Mary turned to look at Norm. He was eyeing at her already, holding himself braced for the blast he knew was coming. George and Ivan were actually cringing, as if they expected her to physically explode.
The image was so ludicrous that Mary burst into laughter instead. “God, look at you,” she said when she could get her breath back. “You’re pathetic. We’re pathetic,” she added generously. “One headstrong fool of a settler and a bunch of yesmen. Well, get this straight, guys: the universe doesn’t give a damn about consensus. You’re either right or you’re wrong, and no amount of bullying or wishful thinking or team-play is going to change that. Until we start taking into account what’s really down there, we don’t deserve to succeed.”
She turned away from them and stalked out of the room, slamming the door behind her. The slam reverberated through the repaired decking, and as the vibrations died away, the three men stole looks at each other.
“Well. Now what?” Ivan asked finally.
Norm had turned bright red during Mary’s harangue. Now he slumped down into a chair, as though abruptly exhausted, and stared away from them, at the wall.
“All right,” he said finally. “Build the damned non-flammable hose – if we can.” He paused briefly, then added, “Mary knows everything. Or thinks she does. She can run the project. I won’t be responsible for it.”
Ivan peered again into the 3D monitor. Serrated arrays of multicolored balls marched off into perspective infinity in an intricate but ever-repeating pattern. He frowned slightly, and thought a command into the link. The crystalline pattern in the display shifted so rapidly and smoothly that the difference in the new configuration was hardly apparent. But Ivan was not bothering to visually scan the crystal model anyway. He was busy calculating parameters on it, strength/lightness, flexibility, fatigue life; and most importantly, susceptibility to oxygen attack. Sure, the silica backbone was impervious – after all, it was fully oxidized already – but did it sufficiently protect the embedded organic fibers?
“How’s it going?” An abrupt voice asked from behind. Ivan jumped but, from long habit, he saved the molecular design first before turning around. Mary stood behind his chair, her arms folded across her chest.
“Okay,” he said. “It would be nice if you knocked first.”
Mary looked over his shoulder into the monitor. “What’s the coding?” she asked, pointing at the colored balls.
With a sigh, Ivan turned back to the screen and said, “The white balls are oxygen. They’re 4-coordinated with silicon; you can see the oxygen tetrahedra” – he pointed at them – “sharing every vertex. You can’t see the silicons ‘cause they’re enclosed in each oxygen tetrahedron. The whole structure’s basically a silica polymer.”
“Quartz?” Mary asked
“No, more like cristobalite. We need a more open structure to thread the superconductors and contractile fibers through. The black is carbon, the red nitrogen,” he continued, pointing at an intricate lacework embedded among the white clumps of oxygen tetrahedra.
“Dammit, that won’t work!” Mary stated emphatically. “The structure’s too open. Oxygen’ll get in and fry the organics.”
Ivan’s lips thinned for a moment. He felt a surge of irritation, and even a flash of sympathy for Norm. “No, Mary,” he finally said in as calm a voice as he could muster. “I have done the simulation. The gaps are too narrow for 02 molecules to pass, and the tunneling probability is negligible. Would you like to see?” Without waiting for an answer, he thought a command through the link. The monitor picture changed; now the intricate crystal structure was almost invisible, hidden behind a swarm of jittering dumb-bells – a simulation of gaseous 02 molecules. “I’ve run this for simulated days, Mary! Nothing happens.” He knew he was going to regret it, but he couldn’t help saying, “Dammit, I know what I’m doing too!”
“Let’s hope so.” Mary watched for a moment longer, then turned and left without another word.
Afterward Ivan found himself shaking. Appalled with himself, he tried to will serenity, calmness, understanding . . . the sort of thing George talked about all the time. But it didn’t come. It would never come until the job was done, and maybe not even then.
George sat again at the VR console. He felt slimy and sweaty, and looked with loathing at the heads-up helmet. He could already feel it itching on his scalp. It wasn’t quite time yet, so he’d hold off putting it on as long as possible.
