with lively eyes and a full, humorous mouth above a strong chin. Her manner was familiar, but Rob was fairly sure they had never met. He would have remembered that dark complexion and the surprise of those pale, animated eyes.

He looked at her for a moment, thinking suddenly of the delights of a long, lazy soak in steaming water and of his own grimy condition. It was a tempting offer—and she was right, the hard part was all behind him. After a few seconds he shook his head.

"I've taken it this far, I'll finish it myself. Anyway, my gear is all down at Suget Jangal."

"That's on my way. You can get a hot bath there, too." She seemed to be reading his mind—unless she could smell him from four paces.

"I imagine that you need one," she went on. "Eleven days on the mountain is a long time."

"Too long." He looked at her curiously. "You checked my departure down at Suget?"

"Yes. And I've had my eye on you for the past few days." She showed no embarrassment at intruding on what he had thought to be his privacy. He looked at her more closely. She was short, not much above five feet, and slightly built. She didn't look older than twenty, but her manner was completely confident. He shrugged his backpack to an easier position, rubbed at his eleven-day growth of beard, and looked at the waiting aircraft.

"And I had the innocent idea that I was alone up here. So much for privacy. Why couldn't you have waited for me at Suget Jangal? I'll be there anyway, three days from now."

"Sure—and you'll be surrounded by twenty people. That's why I didn't hang around there waiting for you to get back. Did you know that there are four business groups in your hotel waiting for the return of Rob Merlin? You slipped out before they could contact you after the end of your last contract. Now they want to try and get in early to make bids for you on the next one."

"I'm not surprised. They were after me even before I finished. That's why I ran for it and tried to get a little time to myself. I guess I was too easy to track." Rob frowned. The lines added to his smooth forehead suddenly made him look a lot older. "And you're just another one of them, I suppose—but you wanted to get in first even more than they did. Well, it's still no. I'm going to finish the climb. You should have done your homework better. If you had, you'd know that I won't deal with intermediaries—and you'd know that I don't like pressure from anybody to set up contracts before I'm ready."

Her expression didn't alter. She looked around her at the peaks of the Karakorum Range, then back to Rob.

"I know all that." Her mouth quirked. "Give me credit for some brains. I admit that I came here to talk business, but there are special circumstances. First, take my word for it that we're not interested in outbidding anybody for your talents. We don't want to build a bridge at all—at least, not one of the usual sort. Second, this couldn't be handled without an intermediary." She was watching Rob's expressions closely. "The man I work for isn't here because he can't be. He would never survive a trip down to the surface of the Earth. Darius Regulo is sick, has been sick for more than forty years."

"Regulo!" Rob showed his first real sign of interest. "Are you telling me that you work for Darius Regulo?"

"I do. The King of Heaven himself—and he wants to see you."

Rob stared again at the aircraft. "He told you to tell me all this?"

"No." She shook her head, and the chestnut hair swirled about it. "You don't know Regulo. He would never give an order like that. It's not his style. `Go on down there,' he said. `Stop that young fool killing himself on the mountain and bring him up here to talk to me.' That's all the instructions he gave me. He'll never tell you how to do a job, he says that's what he pays people for. Results are the thing he cares about." She noticed the way that Rob was eyeing the aircraft. "You're an engineer—he's a man you ought to know."

Rob glanced down at the path ahead, then at the woman. "No fooling me, now. If I go with you we'll head straight off to meet Regulo?"

"That's what I'm saying."

"Right." Rob walked over to the craft and slung his pack into the back of it. "I don't know how you knew it, but that's a strong lure to me."

She was smiling to herself as they climbed together into the aircar, she at the controls and Rob behind her next to the camera assembly. He eyed that curiously, then looked at the TV screen on the opposite wall of the cabin.

"I see what you mean about keeping your eye on me. Did you have that high-gain scope trained on me when I was climbing?"

She nodded without looking around. "It gives a good picture."

Rob snorted. "Too right it gives a good picture. I guess I don't have many secrets from you."

"I might argue with that. You have a reputation,"

"Look, I'm here. You hooked me with Regulo's name. But who are you, and what's his interest in me?"

"I'm Cornelia Plessey. Don't feel bad that I was watching you. I was told to be ready to help if you got into trouble on K-2, and I couldn't do that if I didn't look."

She keyed in a course assignment and set the autopilot, then swivelled in her chair to face Rob. She was smiling. He peered at her face closely, looking for the faint scars that signalled rejuvenation. There was no sign of them. Was she really as young as she looked? It didn't seem consistent with her ease of manner.

"I'm twenty-six years old," she said, interpreting his look. "Don't worry, though, I have all the authority I need. We can talk money, if that's a big factor with you. Regulo leaves it to me to tempt you with wealth, my body, my brains, or anything that works. All I should really tell you is that Regulo wants to talk with you about a project that will make all the other projects you've ever done look like games with children's blocks. When you hear about it, money won't seem relevant."

Rob raised his eyebrows. They were dark and bushy, concealing deep-set eyes. "And I suppose—just by coincidence—it will turn out that this project of his will need the use of the Spider?"

"It will need you toimprove the Spider, speed it up by a factor of twenty. I don't know the details, but I'm quoting Regulo on that."

"Sweet Christ!" Rob rubbed again at his beard and sniffed. "Do you realize how fast the Spider is now? I don't know anything about Regulo apart from his reputation as a super-engineer, but on this one the old fellow doesn't know what he's talking about. Look, Cornelia—"

"Corrie."

"All right, Corrie. I'm intrigued, the way you expected me to be. But I'll have to know a lot more about Regulo before I decide anything. I'm sure you checked out my background, and you know I don't have experience in off-Earth construction work. Now, the one thing I do know about Regulo is that he never does work down here on Earth. He's the `Rocket King' for moving materials all over the Solar System. So why would he be interested in me?"

"You've been listening to the news outlets, and they don't know what they're talking about." It was her turn to sniff. "Regulohates rockets. You'll learn that in your first meeting with him. I just wish you could get all your information from him at first hand." She was thoughtful for a moment, then leaned forward in her seat. Her skin was clear and unlined, a dark even tan underlain with a smooth ivory. "Look, most people couldn't get to see Regulo if they tried for a year. He's a very private person and he's forced to live off-Earth, in low gravity. He doesn't bother with publicity, doesn't even bother to correct the nonsense that's put out about him. But one rumor you'll hear is true: Regulo keeps a two percent carried interest in everything that's shipped in the System—including material to and from Earth orbit. If it were a question of money, Regulo could outbid everyone else in the System. If that's a worry of yours, then forget it. But if you look formore than money in a project—and I think you do—then you ought to come and see Regulo. I'll give you my personal word that you'll be fascinated by what he is proposing."

Rob had been watching her closely as she talked, evaluating her manner more than her words. He nodded and peered forward through the front screen. "I'll risk a day or two. We'll be at Suget Jangal in twenty minutes. I want a hot bath and a hot meal, then I'll be ready to go with you. Where is Regulo now?"

"He's waiting in temporary space quarters, in geostationary orbit above Entebbe. We'll have to get there in two jumps. From here to Nairobi in this ship, that will take about three hours, then it's a Tug from there to geosynch. How soon can you be ready to leave? Don't forget that you'll have to find a way to avoid the other groups back at the hotel."

"I'm experienced at doing that." Rob shrugged. "They can't make me talk to them. But won't it take a while to see when the next Tug is scheduled? It might be anything up to twenty-four hours from now. Is there any point in rushing over there if we have to wait around at Nairobi?"

Cornelia Plessey had returned to the controls and was preparing for a landing on the primitive airfield at Suget Jangal. It was little more than a long cleared patch of flat rock. She turned back to Rob for a moment, an amused look in her pale blue eyes.

"You'll have to get used to the idea that things are different if you work for Darius Regulo. I doubt if there is a Tug scheduled for departure in less than twelve hours. There will be by the time that we get over there. How long before you can be back at the plane here?"

"Give me an hour." Rob began to climb out as the craft halted in a ground hover. Then he turned and hesitated in the doorway. "I'll leave my pack in here to save time. Just as a matter of curiosity, what would you have done if your argument hadn't worked? Suppose I had told you to go and get lost when you tried to persuade me to go up and see Regulo?"

Corrie smiled. "I'd have tried another approach, what else? It's something that Regulo taught me. When you get up there, take a look at the top of his desk. You'll see little signs built into the top of it. One of them says: `There are nine-and-sixty ways of constructing tribal lays, and every single one of them is right.' I looked at that sign for years and years, with no idea what it meant—and then finally I understood why he had it there. Now, I keep on trying, one method after another, until I get one that works."

Years and years.

