“Ready to go?” asked Julie.

Marge nodded. “Yes, indeed.” She was proud of her rainmakers, but trying to look as though this were all in a day’s work.

“Bill,” said Julie, “Get the landers and the helicopter ready.”

“They are primed and waiting.”

Marge planted a pickup on a tree trunk so they could watch the action on the ground. When she’d finished, they got back into the hauler and Julie took them up, directly over the top of the chimney.

They did a quick inspection, and Marge pronounced everything in order. “Let’s go,” she said.

Julie descended gently until they touched the top of the chimney. “That’s good,” she told Bill. “Reconnect.”

Marge felt the magnetic clamps take hold.

“Done,” said Bill.

Marge started the pump. On the ground, a fine spray rose into the air and descended around the rainmaker. “That’s not really going to make the clouds happen, is it?”

“It’ll speed things along,” said Marge.

Julie grinned. “The wonders of modern technology.” She swung round in her seat. “Here we go.”

She engaged the spike, the vertical thrusters fired, and they started up. The top of the rainmaker rose with them, extending like an accordion.

“You ever have a problem with these things?” asked Julie.

“Not so far. Of course, this is the first time we’ve tried to use them off-world.”

“Should work better than at home,” Julie said. “Less gravity.” And then, to the AI: “Bill, let’s get the first lander aloft.”

The interior of the chimney was braced with microscopically thin lightweight ribs, and crosspieces supported the structure every eighty-six meters. A screen guarded the bottom of the chimney, to prevent small animals from getting sucked up inside. (Larger creatures, like Goompahs, would be inconvenienced if they got too close, would lose their hats, but not their lives.)

As they gained altitude, the omega rose with them. For the first time, Marge could see lightning bolts flickering within the cloud mass.

“Four hundred meters,” said Bill, giving them the altitude.

There was an external support ring two hundred meters below the top of the chimney. The first of the four landers, under Bill’s control, rose alongside and linked to the ring.

“Connection complete,” said the AI. Both vehicles, working in concert, continued drawing the chimney up.

Marge could see lights in Hopgop, on the east along the sea. The big moon was up, and it was moving slowly across the face of the omega.

“Seven hundred meters,” said Bill.

The ship swayed. “Atmosphere’s pushing at the chimney,” said Marge. “Don’t worry. It’ll get smoother as we go higher.”

“The other landers are in the air.”

It struck Marge that the cloud looked most ominous, most portentous, when it was rising. She didn’t know why that was. Maybe it was connected with the disappointed hope, each evening, that it wouldn’t be there in the morning. Maybe it was simply the sense of something evil climbing into the sky. She shook it off, thinking how the Goompahs must be affected if it bothered her.

“I have a question,” said Julie.

“Go ahead.”

“When it’s all over, how do we get them down? The chimneys?”

“When the omega hits, we push a button, and the omega blows them into the sea.”

Julie frowned. “They won’t drag? Cause some damage on the ground?”

“I doubt it. In any case, it’s a necessary risk.” The construction materials were biodegradable, and within a few months there’d be no trace of the chimneys anywhere.

They were getting high. Hopgop looked far away. Overhead, the stars were bright.

“Twelve hundred meters.”

Near ground level, a second lander moved in alongside the chimney and tied onto a support ring on the opposite side from the first. “Second linkup complete,” said Bill. “All units ascending.”

At twenty-two hundred meters, the third lander joined the effort, connecting with a ring at right angles to the other two. Marge was sitting comfortably, reassuring Julie when the hauler occasionally rocked as the weather pushed at the chimney. Julie had never done anything like this, and when she put on goggles and saw the chimney trailing all the way to the ground, her instincts screamed that it was too much, that the weight had to drag the hauler out of the air. It came down to Marge’s assurances against the evidence of her eyes.

“Keep in mind,” Marge said, “it’s the same thing you brought down out of orbit. It’s no heavier now than it was then.”

“Except now it’s unrolled.”

“Doesn’t change the mass. Relax. Everything’s going to be fine.”

At thirty-seven hundred meters, they began to slow. By then the fourth lander had joined the support group, and they were approaching the chimney’s extension limit. When the pickup they’d left behind showed them they had exactly the situation they wanted, the anchor lines pulled tight, and the base of the chimney off the ground, they halted the ascent.

“Bill,” said Julie, “activate the helicopter and put it in position.”

Bill acknowledged.

