Pillar to the Sky (44 page)

He was halfway in when the wave hit.

For the first time in his life he actually did feel pure terror. The entire unit lurched. He lost his grip but kept his legs locked around the inside of the hatchway. The pod was then whipped back the other way, a hundred meters or more, and then … the momentum just kept carrying it.

He looked up and gasped.

Merciful God, the tower had snapped in half.

The lower half, to which the pod was attached, was now drifting away at a dozen or more meters per second from the upper half.

He fought down a blind urge, like a drowning sailor, to try to leap to a distant lifeboat on a storm-tossed sea, but already knew it was out of reach.

An impulsive thought flashed to get out of the pod, secure an emergency spool of cable from the tool box, hold on to one end then leap and try to grab the still-dangling strand of the upper half that was drifting away.

Absurd, with the thousands of tons of forces now at work. It would be like using a kite string to try to hold on to a battleship and tie it back in place.

The distance widened with every passing second. The upper half of the tower would actually remain “up” coiling about. There was enough mass in orbit farther up the line to keep it in orbit.

But he was now attached to the lower half, and he had a chilling thought.

At least this is better than dying of Parkinson’s.

19

“It’s gone!”

Franklin tore his gaze from a side monitor supplying video from Gary’s pod, pointed straight up, showing the separation.

“Silence in this room!” Franklin shouted. “Secure the doors; no one is to leave the room. I want calm analysis and no other comments.”

Several people looked back at him. One of the controllers lowered his head and tried to stifle his sobs. There was a numbed silence.

“Kill any outside feeds,” Franklin ordered. In the moments after he thought they had control of the harmonics due to the shifting of the tower to avoid two collisions, he had again allowed an open feed to the world. It was another demonstration of the Pillar’s viability. And he had allowed, as well, the entire world to witness the submarine-launched missile strike. He had already received word from the president of the United States, the prime minister of Great Britain, and even the Chinese government that they were dispatching ships to track down the sub.

But in the hours since the incident, the sub could already be anywhere within 15,000 or more square miles of ocean, and with each passing hour that search area would nearly double yet again. And even if they cornered it, what then? Fire on it? Perhaps trigger a world war?

The damage had been done.

“Can we keep a secured feed to Dr. Petrenko’s flight?” he asked.

“We can encrypt but others will listen in and try to unscramble,” someone replied.

He nodded. He’d make an open-line call to her, though she without doubt already knew.

“Patch me through to Dr. Petrenko and to Miss Victoria Morgan, and do it now. And the rest of you, work the problem. Is there any way we can perhaps use the thruster on the pod to try to maneuver back to a position to reconnect?”

His question was greeted at first with blank stares. No one had ever thought of this desperate scenario.

“We could at least try, sir.” It was Gretchen, tears streaming down her cheeks.

Gary accepted the rapid fire orders coming up from Tower Control without comment. After the terrifying moment of dangling half out of the pod, he had used what little strength he had left to ease his way back in, pulling the hatch shut and repressurizing the unit, with Kevin coaxing him along every inch of the way.

He patched in to Tower Control, offering a running observation as the upper and lower halves of the tower drifted farther and farther apart. He knew the dynamics better than anyone except Eva. If the tower ever snapped, the angular velocity imparted by the rotation of the earth would still hold sway. The section of the tower above 12,700 miles would actually remain in orbit. Every part of the tower below that point would eventually fall back to earth.

And it would bring with it an incredible mess of thousands of miles of dangerous wire. Most would actually burn up on reentry, but enough would just slowly coil down through the atmosphere to create one hell of a problem on the surface, frightfully dangerous to any who might step on it or try to pick a section up barehanded, and absolutely deadly for any air traffic as it rained down.

“Gary…” It was Franklin, now four minutes after the separation. “How you doing?”

“I’ve had better days,” Gary replied, trying to keep the trembling out of his voice, triggered by Parkinson’s and outright fear.

“We’ve come up with two options here.”

“Why do there always seem to be two options at moments like this?” Gary replied, and then added, “Are we on an open or closed mike?”

“I think closed.”

“OK, go ahead, Franklin.”