Rob looked puzzled. He seemed about to ask another question, then changed his mind and climbed out of the plane. As he walked across the rocky surface of the landing strip toward the small town, Corrie stared into the camera mounted on the wall of the ship. "Still there, Regulo?"

"Yes." There was a pause before the gravelly voice spoke again. "Well done, Cornelia. I have already sent a message to have a Tug ready for you at Nairobi in five hours."

"We'll be there. Any other instructions?"

"None. One question, though. I was watching Merlin closely just before he left you. Something seemed to have him worried for a moment, or surprised. I wasn't watching what you were doing, but I wondered if you had done something we didn't catch over the cameras."

"I didn't notice any odd reaction from him." She was pensive for a moment, then shook her head. "I don't recall doing anything peculiar or out of place."

"Keep thinking about it." The voice was reflective. "He's a very sharp young man. Be careful what you say to him. And I see what you meant about his eyes. He's twenty-seven, but his eyes could be those of a six-year-old. You know, Caliban says we shouldn't consider using Merlin at all—at least, we think he says that. You know how hard it is to interpret anything that he transmits to us."

"So why am I here?"

"I have decided to over-ride Caliban's input in this case, despite Joseph's objections to such an action. But we will have to deal with Merlin very carefully. Remember that when you talk to him. I'll be waiting for you here, eight hours from now."

 

 

CHAPTER 2: A Look at Jacob's Ladder
From a distance there was no way of judging the size of Regulo's space station. Corrie had told Rob that it was no more than a temporary home, where Regulo was waiting for his meeting with them. That suggested a small structure. It was only when they were near enough to see the entry lock and use it to provide a sense of scale that Rob realized again that Regulo thought big. The whole cylindrical assembly must be more than a hundred meters long, and at least fifty across.

"He doesn't believe in stinting himself," he said to Corrie, as they sat side-by-side in the passenger section of the Tug.

"Why should he? But this is nothing, just a home for a few days. His real base is about a million kilometers from here at the moment. He's itching to get back there. I told you, Regulo put himself to a lot of trouble to meet with you. His first idea was that I should bring you to home base, but after I'd talked to him for a while he agreed that was too much to expect without some real incentive."

As she spoke, the Tug was drifting gently in for a docking with the central lock of the cylindrical station, adjusting position and velocity with tiny bursts of the control jets. When they finally docked there was no bump, just a smooth and brief acceleration as the ship achieved final position and was coupled electromagnetically to the central station cavity. The electronic checks were completed in a few more seconds and the locks opened silently to the interior of the big station. At the hub the effective gravity was almost zero. Corrie led the way confidently towards the outer sections, with Rob floating after her. His experience of low-gee environments was small, and despite the drugs for vestibular correction he felt some lack of orientation. There was no sign of any other person as they moved steadily outward, to the point where the centrifugal acceleration had increased to almost a quarter of a gee. Rob's discomfort dwindled as the sense of weight returned.

Corrie had kept a sympathetic eye on him as they moved outward.

"You'll feel all right in a few minutes," she said. "And next time out you won't feel nearly as bad. It's something you have to adjust to, and everybody goes through it."

They came at last to a big sliding door. Corrie opened it without knocking and led the way inside. The room they entered had been furnished as a study, with data terminals along one wall, displays along the opposite one, and a big desk and control console in the middle. The lighting level was so low that it was difficult to make out the details of many of the fittings. The smooth curve of the cylindrical floor was covered by a soft, dense carpet, deep red in color, that seemed to glow softly with a ruby light. The top of the desk was made of pink veined material, like a fine marble, that also seemed to add light to the room rather than absorbing it. Rob took in those features with just a brief glance. His eyes were on the man seated behind the great desk.

Darius Regulo was tall and thin, with long, skeletal hands and a stooped posture. The hair on his big head was sparse and white, hanging in an uncombed lock over his high forehead. Clearly, if there had ever been rejuvenation treatments, another was long overdue. Rob had never seen a man or woman who looked so old, so frail. Then he looked at Regulo's face and skin, and the other factors became irrelevant. The eyes were still bright and alert, frosty blue with pale gray rims, but they looked forth from a face that was a mockery of humanity. Regulo's features seemed to have run and melted. The skin that covered them was like furnace slag, grey, granular and withered. Suddenly it was easy to guess at the reason for the low level of illumination in the big room. Rob forced himself to keep his gaze steadily on Regulo, without looking aside or flinching.

"Come on in, Merlin." The deep voice sounded granular and worn also, as though it had suffered the same fate as Regulo's face. The voiced consonants grated forth as though from a throat full of rough sand. "I'm sorry my condition prevented a meeting with you on Earth. Please sit down in the chair there."

He turned to Corrie. "Well done, my dear. Merlin and I will need some time together, and I don't think you would find our conversation of great interest. Might I suggest that you should go and visit Joseph and receive an update on his progress? He thinks he has some new results for us."

Corrie grimaced. "You know I don't like to be with him, especially when you're not there."

"I know." Regulo chuckled. "But I also know that you are as interested as I am in following his projects. Don't deny it, my dear, I could cite you fifty incidents that support my statement. We'll contact you as soon as we are finished. And I'm keeping the Tug on stand-by so that you two will be able to go back down to the surface later in the day."

He turned again to Merlin, as Corrie left the study. "So, you're the man who invented the Spider, eh." His voice, despite its harsh tone, sounded warm and interested. "If you don't mind my asking you, how long did it take you to do it?"

Rob was startled by the question. It was an unexpected beginning to the conversation. "It took about a year. But most of that time went on programming and fabrication."

"One year." Regulo whistled softly to himself and shook his head. "I don't want to make you conceited, but do you know my staff put in over fifty man-years of reverse engineering, trying to figure out how the damned thing works—and we still don't know? It proves what I've always said, work without ideas is worse than no work at all." He sniffed. "There's a trick, right?"

"There is." Rob smiled. "And before you ask, let me point out that's not for sale."

"I thought not." Regulo was watching Rob closely with those crackling blue eyes. "But it's available for hire, in the Spiders, right? Oh, you don't need to tell me, I know you're not in need of money. That last contract on the Taiwan Bridge must have made you billions. What was the main span on it, a hundred and twenty kilometers?"

"A bit more than that. More like a hundred and forty. Maybe even one forty-five."

"Fair enough." Regulo had an amused expression on his battered face. "It's hard to keep things straight on the small jobs, eh? You handled the extrusion of all the support cables?"

Rob had kept his face expressionless at the mention of "small jobs." The Taiwan Bridge was one of the biggest in the world—so where was Regulo heading? "All the extrusion, and all the fabrication," he replied. "The Spider lets you start right from the basic raw materials and makes a cable that's all dislocation-free monofilaments."

"Just so." Regulo turned his big chair to the side of the desk and picked up a page of print-out. "I've spent enough time on the Spider to at least know what it does, even if we don't understand how. Now then, come around here and take a look at this. It's the abstract of a paper that came out just last year, in theSolid State Review ." He tapped it with a skeletal finger. "You may not believe me when I say it, but I've been waiting forty years for this paper to be written. Take a look at it and tell me what you think."

Rob moved around to the side of the desk, next to Regulo, and the two men stared at the listing in silence for a few minutes.

"It's clear enough what it's saying," said Rob at last. "If the author is accurate, he can make doped silicon whiskers, dislocation-free, that are twenty times as strong as the toughest that we've been making from graphite. He only quotes the strength under tension, so my first question would be to ask him about the strength under compression and shear."

"I did ask him. The shear strength is not bad, the compressive strength is lousy. Very much the same as with graphite whiskers."

Rob shrugged. "So you could make a load-bearing cable out of doped silicon, instead of graphite. I don't see why that would be especially valuable. We don't need anything stronger for any of the bridges I know about, not even the ones on the design cards—and that includes the Tasmanian Bridge, with a planned main span of three hundred and forty kilometers."

"Quite right." Regulo leaned over his desk and ran his fingers across one part of the top. Under the pressure of his hand a glowing legend appeared, set in block letters in the pink surface:"THINK BIG."  

"That's what you have to learn to do, Merlin. Think big, not small. I'm interested in something that's orders of magnitude beyond any piffling bridges. If you had no limit on funds, do you think you could modify the Spider so that it could fabricate and extrude doped silicon cable, instead of graphite?"

Rob hesitated. He was still looking curiously at the top surface of Regulo's desk. He leaned across and rubbed the place where Regulo had touched it. Again, the glowing red sign,THINK BIG , appeared.

"Piezoelectric effects?"

Regulo laughed harshly. "Not quite that. You'll have time to figure out the details if we work together. Press the surface a few other places, see what you get."

