What seemed a simple proposition, drop a cable from geostationary orbit, anchor it to the Earth, and run elevator cars up and down the line, turned out to be anything but. For example, the length of the cable would vary from hour to hour, as the Sun heated the cable or night cooled it. But if the cable was too loose, running the cars would result in waves running up and down the cable, destroying it. The engineers resorted to ancient technology to solve the problem—a sea anchor. Like an enormous umbrella held upside down two thousand meters deep, a contracting cable would be trying to lift a cylinder of water a thousand meters across. When the cable heated and lengthened, one-way valves in the sea anchor would let the enormous mass settle back down in the water column, maintaining tension on the line.
Literally hundreds of similar problems, big and small, were discovered and solved during the construction of the smaller Collins Lunar elevator, connecting Lagrange point EML-1 and the surface of the Moon. Now it was Earth's turn.
* * *
With a muted roar, blowers blasted the moist tropical air through the red-hot heat exchangers of the onboard thorium reactor. Simultaneously, hydraulic jacks on the launch platform pushed the nanotube cabin smoothly upward, allowing the woven carbon fiber balloon fabric underneath to expand and inflate.
The Command Bridge, with Topside on the roof, quickly gained altitude as Kishizuna filled out. Thirty minutes later, the lower capsule housing the thorium reactor was straining at its moorings, impatient to be aloft.
“Keel reports zero contact. Tether strain gages registering, Captain,” reported Yuai. “We are ready to be cast off.”
“Thank you, Junior. Resume your station,” Gus said. “Solix Ground, Kishizuna requests mooring release and lock release on the ground cable reel.
“Mooring release in thirty seconds, Kishizuna, mark. Cable reel unlocked. Good hunting the cable, Gus.”
“Roger.” He nodded to Shohei. “All stations, please, Mr. Nishikawa.”
“You're on, sir.”
“Mooring release in twenty seconds. Everyone hold on, or strap in. Here we go!”
At eight thirty-two on a cloudless tropical morning, Kishizuna slipped her bonds and silently ascended into the cerulean sky.
* * *
Yuai blinked sweat out of her eyes. Between the stress of solving Captain Reach's simulation problems and sitting atop a one hundred and fifty meter hot-gas balloon, she was perspiring heavily. But then, so was everyone else.
“Tell me, Ensign Nakata, why do we use three gasses on Kishizuna?” The Captain was relentless. The crew watched her covertly. As the ascent went on, and the Captain continued to push her, the attitude of those around her changed subtly to one of support.
“Sir, we use heated air at the surface to fully stretch and test the balloon's envelope. Occasionally, high altitude helium balloons burst prematurely from hidden defects in the envelope, buried in the folds. Once above five thousand meters, heated helium is slowly released into the top of the envelope, where it displaces the air out of the bottom. Above thirty thousand meters, heated hydrogen is released, forcing out the helium. Only H2 can get us up to forty kilometers, where we will meet the end of the orbital cable.”
“Good. Exactly right. Ms. Izumi, where are we?”
“We are twenty kilometers up, six kilometers from Solix Ground at 265 degrees.”
“Cable?”
“The thruster package is reported at fifty kilometers altitude, one hundred twelve kilometers horizontally from us, speed ninety kph and falling.”
“What does the computer say?”
“Too many variables, sir.”
“Your guess, then, Ms. Izumi?”
“It will be approaching at twenty kph, slowing, and from the east around 74 degrees heading.”
“Sounds good. Ms. Nakata. I think you've had enough drill. We're two hours from initial contact, why don't you get some rest?”
* * *
Gus walked into the Ready Room, a compartment just off the Command Bridge, glancing at the inner door of the airlock at the opposite end of the compartment. The six members of the Topside crew were fully suited, with their faceplates open.
Gus Reach paced the floor of the Ready Room. “Safety, safety, safety, people. I don't want any heroics, hear? Make sure you're tied off at all times. If it gets hairy up there, I want you to head back inside.”
“What's the latest on the flare?” asked Michael Shorter, the secondary controller and crew chief.