“You know you are below the demarcation point for eventual reentry, and you know what that means?”

“Crispy critter,” Gary said softly.

“I wouldn’t put it that crudely, my friend, but yeah, you’re right.

“Option one: break free of the lower half now. Every second counts. Your rocket pack just might have enough energy to get you back to the severed end of the upper tower. Hook back on to it. Take a deep breath, let batteries charge up, and start to climb back up. With luck, you’ll be back in the station in four days and then you return with the crew up there.”

“Anyone work the math on that yet?” Gary asked. “Disconnect from the tower, then chase the upper strand, rendezvous and lock on to it. Sounds doubtful. Give me the second option.”

“Stay attached to the lower half, use your rocket pack to try to guide it back to the upper half, then do an EVA and we’ll try to figure out some way to reconnect the upper and lower halves.”

“I’ll take the second option.”

There was a pause.

“Gary, the second option stands a snowball’s chance in hell. There are dynamics playing out now that we cannot even begin to get a handle on with the way the wires are behaving, and the harmonics are still playing.”

Both options were near to impossible, Gary realized, but at least with the second, there was a chance, a very slim chance he could still save the Pillar.

He sighed.

“You sure this is a secured line?”

Franklin paused, shouting a query to his communications director, and she gave the reply he wanted.

“It’s secure.”

“I’d rather die trying to save our dream than die trying to save my own ass, Franklin. You got that?”

A pause and then just one word.

“Yes.”

“Send up the programming to control the thruster to Kevin on the station; he’s the pro with this. He’ll send it back down and try to coach me through controlling the burn. Who knows, I just might save it after all.”

He could hear the tension in Kevin’s voice as the guidance data was sent up to the station.

“Damn it, Doc, you know it should be my ass in that pod, not you!” Kevin snapped, while Singh loaded in the guidance information that would then be downloaded to the pod’s onboard computer.

“I think you got a more important job ahead of you,” Gary replied.

“Cut the crap, Doc. We both got jobs ahead of us, so don’t lay any more guilt on me than I already feel.”

Gary chuckled, glad for the reassuring voice of his friend. Franklin asked if he wished to talk with Eva, but when told that half the world would be trying to listen in, he had refused, telling Franklin to give the excuse that he was focused on this effort to save the tower.

There was no old-fashioned joystick to grab hold of and maneuver, not that he would even remotely know how to use one, though Victoria would. A flash thought of her.
Thank you, God, this is about me rather than her.
For this burn, he was just along for the ride; it would be Singh and Kevin who would be doing the fine-tuning from above.

“Burn in five, four, three…”

He felt the rocket pack beneath the pod kick in, pressing him sideways. He actually wondered how many terabytes of data were running this show, calculating not just the movement of the pod but also the mass of the wire he was still attached to, its fluctuations from both the harmonics and the fact that it was cut free, then trying to match it all up with the end of the wire floating above him and now more than a kilometer away.

“We have good burn, Doc,” Kevin whispered, voice tense.

He did not reply. Eyes glued to the monitor, the topside camera supposedly focused on where the bottom of the severed strand was located.

“Still a good burn. We are closing in, Doc. You’re doing great.”

“I’m not doing a damn thing,” Gary whispered back.

“You will once we got rendezvous. Your suit pressurized, full oxygen load, ready for EVA?”

“Yes on that.”

He always felt that saying “Roger,” “Affirmative,” or “Check” would sound stupid coming from him.

“Hey, Franklin.”

“Here, Gary.”

“Bet you got the entire world watching this.”

“We’ve shut it down, Gary.”

He said nothing, glad to hear that. He was petrified. Strangely, he was not fearful regarding the next few minutes but about whether the tremors of Parkinson’s would somehow hinder him once he was EVA. That would be an utter humiliation, to be so close to saving the Pillar but then have his own disability prevent it.

“Depressurize cabin, then open the hatch but stay strapped in for now. If we score this, you’ll have to move fast,” Kevin said.

He did as ordered, and for a moment he actually did catch a glimpse of the upper half of the tower. Inwardly he sighed.

