The Operations Manager, Project Gossamer, attracted Morgan's attention with a slightly embarrassed cough.
“We still have one minor problem, Doctor,” she said. “We're quite confident about the lowering – all the tests and computer simulations are satisfactory, as you've seen. It's reeling the filament in again that has Station Safety worried.”
Morgan blinked rapidly; he had given little thought to the question. It seemed obvious that winding the filament back again was a trivial problem, compared to sending it out. All that was needed, surely, was a simple power-operated winch, with the special modifications needed to handle such a fine, variable-thickness material. But he knew that in space one should never take anything for granted, and that intuition – especially the intuition of an earth-based engineer – could be a treacherous guide.
Let's see – when the tests are concluded, we cut the earth end and Ashoka starts to wind the filament in. Of course, when you tug – however hard – at one end of a line forty thousand kilometres long, nothing happens for hours. It would take half a day for the impulse to reach the far end, and the system to start moving as a whole. So we keep up the tension – Oh! -
“Somebody did a few calculations,” continued the engineer, “and realised that when we finally got up to speed, we'd have several tons heading towards the station at a thousand kilometres an hour. They didn't like that at all.”
“Understandably. What do they want us to do?”
“Programme a slower reeling in, with a controlled momentum budget. If the worst comes to the worst, they may make us move off-station to do the wind-up.”
“Will that delay the operation?”
“No; we've worked out a contingency plan for heaving the whole thing out of the airlock in five minutes, if we have to.”
“And you'll be able to retrieve it easily?”
“Of course.”
“I hope you're right. That little fishing line cost a lot of money – and I want to use it again.”
But where? Morgan asked himself; as he stared at the slowly waxing crescent Earth. Perhaps it would be better to complete the Mars project first, even if it meant several years of exile. Once Pavonis was fully operational, Earth would have to follow, and he did not doubt that, somehow, the last obstacles would be overcome.
Then the chasm across which he was now looking would be spanned, and the fame that Gustave Eiffel had earned three centuries ago would be utterly eclipsed.
28. The First Lowering
There would be nothing to see for at least another twenty minutes. Nevertheless, everyone not needed in the control hut was already outside, staring up at the sky. Even Morgan found it hard to resist the impulse, and kept edging towards the door.
Seldom more than a few metres from him was Maxine Duval's latest Remote, a husky youth in his late twenties. Mounted on his shoulders were the usual tools of his trade – twin cameras in the traditional “right forward, left backward” arrangement, and above those a small sphere not much larger than a grapefruit. The antenna inside that sphere was doing very clever things, several thousand times a second, so that it was always locked on the nearest comsat despite all the antics of its bearer. And at the other end of that circuit, sitting comfortably in her studio office, Maxine Duval was seeing through the eyes of her distant alter ego and hearing with his ears – but not straining her lungs in the freezing air. This time she had the better part of the bargain; it was not always the case.
Morgan had agreed to the arrangement with some reluctance. He knew that this was an historic occasion, and accepted Maxine's assurance that “my man won't get in the way”. But he was also keenly aware of all the things that could go wrong in such a novel experiment – especially during the last hundred kilometres of atmospheric entry. On the other hand, he also knew that Maxine could be trusted to treat either failure or triumph without sensationalism.
Like all great reporters, Maxine Duval was not emotionally detached from the events that she observed. She could give all points of view, neither distorting nor omitting any facts which she considered essential. Yet she made no attempt to conceal her own feelings, though she did not let them intrude. She admired Morgan enormously, with the envious awe of someone who lacked all real creative ability. Ever since the building of the Gibraltar Bridge she had waited to see what the engineer would do next; and she had not been disappointed. But though she wished Morgan luck, she did not really like him. In her opinion, the sheer drive and ruthlessness of his ambition made him both larger than life and less than human. She could not help contrasting him with his deputy, Warren Kingsley. Now there was a thoroughly nice, gentle person ("And a better engineer than I am," Morgan had once told her, more than half seriously). But no-one would ever hear of Warren; he would always be a dim and faithful satellite of his dazzling primary. As, indeed, he was perfectly content to be.
It was Warren who had patiently explained to her the surprisingly complex mechanics of the descent. At first sight, it appeared simple enough to drop something straight down to the equator from a satellite hovering motionless above it. But astrodynamics was full of paradoxes; if you tried to slow down, you moved faster. If you took the shortest route, you burned up the most fuel. If you aimed in one direction, you travelled in another… And that was merely allowing for gravitational fields. This time, the situation was much more complicated. No-one had ever before tried to steer a space-probe trailing forty thousand kilometres of wire. But the Ashoka programme had worked perfectly, all the way down to the edge of the atmosphere. In a few minutes the controller here on Sri Kanda would take over for the final descent. No wonder that Morgan looked tense.
“Van,” said Maxine softly but firmly over the private circuit, “stop sucking your thumb. It makes you look like a baby.”
Morgan registered indignation, then surprise – and finally relaxed with a slightly embarrassed laugh.
“Thanks for the warning,” he said. “I'd hate to spoil my public image.”
He looked with rueful amusement at the missing joint, wondering when the self-appointed wits would stop chortling: “Ha! The engineer hoist by his own petard!” After all the times he had cautioned others, he had grown careless and had managed to slash himself while demonstrating the properties of hyperfilament. There had been practically no pain, and surprisingly little inconvenience. One day he would do something about it; but he simply could not afford to spend a whole week hitched up to an organ regenerator, just for two centimetres of thumb.
“Altitude two five zero,” said a calm, impersonal voice from the control hut. “Probe velocity one one six zero metres per second. Wire tension ninety percent nominal. Parachute deploys in two minutes.”
After his momentary relaxation, Morgan was once again tense and alert – like a boxer, Maxine Duval could not help thinking, watching an unknown but dangerous opponent.
“What's the wind situation?” he snapped.
Another voice answered, this time far from impersonal.
“I can't believe this,” it said in worried tones. “But Monsoon Control has just issued a gale warning.”
“This is no time for jokes.”
“They're not joking; I've just checked back.”
“But they guaranteed no gusts above thirty kilometres an hour!”
“They've just raised that to sixty – correction, eighty. Something's gone badly wrong…”
“I'll say,” Duval murmured to herself. Then she instructed her distant eyes and ears: “Fade into the woodwork – they won't want you around – but don't miss anything.” Leaving her Rem to cope with these somewhat contradictory orders, she switched to her excellent information service. It took her less than thirty seconds to discover which meteorological station was responsible for the weather in the Taprobane area. And it was frustrating, but not surprising, to find that it was not accepting incoming calls from the general public.