And just what the hell can we say, Morgan thought to himself except “Goodbye”?
Crisis-management was a skill which Morgan admired but did not envy. Janos Bartok, the Tower Safety Officer up at Midway, was now in charge of the situation; those inside the mountain twenty-five thousand kilometres below – and a mere six hundred from the scene of the accident – could only listen to the reports, give helpful advice, and satisfy the curiosity of the news media as best they could.
Needless to say, Maxine Duval had been in touch within minutes of the disaster, and as usual her questions were very much to the point.
“Can Midway Station reach them in time?”
Morgan hesitated; the answer to that was undoubtedly “No”. Yet it was unwise, not to say cruel, to abandon hope as early as this. And there had been one stroke of good luck…
"I don't want to raise false hopes, but we may not need Midway. There's a crew working much closer, at the 10K – ten-thousand-kilometre – Station. Their transporter can reach the Basement in twenty hours.'
“Then why isn't it on the way down?”
“Safety Officer Bartok will be making the decision shortly – but it could be a waste of effort. We think they have air for only half that time. And the temperature problem is even more serious.”
“What do you mean?”
“It's night up there, and they have no source of heat. Don't put this out yet, Maxine, but it may be a race between freezing and anoxia.”
There was a pause for several seconds; then Maxine Duval said in an uncharacteristically diffident tone of voice: “Perhaps I'm being stupid, but surely the weather stations with their big infrared lasers -”
“Thank you, Maxine – I'm the one who's being stupid. Just a minute while I speak to Midway…”
Bartok was polite enough when Morgan called, but his brisk reply made his opinion of meddling amateurs abundantly clear.
“Sorry I bothered you,” apologised Morgan, and switched back to Maxine. “Sometimes the expert does know his job,” he told her with rueful pride. “Our man knows his. He called Monsoon Control ten minutes ago. They're computing the beam power now – they don't want to overdo it, of course, and burn everybody up.” “So I was right,” said Maxine sweetly. “You should have thought of that, Van. What else have you forgotten?”
No answer was possible, nor did Morgan attempt one. He could see Maxine's computer-mind racing ahead, and guessed what her next question would be. He was right.
“Can't you use the Spiders?”
“Even the final models are altitude-limited – their batteries can only take them up to three hundred kilometres. They were designed to inspect the Tower, when it had already entered the atmosphere.”
“Well, put in bigger batteries.”
“In a couple of hours? But that's not the problem. The only unit under test at the moment can't carry passengers.”
“You could send it up empty.”
“Sorry – we've thought of that. There must be an operator aboard to manage the docking, when the Spider comes up to the Basement. And it would still take days to get out seven people, one at a time.”
“Surely you have some plan !”
“Several, but they're all crazy. If any make sense, I'll let you know. Meanwhile, there's something you can do for us.”
“What's that?” Maxine asked suspiciously.
“Explain to your audience just why spacecraft can dock with each other six hundred kilometres up – but not with the Tower. By the time you've done that, we may have some news for you.”
As Maxine's slightly indignant image faded from the screen, and Morgan turned back once more to the well-orchestrated chaos of the Operations Room, he tried to let his mind roam as freely as possible over every aspect of the problem. Despite the polite rebuff of the Safety Officer, efficiently doing his duty up on Midway, he might be able to think of some useful ideas. Although he did not imagine that there would be any magical solution, he understood the Tower better than any living man – with the possible exception of Warren Kingsley. Warren probably knew more of the fine details; but Morgan had the clearer overall picture.
Seven men and women were stranded in the sky, in a situation that was unique in the whole history of space technology. There must be a way of getting to safety, before they were poisoned by CO2, or the pressure dropped so low that the chamber became, in literal truth, a tomb like Mahomet's – suspended between Heaven and Earth.
45. The Man for the Job
“We can do it,” said Warren Kingsley with a broad smile. “Spider can reach the Basement.”
“You've been able to add enough extra battery power?”
“Yes, but it's a very close thing. It will have to be a two-stage affair, like the early rockets. As soon as the battery is exhausted, it must be jettisoned to get rid of the dead weight. That will be around four hundred kilometres; Spider's internal battery will take it the rest of the way.”
“And how much payload will that give?”
Kingsley's smile faded.
“Marginal. About fifty kilos, with the best batteries we have.”
“Only fifty! What use will that be?”
“It should be enough. A couple of those new thousand-atmosphere tanks, each holding five kilos of oxygen. Molecular filter masks to keep out the CO2. A little water and compressed food. Some medical supplies. We can bring it all in under forty-five kilos.”
“Phew! And you're sure that's sufficient?”
“Yes – it will tide them over until the transporter arrives from the 10K Station. And if necessary Spider can make a second trip.”
“What does Bartok think?”
“He approves. After all, no one has any better ideas.”
Morgan felt that a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders. Plenty of things could still go wrong, but at last there was a ray of hope; the feeling of utter helplessness had been dispelled.
“When will all this be ready?” he asked.
“If there are no hold-ups, within two hours. Three at the most. It's all standard equipment, luckily. Spider's being checked out right now. There's only one matter still to be decided…”
Vannevar Morgan shook his head. “No, Warren,” he answered slowly, in a calm, implacably determined voice that his friend had never heard before. “There's nothing more to decide.”
“I'm not trying to pull rank on you, Bartok,” said Morgan. “It's a simple matter of logic. True, anyone can drive Spider – but only half-a-dozen men know all the technical details involved. There may be some operational problems when we reach the Tower, and I'm in the best position to solve them.”
“May I remind you, Dr. Morgan,” said the Safety Officer, “that you are sixty-five. It would be wiser to send a younger man.”
“I'm not sixty-five; I'm sixty-six. And age has absolutely nothing to do with it. There's no danger, and certainly no requirement for physical strength.”
And, he might have added, the psychological factors were far more important than the physical ones. Almost anybody could ride passively up and down in a capsule, as Maxine Duval had done and millions of others would be doing in the years ahead. It would be quite another matter to face some of the situations that could easily arise, six hundred kilometres up in the empty sky.