Each part of the desk top responded to slight pressures from Rob's hand:"WIN SMALL"; "IDEAS-THINGS-PEOPLE"; "ROCKETS ARE WRONG" —Rob stared hard at that one. It was exactly in line with what Corrie had said about Regulo. The older man was watching with undisguised pleasure as the red signs glowed from the desk top, then faded after a few seconds to the usual smooth pink.

"I've got my working philosophy built into that desk," he said. "You should take a half hour and go over the whole thing—but not right now. I still want your answer: can you modify the Spider?"

Rob nodded. "It would take me maybe a month's work, but I could do it. I designed the Spider with a lot of flexibility of operation."

"And it could still extrude any shape of taper, same as it did for your work on the bridges?"

Rob nodded again, this time without comment. Regulo sat up straighter in his chair, grunting as he came upright from his stooped posture.

"All right, then." He placed both hands flat on the desk. "I have one more question, then I'll answer some of the ones I'm sure you have. If I made the money available, could you speed up the Spider? Could you increase the maximum production rate of extruded cable from ten kilometers a day up to something like two hundred a day?"

Rob frowned, biting his lip in concentration. "That's a tougher one," he said at last. "I'll have to have time to think about it before I can give you a definite answer. I don't know of any specific reason why I couldn't, off-hand, but that's not the sort of answer you need. Why would you ever want to do it, though? When I designed the Spider, I made it so that it would work faster than every other component of the bridge-building operation. I don't see any point in speeding it up—nothing else would be able to keep pace with it."

"I'll tell you why." Regulo held out his hand. "Look at that. Look at the rest of me. I'm an old man, right—and that means I've not got the time to wait about that you have. Don't let anyone try and tell you that it's the young men who are in a hurry. It's the old ones, who have learned how precious time can be. I don't know about you, but I'm not willing to sit about for ten years, waiting for a supporting cable to be extruded. One year, maybe—we'll need that much time to arrange everything else. But no longer than one year. I want this fast."

Rob sat down again in the chair facing Regulo. "You know there's an old saying about engineering projects.Fast—cheap—good. You can only have two out of three. "

Regulo waved a hand. "Oh, I know, I know. I've already made my pick. You give me fast and good, and let me worry about the costs."

Rob stared hard at the ruined face, trying to read the feelings behind the deformed mask. It was impossible. Only the eyes were human, and they glittered with an intense intellectual interest. "All right. Fast and good. It's still your ball. You realize that an extrusion rate of two hundred kilometers a day could spin a supporting cable out of the Spider in one year to go twice around the Earth? Atten kilometers a day we'd have thousands of kilometers of cable—more than we'd ever need. What are you playing at, designing bridges to put on Jupiter?"

"No. Something a lot more interesting and a lot more useful." Regulo leaned across to the control panel at the side of the desk and pressed a sequence of keys. The big display screen on the right-hand wall came alive with the stylized image of the Earth-Moon system, roughly to scale. "You already know my view of rockets, from the motto in the top of the desk. I'm responsible for hauling more material up from Earth than anyone else, and we use rockets for all of that; but I happen to believe that I'm working with an obsolete piece of technology. Even with the best nuclear propulsion systems, it still takes an awful lot of energy to hoist a payload up from the surface of Earth into orbit. And it takes just as much energy and reaction mass to get the damned stuff back down again.

"Now, Rob, you're trained in physics as well as engineering. I checked that much of your background, before I ever asked Cornelia to try and bring you up here. So you know very well that a Newtonian gravitational field isconservative . A potential function exists for it. What does that mean? I'll tell you: it means that in principle you should be able to take a mass from one point of the field—let's say the surface of the Earth—out to some other point—let's say geosynchronous orbit—using a certain amount of energy. Then you should be able to take it back down to Earth—and you should recover all the energy you expended to get it up in the first place. That's the whole point of a conservative field, what you used going up, you should recover when you come back down again."

Rob shrugged. "I understand the ideas behind potential fields. They don't help at all in practice. The Earth's gravitational field is very close to conservative, true enough, but you still have to use energy to get the rockets up into space from the surface. And you still need reaction mass and energy to stop them falling too fast when you want to go back down."

"We do. Isn't that a terrible situation, from the point of view of engineering efficiency? So there's where we have to begin." Regulo pressed another key on the control console and the wall display became animated, showing the Earth and Moon rotating together about their common center of mass, with the Earth also rotating on its axis.

"Suppose we don't use rockets at all," he said. "Rockets are like ferry-boats, taking materials and people up and down. Suppose that instead of ferry-boats we were to build abridge to space. The idea is simple enough: we take a cable, tethered to a point of the Earth's surface, somewhere on the equator. It extends vertically upwards, all the way up to synchronous orbit, where we are now, and on beyond it. At the far end, we have some kind of ballast weight. See the picture? The whole thing hangs there in equilibrium, with the downward forces from all the length of cable below geosynchronous altitude just balancing the outward forces from centrifugal acceleration. The ballast weight wants to fly outward, but the cable prevents that, and the outward tension on the cable is just balanced by the force on the tether point, down on the surface. The whole assembly rotates, at exactly the same speed as the Earth. Like this."

Regulo pressed another key. The rotating Earth-Moon system now showed a long cable, extending up from the surface of the Earth and rotating steadily with it.

Rob stared at the display, thoughtfully, head to one side and hand rubbing at his black beard. He had not bothered to remove the eleven-day growth before he and Corrie left Suget Jangal. "It sounds nice. But I don't see how it could work. Every element on that cable wants to move in a different orbit. Every part of it wants to move around the Earth at a different speed."

"Quite true." Regulo sounded confident, and it was clear that he was enjoying himself. "Elements of the cablewant to move at different speeds—but they can't. The tension in the cable prevents that from happening. There's no difference between this situation and a stone swinging around on the end of a rope."

He reached again to the side of the desk and picked up another listing. "Look, Rob, this isn't something I've just now dreamed up. You can find references to it in the literature—as an idea, not as an engineering reality—over ninety years ago. The first suggestions for a system like this one go back to the 1960's, maybe even farther. All the orbital mechanics were studied back then. This is a list of some of the references. I told you, I've known about the idea and wanted to build it for over forty years. The thing that always held me back was the problem of materials. We never had anything strong enough to support the cable's own weight, never mind carry other materials up and down. I've been watching the progress in materials science, year after year, looking for something like that article I just showed you. Finally, it came."

Regulo again picked up the abstract that he and Rob had been reading earlier. He tapped the page with a thin finger. "There's a crucial point about this that you might have missed on a quick read through. These doped silicon whiskers for cable-making can be producedcheaply , and that's the key to everything. They're even less expensive than the graphite ones."

Rob was still staring at the image on the display screen. His eyes were blank as he performed rapid mental calculations. "Regulo, that thing would have to be at least seventy thousand kilometers long, just to keep the ballast weight to a reasonable value. My God, what a project—and I thought the Tasmanian Bridge might be the biggest job I'd ever see."

Regulo watched approvingly as Rob's absorption in the display before him increased. "You see now why I'm interested in the Spider," he said. "You know, I noticed at once when you patented the Spider, three years ago. I thought it was just the thing we'd need if I ever got the chance to build this one. We tried to duplicate the idea for ourselves, thinking we might find a way around your patents once we understood the process. We never came close. That's when I realized the two of us ought to be talking. It's one of my basic principles, hire anybody who does something that I can't. As for your estimate of seventy thousand kilometers . . ."

He leaned forward and again pressed a key on the control board. The display remained in position, but an additional message appeared at the foot of the screen: CABLE DESIGN LENGTH: ONE HUNDRED AND FIVE THOUSAND KILOMETERS.

"What would it mass to give a reasonable transportation capability?" Rob emerged from a fury of introspective calculation. "Where would you get the materials to make it? Where would you get the power to run it? And where would you assemble it?—I can see problems in that, even now. And I don't see how you'd get the permits that would let you put it together and bring it down to Earth." He shook his head. "Regulo, it's fascinating, but I have so many questions about it that I don't know where to begin."

"Excellent!" The other man nodded his gnarled head. As much as his ruined face could show anything, it displayed deep satisfaction. "You're interested. I was quite sure you would be, once you heard about it. As for your questions, I could probably answer most of them now, but I suggest we do things a little differently. I propose that you go back down to Earth, think about this for a while, read the references, and make your own first shot at an engineering design. If you're anything like me, you'll want to do your own design anyway, no matter what anybody else says."

Rob smiled ruefully. Regulo had put his finger on a key point of the Merlin engineering philosophy—don't accept a design unless you've been over it for yourself. He nodded agreement.

