“Good Lord!” Richards said. “What are those?”
The camera was still zooming in, allowing a tantalizing glimpse of something unnaturally angular.
Then there was a dazzle of ruby light, and the screen went blank.
“Bedford!” Van Eyck roared through his microphone. “Get that picture back on!”
There was consternation among the ranked consoles down below. The flight controllers, some of them half out of their seats, were scrabbling over their buttons and dials. One of the systems-operation engineers had left his chair entirely and was leaning over the telemetry officer, yelling in his ear.
“It’s dead, sir,” Bedford’s voice came over the speaker. “The probe’s dead. The instruments say that everything heated up—fast! Then it died on us.”
Chapter 6
For a moment, as the ablative port shields shredded and whipped away into the wind, Jameson caught a fine view of Greater Houston spread out below him: a glittering sprawl of bright cuboid shapes stretching for a hundred miles along the Gulf Coast. Inland, at the center of that vast multicolored jumble, was the graceful mile-high stalk of the Federal Tower, its entire south face a shimmering parabolic cliff reflecting the sunlight of the hundred acres of solar collectors skirting its base toward a focus at the Houston Electrical Authority plant across the river. It was still in use after forty years, despite the gradual conversion to fusion power that had begun in the early decades of the century.
Offshore, rising from the rich blue waters of the Gulf, he could see the moored ranks of thousands of wind machines bobbing on their submerged floats: delicate-looking lattices hundreds of feet high, with propeller blades spinning like bright dewdrops all across the spider-web surfaces.
As far as the eye could see, across the surrounding Texas countryside, were the shining spokes of the solar farms, alternating with green strips of cropland growing chimeric soycorn and peanuts and wingbeans—food and energy for the megalopolis and its satellite cities. More than a hundred million people, the largest urban population in North America, lived in the Houston-San Antonio-Dallasworth triangle.
The horizon tilted as the great shuttlecraft banked toward the Dallasworth spaceport. Jameson settled back and watched the landscape flash by beneath him. The solar farms gave way to a drab patchwork of farmland dotted with small skyscrapers. After another ten minutes the green became increasingly pebbled with dull gray, as Dallasworth’s outskirts yearned toward merger with Houston. Then the shuttlecraft banked again and dropped like a stone as it entered its final glide path. There were audible gasps from the more inexperienced travelers. Jameson had a glimpse of looping freeways, a blurred impression of serried roofs, horizon to horizon, and then the huge manta-winged craft dipped and skidded to an abrupt stop.
The pilot was skillful; reentry vehicles have all the responsiveness of a brick at their 200-mph landing speed. Only a mild jolt threw Jameson and the other passengers forward against the corsets that encased them from armpit to hip. He could see his seatmate, a pert little brunette from the Moon, wince as the stretchband briefly flattened her breasts, and then the automatic clamps snapped free, a chime sounded, and the passengers began peeling themselves out of their cocoons.
“Please stay in your seats, ladies and gentlemen,” the pilot’s voice came over the com. “The conveyer will hook up as soon as our outer skin cools off a bit.”
No one paid attention. The passengers were struggling to their feet, jolly and befuddled by the drinks and joints they’d been served before reentry. More than a hundred of them were milling noisily in the narrow aisles: tourists returning from Mare Imbrium and Eurostation’s vacation inn, lunies, scientific and support personnel. They clutched their little souvenir packs with the ounce of Moon rock and the bottle of vacuum, and called back and forth to one another.
“How does it feel to have Earthweight on you again?” Jameson said to the woman. She very sensibly had remained in her seat while they were waiting.
“Good,” she said, flashing him a smile. “I haven’t been back for almost a year.”
“Oh?” He raised his eyebrows. “I thought you Farside people got terrestrial furlough every six months.”
“I … I couldn’t get away,” she said. There was an awkward silence. She suddenly seemed preoccupied.
“Well…” Jameson said. “Planning to spend your leave in this area? There’s certainly a lot to do. You’re just in time for the start of the Houston theater season, and the San Antone Fiesta—”
“No,” she said. “I’ll be taking the tube to Nevada.” She stood up. “It was nice meeting you, Commander Jameson. Have a good leave, and good luck on your mission.”
She shook hands with him and disappeared into the crowd that was flowing toward the exit. The conveyor had arrived with a thud against the hull, and the big oval port swung inward; Jameson watched her go with faint regret. He had been on the verge of asking her to dinner.
He joined the surge to the exit, a tall, lean figure with his black hair cut spaceman-short. He looked cool and neat in lightweight gray slacks and an open-necked white shirt. He carried nothing but a small zipbag.
A beefy tourist, loaded down with cameras, last-minute purchases, and a bulging shoulder bag that had doubtless seemed light on the Moon, bumped into him. Jameson helped him retrieve a gift-wrapped bottle of champagne from Eurostation—one that had come from Earth in the first place. “Thanks,” the man said. There was hash on his breath. “What a trip, but there’s no place like home, right?” Jameson agreed with him politely and helped him negotiate the moving belt to the terminal. Around him cameras were clicking as they were carried past the controversial memorial statue of John F. Kennedy, an heroic nude more than fifty meters high, molded of gleaming polymers; the figure balanced a representation of the Moon in one hand and held a rocket aloft like a sword in the other.
His clearance through customs was fast. The inspector flipped to the holopic in Jameson’s ident-book and said, “Hey, you’re not the Commander Jameson that’s going to Jupiter?”
“I’m the one,” Jameson said.
The inspector snapped the book shut and shoved it briefly under the scanner linked to the federal computer. There was no warning light. The computer noted Jameson’s, position on the planet, along with the last known positions of a billion other Americans, and sent the appropriate signals to both the central locator files and Jameson’s own biographical file. It also automatically deducted his port-entry fee from his bank account.
“Nothing to declare, right, Commander?” the inspector asked cheerfully.
“Not a thing.”
The inspector slid the zipbag over to him, unopened, and handed him back his book. “Enjoy your stay, Commander,” he said. “And give our regards to the beasties on Jupiter.”
“I’ll do that.” Jameson laughed. He took his bag and headed for the slideway to the levi-car terminal.
He’d just missed a car. He was in time to see it rolling down the tube, retracting its landing wheels from the tunnel’s side flanges as it picked up speed and began to levitate.
The next car slid in a minute later, a long, sleek, windowless bullet, painted with graffiti. It was amazing how teenagers painted their slogans on the hulls during the few seconds a levi-car was at rest.
Curved sections of hull swung open and became ramps. Jameson boarded with long strides, found a seat, and sat down. He kept his zipbag in his lap. The hull sealed itself shut, and the levi-car launched itself smoothly down the tube.
The car rocked slightly as the side wheels retracted and the vehicle began to hover above the guideway, riding on a cushion of magnetic flux. Shielding coils under the floor protected the passengers from the intense fields generated by the superconducting levitation magnets. There was a momentary feeling of lag as the car’s bullet nose penetrated the elastic petals of the first tunnel seal, a second momentary resistance, and then the car was hurtling down the evacuated tubeway in full electromagnetic flight. Jameson raised his eyes to the display board at the front of the car. The reeling numbers told him that Greater Houston was 221 miles away, that they were building quickly toward their optimum 600-mph speed, and that E.T.A. was approximately 23 minutes.