Starclimber (16 page)

“Centrifugal force!” I said in amazement.

“Correct, Mr. Cruse.”

“How did you get the counterweight up there in the first place?” Shepherd wanted to know.

“Rocket,” said Dr. Turgenev with a sigh.

Mr. Lunardi stepped in. “We’ve been messing about with rockets for years. We have a launch site on the other side of the island. I can’t tell you how many we shot off. They all blew up, or crashed back down. The ocean’s littered with them. But once I got Sergei involved, we made a big leap forward. We got them to stay up for longer. Then one day, they stopped coming back down altogether.”

I caught sight of Tobias peering up into the sky, as though he might see one plummeting home.

“So you used a rocket to get the astral cable into outer space?” I asked.

Dr. Turgenev nodded. “Inside rocket is astral cable on big spools. Rocket goes up, pays out cable. Rocket runs out of fuel in outer space, but stays attached to end of cable.”

“So the rocket
is
the counterweight?” asked Kate.

“Yes, same thing,” said Dr. Turgenev.

“The counterweight is in geosynchronous orbit,” Mr. Lunardi explained excitedly. “It stays in exactly the same spot over earth at all times. Do you see? It’s our ladder to the heavens.”

“Jack and the Beanstalk,” I murmured, shaking my head.

When I was a little boy, I’d wondered if I could climb to the stars if only I had a tall enough ladder.

“That’s right,” said Mr. Lunardi. “And you’ll be going to the very top.”

“Twenty-five thousand miles?” asked Sir Hugh.

“To the counterweight, yes.” said Captain Walken. “That’s as high as we can go at the moment. The ascent should take about eight days.”

“And this trip’s just the first of many,” said Mr. Lunardi. “We plan to build a proper space station up there. And from that we can launch expeditions deeper into the solar system, and beyond!”

Everyone was quiet for a moment. It was almost too much to understand all at once.

“I hope your cable’s well tied down,” said Miss Karr bluntly, and Haiku frowned and jumped up and down, as if sharing her concern.

“Very well tied down,” Mr. Lunardi promised her. “It’s welded to an anchor deep in the earth. And it’s wound through a system of pulleys to reduce the strain.”

“What’s it made of?” Shepherd wanted to know.

“Who’s to say it won’t snap like a thread?” Sir Hugh asked uneasily. “Has it been inspected by the proper authorities?”

“Is it some kind of alumiron alloy?” I said. “Like the French are using for the tower?”

Lunardi shook his head. “There’s no metal on earth strong enough to withstand the kind of strain our cable’s under.”

“Then what?” said Sir Hugh.

“It’s metal from another world.”

“How?” Kate asked, sounding as surprised as I felt.

“You’ve heard of the Badlands Crater, perhaps?” Mr. Lunardi said.

Tobias was nodding excitedly. “They say it was made by a meteorite, millions of years ago.”

“Exactly,” said Mr. Lunardi. “They found metal that had never been seen on earth before. It’s light and flexible, and, when made molten, can be spun thinner than a spiderweb, only a thousand times stronger.”

“It’s this,” said Tobias, pulling his bit of space rock from his pocket.

“Let’s have a look,” said Mr. Lunardi, hefting the lump in his hand. “It is indeed. The very stuff. “

As the
Bluenose
came in to land, I stared out at the glinting astral cable in awe.

“All the way to outer space,” Kate said softly beside me.

I wished I’d been there to see it: the rocket blasting off from the island and soaring up into the sky, unspooling the golden cable behind it. A ladder dropped from the stars.

I could imagine the land crew seizing the end of the cable and hurriedly welding it to the anchor deep within the island’s rock. And then they must have stood back and stared up at the metal thread as it stretched, straight as a navigator’s line, into the tropical sky and the high cirrus clouds until it could no longer be seen. And they must have looked at one another, maybe a bit afraid, wondering just what they’d done, marveling that they had tethered heaven to earth.

S
he hung there like a giant metal spider upon her thread, all fifty silver feet of her, towering over us in the hangar. She was cylindrical, bulging slightly in the middle, and tapering at both ends. Slender vertical fins were spaced evenly around her flanks. Judging by the rows of portholes, she had three decks, and at the summit a glass-domed bridge.

