CHAPTER 15: “I do begin to have bloody thoughts”
This was the way that an eclipsing binary must look. There was the bright disk of the smaller star, a searing white, moving steadily into occultation behind the softer glow of its orange-yellow giant companion.
Except that now the smaller star was Sol. It was hard to believe that the Sun, so small and bright, was really thousands of times the size of the nearer sphere that shone to fill a fifth of the sky. Rob looked around him for some reference point that would allow him to calibrate size and distance. There was no other disk in the sky, nothing but the hard unwinking lights of the stellar background and the diffuse glow of the nebulae.
“I wondered what was keeping you,” said a familiar voice behind him. “What do you think of it?”
Rob turned at the grated words. Regulo, gaunt and awkward, was hunched by the entrance of the viewing room. In the few weeks since he and Rob last met, his condition had visibly worsened. The rough skin of his face was scored deeper with channeled gulleys, and the white hair was sparser. Only the eyes, bright and inquisitive, were undimmed and unchanged.
“When you didn’t show up at the office, I thought you must have stopped here on the way in,” went on Regulo. “So I decided to take a look for you.” He nodded at the bulk of Lutetia, glowing in the big viewing panel. “Impressive, eh?”
Rob nodded. “It looks even better from space. You lose a lot of the impact on a viewing screen. I’m still having trouble getting used to the sheer size of it. I know the Spider must be up there somewhere, but I can’t see it. Did you put in all the modifications that I sent to you?”
“Every one.” Regulo slowly came forward to stand at Rob’s side. “You’d need a telescope to see the Spider from here. We’re still about two hundred kilometers from the surface of Lutetia. I’ll move Atlantis in close before the tap begins, so we can all have a better look at what’s going on. I didn’t want to get close too soon, or we’d have troubles with the temperature of the aquasphere.”
“Lutetia’s giving out that much heat?” Rob studied the image again. “I think there’s something a little off with your camera system on Atlantis. It’s distorting the colors that come through to the screens. What’s the surface temperature of Lutetia now?”
“About three thousand, maybe as high as thirty-one hundred. We finished the spin-up and most of the inductive heating three days ago. I could have started the tap then, but I wanted you to take another look at the Spider and see if you need to do any fine tuning before we begin.”
Rob nodded. Things had been moving faster than he expected. On the trip from Earth he’d had time to look over the materials that Howard Anson had pulled together for him. They pointed to a bizarre conclusion, but to verify it he needed time. And opportunity. He had the right equipment with him, selected and loaded before he left Earth. But when would he find a chance to use it?
Regulo was watching him closely. “Problems, Rob?” The old eyes were keen.
“Just a lot on my mind. All the reports from the beanstalk are good, but I can’t stay away too long. Landing is scheduled six days from now.”
“Understood. But you don’t need to worry. I’ve been following the work from here. Merindo has everything ready to go at the ground end, and Hakluyt’s already up there with the powersat.”
“You’re more up-to-date than I am.” Rob frowned. “I missed that report from Merindo. It must have been sent as we were on final approach here. Did he reach target tether mass yet?”
“Past it. He has a twenty-percent margin.” Regulo was turning to leave the viewing room. “The beanstalk can’t be finished and operating soon enough for me. I just saw a forecast from Sycorax showing a near-term Earth shortage of titanium. There will be a shortfall of five million tons a month, and we’re the only ones with any chance of filling it. The assay of Lutetia shows billions of tons of the metal. If we can tap it out efficiently, and have a working beanstalk, we’ll be unbeatable.”
“Can you ship in time? Even if we can mine it, we’ll still have to live with the rules for cargo ship drives in the Inner System.”
“Right.” Regulo paused in the doorway, pale eyes hooded and inscrutable. “That’s a problem, no doubt about it. But let’s see how the tap goes before we worry.”
“When do you want to start?”
“The sooner, the better. Then you can be finished and out of here. Unless you have problems with the Spider, how about shooting for twenty-four hours from now? That will give you time to work, and time to rest as well.”
“I’ll be ready. I’ll go out to the Spider now and see what needs to be done.”
Regulo nodded and limped away, leaving Rob with the unpalatable arithmetic. Twenty-four hours would provide sixteen for work on the Spider, and the other eight for preparation, exploration and — if he were correct — action. Rest or sleep would have to go. But Rob always seemed to be squeezing such luxuries out of his crowded life.
A century of space experiments had only served to confirm the strength of the circadian rhythm. After attempts at twenty-, thirty- and forty-hour days, and almost every number in between, humankind had finally accepted the constraint. Every colony on the Moon and Mars, and every outpost of the USF through the Middle and Outer System, now worked from the same premise: a day was twenty-four hours; and in each place, one third of that period was accepted as a time of reduced activity.
Rob had finished his review of the Spider, which was functioning flawlessly. Now he waited quietly in his rooms at the edge of the living-sphere for the time when the rest of Atlantis slept. Then he could begin.
Anson’s Information Service had provided him with a number of important operating factors. Item: Joseph Morel was an insomniac, sleeping only a couple of hours a day. Implication: No time of the diurnal cycle was really safe for exploration of Atlantis.
Rob had noted the point, but it made no difference to the way he must proceed. Exploration would be done when most of the inhabitants of the living-sphere were asleep. Morel was simply an added and unavoidable risk.
Item: Only four appearances of Goblins had ever been recorded, and the geographical distribution of at least the most recent three was consistent with Atlantis as their point of origin.
Item: By every reasonable index, Caliban was intelligent. Further exploration of Atlantis via the aquasphere, unless Caliban could be eliminated from the picture, would be rash verging on insane.
Rob, remembering his earlier visit to the water-world, did not need Anson’s information to keep him clear of the aquasphere. His survival then, with Caliban patrolling, seemed more and more an accident of good luck. This time, Rob would work from within.
He went across to the window partition and stared out into the clear water. The lights had been dimmed, but he fancied he could see a faint new glow diffusing through the interior of Atlantis. As they moved closer to Lutetia, the white-hot asteroid served as a second sun. Rob looked for signs of Caliban but the great squid was busy elsewhere. He forced himself to sit quietly for another half hour, even though his instincts urged him to hurry.
At last he collected the small tools that he had brought with him from Earth, stowed them in a plastic bag that fitted in his shirt pocket, and set off through the darkened corridors of the inner sphere. At this hour, the living-sphere seemed deserted; but he was sure that each corridor contained its own cameras and viewing monitors. It was an unavoidable risk, one that he had not been able to plan around.