“We've got three hours until the protons hit. The cable will be here in twenty minutes. I think we'll make it.” Gus walked over to one of the numerous displays lining the walls. “Meter shows eight millisieverts per hour. Those Fukishima workers got twenty times more radiation.”
“What about after we connect the cable?” asked Yuai. “We'll be hours getting down.”
“I didn't tell you? The device that holds our cable has a set of motors on it. We can run up and down the cable. In this case, I've been cleared to run us up to six meters per second down the ground cable. We'll be in breathable air at thirty-five hundred meters in about two hours. Plenty of slack.”
“Time, sir,” said Mai Izumi, over the intercom.
“Mike, the crew is yours,” said Gus. “Godspeed.”
“All right, folks, time to saddle up...” said Mike, as Gus sealed the door behind him.
* * *
“Thruster package spotted,” said Mia Izumi. “Slant range twelve kilometers east at heading seventy, relative altitude five hundred meters. Moving at thirty kilometers per hour, slowing. Deceleration curve has it at rest relative to us at slant range seven kilometers, heading two hundred fifty, within the next two hours. Should I head us over there?”
Gus rubbed his chin. He was boxed in. He had to complete the cable marriage within the next ninety minutes, then drop as fast as he could before the high speed protons from the solar flare arrived to fry him and his crew. “Halfway there,” he said. “Mr. Nishikawa, get me Mr. Shorter on Topside.”
“Shorter.”
“Reach here. We're going to have to harpoon it. Expected velocity around five kph.”
“No problem, sir.”
“Mike, no heroics. Be methodical, be careful. If you miss, we'll just go chase it down.”
“Understood, sir.”
* * *
Mike Shorter was no stranger to high-stress situations. He didn't share Gus's misgivings about Yuai either. He knew her abilities, and he saw, with his own eyes, how she was able to block out distractions and bear down on a problem.
“All right, folks, we're going to harpoon it as the thruster package flies by. Yuai, slow it down as much as you can, and have it pass us with ten meters to spare, please.”
Yuai nodded her head and bent over her board.
“Kenji, set the harpoon, and for God's sake, make sure that it's grounded.” Mike said. “Yuai, did you hear me?”
Yuai looked up from where she stood, two meters away from Kenji Maruyama and the harpoon launcher. “Huh? Yes, sir.”
“I didn't hear you acknowledge. If I didn't happen to see you nod, I'd have no idea if you heard me. Don't let it happen again.”
“Yes, sir,” she said. She bent again over her board, working the controls. Ten minutes later, she looked up. “Final approach, sir. Passing ten meters off the starboard bow, six point one kph, and falling.”
“Good work. Ready, Kenji?”
“Yes, sir.” The harpoon was a grappling hook welded onto a high-strength steel rod. A pusher plate allowed it to be shoved out of the end of a simple steel pipe when the gunner opened the gas valve at the end. The working surfaces on the hook were covered with high-density spinel, a mineral that could withstand the cutting forces of the orbital cable.
“Fire at will.”
Kenji watched the approach of the irregular slab of asteroidal slag with the bell-shapes of thrusters poking out. His record in the simulator was fifty-four consecutive 'snags' in all kinds of situations. Topside conditi
ons were excellent. He led the slab as it appeared to sweep in, and pulled the trigger. He felt, more than heard, the thud of escaping gas as the harpoon was thrust towards the slab.
It was the last memory he had Topside.
* * *
The lights went out, and plasma discharges arced through the close confines of the Control Bridge. Something flashed past the windows, and muted thuds from Topside spoke of disaster there.
“Status!” shouted Gus, above the brief roar of automatic extinguishers operating inside the electrical panels.
“Unknown, sir!” said Mai Izumi. “Position unchanged, we are not maneuvering.”
“Comms out throughout the ship,” said Nishikawa.
Emergency lighting cut in, a dim red light filling those spaces far from the sunlight streaming in the windows.
Gus ran over to the electrical panel, felt the metal cover carefully, and pried it open. The circuit breakers were all thrown. There was some soot, but it did not look like there had been a fire. He located the section powering communications and slowly engaged the breakers, one at a time.
“That did it, sir!” said Nishikawa, and bent to the task of collating damage reports. “Engineering on the line, sir. Topside still out.”