A camera at the base of the stalk showed Waterworld looming massively below, cruelly tantalizing with its ocean and clouds. It looked like they could just reach out and scoop up seawater. So teasing and yet so inaccessible, protected by acid and fire like a treasure in some old fairy tale.
Ivan also watched, dividing his attention between George and the monitors in the room. Presumably Norm was watching too, but on a monitor in his cabin. He had refused to be in the same room with Mary ever since the debacle with the diamond peripump.
“Whenever you’re ready, George.” There was an edge in Mary’s voice.
Mary’s comment cut abruptly into his reverie. Since Norm’s abdication of authority, Mary didn’t even try to hide her contempt for the rest of them. She didn’t seem to realize that the decisions hadn’t been so clear-cut as she imagined. But history would judge that, too, he supposed. He tried to be charitable: being right had gone to her head. But still . . .
“The hose isn’t quite to the end of the cable yet,” he said mildly. Not for the first time, George contrasted her – and Norm – with Teresa. Teresa had been a facilitator – she’d gotten along with Mary, even while sleeping with Norm – and she’d been an effective leader, too. More effective, in fact, with this group of egotists than the would-be autocrats who’d succeeded her.
But Teresa was dead. And the whole expedition was dead, too, unless this worked. The new silica hose was gliding down the skystalk on a string of elevator cars working in tandem, like porters carrying a snake. The multi-elevator approach was partly to spread the weight out so no one car was overtaxed, and partly to keep the hose from cracking like a whip. As its mass moved down the elevator, it pulled the skystalk sideways with its added angular velocity, and the navigation computer had to compensate by accelerating the ship slightly, to pull the stalk taut again.
The computer would do most of the work of guiding the hose all the way down to Waterworld’s sea, too, but George would be in the loop as a back up, in case the unexpected happened.
And, God knew, there was ample chance of the unexpected.
He sat down and put on his helmet, glad, at least, to be escaping Mary’s presence even if only through the mind link. He found, though, it took longer than usual to focus his mind into the link. Finally he directed his attention to the base of the skystalk, where the ballast mass hung, and where the new hose was approaching. The elevator chain had slowed down as the lower end neared the ballast, but finally the lowermost elevator let go of its cargo and the tip of the new silica-fiber peripump emerged beyond the end of the skystalk. Then the hose drifted uncertainly, like a puzzled snake. The ungainly trashrack on the end, an improvized ceramic cage to keep the seething predators out of the intake, sported a rocket engine whose nozzle looked a little like a bulbous snout.
Now, thought George, it gets interesting. Even just above the atmosphere, the hose tip still had angular velocity that needed to be canceled. So they couldn’t go the last 600 km down through the atmosphere just by tweaking the trim masses on the skystalk. And they didn’t dare try aerobraking, not on their untried, ad-hoc design. No, they needed to use reaction mass, because they had to take the hose into the atmosphere at the lowest speed possible. Not because of the danger of ignition this time, but because silica was much less strong than diamond fiber. One wrong move and they could snap off a hundred kilometer length of it.
Which meant, even though they’d calculated the most fuelefficient trajectory possible, they had to sacrifice the last of their water. They had nothing else that could be pumped
through the hose. They didn’t need much – the antimatter rocket engine ensured that – but then, they didn’t have much.
To George, it felt like landing a 600-kilometer long flexible spaceship, in slow motion. As the sun gradually set with Waterworld’s leisurely rotation, the cameras mounted along the hose itself all showed similar views: a slim bright line tapering into nothing against the utter black of the planet’s advancing night side. Now and again a puff of brilliant smoke materialized against that blackness, a cloud of superheated steam exhaust flashing into ice crystals and catching the sun – another burst of reaction mass from the nozzle at the hose tip, braking its long descent to the planet below.