"I thought that might get to you," said Regulo happily. "Take a look at the design of the Spider, too, and see if it can be speeded up, the way we talked about. You ought to think in terms of a hundred thousand kilometers of cable—see now why I need a capacity of at least two hundred kilometers a day? I'd be happier if you could even double that. And take a look at the old reports on the dynamics of the bridge. You'll see that it's often called askyhook , although to me it always seems more like a beanstalk." He laughed. "Up from the surface of the Earth, to a new land at the top of it—surely that's a beanstalk, if ever I heard of one. Pity your name isn't Jack."

Regulo reached over and switched off the display. "Come back and see me when you've had a chance to get your head around some kind of design and installation plan, and let's fight it out between the two of us. I'll warn you, I have my own ideas, and I've been thinking about all this for an awful long time. You'll have to come up with something at least as good, and convince me of it. Of course, I don't know the real potential of the Spider, and you do, so that gives you one advantage."

He rose stiffly from his chair, movements labored and clumsy even in the low gravity of the station. "We've done enough for the moment. Damn it, I don't have the stamina I need. Fifty years ago I never got tired, now I'm tired before we even begin. Go on and get Cornelia for me, would you? Tell her that we're done here, and you're ready to go back down again. Unless there are other things that you think we have to settle now? Any money questions, for instance—we haven't even mentioned those."

Rob shook his head. "Let me convince myself that your beanstalk is feasible. We'll have plenty of time to talk contracts after that." He looked curiously into Regulo's pale eyes. "I do have one question. If I take over the engineering, what willyour role be? You started it, and I'm sure you'll want to be involved."

"Me?" The old man chuckled gruffly. "Why, if you're going to be Jack for the beanstalk, then I suppose that I ought to be cast as the Ogre. I've got the looks for it, you'll have to admit. But if you mean what I'll be doing to help, I'll tell you in detail next time. Don't worry, there's plenty of work for two. For one thing, there's the whole question of the financing. We haven't talked cost, but believe me it will be more than you can easily imagine—luckily I have access to that much, and maybe a bit more. I've been making an awful lot of money, for an awful long time, and I don't have many good ways to spend it. Then there's materials. It will take more than you'll easily get from Earth to build the beanstalk, and I'll show you where it will all come from. You tell me where you want to construct it, and how, and I'll get you the makings."

He moved slowly to the door of the study and slid it open, leaning his weight against it. Rob could see more clearly how wasted the old man's frame had become, with his clothing hanging loosely on his stooped shoulders.

"Down the corridor to the end, then turn right," said Regulo. "You ought to find Cornelia in the next room along. Tell Joseph Morel—he'll be there with her—that we're done, and say I want to talk to him now." He took a deep breath. "By God, Merlin, I've enjoyed this talk. More than anything else in months. Have a look at the design, then I'll expect to see you again."

"Here?"

Regulo shook his head slowly. "I don't think so. This place doesn't have the facilities we need. Come on out to Atlantis. I'll show you around, and you'll get an idea what a good place to live looks like. Cornelia can make all the arrangements to get you there."

He took Rob's hand as though to shake it, then lifted it higher and held it in both of his. He examined it curiously, turning it over and studying the nails, fingers and palms. "Remarkable," he said at last. "It even feels right. It's at body temperature, or close to it, and the texture could pass for skin. How sensitive are the fingers?"

Rob flexed them, then held both his hands out in front of him. "Better than human. I can feel a hair under a sheet of paper, or the year on a coin."

"And strength?"

"They'll do. They're probably twice as strong as my own would have been."

"Aye." Regulo rubbed his thumb thoughtfully along the back of Rob's hand. "Quite a job they did, all things considered. Frostbite, wasn't it? I'm surprised they didn't re-grow them."

"They couldn't. I'm one of the unlucky two percent that can't regenerate." Rob met Regulo's bright eyes. "How did you know about the frostbite?"

"The same way I knew that your hands were artificial." Regulo was unabashed. "Didn't you think I would do a thorough background check, before I ever asked Cornelia to contact you? I'm like you, I want to know who I'll be working with. Don't worry, though, I'm not one to pry into private affairs. I was interested in those hands as a first-rate piece of precision engineering, that's all. How long did it take the cyber crew to get the settings right?"

"Too long." Rob grimaced at the memory. "I had the final pair fitted eight years ago, on my nineteenth birthday. They decided that I'd finished growing by then. But I had twelve temporary sets as I was getting bigger."

Regulo was nodding his head sympathetically. "There must have been one hell of a lot of operations. I've had my share, and more, so I have some idea what you've been through." He lifted his head as though to say more, then appeared to change his mind.

"Sixty-two operations, according to the hospital records," Rob said after a moment's silence. "Of course, I was too young to remember anything about the first few. Anyway, I only bother to count the ones where they actually fitted new hands. They could use anesthetics for all the others, because they didn't need to play games to get exact nerve connections."

Regulo looked suddenly upset by the subject of their conversation. He nodded, patted Rob lightly on the shoulder, and went slowly back into the big office.

Rob stood alone in the corridor, wondering if he was reading expressions from Regulo's scarred face that had never been there.

 

In the room along the corridor, Rob found Corrie deep in conversation with a burly, florid-faced man in a white tunic. He was standing in profile, showing blond hair cut close to his scalp above a bulging forehead and a sharp, jutting nose. Rob noticed the thickness of the shoulders and the depth of the heavy chest. The man was talking to Corrie in a soft voice and she seemed to be listening avidly to his words. As Rob entered the room, the talk ceased abruptly. There was a sudden awkward silence.

"All right, Corrie," Rob said at last, when neither of the others seemed inclined to speak. "Regulo and I are all finished. We can take the Tug back to Earth." He turned to the man. "You must be Joseph Morel. If you're finished here, Regulo said he would like to have a word with you."

The other man turned a pair of cold gray eyes towards Rob and bowed slightly, with a curiously dated and formal movement from the hips. "My apologies that I did not introduce myself when you entered. Cornelia and I had become engrossed in our discussion, to the point where I forgot the common civilities. I am Joseph Morel, as you surmised. We have never met, but many years ago I knew your father, Gregor." He smiled. "You have something of the same cast of features."

Merlin looked at Joseph Morel with increased interest. The scars were there, at temple and neck, the sure evidence of a rejuvenation treatment. Assuming it had been done once only, that would make Morel about sixty years old—slightly younger than Gregor Merlin would have been by now.

"At Göttingen," went on Morel. "We were students together. I was sorry to hear about his unfortunate accident."

The three of them began to walk back towards Regulo's office. "He was a scientist of great promise," Morel continued. He shook his head sadly. "I regret that he did not live to achieve his full potential."

He glanced sideways at Rob. "I understand from Darius Regulo that you have inherited his talents, although you choose to apply yourself to a different field of endeavor. Regulo has a high regard for your abilities."

He nodded briefly and stepped through into the study, leaving Rob and Corrie to continue along the corridor towards the Tug. Inside the room, Regulo had again switched on the big display, showing Moon, Earth and skyhook in an endless complex pattern of rotation. Morel walked over to the big desk and stood directly in front of it.

"I gather from Merlin's comments to me that you intend to proceed," he said stiffly. "May I remind you again that Caliban has suggested—three times—that a relationship with Merlin is undesirable? Perhaps even dangerous."

Regulo grunted. He was leaning back in his chair, gazing vacantly at the animated display against its dark-blue background. "I hear you, Joseph. I heard you last time." He swivelled in his chair towards the man standing before him. "And I know exactly what Caliban said. But I don't have your faith in that damned oracle, and I really need Merlin and the Spider. What makes you so sure that you're interpreting Caliban correctly? You keep telling me that his outputs are always ambiguous. Are you sure that they are really warnings to us?"

Morel pursed his lips. They were full and very red, framing a small, prim mouth. "It should not be necessary for me to reiterate this. You know as well as I do that the outputs are difficult to interpret. That is no reflection on their validity. For all that we know, most of Caliban's messages originate with Sycorax, since all the displays and transformations of his messages are created there. All this is irrelevant. There has been a warning, which you seem to ignore. Yet you have given me no compelling reason for Merlin's involvement in the activities of Regulo Enterprises. You have not convinced me that you need Merlin at all."

Regulo nodded. "And I don't think I'll try," he said brusquely. "Look, Joseph, you concentrate on your work, and let me worry about the general development of Regulo Enterprises. You don't understand the space transportation business, but I'm telling you, we must have the skyhook. If we don't build a beanstalk, somebody else will—and once one is working, the number of rocket launches will drop to zero. That's the source of more than half our income. Don't you think that the United Space Federation would just love a chance to cut us down to size? The only way we can beat their bureaucracy is to keep one step ahead of them technically, so all the new restrictions they put on us are never quite enough to bring us down. If you want the resources to keep your experiments going, then remember that we all need the beanstalk."