The helicopter was a gleaming antique unit, a Falcon, which had become legendary during the long struggle with international terrorists during the later years of the last century. CANADIAN FORCES was stenciled on its hull. It was equipped with lasers and particle beam weapons, but of course none was functional.

Bill started the engine and engaged its silent-running capability, which wasn’t really all that silent. When it was ready, he lifted it a couple of meters into the air, navigated it between the two trees Marge had selected, and inserted it directly beneath the base of the chimney.

“Ready,” said Bill.

“Okay.” Julie was doing a decent job hiding her qualms. “We want the blades turning as fast as possible, but we don’t want it off the ground. We just want to move the air around.”

“Ground idle,” said Bill.

“Yes. That sounds right.”

The blades picked up speed. The helicopter strained upward and Bill cut back slightly. “Perfect,” Marge said.

“What next?” asked Julie.

Marge smiled. “I think from here we can just relax and enjoy the show.”

A column of warm moist air moved skyward. Up the chimney. More warm air rushed in to fill the vacuum, and gradually the flow took over on its own. Bill had to cut the blade rotation back again to keep the Falcon from lifting off.

“Moving along nicely,” he reported. And, finally: “I believe it is self-sustaining now.”

Marge gave it a few more minutes, then Julie directed Bill to move the helicopter away. “Be careful,” she added.

Bill brought the Falcon out, squeezing past the same two trees. When it was clear, he gunned the engines, and it lifted off into the steady winds that were racing around the chimney. It fought its way into the sky and turned west toward Utopia.

Avery Whitlock’s Notebooks

The ship is asleep.

Digger seems to be okay. We were worried for a while that there might be some brain damage. He still doesn’t have his memory back completely, can’t recall how he got into the ocean, or even being on the beach. But Bill says that’s not an unusual result in cases like this. I guess we’ll know for sure in the morning.

I haven’t been able to sleep. It’s not so much that I’m worried about Digger, because I think he’ll be okay. But watching a creature that one thinks of as rational try to end its life for the most irrational of purposes. I cannot get it out of my mind. Knowing that it happens, has happened to us, and seeing it in action. It gives me a sense of how far we’ve come. Of what civilization truly means.

— December 5

On board the AV3, west of Hopgop.

Saturday, December 6.

“LEVEL OF CONVECTION is sufficient,” said Bill.

“All right.” Marge rubbed her hands together. “Now we do the magic.” She glanced out at the sky. The chimney, which they’d been supporting for several hours, was all but invisible to the naked eye. Julie had noticed that the drag on the AV3 had lessened, had in fact all but disappeared. “Cut them loose,” she said. “Cut everything loose.”

“The landers, too?”

“Everything. Send them to Utopia.”

Julie knew how it was supposed to work. But this kind of operation flew in the face of common sense. And she had a bad feeling about what would happen when she released her grip on the chimney. Ah, well. “Bill,” she said, “do it.”

The AI acknowledged. She felt the clamps release the chimney, watched the status board light up with reports that the four landers had simultaneously turned loose, heard Bill say that the action was completed. And all her instincts told her that the elongated structure they’d so laboriously hauled up several thousand meters would now collapse, crash down on the countryside and, God help them, maybe on Hopgop.

Marge was smiling broadly. “Let’s take a look,” she said.

Julie took the hauler around in a large arc so they could see. The chimney was constructed of stealth materials. When she looked through the goggles, it was voilà all the way to the ground. It was standing on its own, a great round cylinder extending down through the clouds, supported by no visible means.

She knew the theory. Surface air is warmer, heavier, and more humid than air at altitude. It wants to rise but generally can’t do so in any organized fashion, or in sufficient volume to create clouds unless there’s substantial pressure or a temperature gradient. Nightfall and pressure fronts provide that in nature.

To do it artificially, a chimney was needed. Once it was in place, the warm air started up on its own. It kept moving up because there was no place else for it to go. They’d put the Falcon at the base to provide a fan, to help things along. Once the system got going, the chimney became an oversize siphon, perfectly capable of keeping itself inflated.

At the moment, warm moist air was spreading out from the top of the rainmaker. It would shortly begin to create clouds.

“We just have time,” Marge said, “to get the next package and run it down to the Sakmarung site so we can be ready to go tomorrow night.”

That would leave enough time for Julie to get back to the Jenkins and pick up her two caballeros, who’d be looking forward to another day of planting their projectors and getting ready for the big show. She wasn’t entirely sure Digger would be able to go back down, and in fact she thought he should stay put. Since Whit was too inexperienced to go down alone, that meant both of them should take a day off.