He knew that they knew; the radar aboard the pod would already be showing it. They were moving to directly underneath where the wire had once been, but already it had drifted more than a kilometer upward and was accelerating away from him, its lateral movements random and out of control, orbital dynamics swinging it up and away.

No one spoke. He could feel the thrust shifting, the adjustable nozzle moving directly underneath him despite the threat that the wire coiling beneath the pod might be cut by the high-intensity flame of the hybrid oxygen and solid propellant engine.

The pod started to thrust upward. He watched the monitor, the amount of fuel remaining, the gauge dropping down, color coding on the computer screen.

“Three percent fuel remaining,” Gary whispered.

“I know, Doc.” It was Kevin, his voice trembling.

“We’ll make it.”

“Of course.”

He could see the wire—at least, the onboard radar could—so tantalizingly close, less than half a kilometer above, but shifting several hundred meters now to his right.

Even more than in a plane, where at least if you had your stick or wheel directly wired to the ailerons, elevator, and rudder you still had some control, in space, once you lost thrusters, you were locked on the trajectory, fated to follow the path in your last second of burn. The engine, never designed for this kind of duration of burn, or for nudging such a mass back into position, sputtered out. The drag of the wire he was still attached to rapidly slowed his upward thrust.

“Doc, abandon the pod! If you EVA now, you might be able to grab the upper wire,” Kevin shouted.

Gary actually laughed.

“Then what, hang there until I run out of air?”

“We could think of something. Sending a spinner down ASAP might work.”

“Dream on,” Gary replied. “Remember, I designed most of this. It’ll never work.”

He didn’t speak after that, ignoring Kevin’s repeated appeals to go for the EVA, instead just watching the monitor, the upper half of the tower, the focus of a lifetime of dreams so close and yet now an eternity away.

Upward velocity of the pod ceased as the thousands of miles of wire beneath him acted like an anchor line. He gazed at the radar image of the wire above, smiled sadly, then switched off the image.

“Franklin, can you patch me through to Eva and Victoria?”

*   *   *

The choice was easy enough once made. There were enough oxygen and supplies on board the pod for four days. Four days of what? Melodrama? Breathless, teary-eyed reporters flooding the Internet and airwaves with hourly bulletins? The already sick demands for exclusive interviews by tabloid writers trying to get into Tower Control? There was one piece of scum who had cornered Victoria at the Purdue airport and offered her a million dollars for a ten-minute exclusive. If Gary had been on earth, he would have knocked the guy flat. When he heard how physical her response was—about the shrieking reporter writhing on the pavement as her flight took off—he actually forgot his own situation for a moment and laughed. That was indeed his girl!

He still had friends at Goddard and in the government, who opened up a very secure channel so he could chat freely with his “girls” as they raced to New Mexico to catch a supersonic four-hour flight to Kiribati, personally piloted by their British friend.

It did give him time to compose his thoughts and, amazingly, even to sleep for a while. He had a wonderful dream, very private, of a time early on with Eva, and he awoke with a smile.

The retrograde motion of the lower half of the wire was increasing. The point of near impact by the missile had finally fractured completely from the stress loads. On the ground at the platform they were hurriedly trying to reel in the lower two hundred miles of wire. Parts of the wire farther up were into the upper atmosphere with enough velocity to burn up, with more fractures breaking other sections apart. He thought he could actually feel the vibrations of those breaks—or was it that so much of his soul was tied to this dream that he could feel it breaking apart and dying?

He clicked on one of his favorite albums by Constance Demby,
Sanctum Sanctorum
. It was comforting; there was a spiritual sense to it that had always moved him and seemed so appropriate now.
Novus Magnificat: Through the Stargate
was perfect for his ride up, but now?
Sanctum
was the comfort he needed as he gazed out the window of the pod, soaking in a sunrise, the moon setting on the western horizon and, above him, the sea of stars. Some more messages, to old friends, professors who had helped; a general message to Goddard to read to the staff sometime in the future, leaving it to Franklin to determine when; and a less-than-pleasant sign-off to Professor Garlin and her anti-technology friends. To be able to plan all that out and deliver it diverted him for a few hours and actually gave a certain pleasure, especially the messages to his favorite composer and friends.