Morel's face had flushed slightly while Regulo was talking, bringing a patch of bright red to each prominent cheekbone. "So we need to build the skyhook," he said sullenly. "I will grant that. However, you have not convinced me that we needMerlin . Presumably Sala Keino is still on your payroll?"

"He is. And we'll be using him. But the beanstalk needs the Spider, and the only way we'll get that is through Rob Merlin." Regulo stood up, switched off the display, and came slowly around the desk to stand at Morel's side. He put a hand gently on the other man's heavy shoulder. "What's the problem, Joseph? You sound almost as though you are afraid of Merlin."

"I am." Morel turned to face Regulo, his face still reflecting his discontent. "I am the one who performed the background check on him, remember? He is a most dangerous combination: intelligent, and as obsessive as you once he begins to pursue something. What sort of lunatic will climb K-2 for sport, alone and with a minimum of oxygen equipment?"

"He has an advantage for climbing. Those artificial hands can hold on to anything."

"Let us not be ridiculous, Regulo." Morel's tone was biting. "Since when did you become an expert on prosthetics? I know the subject far better than you. I assure you, regardless of what Merlin chooses to tell you about those hands—and regardless of what hebelieves about them—they are no stronger than flesh and blood, and they are certainly less sensitive in their touch. He has grown used to their presence, but they could have been at best no more than a marginal aid. They are not the reason that he was able to climb that mountain. There is only one valid reason: he succeeded because he is a madman. I would not choose to have that mania focused in my direction, the way it was concentrated on the summit of that peak."

"All right, Joseph." Regulo held up his hand to stem the rush of words. "I hear you, and I appreciate your concern. Will you take my word for it, if I tell you that your worry is unnecessary? You've seen Merlin. You've had the chance to read that face and those eyes, but perhaps you don't know how to. I do, because I've seen that expression before. Rob Merlin is all engineer, with little time for anything else. Once we get moving on the beanstalk he'll have his hands—real or artificial—too full to worry about anything connected with your work. Ten years from now, he might be a different man, but at the moment his concerns will all be with his projects—and you have no idea how focused that will make him. I know it, because I've been there myself."

He went back around the desk and sat down, motioning Morel to the chair opposite. "Let me handle him," he went on. "Now, I assume that you've been in communication with Atlantis again. What's happening there? I'd like to hear how the new projects are coming along."

Morel sat down. He spent a few moments organizing his thoughts, then began to speak in a clear and precise voice. Regulo leaned forward, bright eyes intent, lava-flowed face cupped in his bony hands. Occasionally he would nod, ask a question, or make a note for actions on the tablet set in front of him. Once he halted Morel, and keyed in a long sequence of entries on the control panel by his desk. He whistled at the answer.

"Do you realize how much that will cost? Joseph, it proves my point again—we have to have the beanstalk."

Morel nodded. His mind was busy elsewhere. Money was Regulo's problem. There had always been ample amounts of it in the past. Darius Regulo would find some way to keep the finances healthy.

 

 

CHAPTER 3: "Go and catch a falling star . . . "
As soon as they had entered the Space Tug and were comfortably in their seats, Cornelia Plessey pressed the door control that separated them from the crew section and looked questioningly at Rob.

"Where to?"

Rob, fiddling with the unfamiliar straps of the seat, paused in his efforts. "Give me ten minutes and I could give you a decent design for these things," he said. "Are you implying that we have a choice?"

"Sure. I told you before we came up here, when you work for Darius Regulo there are advantages. I can give directions to have us set down anywhere, provided it's not too far from the equator. I think that latitude twenty-five is about the limit for this Tug."

"That presents new possibilities." Rob thought for a moment. "I'm not sure yet. The first thing that I need is a nap—we've been going pretty hard since we left Earth and I'm beginning to wilt. How long will the flight down be?"

"About four hours."

"That's more than I need." He hesitated. "I don't know what your plans are, but if you have the time to do it I'd like to talk some more about Regulo. You told me a fair amount on the way up here, but now that I've met him I have a whole new set of questions."

"We'll talk as much as you like. That's part of my job, and you're my first priority." She rubbed a thin brown hand at her tanned forehead, then closed her eyes for a moment. "If you don't mind, though, let's sleep before we talk. I've been up and about for almost twenty-four hours now. How about this for a plan of action: you decide where you'd like to go with the Tug, and we'll wait until we get there before we eat? The food that they could give us on the Tug isn't very good, and I don't know how well your stomach will manage in free fall."

"Badly. I'll wait. I think I know where I want to go, but I have to make a call down to the surface before I'm sure of it."

"There's a cubicle in the back with a full scrambler on it, if you need real privacy."

She watched him get up from his seat, cursing again at the straps, and make his way aft. His secrecy was intriguing. When he came back a couple of minutes later he was looking pleased with himself.

"It's all settled. I'd like to have the crew take us to the southern part of the Yucatan, near the Guatemalan border. I'd estimate that as about latitude fifteen, so they'll have no problem getting us there. Then we'll go on from the spaceport and eat at Way Down."

He looked at her, expecting a positive reaction, but her face was unreadable and her bright eyes downcast. Rob had a sudden concern that Corrie might find it less of a luxury than most people. How wealthy was she, with her expensive clothes and air-car? He had been assuming that the latter belonged to Regulo, but maybe he was wrong.

Her reaction seemed to confirm his view. "All right," she said, but there was no enthusiasm in her voice.

"What's wrong? Have you been there before?"

"No, I never have." She looked up at him, and after a moment seemed to reach some decision. She smiled and nodded her head. "Let's do it. I'll go and tell the crew where we want to go, so they can work out an approach orbit and decide on the nearest port that can land us. You can just settle yourself here. There should be no need for you to be awake until we land—though I know I can't sleep at all at two or three gees, and we'll be getting that on parts of the way down to the surface. I'll ask them to keep the ride as smooth as possible."

Rob was thoughtful as she left the compartment and he settled down into his berth. No doubt about it, Corrie had something on her mind, and it concerned Way Down. Maybe she thought it wouldn't live up to its reputation. Well, even if that were true of most of the attractions, he'd have something special to show her that ought to make a difference. He closed his eyes.

Sleep did not come quickly. His mind was too full of random ideas. Last night, tethered to the bare face of the mountain; now, in free fall up in synchronous orbit—and a wild day between those two nights. As Rob began to drift toward unconsciousness he saw before him the knobbed, grey face of Darius Regulo, with its cap of white hair and piercing blue eyes. What was it?The toad, ugly and venomous, wears yet a precious jewel in his head . But ugly Regulo seemed anything except venomous. Kindly, shrewd, vastly experienced—and the very devil of an engineer. In some ways, that fact was more important than all the others.

 

"So how did you sleep?" Corrie appeared from nowhere a few seconds after they touched down.

"Not too well." Rob looked at her admiringly. She had changed into a two-piece leisure suit, with a pale-cream blouse to show off her figure and her smooth arms and shoulders. "I was all right when we were under acceleration," he went on. "I guess I'm the opposite of you—two gee was fine, but as soon as we went into zero gee I kept waking up and grabbing at the walls. Don't forget I spent the past week on the side of a mountain. In that situation free fall is bad news."

He rubbed at his eyes, sat up and looked out of the port. "That doesn't look much like Belize Spaceport to me."

"Quite right. It isn't." Corrie gave a little shrug of her left shoulder. "The crew told me they couldn't get an arrival approved there for another twenty-four hours. Rather than wait a day I told them to go ahead and get us a landing at Panama. We'll have to go the rest of the way by air flier. I arranged to have one ready for us as soon as we want it. If we leave now we can be at Way Down in a couple of hours."

"Fine." Rob unstrapped himself and stood up. It was oddly reassuring to be in a one-gee environment again. "I'm glad to see that Regulo's money can't buy quite everything—though it does seem to buy an awful lot."

"We don't control the spaceport schedules, if that's what you mean—the USF keep those under close control." Corrie opened the sliding door and looked out at the tropical evening. The sun was not far from setting, and the air was full of dry, spicy scents. "Some day, I expect that Regulo will seek permission to build his own private spaceport—though it's no use to him personally, because he can't ever come here to Earth."

Rob recalled his last thoughts, before he had sunk into sleep. "Maybe you can clear one thing up for me," he said, "while we're on our way over to the Yucatan. When we first went into Regulo's office, I couldn't see much because the lighting level was so low. My assumption was that he doesn't want people to have a close look at his face. But after talking with him for a while, I find I can't believe that. He doesn't seem like the type to be worried about the way he looks. Am I reading him wrong?"