“Machiko, get into the Ready Room and suit up. Get Topside and tell me what's going on.” Machiko Ozaki jumped up from her position at an engineering console and raced to the Ready Room door. She looked carefully at the gauges, especially the small latex balloon, before undogging the hatch and stepping inside.
“Koji,” said Gus into his communicator. “What's going on down there?”
Engineering Chief Hirano's soot-stained face appeared on the small monitor. “I was going to ask you what was going on up there! Looks like we got a massive static discharge through the tow cable. Reactor's fine, it's isolated anyway, but the Peltier converters all blew their breakers. Two are fused and worthless, but I can give you two thirds power in ten minutes. We're on batteries, about fifteen minutes of power at this level. Try not to turn anything else on.”
“Captain, Machiko here. Everyone's down up here.” Machiko's voice faltered. “I count five suits.”
“Who's missing?” Gus's heart started pounding. Knew it. Knew it.
“Looking now. Shorter seems to be coming around.”
“Hurry! Before they fall out of range!” Not her. Please, not Yuai. Gus shook himself. “Nishikawa! Anything on the suit radios?”
“Scanning. Nothing, sir. Just breathing and a little moaning.”
“Put that channel on speaker. Kishizuna calling Topside crew. Count off!”
“Shorter. I was furthest away.”
“Away from what?” Gus wanted to swarm down the microphone up into Michael's suit and shake him.
“Machiko, sir. It's Yuai.” Machiko's voice sobbed. “Her tether looks like it melted.”
* * *
“Kishizuna to Yuai. Kishizuna to Yuai. Come in Ms. Nakata,” repeated Nishikawa.
A voice, faint with distance, floated from the speakers. “Yuai Nakata here. I am in a flat spin, and I can't move.”
“It seems there was some kind of static discharge. Your arms will recover.” Gus's heart went out to the young woman now rushing ever faster towards the Earth below.
“My spin, it's getting faster. I can move my fingers, I just can't pull my arms or legs in against the spin.”
“Angle your arms in the direction opposite the spin!” Gus pleaded over his headset. “See of you can flip on your back. Anything!”
“My head, it's so stuffed!” Grunts sounded as she struggled against the implacable forces of the spin. “It's no use, sir. I can't seem to pull them in.”
Gus looked over at Nishikawa. “Biomonitors?”
Nishikawa looked at his screens. “Heart rate up, blood pressure low, respiration up. That's all I can tell you, sir.”
“Come on, Yuai! I know you can do it! Roll them in slowly. Start at your fingers, make fists. Then curl your hands up. Then your elbows. You've been in the centrifuges, you know you can take more than this!”
“Trying sir, I really am.”
Shorter's voice sounded next to his ear. “Unless her spin rate slows down, Gus, she's going to pass out. She has to be pulling six gees now.”
“Michael! What happened up there?” asked Gus. His Topside crew chief stood in the door to the Ready Room. His spacesuit looked like it had been bronzed.
“After Kenji shot the harpoon out there, the biggest bolt of lightning I've ever seen flashed from the orbital cable to the harpoon mount. The grounding cable exploded. Kenji's burnt pretty bad, sir, and Yuai appears to have been blown overboard.”
Gus frowned. “We'll figure it out later. Are all your people back inside?”
“Kenji and Sen Ono are; the other two are cycling through now.”
“Gus!” Yuai's voice was fainter, slower.
“Yuai!”
“The spin's still increasing. My head feels like it's coming off! Tell my father that I love him.”
“You're going to make it!” said Gus. “You just have to keep trying!”
“I'm not, we both know it. You were a good boss. Tell him that too.”
“Tuck your arms in!” Gus shouted. “Yuai!”
The hiss of the radio was faint in the Control Room.
“Radar shows her at nine hundred kph, increasing,” said Mai Izumi. “Altitude twenty nine kilometers. Good return, her suit must have been bronzed, too.”
Gus moved over to the navigation section, looked at the radar display. “Come on, Yuai. You can do it!” he mumbled to himself.
“Sir, biomonitors are showing critical. The blood seems trapped in her extremities, nothing for the heart to pump.”
