“Charming.” Their companion grunted his displeasure. “And how long would all that take? I was once stuck on a funicular railway for seven hours, and believe me, it felt like seven hours going on seven years. Suppose the power doesn’t come back on? What are you supposed to do, shin down the cable on your own?”

While the aide was speaking, Howard Anson had turned to watch Rob’s reaction to the view on the big screen. What he saw disturbed him. This should be the moment of triumph, the point where the architect of the beanstalk was relaxing and smiling and giving the thumbs-up sign to everyone in sight.

Rob was slumped in his seat, the stump of his left hand held across his chest and cradled in his right. As Anson watched, Rob yawned hugely, slowly stood up, and stumbled like a drugged or drunken man toward the door of the Control Center.

“Come on, Senta.” Howard Anson came quickly to his feet. “The show’s over. Rob needs help.”

“He’s all right.” The senate aide examined Rob’s image. “I’ve seen that expression before. When you finish a big, complex job, you get a feeling like nothing else in the System. It’s the biggest high in the world, and at the same time you feel so weak and tired that you can’t really think at all. Merlin is coming down, that’s all.”

“I wish you were right.” Anson was at the door. “But I don’t think so.”

When they reached Rob he was standing motionless by the communicator at the entrance of Central Control. He was staring at it expectantly. Anson gave the operator a questioning glance.

The woman nodded. “I don’t have this on the schedule, but we have an incoming signal forwarded through lunar relay. Here comes the video.”

The communicator screen lit up. Darius Regulo’s battered countenance appeared.

While Senta Plessey gasped and Rob went rigid, Regulo spoke. “I’m sure it’s looking good. Better than good, Rob — perfect, everything on the button. Congratulations. I’ve watched you do it, but the beanstalk is all yours. Twenty years from now, people are going to marvel at the way that Earth managed to struggle along without it. Go out and enjoy yourself, savor the moment. You won’t get a feeling like this many times in your life. I wish I could be there to help you celebrate, instead of being stuck here on Atlantis.”

Senta said, “But Regulo is dead.”

“It was pre-recorded.” Anson was staring at the image caption. “More than a month ago. Regulo had that much confidence.”

“Confidence in me.” Rob, unsteady on his feet, placed his right hand against the wall. “More confidence than I had. It wasn’t ever supposed to end like this.”

Corrie entered Control Center. She had missed the message from Regulo, and saw only Rob’s agonized look and rigid posture.

“I knew it.” She went to his side and placed an arm around him in support. “Just look at you, you’re a wreck. The beanstalk is a great success, but it could have waited until you had recovered. No more excuses. It’s operation time. You want to celebrate? You can do it in the hospital.”

She expected an argument. Instead, Rob meekly allowed himself to be led away. As he went, he muttered — to her, or to himself? — “It’s over. It’s all over.”

By nightfall, the last traces of oscillation had damped below the detection level of any of the monitors. Earth had adjusted to the presence of its newest bridge. As the stars appeared, Luis Merindo could see the bright thread of the beanstalk, still illuminated by the setting sun, disappearing into the night sky.

He walked to the perimeter of the guard fence and looked up. Far above his head, catching the sunlight until the final sweep into Earth’s shadow, the patient robots continued their work of installing the ore and passenger carriers. Their night would not come for another five hours, until the deep shadow had climbed the beanstalk all the way to synchronous altitude. Even then the ballast weight would still swing in full sunlight, until it too dipped at last behind the Earth for its brief half-hour of night.

Merindo stood alone, gazing upward. Broad, dark, heavily built, he had been a ground-hog all his life, moving the earth and planting the caissons. Rockets out to a cold and empty space had never offered any attraction, not to a man who felt his roots so deep in earth. But now the way to space was a part of Earth itself, and with a firm highway standing ready to be taken…

The thin filament of the illuminated cable moved higher in the sky, even as the lower parts drifted into shadow. The thread drew his vision outward. He did not realize it then, but when Luis Merindo finally lost sight of the beanstalk against the background of the tropical star field, and turned his weary way back to the air car and Tether Control, a decision had been made at some deep level within him.

He was the first of the billions who would feel the lure of that shining road, and follow it outward.

CHAPTER 18: “Cor contritum quasi cinis, gere curam mei finis”

“Senta and Corrie ought to be here in a few minutes.” Howard Anson, seated by the window, was watching the endless stream of traffic as it moved to the base of the beanstalk. There was a speculative look on his well-bred features. “What did the doctors decide, Rob? Are you on the road to recovery?”

“That’s what they tell me. I’m even beginning to believe it. Can you tell me, Howard, is it possible to die of pain?”

“Sure it is. You’ll never hear a doctor call it that, they say that your heart failed, or you lost the will to live, or some other nonsense. But dying of pain used to be very common.” Anson shuddered. “Thank Heaven for modern anesthetics. Why do you ask? Were the operations so painful?”

“Not them. The final hours on Atlantis, and afterwards. If Corrie hadn’t ignored everybody on the ship and cut off the rest of my hand with the surgical laser, I don’t think I’d be here now.”

“You owe her a lot. I finally had time to examine the records of your trip back. She broke every rule in the System. You averaged two gees — there were traffic alarms going off all the way in from the Belt. Didn’t you tell me that thing” — Anson gestured at Rob’s new left hand — “could be switched off any time you wanted to? You should ask for a refund.”

“The people who installed the new one said they didn’t expect me to shred my hand and use it as a screwdriver. And I didn’t know that Morel was going to melt part of the wall of Atlantis and shower me with drops of liquid metal.”

Rob was sitting up in the bed close to the broad window, supported on a pile of pillows. His face was emaciated but his color was good. Anson was pleased by the improvement.

“When will you get an explanation from them?” he said. “You once told me that those hands were foolproof.”

Rob smiled. “It depends how big a fool owns the hands. They never could tell me what happened, but this morning I finally figured it out for myself. I had stripped off the protective layer of skin, down to the metal skeleton. Then Morel splashed on a drop of liquid nickel, right next to the ulnar nerve terminal input and inside the hand. Then we added a few drops of sepia and water, from Caliban’s splashing about after Joseph Morel. The result was a nice little micro-battery. It couldn’t have been generating more than a millivolt — but it fed right into my sensory nerves.”

“I hope you got a design modification, so it won’t happen again.” Anson seemed unmoved by Rob’s grimaces at the memory.

“It won’t happen again. Not to me, at least. I’m headed for the quiet life — rigging the high steel, or painting the beanstalk to keep it from rusting.” Rob stared out of the window towards the distant base of the structure. “Are you really thinking of going up it? I thought you were dead set against space travel.”