George couldn’t tell how long he’d sat there, straining to stay alert, but the alarm buzzer brought him to full consciousness in an instant. Reflexively he shut off the valve feeding water to the engine, with the engineer’s instinct offirst stop the flow; then find the problem.
Mary had been dozing in front of the monitor. She awoke at the alarm, or at George’s curse, and said, “What are you doing, George? What is it?”
George was wondering the same. He scanned the displays, trying to identify what had gone wrong, while part of his mind noted wryly that Mary’s immediate reaction wasn’t too useful. If he’d already known what was wrong, was he going to just sit mum until she demanded an answer?
There! Stress in the hose; sensors showed the tension dangerously high at one point. Much more and the hose would break.
Heart pounding, he went to locate the problem. Their lives and their expedition now hung by a literal thread . . . if the stressed point was on the part of the hose that still lay alongside the stalk, they might be able to fix it. If it was on the part that was already down into the atmosphere, though . . .
It was fifty kilometers up the stalk.
So. It could be worse; the problem might be reachable, if necessary. But what had happened to cause the stress?
Ah, there it was.
“An elevator isn’t moving,” George said. “Nor responding. Something’s stuck.”
Ivan had awakened as well. “Can you fix it?” he asked.
“I don’t know. There’s not much to try here. I can try wriggling the hose by jiggling the other elevator cars, to see if that unsticks it, but—”
“Then do it!” That was Mary, peremptory.
George finished despite the interruption, “But I don’t recommend it. We’re simply going to break the hose. It’s not likely to be able to take such treatment.”
“He’s right,” Ivan said.
Mary had seemed about to blow up again, but then restrained herself with an effort as what he said registered. “What else can we do?”
“I can try to get the stuck elevator car to free itself.”
“Do it, then,” she said unnecessarily.
George did, but it quickly became evident that the errant car was not responding to any commands whatsoever from the controls.
“What now?” Mary asked George.
“What now? It’s obvious.” He avoided looking directly at Mary. “We have to go unstick it.”
“Good luck,” Ivan’s voice was strained over the radio, but Mary didn’t acknowledge the good wishes as she climbed into the elevator car. The whole crew was there. Even Norm was watching, in person. She and he had drawn straws for the debatable privilege of riding down the stalk to fix the stuck hose. (They had to assume it was fixable. Had to.) Neither one of them was particularly happy with the result, but neither would suggest a switch.
The elevator car was an open-framed cylindrical cage about 3 meters tall and 1.5 meters across, with two superconducting rings holding it to the cable. Cargo pods would normally be enclosed in the cage or, in the case of the hose carriers, empty tanks to ferry the water back to the ship. Grapples for handling the hose had been attached to the outside. Mary’s car was empty, and she rode inside, but there was barely room for her, perched atop a mass of tools, ropes, and such – anything she thought she might need. She fitted herself in as best she could, and then spoke a single word into the radio. “Ready.”
“Here goes. Hang on.” George’s voice echoed in her ears. She felt weight settle on her as the car accelerated – slower than usual because of its human cargo, but still, within ten minutes she was traveling a thousand kilometers per hour and the ship’s ungainly form was dwindling behind her. She felt light again as the acceleration shut off, then she struggled to move the tools to the other end of the cylinder. The next time she felt weight, it would be coming from the other direction.
The gaps in the cage were wide enough to fit through with only a little squeezing. She leaned out and looked down, down, down along the cables, twin threads tapering together with perspective against the disk of Waterworld, over ten degrees across even from her distance. Each cable was less than a centimeter in diameter, but even so the entire skystalk massed several hundred tons, all pure carbon 12. It was supposed to be a critical “bootstrap” piece of technology when they got to their destination, but it had never been designed for reeling back in.
If they couldn’t . . . She shook herself out of that line of thought. They had more immediate problems.
But not so immediate that she couldn’t catch up on her sleep. Even at a thousand kilometers an hour, it was still a thirty-hour ride to the point where the hose was stuck, and she might as well get some rest. She wouldn’t get any when she arrived, and besides, it would be more comfortable now while the gravity was still so low. But she was still keyed up; the sight of the cables stretching away toward the planet kept drawing her attention.