"Regulo? You thought he was vain?" Corrie burst out laughing, while Rob looked at her with irritation. "I'm sorry, but that idea's so ludicrous if you know Regulo at all. He doesn't give a damn what he looks like—not in the slightest. Don't you know how he first made his money?"

"Well, I have a rough idea." Rob was puzzled by the apparent change of subject. "He started out shipping materials into Earth orbit from the Asteroid Belt, didn't he? What's that got to do with his preference for the dark?"

They were outside the Tug and clearing Immigration. Rob saw more evidence of Regulo's long arm of influence. The usual time-consuming formalities with Customs and Entry were completed in seconds, with no more than a perfunctory look at IDs and a rapid data entry through the terminal. The sun was descending rapidly as they walked through the early twilight to their waiting aircraft and climbed aboard.

"It has everything to do with it," Corrie said at last, as she checked the controls and keyed in their destination. "It explains a number of things about Regulo. You'll hear it sooner or later, so you may as well hear it right the first time. There are enough rumors about him without us adding to them. What you said was true enough. He and a couple of senior partners started out in the transportation business, more than fifty years ago. The development of the Belt was just getting started and there were four or five groups who handled the haulage work, moving materials around the Inner System. I gather it was pretty competitive, and cut-throat too. Regulo's team was one of the first to get into real trouble . . ."

 

It was the big asteroids that got the publicity but the little ones that had the value. The "Big Three" of the Inner Belt, Ceres, Pallas and Vesta, were already suitable for permanent colonies. A little farther out was a good handful of others, above three hundred kilometers in diameter and all likely candidates for long-term development: Hygeia, Euphrosyne, Cybele, Davida, Interamnia. The crew of theAlberich had tracked and ignored all these, along with anything else that was more than a kilometer or two across. Finding metal-rich planetoids was one thing; moving and mining them was a different and more difficult proposition.

Darius Regulo, as junior member of the team, had been given the long and tedious job of first analysis and evaluation. He took all the observations: spectroscopic, active and passive microwave, thermal infra-red, and laser. That permitted the estimate of probable composition. Add in the data on size and orbital elements, and he had all he needed for the first recommendation. Nita Lubin and Alexis Galley would take his work, throw in Galley's encyclopedic knowledge of metal prices F.O.B. Earth orbit, and make the final decisions.

Now Galley, grey-haired and bushy eye-browed, was sitting at the console. He looked like an old-fashioned bookkeeper, squinting his deep-set eyes at the output displays and muttering numbers beneath his breath. Every few seconds he would gaze up at the ceiling, as though reading invisible figures printed there.

"It's the right size," he said at last. "Not bad elements either. I wish we could get a better idea of iridium content—that and the percentage of volatiles, they'll be the swing factors. What's the assay look like for lead and zinc, Darius? I don't see those anywhere."

"They're negligible. I decided we might as well call them zero, for estimating purposes."

"Did you now?" Alexis Galley sniffed. "I'll thank you to leave that decision to me, until you get a few more years on your shoulders. Now, let's have another look at those mass figures."

Darius Regulo stood behind Galley, watching over his shoulder as the older man worked. If a twenty-four-year-old could pick up the results of twenty years of space mining experience just by watching and listening, he would do it. Already he had learned that the actual value of the metals was no more than a small part of the final decision. It was outweighed by the availability of the volatiles used to make the orbital shift, by the asteroid position in the System, and by final mining costs.

Galley was nodding slowly. "I'm inclined to give it a try," he conceded. "You've done a fair job here, Darius." He swivelled in his chair. "What do you think, Nita? Shall we give this one a go?"

The third member of the crew stood by the far wall of the ship, looking through the port at the irregular pitted mass of rock that was looming gradually closer to theAlberich . She was rubbing at the back of her head, thinking hard. "I don't know, Alexis. There's an ample margin on the volatiles, we can get it there easily enough. But can we do itquickly enough? The Probit group is offering a ten percent bonus for the next hundred million tons of nickel-iron in Earth orbit."

Galley nodded. "They're fighting deadlines."

"As usual," said Lubin. "And so are we. I'm afraid that Pincus and his team will beat us to it. I've been listening to their radio broadcasts and they'll be starting to move their choice in another day or two. Even if we decide this minute, we won't have the drives on this rock for close to a week, and we won't pick up any time on them in the transfer orbit. If anything, they're better placed for transfer than we are."

"Then we're in trouble." Alexis Galley peered vacantly at the screen. "Getting there second would halve our profit. Maybe we should look some more, try and find one with a better composition."

"We shouldn't do that." Regulo had been listening intently to the exchange. Alexis Galley was always too conservative, and Regulo needed that bonus far more than either Galley or Nita Lubin. "We've taken weeks to find one as good as this. How about trying a hyperbolic?"

There was a silence from the other two.

"There should be plenty of reaction mass for it," Regulo went on. "You said yourself that there were ample volatiles, Nita—and we'd pick up at least four weeks on total transit time."

Galley looked up at Regulo's thin face and pale, bright eyes. "I think you know my views on hyperbolic transfers," he said. "Do I have to say them again? You'll boil off some of the volatiles and lose reaction mass on solar swing-by. If you're unlucky you'll find that you have to ask for help when you're past perihelion, just to get yourself slowed down into Earth orbit. You can spend twice your profits on tugs to help you in. Still"— he shrugged—"I don't like to close my mind to things, just because I'm getting older. How close in would we have to go?"

"Three million kilometers, at perihelion."

"From the center of the Sun, or from the surface?"

"From the center."

"Hell. We'd only be two and a quarter million from the solar surface. That's close, too close."

"But we won't be there for long," Nita Lubin broke in. She came forward and stood by the screen. "I think we should do it. We've talked about it before, and we always find a reason not to. Let's try it. We don't have to stay with the rock, you know. We can separate ourselves on board theAlberich once we get in as far as Mercury, fly on an orbit with a bigger perihelion distance, and re-connect with the rock later."

"But then we'll be too late to meet it," protested Galley. "If we fly past further out, we'll take longer."

"Not if we take theAlberich on a powered fly-by. Alexis, you're just making up reasons to avoid trying." Nita Lubin seemed to have made up her mind. She turned to their junior crew member. "How long will it take you to work out a decent power trajectory for theAlberich ? We'll need to have a few choices."

Regulo did not speak. He reached into his pocket, produced an output sheet and held it out to her.

"What's this?" Nita Lubin glanced quickly over the sheet, grinned, and placed it in front of Galley. "Orbits for theAlberich . He's really hungry, isn't he? Well, there's nothing wrong with that—it's what we're all here for. What do you think, Alexis? We'd have a twelve-million-kilometer perihelion for the ship. That's not too bad, though I suppose I'd better check it for myself. You two might as well get to work putting the drives out on the rock. We should have plenty of time for that if we can really pick up four weeks on the transfer, the way this analysis shows."

Alexis Galley stood up slowly from the console and looked for a long moment at the other two. "I still don't like it, but I'll go along with it. You put up most of the money, Nita, and it's only right that we try and protect your investment. Remember one thing, though. Neither of you has ever done any work close in to the Sun. I have. We're going to find that timing is tighter there—you don't have as much margin for error as we have out here. If you don't mind, Nita, I'll check those calculations when you've done with them."

He left the cabin and went forward towards the drive supplies and installation facility. Nita Lubin looked after him thoughtfully. "You know, he's only going along with this for me, Darius. I'm wondering if we ought to go through with it. Alexis has more experience than the two of us put together."

Regulo stared at her, his head cocked to one side. "What do you mean, Nita? I thought it was all settled. Look, I don't know about you but I certainly don't want to lose to the Pincus group. That's what will happen if we settle for the usual elliptic orbit transfer. We'll lose, there's no question of it."

His face had gone pale, and his eyes blazed. Nita Lubin looked at him shrewdly. "Youare hungry, Darius—more than I ever realized. Well, I still say that's no bad thing. I'm in this for profit myself, and so is Alexis. You go up front and help him, and let me check your calculations."

"They'll be right," said Regulo. He turned quickly and left the cabin, before Nita Lubin could speak further.

 

The first stages of the orbit transfer were following the classical pattern that Alexis Galley had pioneered more than twenty years earlier. First the shape of the asteroid was mapped and recorded from multiple angle images. Next came the detailed mass distribution calculated from analysis of seismic data. That determined the place where powerful explosive pellets would be sited in bore holes drilled deep into the rock. Even with these they would gain only an approximate distribution of the internal densities, but that was still their best source of information on the amounts of ammonia, solid carbon dioxide, water and methane ice inside the asteroid—the source of the reaction mass that would power the transfer of the fragment to Earth orbit.

