Wherry’s operations were strong enough to withstand a challenge from any government, his defense systems rumored to be capable of meeting a combined Earth attack. The Institute could be moved here, safe from withering cuts and changes of direction. But would it be worth it? Only if she and the rest of the staff had real freedom to pursue their work. That was the promise that she must extract from Salter Wherry. And an ironbound legal contract had to go with it. When you dealt with a master manipulator, you couldn’t afford to leave loopholes.
She lay back in her seat, staring upward. A faint glimmer of light caught her eye, drifting past her field of view. She realized that she was witnessing one of the infrequent transits of Eleanora, the sixth and most ambitious of the giant arcologies. It was in an orbit nearly a thousand kilometers higher, and it passed the station only once every three days. Initially dubbed as “Salter’s Folly” by the skeptical media, the first arcology had been started fourteen years ago and had grown steadily. Until the great space station was completed, Salter Wherry seemed content to let the original jeering name serve as the official one. Then he had finally renamed it Amanda, assisted its population of four thousand to establish themselves there, and apparently lost all interest. His mind was focused on construction of the second arcology, then the third…
Curious, Judith dialled into the Station’s central computer and requested a high-resolution image of Eleanora. The half-built arcology blinked into full-color display on the screen. The skeleton was finished now, a seven-hundred-meter spherical framework of metal girders. Wall panels were going in over half the structure, so that she could estimate the size of the rooms and the internal corridors that would exist in the final ship. Allowing for power, food, maintenance and recreational areas, the final Ark would comfortably house twelve thousand people — the biggest one yet. And it had more facilities and living-space per person than the average family enjoyed on Earth. Two more arcologies were starting construction in higher orbits, each supposedly even bigger than this one.
Judith stared out of the port, seeing again her own office back at the Institute. The group’s move up here (if it happened; Hans Gibbs had been gone a long time) had seemed such a big thing when it was first proposed. Compared with what Salter Wherry was planning for the arcologies, it was nothing. They were designed to be self-sustaining over a period of centuries and more, free-ranging through the Solar System and beyond if they chose, independent even of sunlight. From a kilo or two of water, self-contained fusion plants would provide enough power for years. As a backup to the recycling systems, each arcology would tow along an asteroid several hundred meters across, to be mined as needed. Judith shook her head thoughtfully. She swung her chair to look out of the Earthside ports. It was daylight below, and she could see the great smudge that shrouded most of central Africa. Parts of the desiccated equatorial rain forest were still ablaze, casting a dark shadow across a third of the continent. The drought-ridden area stretched from the Mediterranean past the Equator, and no one could predict when it would end. It was hard to imagine what life must be like down there, as the climate changes made the old African life styles impossible. And across the Atlantic, the vast Amazon basin was steadily drying, too, becoming the tinder that would flame in just a few more months unless weather patterns changed.
A turn of the head brought Eleanora back into view, far above. Down on Earth the arcologies seemed remote, the daydream of one man. But once you were up here, watching the ferry ships swarming between the Station and the distant, twinkling sphere of Eleanora…
“Interested in taking that trip?” said Hans Gibbs’ voice from behind her. “There’s plenty of space available for qualified people, and you’d be a prime candidate for a colonist.”
The spell was broken. Judith realized that she had been staring out mindlessly, more fascinated than she had ever expected. She looked around at him questioningly.
“It’s yes,” he said at once. He shook his head in a puzzled way. “I’d have bet my liver that he wouldn’t even consider seeing you — I told you, Salter Wherry never meets with anybody except a few aides these days. So what does he do? He agrees to see you.”
“Thank you.”
Hans Gibbs laughed. “For Christ’s sake, don’t thank me. All I did was ask — and I didn’t expect anything except a quick refusal. He agreed so quickly, I wasn’t ready for it. I started to give him arguments why he should make an exception in this case, then my brain caught up with my mouth. I suppose that proves how little I know him, even after all these years. If you’re ready we can go over right now. His suite is on the other side of Spindletop, directly across from here. Come on, before he changes his mind.”
CHAPTER SIX
Salter Station was built on the general double-wheel plan defined thirty years earlier for a permanent space station.
The upper wheel, Spindletop, was reserved for communications, living, and recreational quarters. It rotated about the fixed spindle that jutted up to it from the lower wheel. With a diameter of four hundred meters, Spindletop had an effective gravity that ran from near-zero at the hub to almost a quarter-gee at the outer circumference. The thicker under-section turned much more slowly, needing close to two hours for a full revolution compared with Spindletop’s one-minute rotation period. All the maintenance, construction, power, and agriculture systems resided on the lower wheel.
“And some of the people, too,” said Hans Gibbs as they rode the moving cable in toward the hub of Spindletop. “Once they become used to zero gee, it’s a devil of a job to get them up here again. There’s a compulsory exercise program, but you wouldn’t believe the ways they find to get around it. We have engineers here who couldn’t go back down to Earth without a year’s conditioning — they spend all their time loafing around Workwheel. They even take their meals down there.” He pointed along a metal corridor, twenty meters across, that went away at right angles from their inward passage. “That’s the main route between Workwheel and Spindletop. See, we’re at the hub now. If we wanted to we could just hang here and drift.”
They paused for a few seconds so that Judith could take a good look around her. The central section was a labyrinth of cables, passages, and airlocks. “It’s all pressurized,” he said in answer to her question about the need for interior airlocks. “But different sections have different pressure levels. And of course the locks are there for safety, too. We’ve never had a blow-out or a bad air loss but it could happen anytime — we can’t track all the meteors.” He took her arm as they caught the cable out along another radial passageway of Spindletop. Her muscles tensed slightly beneath his fingers, but she made no comment.
“Have you spent much time in freefall?” he said after a few moments. He turned so that they were facing each other, dropping outward steadily down the spiralling circular tunnel that led to the edge of Spindletop.
She shook her head. “Enough so that it doesn’t trouble me in the stomach any more, but that’s about all. I’ve sometimes thought it might be nice to take a vacation up on Waterway and see how freefall swimming is done; but I’m told it’s expensive and I’ve always been too busy.”
“If you come up here to work, you can do it free. The big fish tanks down on Workwheel are open to swimmers all the time.”
He turned his face so that he was no longer looking directly at her before he spoke again. His voice was completely neutral. “There are some other experiences in freefall that you ought to try — really interesting ones. Maybe you can sample them before you go back down to the Institute and tell the others what it’s like here.”