Down, down . . . She strained to see where the cables were leading, following them with her eyes. It was tantalizing: their tips just vanished against the disk of the planet. You couldn’t really define, though, exactly where they became invisible.
Abruptly she realized she didn’t remember the last few minutes, and that she was balanced precariously over the side of the cage.
And she was no longer in zero-gee. If she fell out, she’d be in a separate orbit. It would still be close to the ship’s, and they might be able to rescue her with the shuttle if she missed the atmosphere at perigee, but then they might not. And it would cost time and reaction mass they didn’t have.
Norm would have the last laugh if that happened. Another good reason not to have it happen.
Shuddering, she pulled back in and clipped her safety belt to one of the cage bars, then she curled up atop her tools and fell asleep.
The insistent chiming of her radio alarm woke her from uneasy dreams. Momentarily disoriented, Mary absently tried to scratch herself, but felt only smooth skinsuit under her fingers. She sat up abruptly as memory flooded back and nearly teetered off the top of the tool bundle. She grabbed at her safety line and at the cage, twisting her body back and wrenching her right arm as she did so.
“Coming up on the target,” George said over the radio. His voice sounded amused; he’d probably been watching her from the elevator’s camera, and no doubt had enjoyed watching her panic.
Well, screw him, she thought. She looked out at the other skystalk cable, the pump dangling alongside it, the elevator cars supporting it flashing by every ten kilometers or so. She was slowing down perceptibly.
She looked over the side. Waterworld was no longer a disk. Vastly larger, it was now a flat wall beside her, curving away toward the distant, atmosphere-fuzzed horizon. She was nearing the end of the stalk. George would bring her to a halt at the point where the other elevator car had failed, and from there she would have to search manually for the problem.
In a few minutes she felt the elevator begin to decelerate, adding to her weight as it did. Even after it stopped, she felt a sixth of a gee or so from the planet itself, and that sensation triggered an unexpected wave of vertigo. Suddenly Waterworld was not a ball hanging in space; she was up, and it was below. Far below. Far, far, far below. With suddenly shaking fingers Mary double-checked her safety line. Nothing could save he
r if she fell here. She’d plunge into the atmosphere like a meteor, her angular velocity carrying her away from the stalk as she did so.
She sat back and carefully looked out rather than down, trying to focus her mind on what she came for. She inspected the elevator on the opposite cable with the binocs built into her suit helmet, trying to will the shaking away. A deep breath, then another . . .
George’s voice broke into her thoughts like a clap of thunder. “Looks like you’ll have to—”
“Shut up and let me think,” she snapped at him. “I don’t want to hear from any of you unless it’s an emergency, is that clear?”
“Clear as vacuum,” he said, and Mary heard the click of him disengaging his microphone. Good. One less thing to worry about.
The hose stretched parallel to the cable, held taut by the clamps mounted on the cage. George had backed the lower elevators up to relieve the tension in the hose, but ten kilometers of its own weight still pulled it tight below the clamp. Above it, though, the hose was slack, drifting slowly side to side as a long-period vibration ran up and down it.
The problem didn’t take long to find. The elevator evidently had lost power, so its automatic braking system had grabbed onto the cable to prevent it from free-falling the entire length of the skystalk and hitting the bottom like a bomb. Then the hose had started to stretch as the other elevators continued moving. Apparently George had cut the power to the whole chain of them just in time.
She fumed silently. Maybe he’d saved the pump, but none of this would have been necessary if they’d deployed the silica pump in the first place.
Anyway. What to do? Mary considered her options. The elevator itself was probably not worth trying to fix. It was far more important to get the hose deployed, and anyway, to risk damaging it to save one elevator made no sense. Enough others were carrying the weight; they could do without one.
The Mammoth Book of Extreme Science Fiction Page 28