A loud guttural croak sounded over the speakers. Gus's eyes snapped from the speakers to the radar display in time to see Yuai's image separate into five smaller blobs and fade out. He closed them briefly.
When he straightened up, he looked over to Nishikawa and motioned the audio feed off. “When we get Ground back, tell me immediately. I must inform Mr. Nakata of his loss.”
“Put me on Shipwide,” he instructed Nishikawa. “Crew of the Kishizuna. It appears that we've been hit with a bolt of electricity from the orbital cable, far larger than any simulation ever predicted. Maybe it's from that flare.” He paused a moment. “We will have time to mourn Ensign Yuai Nakata during our descent. Right now, we have a cable to catch.”
* * *
Gus led a second crew Topside for the second attempt at snagging the orbital cable. He was appalled at the amount of destruction, but was able to cobble together enough equipment to complete the capture and tieoff of the orbital cable to the tow cable. Solix Ground began to reel in the Kishizuna. Seventy-one minutes after the reeling began, the radio burbled.
“Captain, Solix Ground. Extremely urgent.” Nishikawa looked apologetic.
“Reach here,” he said, wondering what else was going to go wrong.
“Solix Ground here. We've been informed that the coronal mass ejection has just swept by EML-1.” The voice paused. “S5 radiation storm levels are forecast.
“Sweet Buddha's left nut,” breathed Gus. “We're gonna fry.” A S5 radiation storm is the highest rating on the space weather scale, indicating severe radiation levels.
“We've been thinking about that, and might have an answer.”
* * *
“We're gonna fry, all right, but not from radiation.” Nishikawa said. “Wrapped in a big bag of hot hydrogen.”
“You have to admit—it's an ingenious solution,” said Mai. “Of course, we can't see a thing.”
“The Kishizuna was never designed to fly this way,” Captain Reach groused. The balloon was half-deflated, and the Control Bridge sank into the saggy hydrogen-filled lifting bag, while the lower capsule was pulled up until it was smothered by the lower part of the bag. His eyes roved the instrument readouts, but kept returning to the three most important ones: cabin radiation, cabin temper
ature, and outside air pressure.
“How high?” he asked.
“We're within one hundred meters of twenty-five thousand, descending at eight meters per second,” Mai said. “We're going to have to dump the hydrogen within the hour.” As they descended the tow cable, more and more oxygen in the surrounding atmosphere raised the danger of explosion from the Kishizuna's hydrogen-filled lifting bag.
“Tricky,” murmured Benny Rabaull. “We're going to want a layer of hydrogen in the top third of the balloon, to keep shielding us.” Hydrogen, despite being the least dense gas known, was uncommonly good at particle shielding.
“Going to pump the helium in cold?” asked Gus.
“Yup,” said Benny. “That way, it's not going to want to climb up the envelope. Just like pouring one of those fancy cocktails.”
The ones that Yuai drank, thought Gus. His mind could not stop turning over events in his mind. Should he have threatened to resign? Should he have ordered her to stay inside, despite Shigeru, despite the damage to his career? As it was, his career was in ruins. Nobody would hire the Reach Corporation now, with this on the record.
“Captain?” asked Benny. “Ready to begin helium introduction. How are we doing?”
“OK. Solix GEO is reporting one hundred millisieverts per hour, and we're only getting five point six in here. Start the helium. Looks like we're going to make it.” All of us except for Yuai, he thought. Shigeru is old-school Nipponese. I'm going to have to fall on my sword.
* * *
The crumpled folds of the opaque polyethylene bag could not hide the fact that there was not a complete body inside. The bag rested inside a plywood box, on a pallet on the floor of a hanger on the grounds of Solix Ground.
Barry Jensen, in charge of the surface fleet supporting Solix Ground was matter-of-fact.
“We couldn't find everything, sir. Torso, head, right leg, left arm. You, ah, don't really want to look inside. It's Yuai Nakata, all right. I had to remove the helmet.” He gulped. “The helmet was coated with a coppery film, almost like it was sprayed on.”
Eye of the Needle: A Paradisi Short Page 2