“We call her the
Starclimber
,” Mr. Lunardi told us proudly as we all stood gazing up at her.

Until I’d seen the astral cable, I’d imagined our vessel would look pretty much like an ordinary airship—pressurized, of course, with new engines that could rocket us beyond the sky. But this was an altogether different kind of ship, with no need for lifting gas or rudders or propellers.

The
Starclimber
was suspended over a wide shaft, out of which rose the astral cable. It didn’t look like a cable at all. It was thin as a ribbon, and no wider than my hand. It ran through the very center of the ship, from stern to bow, and continued on through the center of the hangar roof, into the depths of space. It made the back of my neck tingle to think that something right before me was connected to the heavenly ether.

“How does it actually climb the cable?” I asked.

Lunardi smiled. “We spent months trying various methods. We settled on a simple friction grip.” He held his two hands up, palms flat, and pressed them together firmly. “Rollers grip the cable from opposite sides and crawl up its length. Look here.”

He pointed at the sets of muscular metal spider legs that protruded from the ship—two at the bow, one at the stern—and locked around the cable.

Tobias looked at me and swallowed. “That’s all that’s holding us to the cable?” he said.

“No, no,” said Mr. Lunardi. “These legs are just the external rollers. The astral cable runs through a sealed shaft inside the ship. You’ll see it when you go inside. It’s like a thick column in the very center of every level. Now, on the inside of that column are more rollers, gripping the cable so tightly, there’s no risk of slippage. It’s quite incredible.”

It was incredible—but a stubborn part of me wondered if it could really work. Miss Karr was jotting things down in her notebook; Sir Hugh looked faintly queasy.

“Where does the ship get her power?” Shepherd asked.

“Ah, yes,” Dr. Turgenev said ruefully “This was big problem for us. Amount of power needed for ship is huge. Aruba fuel too heavy, and takes up too much space. Battery is not powerful enough—”

“The solution lay with the cable itself,” Mr. Lunardi cut in impatiently. “The metal, we discovered, was an excellent conductor. So we use it to deliver a constant supply of electricity to the
Starclimber
.”

“It’s got no generator of its own?” asked Shepherd, frowning. “What if you lose power down here on earth?”

“We have an abundant supply,” said Mr. Lunardi.

I remembered the ranks of wind turbines I’d seen on the island’s windward shore, and the blustering smokestack of a coal-burning generator.

“And what if the cable breaks?” Kate asked politely, as if she were inquiring about the possibility of rain.

For the first time since I’d met him, Dr. Turgenev actually chuckled. “If cable breaks we have bigger problem than no electricity. But cable will not break. We try to break it. We hit it and cut it and heat it. Cannot be broken.”

For a moment we all stared at the ship in silence. I looked at Captain Walken, who’d known all about it well before the rest of us. No unease showed in his face, and that reassured me.

“I thought I was here to fly,” said Shepherd with obvious disdain. “This isn’t a ship; it’s an elevator.”

“Don’t be deceived, Mr. Shepherd,” said Captain Walken. “It may have a different means of propulsion, but it’s no less a ship.”

Shepherd grunted. “It runs on a track. It’s like flying a streetcar.”

The captain raised an eyebrow. “I believe there will be enough challenges in space to satisfy even you, Mr. Shepherd.”

“Yes, sir,” said Shepherd, but he seemed unconvinced. For the first time, I wondered how well he was going to take orders. I didn’t like the way he looked at the captain, as though he knew better.

“By voyage’s end you may change your mind, Mr. Shepherd,” said Mr. Lunardi. “But for now, your training isn’t quite done. We leave in a week, and you all have a great deal to learn. Now, to work!”

“Not fast enough, Cruse,” Shepherd said, looking at the pressure gauge. “We’re already dead.”

We were up on the
Starclimber
’s glass-domed bridge, running through an emergency depressurization drill, and I hadn’t got the backup system working in time. Tobias glanced over from his control panel. His look was sympathetic but also a bit weary, for this was our third try, and it was late in the afternoon.

