“Coming up to three eighty,” said Kingsley. “How is the power level?”
“Beginning to drop – down to eighty-five percent – the battery’s starting to fade.”
“Well, if it holds out for another twenty kilometres, it will have done its job. How do you feel?”
Morgan was tempted to answer with superlatives, but his natural caution dissuaded him. “I’m fine,” he said. “If we could guarantee a display like this for all our passengers, we wouldn’t be able to handle the crowds.”
“Perhaps it could be arranged,” laughed Kingsley. “We could ask Monsoon Control to dump a few barrels of electrons in the right places. Not their usual line of business, but they’re good at improvising… . aren’t they?”
Morgan chuckled, but did not answer. His eyes were fixed on the instrument panel, where both power and rate of climb were now visibly dropping. But this was no cause for alarm; Spider had reached 385 kilometres out of the expected 400, and the booster battery still had some life in it.
At 390 kilometres Morgan started to cut back the rate of climb, until Spider crept more and more slowly upwards. Eventually the capsule was barely moving, and it finally came to rest just short of 405 kilometres.
“I’m dropping the battery,” Morgan reported. “Mind your heads.”
A good deal of thought had been given to recovering that heavy and expensive battery, but there had been no time to improvise a braking system that would let it slide safely back, like one of Morgan’s kite-riders. And though a parachute had been available, it was feared that the shrouds might become entangled with the tape. Fortunately the impact area, just ten kilometres east of the earth terminus, lay in dense jungle. The wild life of Taprobane would have to take its chances, and Morgan was prepared to argue with the Department of Conservation later.
He turned the safety key and then pressed the red button that fired the explosive charges; Spider shook briefly as they detonated. Then he switched to the internal battery, slowly released the friction brakes, and again fed power into the drive motors.
The capsule started to climb on the last lap of its journey. But one glance at the instrument panel told Morgan that something was seriously wrong. Spider should have been rising at over two hundred klicks; it was doing less than one hundred, even at full power. No tests or calculations were necessary; Morgan’s diagnosis was instant, for the figures spoke for themselves. Sick with frustration, he reported back to Earth.
“We’re in trouble,” he said. “The charges blew – but the battery never dropped. Something’s still holding it on.”
It was unnecessary, of course, to add that the mission must now be aborted. Everyone knew perfectly well that Spider could not possibly reach the base of the Tower carrying several hundred kilos of dead-weight.
48. Night at the Villa
Ambassador Rajasinghe needed little sleep these nights; it was as if a benevolent Nature was granting him the maximum use of his remaining years. And at a time like this, when the Taprobanean skies were blazing with their greatest wonder for centuries, who could have stayed abed?
How he wished that Paul Sarath was here to share the spectacle! He missed his old friend more than he would have thought possible; there was no-one who could annoy and stimulate him in the way that Paul had done – no-one with the same bond of shared experience stretching back to boyhood. Rajasinghe had never thought that he would outlive Paul, or would see the fantastic billion-ton stalactite of the Tower almost span the gulf between its orbital foundation and Taprobane, thirty-six thousand kilometres below. To the end Paul had been utterly opposed to the project; he had called it a Sword of Damocles, and had never ceased to predict its eventual plunge to earth. Yet even Paul had admitted that the Tower had already produced some benefits.
For perhaps the first time in history, the rest of the world actually knew that Taprobane existed, and was discovering its ancient culture. Yakkagala, with its brooding presence and its sinister legends, had attracted special attention; as a result, Paul had been able to get support for some of his cherished projects. The enigmatic personality of Yakkagala’s creator had already given rise to numerous books and videodramas, and the son-et-lumi�re display at the foot of the Rock was invariably sold out. Shortly before his death Paul had remarked wryly that a minor Kalidasa industry was in the making, and it was becoming more and more difficult to distinguish fiction from reality.
Soon after midnight, when it was obvious that the auroral display had passed its climax, Rajasinghe had been carried back into his bedroom. As he always did when he had said goodnight to his household staff, he relaxed with a glass of hot toddy and switched on the late news summary. The only item that really interested him was the progress that Morgan was making; by this time he should be approaching the base of the Tower.
The news editor had already starred the latest development; a line of continuously flashing type announced
MORGAN STUCK 200 KM SHORT OF GOAL
Rajasinghe’s fingertips requested the details, and he was relieved to find that his first fears were groundless. Morgan was not stuck; he was unable to complete the journey. He could return to earth whenever he wished – but if he did Professor Sessui and his colleagues would certainly be doomed.
Directly above his head the silent drama was being played out at this very moment. Rajasinghe switched from text to video, but there was nothing new – indeed, the item now being screened in the news recap was Maxine Duval’s ascent, years ago, in Spider’s precursor.
“I can do better than that,” muttered Rajasinghe, and switched to his beloved telescope.
For the first months after he had become bed-ridden he had been unable to use it. Then Morgan had paid one of his brief courtesy calls, analysed the situation, and swiftly prescribed the remedy. A week later, to Rajasinghe’s surprise and pleasure, a small team of technicians had arrived at the Villa Yakkagala, and had modified the instrument for remote operation. Now he could lie comfortably in bed, and still explore the starry skies and the looming face of the Rock. He was deeply grateful to Morgan for the gesture; it had shown a side of the engineer’s personality he had not suspected.
He was not sure what he could see, in the darkness of the night – but he knew exactly where to look, for he had long been watching the slow descent of the Tower. When the sun was at the correct angle, he could even glimpse the four guiding tapes converging into the zenith, a quartet of shining hair-lines scratched upon the sky.
He set the azimuth bearing on the telescope control, and swung the instrument around until it pointed above Sri Kanda. As he began to track slowly upwards, looking for any sign of the capsule, he wondered what the Maha Thero was thinking about this latest development. Though Rajasinghe had not spoken to the prelate – now well into his nineties – since the Order had moved to Lhasa, he gathered that the Potala had not provided the hoped-for accommodation. The huge palace was slowly falling into decay while the Dalai Lama’s executors haggled with the Chinese Federal Government over the cost of maintenance. According to Rajasinghe’s latest information, the Maha Thero was now negotiating with the Vatican – also in chronic financial difficulties, but at least still master of its own house.
All things were indeed impermanent, but it was not easy to discern any cyclic pattern. Perhaps the mathematical genius of Parakarma-Goldberg might be able to do so; the last time Rajasinghe had seen him, he was receiving a major scientific award for his contributions to meteorology. Rajasinghe would never have recognised him; he was clean-shaven and wearing a suit cut in the very latest neo-Napoleonic fashion. But now, it seemed, he had switched religions again… . The stars slid slowly down the big monitor screen at the end of the bed, as the telescope tilted up towards the Tower. But there was no sign of the capsule, though Rajasinghe was sure that it must now be in the field of view.
He was about to switch back to the regular news channel when, like an erupting nova, a star flashed out near the lower edge of the picture. For a moment Rajasinghe wondered if the capsule had exploded; then he saw that it was shining with a perfectly steady light. He centred the image and zoomed to maximum power.
Long ago he had seen a two-century-old video-documentary of the first aerial wars, and he suddenly remembered a sequence showing a night attack upon London. An enemy bomber had been caught in a cone of searchlights, and had hung like an incandescent mote in the sky. He was seeing the same phenomenon now, on a hundredfold greater scale; but this time all the resources on the ground were combined to help, not to destroy, the determined invader of the night.