“Sippy cups,” Lara said, with a giggle. “Like babies use.”
“You need them in zero g,” Bracknell said.
There were curved partitions in place here, and the noise abated a little. As they walked onward, the partitions became roofed over like an arched tunnel and the din diminished considerably.
“As you can see—and hear,” Bracknell said, “level one is still very much under construction.”
“My ears are ringing,” Lara said.
“They’re a noisy bunch, all right,” Bracknell conceded. “But if they were quiet they wouldn’t be getting any work done.”
Molina gave a half-hearted nod.
Pointing to the curved metal overhead, Bracknell said with a hint of pride in his voice, “These partitions were scavenged from the heavy-lift boosters that brought most of the materials up here.”
Lara grinned at him. “Waste not, want not.”
“In spades. Nothing of the boosters was returned to Earth except their rocket engines.”
She pointed to the floor. “There aren’t any floor loops set into the floor.”
With a nod that sent his whole body bobbing, Bracknell said, “The crew hasn’t gotten this far yet. We swim the rest of the way.”
“Swim?”
“Just push yourself along the wall with your fingertips. It’s easy.” Then Bracknell saw Molina’s grim expression. “Victor, will you be okay?”
“I think so,” Molina said, without much conviction.
As they floated along the bare decking of the corridor, brushing the curving metal wall with their fingers, Bracknell explained, “Back there where we came in, the biggest area will be a preparation center for launching satellites.”
Lara said, “You’ll carry them up here on the elevators and then launch them at this altitude?”
“It’ll be a lot cheaper than launching them from the ground with rockets,” Bracknell said. “All we need is a little kick booster to place the satellite in the orbit its owners want.”
“You’ll launch geostationary satellites from the platform up at that level, right?” Lara asked.
“Right. Again, with a little maneuvering thrust to place them in their proper slots.”
“Masterson Aerospace and the other rocket companies aren’t going to like you,” she said.
“I guess not. The buggywhip makers must have hated Henry Ford.”
Lara laughed.
The noise was far behind them now, still discernable, but down to a background level. They came to a heavy-looking hatch set into a wall. Bracknell tapped out the proper code on the keypad set into the wall and the hatch sighed open. Lara felt a slight whisper of air brush past her from behind.
“You wanted a window?” Bracknell said to her. “Here’s a window for you.”
They stepped through and Lara’s breath caught in her throat. They were in a narrow darkened compartment. One entire wall was transparent. Beyond it curved the gigantic bulk of Earth, sparkling blue oceans gleaming in the sunlight, brilliant white clouds hugging the surface, wrinkles of brown mountains.
“Oh my god,” Lara gasped, gliding to the long window.
Molina hung back.
Bracknell rapped his knuckles against the window. “Glassteel,” he said. “Imported from Selene.”
“It’s so beautiful!” Lara exclaimed. “Look! I think I can see the Panama Canal.”
“That’s Central America, all right,” Bracknell said. Pointing to a wide swirl of clouds, “And that looks like a tropical storm off in the Pacific.”
Molina pushed up behind him and peered at the curling swath of clouds. “Will it affect the tower?”
“Not likely. Tropical storms don’t come down to the equator, and we’re well away from the coast anyway.”
“But still…”
“The tower can take winds of a thousand kilometers per hour, Victor. More than three times the most powerful hurricane on record.”
“I can’t see straight down,” Lara said, almost like a disappointed child. “I can’t see the base of the tower.”
“Look out to the horizon,” said Bracknell. “That’s the Yucatan peninsula, where the ancient Mayas built their temples.”
“And those mountains to our right, they must be the Andes,” she said. The peaks were bare, gray granite, snowless since the greenhouse warming had struck.
“Mance,” said Lara, “you could use glassteel to build a transparent elevator tube.”
He snorted. “Not at the prices Selene charges for the stuff.”
Molina glided back toward the open hatch. “This door is an airtight seal, isn’t it?”
“That’s right,” Bracknell answered. “If the outside wall of this compartment is punctured and there’s a loss of air pressure, that hatch automatically closes and seals off the leak.”
“And traps anybody in this compartment,” Molina said.
“That’s right,” Bracknell replied gravely.
Lara said, “But you have spacesuits in here so they can save themselves. Don’t you?”
Bracknell shook his head. “It would take too long to get into the suits. Even the new nanofiber soft suits would take too long.”
“What you’re telling us,” Molina said, “is that we’re in danger in here.”
“Only if the outer shell is penetrated.”
“How likely is that?” said Lara.
Smiling tightly, Bracknell said, “The tower’s been dinged by micrometeorites thousands of times. Mostly up at higher altitudes. No penetrations, though.”
“Wasn’t there a satellite collision?” Molina asked.
“Every satellite launch is planned so that the bird’s orbit doesn’t come closer than a hundred kilometers of the tower. The IAA’s been very strict about that.”
“But a satellite actually hit the tower?” Lara looked more curious than afraid.
With a nod, Bracknell replied, “Some damnfool paramilitary outfit launched a spy satellite without clearing it with the IAA. It smacked into the tower on its second orbit.”
“And?”
“Hardly scratched the buckyball cables, but it wrecked the spysat completely. Most of the junk fell down and burned up in the atmosphere. We had to send a team outside to clean off the remaining debris and inspect the area where it hit. The damage was very superficial.”
“When you stop to think about it,” Lara said, “the impact of even a big satellite hitting this tower would be like a mosquito ramming an elephant.”
Bracknell laughed as he turned back toward the open hatch.
“The only way to hurt this beanstalk,” said Molina, “would be to somehow disconnect it up at the geostationary level.”
Bracknell looked over his shoulder at the biologist. “That’s right, Victor. Do that, and the lower half of the tower collapses to the ground, while the upper half goes spinning off into deep space.”
“The tower would collapse?” Lara asked. “It would fall down to the ground?”
Bracknell nodded. “Only if it’s disconnected from the geostationary platform.”
“That would destroy everything?” Lara asked.
“Quite completely,” said Bracknell. “But don’t worry, we’ve built that section with a two-hundred-percent overload capacity. It can’t happen.”
YAMAGATA ESTATE
Nobuhiko Yamagata’s knees ached as he sat on the tatami mat facing this, this … fanatic. There was no other way to describe the leader of the Flower Dragon movement. Like a ninja of old, he thought, this man is a fanatic.
Yoshijiro Umetzu was named after a shamed ancestor, a general who had surrendered his army rather than fight to the death. From earliest childhood his stern father and uncles had drilled into him their expectation that he would grow up to erase this century-old stain on the family’s honor. While upstarts like Saito Yamagata made vast fortunes in business and Japanese scientists earned world recognition for their research work, Umetzu knew that only blood could bring true respect. Respect is based on fear, he was told endlessly. Nothing less.