“Sorry, everyone,” I said. “I thought I had it that time.”

Shepherd said nothing. Whenever I made a mistake, he never lost his temper or insulted me—in some ways I wished he would, because then I could defend myself. But how could I when all he did was calmly state the facts?

It was the last day before our launch. For the past week, Shepherd, Tobias, and I had worked dawn to dusk, getting acquainted with the ship. The controls were unlike anything I’d seen. There were no rudder or elevator wheels. There were no levers to valve hydrium or dump water ballast. Instead there were bewildering numbers of control panels, with more lights and switches than I’d ever seen. Even Shepherd had looked subdued when he’d first set eyes on it all.

Every day the
Starclimber
bustled with activity as everyone learned about the ship, and their various duties. Chef Vlad was kept busy in the kitchen, practicing with the new pots and pumps and dishware that would be necessary once our gravity failed. Dr. Turgenev showed Sir Hugh and Kate how to use the laboratory and all its equipment. We all practiced using magnetic space shoes, to help us move about the ship when we became weightless. We also got a lively lesson on the space toilets, which involved complicated straps and funnels and levers to turn on the suction. Miss Karr assured us that Haiku was quite capable of using the space toilets as well—much to everyone’s relief.

As for us astralnauts, day by day, all the buttons and switches began to make sense. We pored over blueprints and technical diagrams, peered into ducts, and traced bundles of multicolored cables through the ship’s innards. We got so we could move about the
Starclimber
with our eyes closed. It was a lot to learn in just seven days, and I’d never worked harder, wanting to prove that I belonged aboard. I could never quite forget I wasn’t first choice, especially when I fouled up a drill, like now.

“All right, gentlemen,” Captain Walken said. “Reset your controls and let’s go again. We need to get this right.”

The drone of powerful engines drew our eyes skyward. The hangar roof was retracted and I saw a big airship pass overhead. On its flank and fins was the insignia of the Aeroforce. Two ornithopters dropped from the ship’s belly, wings flapping, and circled the astral cable like gulls.

“What’s the Aeroforce doing here?” I asked, as the ship came in to land on the island.

“I’m sure we’ll find out,” said Captain Walken, but I thought I saw a shadow of annoyance cross his face. Then he looked back at us with a wink. “Now then, let’s do this drill for the last time, shall we?”

When the four of us left the
Starclimber
, Mr. Lunardi was walking across the hangar floor to meet us. At his side was a silver-haired military man. Judging from the colorful rows of insignia on his uniform, he was very high ranking.

Shepherd saluted sharply and said, “General, sir!”

“Ah, Captain Shepherd, delighted to see you. A shame Bronfman’s not joining you.”

“Yes, sir.”

For just a second the general’s eyes settled on me before turning back to Shepherd. “Still, I’m relieved to know we have a man of your caliber aboard. Excellent.”

“Gentlemen, this is General Lancaster,” said Mr. Lunardi, sounding just a bit too cheerful. “The Minister of Defense thought we could use some help.”

“I wasn’t aware this was a military operation,” Captain Walken said coolly.

The general laughed. “And it’s not, Captain Walken. We’re just here to lend a hand. Just to make sure things are tickety-boo.”

It was such a childish turn of phrase that I had trouble holding back a smile. But the general’s expression was severe when he next spoke.

“I’ll be frank, gentlemen. The Minister’s worried your security’s slack.”

“We’ve stepped it up,” said Mr. Lunardi.

“Not enough for my liking,” said General Lancaster. “Grendel Eriksson’s still at large, and our spies are hearing rumblings about new Babelite activity. We’ll be guarding the astral cable and Ground Station. Your power plants in particular—they’d be a prime target. My team will also make sure nothing suspicious gets loaded onto your ship. If the Babelites have any designs on the
Starclimber
, we’ll be ready for them.”

This didn’t seem like any bad thing to me, but I could tell that both Captain Walken and Mr. Lunardi were ill at ease.

“Well, we’re very grateful to you, General,” said Lunardi.