Galley and Regulo were at the computer, working together on the computation of the drive placings. As volatiles were consumed and expelled in flight, the center of mass and moments of inertia of the remaining rock would change. The drive thrust had to remain exactly through the changing center of mass, or the whole planetoid would begin to rotate under the applied torque.

"See now why I'm against your damned hyperbolic fly-by?" grumbled Galley. "When you send anything that close to the Sun, the boil-off rate goes crazy. You lose a good fraction of your volatiles in just a few hours if you go in near enough. That's going to ruin the center-of-mass calculation. We never run into that sort of problem with an elliptic transfer, but now we have to think about it."

"We can allow for it," said Regulo. His voice was confident. "It's just a matter of a little more calculation. I'll work out the solar flux as a function of our time in orbit, and that will give us all the boil-off information that we need."

"Oh, I'm not saying we can't do it." Alexis Galley shook his head. "Only that it's a pain, and we'll lose another day while we're at it."

"Look, I'm not askingyou to do it. I'll be quite happy to handle all the computation."

The older man looked at Regulo calmly. "Now then, Darius, just cool off. I'm not saying you don't take your share of the work, and more. I'm just saying that I still don't care for this whole thing. I've only flown one hyperbolic in my whole life, and that was in an emergency medical ship with unlimited thrust. We weren't trying to steer a billion tons of rock along with us, either. This is a tricky business, one you don't jump into without a decent amount of thought. If you're going to work on the calculations, I'll go out on the rock and take another look at the position of the drive placings."

"I'd like to help on that, too. I've never seen it done before, and I want to learn how. Don't worry about the boil-off calculations," Regulo added quickly, seeing Galley's doubtful look. "I'll work those up as soon as we come back into the ship."

"All right." Galley paused for a second, then nodded his head approvingly. "I'll say this for you, Darius, I've never had a junior man as keen to learn every single thing about this business. Come on, let's get our suits on. Time's a-running."

TheAlberich was moored on a short cable, a few meters from the asteroid. The difference in the natural orbits of the two bodies was infinitesimal, barely enough to hold the tether taut. The two men drifted slowly across to the rock and Galley began his careful examination of its surface.

"Here's a good example," he said after a few moments, his voice loud over the suit phone. "When you first look at this location you think it's perfect. There's solid rock to secure a drive to, and you can see the volatiles right on the surface. But take a look at the mass distribution." Galley flashed part of the computed interior structure of the planetoid onto the suit video. "See that? The volatiles peter out just a few meters below the surface. Now, compare it with that position over to sunward. There's a real vein of volatiles there, and the mooring is just as good." Galley peered closely at the cratered surface, lit by the harsh, slanting rays of the distant Sun. "This looks like a fine one. There's enough reaction mass in that vein to do us some real good."

Regulo was studying the video display. "I thought you told me that this mass distribution was just an approximation."

"It is." Galley gave a brief bark of a laugh. "Sometimes you get a surprise, no matter how much thinking you do ahead of time. But the approximation is still the best information we have, so there's no sense in ignoring it unless we actually see something on the surface to tell us more. That's one reason we came out here." Galley switched in the ship's circuit. "Nita? Give us that composition read-out, would you?"

He bent forward while the signal was being read through to the suits, and tapped the rock close to their feet. "Here's an example of what I was saying. I know there's a good amount of ferromagnetics under us, just from the strength of the magnetic clamps in the suit. You couldn't see that from the data we have on the ship, right? I don't know what else we've got here, either. I'd hate to throw away a lump of platinum, just to make a hole setting for a drive."

The two men moved slowly across the surface of the rock, examining each possible site carefully while Galley offered a running commentary on his selection logic. It took a long time, and almost four hours passed before Alexis Galley picked the last of the seven places that he wanted. He patiently answered Regulo's continuous stream of questions.

"We don't usually need to be this careful," he said. "But this one's an awkward shape—too long and thin."

"You're afraid it might start to tumble?"

"It has that tendency. The closer the shape of the rock to spherical, the less we have to worry about rotational instabilities. This one is almost twice as long as it is wide. We'll be all right, though. With those drive placings, we'll have no problem unless you find really big values for the boil-off mass. I'll be interested to see what the temperatures run out here during perihelion fly-by. Up near the thousand mark, for my guess."

The two men had begun to drift slowly back towards theAlberich . Regulo noted the easy control of small body movements and the tiny, almost unconscious use of the suit jets as Alexis Galley controlled his position and attitude. He did his best to mimic the older man's actions.

"Fly-by will go really fast," he said. "I don't think we'll spend more than two weeks inside the orbit of Mercury, in-bound and out-bound. The rock will get hot, but there's no harm in that—and it won't be for long."

He turned his head and stared through the faceplate of the suit at the distant Sun. Still two hundred and fifty million miles away, it seemed small and strange, a dazzling, golden ornament in the black sky. Galley had stopped and was following his look.

"Come on, Darius," he grunted. "You'll be getting your belly-full of that in another month or two. Let's get those calculations done and see to the drives. After that, you'll have all the time in the world for Sun-watching. But I have to say, the sooner we get through with this whole thing and are in Earth orbit, the better I'll be pleased."

 

 

CHAPTER 4: "Busy old fool, unruly Sun . . . "
The drives set in the surface of the asteroid had finished their first spell of work long ago. Now they sat idle. They would not be needed again until the time came to decelerate into Earth orbit. TheAlberich , still tethered to the rock, was falling with it, steadily and ever faster, toward the Sun. They were past Venus, past Mercury, plunging to perihelion. Darius Regulo, magnetic clamps holding him firmly to the surface of the planetoid, paused in his work to take a quick look at the solar primary. It had swollen steadily since they left the Asteroid Belt. Now it was ten times its former size and dominated the sky.

"Come on, move it." Nita's voice came suddenly over the suit phone. She must have been watching on the external viewing screen. "Don't hang about out there. We'll be separating theAlberich from the asteroid in less than two hours."

"On our way," Regulo said. "I just finished checking the last drive. They've all come through first impulse well. Unless Alexis disagrees with some of my data, I don't see a reason to change any of the settings before we use them again." He looked closely at the rock surface beneath his feet. "I'd say we're getting about our predicted amount of boil-off from the surface here."

"And it's getting hotter than hell." That was Galley's voice, grumbling over the suit circuit. He was standing on the rock, close to the tether point that connected theAlberich to the asteroid. "I'm showing contact temperatures of over five hundred Kelvins, going up every minute. Come on, Darius, put the lid on it and let's get out of here."

"I'll be right with you." Regulo bent to clamp the protective cover over the last of the drive units. It was a little tricky getting the fit to the asteroid's rough surface. He crouched lower, frowning at the awkward bolts.

He was carefully turning the last coupling when the tremor came. His attention was all on the clamp and he saw nothing—but the rock surface was suddenly shaking beneath his feet. Even as he felt the vibration, he knew that it was impossible. Earthquakes simply don't happen on tiny rock fragments only a couple of kilometers across.

He straightened, and at the same moment there was a long, metallic screech over his suit phone. The Sun, which a moment ago had been shining in fiercely through his faceplate, was abruptly darkened by an obscuring cloud. He looked for theAlberich but it too had vanished within a glowing white nimbus.

"Alexis! What's going on?"

He waited. There was no reply over his phone. After a few seconds he saw the shape of the ship, appearing mysteriously through the fog.The fog . There could be no fog here, far from any possible form of atmosphere. Regulo set his course for the ship, using his jets as Alexis Galley had taught him. As he moved, his eyes scanned the surface of the rock looking for Galley himself. The other man had to be somewhere on the asteroid. There was no sign of him, but before Regulo was halfway to the ship tether point he was beginning to see a slight change to the familiar shape of the surface. Where he had last seen Galley there now stood a deep pit, gouged into the rock itself. A fuming gas, brightly lit by the glaring beams of the swollen Sun, was pouring out of its interior.

TheAlberich was still attached to the rock by its tether. Regulo propelled himself up to it and looked in dismay at the condition of the ship. The forward hull plates had been shattered, with a great boulder of dark rock embedded in the wall of the main cabin. He looked in through a broken port and saw Nita Lubin's body, unsuited, floating free against an inner bulkhead.

Even while his mind was struggling to accept the reality of an impossible series of events, some deep faculty was coolly assessing all that he saw and seeking explanations. He looked for an instant at the face of the Sun. The photo-sensitive faceplate of the suit darkened immediately, so that he could see nothing in the whole universe but that broad and burning face. TheAlberich and its cargo were still falling towards it at better than thirty miles a second.