“Not at all. The Minister considers it a matter of national security. And on that subject I do have some other news to share with you.” He looked around the hangar at the ground crew, bustling about. “Perhaps it’s best done in private.”

“Of course,” said Mr. Lunardi, leading the way to his office.

Once we were all seated, the general launched right in. “About four weeks ago, our astronomers on Mount Steele made some unusual sightings. It turns out they weren’t alone. There was a special meeting in Zurich recently, and quite a few astronomers reported strange lights moving in the night sky.”

“I think I’ve seen them!” I blurted out.

“You have?” Tobias said in surprise.

“At the Paris Observatory,” I said, and told them about the blue and green lights I’d watched through the telescope. Of course, I didn’t tell them I was with Kate at the time.

“That sounds very like what our scientists reported,” said the general. “They don’t know what they are. If they’re just meteorites, they’re no concern of ours. But if they’re some kind of spaceship, we want to know.”

Lunardi was shaking his head. “Can’t be. No one else is even close to getting a ship into space.”

“I didn’t say it had to be from earth,” the general said.

I looked at Tobias and felt a prickling of gooseflesh across my neck.

“Let me show you something,” said the general. He pulled a sheaf of photographs from an attaché case and laid them out on Lunardi’s desk. “These are photos of Mars taken over a two-year period. Classified, of course. You see these networks of lines?”

“The canals,” said Shepherd. “I’ve read about them.”

“They’re not really canals, though,” said Mr. Lunardi. “Just canyons.”

“We’re not so sure anymore,” said the general. “Look at this one on the upper left. And now look at it two years later.”

“It’s a bit longer,” said Tobias.

On paper the difference was small, no more than an inch, but with a shiver I realized just how big that distance really was. “That must be a thousand miles,” I said.

“Fifteen hundred,” said the general. “And straight as an arrow. This doesn’t look like any natural canyon, gentlemen. It’s possible it was built by intelligent creatures—creatures that must be incredibly advanced.”

“Advanced enough to make spaceships,” Shepherd said.

The general nodded. “Maybe. That’s what we want to find out. These flashing lights are a mystery, and we need you to solve it for us.”

“General,” said Mr. Lunardi, “as you know, we have three scientists aboard and we mean to collect as much information about outer space as possible. If we make any sightings of these lights, you can be sure we’ll share them with the world.”

The general gave a gruff laugh. “But we want to know first. We want to know what we’re facing up there.”

I shifted uneasily. Was he assuming they were hostile?

“I’ll be frank,” the general went on. “This expedition might be more dangerous than you thought. Alien vessels. Babelites. The Minister of Defense has some misgivings about how some of your astralnauts might perform in a tough situation.”

I felt a surge of anger but held my tongue. It was painfully obvious the general was talking about me, and maybe Tobias too.

“I’m sorry if the Minister has misgivings about my crew,” said Captain Walken. “I myself have none.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” the general said. “But if any extreme situation were to arise, I’d like Captain Shepherd to report directly to me.”

I felt the barometer in the room plunge. I wasn’t quite sure what was happening, but it seemed as if the general wanted Shepherd to have some special authority. Was he even suggesting that the test pilot should be captain? I looked at Shepherd, but his face betrayed nothing. I couldn’t help wondering if he’d had some inkling of this ahead of time. He certainly hadn’t seemed very surprised to see the general.

I’d never seen Mr. Lunardi look more grave. “I’m afraid that’s simply not acceptable, General,” he said. “As you yourself acknowledged, this is a civilian expedition. And I don’t think I need remind you that Mr. Shepherd has no military rank aboard the
Starclimber
. He reports only to Captain Walken.”

There was a brief, chilly silence, but then the general smiled agreeably.

“As you wish, Mr. Lunardi. I never meant to undermine the good captain’s authority. Very well. We’re only here to lend a hand and keep everything tickety-boo. Nonetheless, we need you to be our eyes up there, and the Prime Minister himself wants it to be the top priority of the expedition.”

The mention of the Prime Minister made it feel like a threat.

“Of course, General,” Mr. Lunardi said.

“Good evening, gentlemen,” said the general. “And good luck tomorrow.”