What were the last words he had heard from Alexis Galley?. . . over five hundred Kelvins, going up every minute . Somehow, that had to be the key. A hundred and thirty degrees above the boiling point of water, almost four hundred degrees above the boiling point of methane. The surface of the asteroid had been cooking hotter and hotter in that unrelenting Sun, vaporizing the volatiles beneath. The pressure of the trapped gases forming there had increased and increased . . . until at last some critical value had been reached. Part of the rock had fractured under the intolerable stress. Fragments had been propelled out by the expanding gases, into the body of Alexis Galley, into the hanging target of theAlberich . All that had saved Regulo had been luck, his position on the asteroid and distance from the explosion.

But saved for what? Regulo looked about him with a sickening realization of his own plight. The ship was a total wreck, he had known that as soon as he saw it. There was no way that it could be powered up to take him away to a safe orbit. The automatic alarm system should have triggered as soon as the ship's internal condition became unable to support human life. Regulo tuned quickly to the distress frequencies and heard the electronic scream as the ship blared and roared its high-frequency Mayday across the System. The signal would already be activating the monitors far out beyond Mercury, but that would be of no use to him. When the ship had swung past the Sun and out to the cooler regions of the Inner System, others would come and recover the hulk and its valuable cargo. But that would be too late for Regulo. At the moment, theAlberich was as unreachable by outside assistance as if it were sitting on the blinding photosphere of the Sun itself.

After those first few moments of animal panic, Darius Regulo steadied. In spite of the furnace looming ahead of him, he felt cool and analytical. What were his options?

TheAlberich was available—but he had calculated long since that the ship's refrigeration system could not support a tolerable temperature through a perihelion transit of two and a quarter million kilometers. If he stayed with the ship he would quietly broil to death. He stared again at the Sun. Already it seemed bigger than ever before. In imagination, those fierce rays were lancing through his puny suit, pushing his refrigeration system inexorably towards its final overload. He could feel sweat trickling down his neck and chest, the body's own primitive protest at the worsening conditions surrounding it.

He could open the suit and end it now. That would be a quicker and more merciful death, but he was not ready for it.

Regulo entered theAlberich through its useless air lock. First he went to the communicator and sent out to the listening emergency stations a brief and precise description of his situation. He added a summary of what he intended to do, then went to the supply lockers and took out an armful of air tanks, jet packs, and emergency rations. The latter, he felt, had to be thought of as an expression of optimism. From the medical locker he took all the stimulants that he could find.

He performed a brief calculation on his suit computer, confirming his first estimate. Somehow he would have to survive for eight days. If he could do that, perihelion would be well past and theAlberich again cool enough to tolerate.

Dragging the bundle of supplies along behind him, Regulo left the ship and propelled himself slowly back to the asteroid. The explosion that destroyed theAlberich and killed Alexis and Nita had expelled enough material from the rock to give it some angular momentum. It was turning slowly about its shortest axis. Regulo attached the supplies firmly to his suit, took a last look at the ruined ship, then went behind the rock and entered the deep, black shadow. He knew what he had to do. At three million kilometers, the Sun would stretch across more than twenty-five degrees of the sky. He had to stay close enough to the surface to remain within the shield of the cool umbra. That was his only protection against the roaring furnace on the other side of the asteroid.

He felt cooler as soon as he passed into the shadow. That, he knew, was all psychological. It would take several minutes before his suit temperature dropped enough to make a perceptible difference.

As he expected, there were first of all several hours of experiment. If he ventured too far from the surface, he lost the protection of the cone of shadow. Too close, and he was forced to move outward when the long axis of the asymmetrical rock swung around towards him in its steady rotation. He found the pattern of movements that would minimize his use of the jet packs and settled in for a long, lonely siege.

There was ample time to look back and study the mistakes that they had made. With such a close swing-by of the Sun, they should have kept the rock turning. That would have given an even heating on all sides and also a chance for heat to radiate away again into space. And they should have put theAlberich at least a few kilometers away from the asteroid, to reduce its vulnerability to accidents. Regulo reached a grim conclusion. Alexis Galley had been right: with all his experience, he had not known how to handle the hyperbolic swing-by. Regulo would learn that—if he survived.

 

After the first twelve hours his actions became automatic. Move always to keep in the shadow. Eat and drink a little—he had to force himself to do that, because his appetite was gone completely. Check the fuel in the jet assembly. And take a stimulant every six hours.

He could not afford to sleep. Not with the menace of the Sun so ready to engulf him if he failed to hide from it. But sleep was the tempter. After sixty hours his whole body ached for it with a physical lust that surpassed any desire he had ever felt. The stimulants forced the mind to remain awake, but they did so without the body's consent. Fatigue crushed him, sucked the marrow from his bones, drained his blood.

After eighty-five hours he began to hallucinate. Alexis and Nita were hanging there next to him, unsuited. Their empty eyes were full of reproach as they floated out into the golden sunlight and waved and beckoned for him to follow them, to leave the dead shadows.

Soon after the hundredth hour, he fell briefly asleep. The flood of molten gold wakened him, splashing in through his faceplate. He had drifted outside the guardian shadow of the asteroid, and although his visor had darkened to its maximum it was useless against the stabbing, shattering light. He squeezed his eyes shut. The orb was still visible, burning a bloody, awful red through his eyelids.

He must be close to perihelion. The Sun had become a giant torch surrounded by huge hydrogen flares. The asteroid had dipped well inside the solar corona itself, hurtling in to its point of closest approach. Light filled the world. Regulo writhed in its grip, turning desperately about to seek the shelter of the rock. The asteroid, the stars, the ship, all were invisible now, forced to insignificance by the tyrannous power of the great solar crucible.

Instinctively, Regulo began to jet back and forth, firing his thrusts at random in a desperate cast for the shadow. At last he found it by pure luck, a dark crescent bitten from the flaring disc. He moved towards it. Back once more in the blessed darkness, he hung seared and gasping in his overloaded suit.

"No." His voice was hoarse and choking. "Not this time, you bastard. You don't get me this time." He glared through bloodshot eyes at the surface of the asteroid, as though seeing right through it to the burning orb beyond. "You won't get me. Ever. You think you're the boss of everything, but I'll prove you're not. I'll beat you. I'lloutlast you."

Even as he spoke, an icy trickle of rage dribbled into his brain, washing away the fatigue and the terror. He knew that his face was beginning to sear and blister from the harsh sleet of radiation that he had experienced, but he was able to ignore it. All that mattered was the battle ahead. He stared about him.

On each side of the asteroid a stream of ionized gases was roaring past, boiled out from the sunward surface and driven by light pressure. The halo that they formed scattered the Sun's rays to make a ghostly sheath of green, blue and white, flickering all around him. A hundred meters below, the dark surface of the rock was beginning to bubble and smoke as it slowly turned, roasting in the solar glare like a joint on a spit. He stared at it, cold-eyed. He would have to keep well clear of that, now and for the next seventy hours. No matter. It was just one more reason why he could not afford to fall asleep again. He would not sleep again.

 

"They never found any trace of Alexis Galley, and of course the other crew member was dead. The verdict on the whole thing was an unfortunate accident, with no one to blame. When they brought the asteroid in to Earth orbit, Regulo owned all of it—survivors on the mining teams always willed the finds to each other if some of them were killed. And Regulo had stayed with the rock, otherwise the value would have been shared with the crew who salvaged theAlberich ."

Corrie was silent for a few moments as she watched the display with its final landing instructions for the field at Way Down.

"That was enough to give him the financing for his first transportation company," she went on. "He pioneered the techniques for the hyperbolic orbit and cut all the transit times by a factor of two. But he never flew another hyperbolic himself. He has never been closer to the Sun than the orbit of Earth. And he will not tolerate any form of intense light. It upsets him, makes him almost unstable. It's the only thing that ever has that effect on him."

"Not surprising, though, after what he went through," Rob said. "He must have been in terrible condition when they finally picked him up."

"Not as bad as you'd think. Once he got past perihelion, he did everything right. The old logs of that trip are still in his office. They make interesting listening—I've played them myself. Regulo had the sense to ignore everything about theAlberich until he had treated his burns and doped himself up to sleep for a solid twenty-four hours. That took real nerve, to put himself under for so long when the Sun was still big and blazing and he didn't know if he'd be picked up at all."

"But why couldn't they do anything about his face?" Rob asked. "I mean, no matter what the burns were like, surely they could have used grafts or regeneration to repair most of it. I've never seen scars like that, and I've had bad accidents to my crew on construction jobs."

Corrie did not answer. She stared straight ahead with a curious expression on her face, as they left the craft and began to walk together to the entry point of Way Down. Rob waited for a reply. When it did not come, he turned to her and looked more closely. Corrie's skin had paled, so that the smooth tan had become like old ivory, cold and bloodless.