Rob’s intention was to check the position of the leads, but the camera was coincidentally looking straight down along the length of the beanstalk. In the observation center where Howard Anson and Senta Plessey were located, a communal groan went up from the onlookers. The senate aide next to Anson grunted, as though he had been hit hard under the ribs.
“Jesus H.” He turned to Howard and Senta and shook his head. “Do they think they’ll get people to ride that thing? It turns my stomach to think of it.”
His eye, like everyone else’s, was following the cable endlessly down toward Earth. Views from rockets were common enough, but they never gave the onlooker a true feeling for height. There was no direct connection, nothing to tie the mind back unavoidably to the real globe beneath. The beanstalk changed that. There was no doubt here that they were looking down — a long way down — even though the cable itself shrank to invisibility against the background of the cloud-covered planet. As they watched, the first of the maintenance robots moved out from the powersat and began to crab its way precariously down the drive ladder. It was checking the current in each segment, readying for the deployment of the ore carriers, and its hold on the beanstalk was in fact completely secure. The onlookers didn’t know that — or care. The observation center was gripped by a total and breathless silence.
“Are they really planning for passengers?” whispered the aide, almost to himself. “I can see them using it for cargo, but not for people.”
Senta turned to him and patted his arm. “Don’t worry.” She smiled. “I feel the same way that you do, but they won’t ask anybody to use it who doesn’t feel comfortable. All the passenger cars will be closed in, so you won’t get any feeling of height. Think of it as just a great big elevator.”
“Elevator?” The aide gave her a sickly smile and turned back to the display. “Funniest damn elevator I’ve ever heard of. It would take you hours and hours to get up or down.”
“More than that,” Howard Anson said softly. The sight of the cable confirmed all his fears of space travel. “It would be a five-day trip, one-way. And once you started out there’d be no changing your mind. You’d have to ride it all the way.”
“Well, you can have my share of it.” The aide was still staring in horror at the big screen. “I’ll stick to good old rockets. I don’t mind being thought old-fashioned. Look, suppose the power failed on that thing? You’d fall off it and you wouldn’t stop falling until you hit Quito.”
“You can’t fall off,” said Senta. She seemed to be the calmest person in the room. “If the power failed, the cars will stick to the drive train with a mechanical coupling. You’d just hang there until they started the power up again. Anyway, if something did fall off it wouldn’t land at Quito. If you fell off from high enough, you’d miss Earth completely, and finish up back near the point you started from.”
“Charming.” Their companion grunted his displeasure. “And how long would all that take? I was once stuck on a funicular railway for seven hours, and believe me, it felt like seven hours going on seven years. Suppose the power doesn’t come back on? What are you supposed to do, shin down the cable on your own?”
While the aide was speaking, Howard Anson had turned to watch Rob’s reaction to the view on the big screen. What he saw disturbed him. This should be the moment of triumph, the point where the architect of the beanstalk was relaxing and smiling and giving the thumbs-up sign to everyone in sight.
Rob was slumped in his seat, the stump of his left hand held across his chest and cradled in his right. As Anson watched, Rob yawned hugely, slowly stood up, and stumbled like a drugged or drunken man toward the door of the Control Center.
“Come on, Senta.” Howard Anson came quickly to his feet. “The show’s over. Rob needs help.”
“He’s all right.” The senate aide examined Rob’s image. “I’ve seen that expression before. When you finish a big, complex job, you get a feeling like nothing else in the System. It’s the biggest high in the world, and at the same time you feel so weak and tired that you can’t really think at all. Merlin is coming down, that’s all.”
“I wish you were right.” Anson was at the door. “But I don’t think so.”
When they reached Rob he was standing motionless by the communicator at the entrance of Central Control. He was staring at it expectantly. Anson gave the operator a questioning glance.
The woman nodded. “I don’t have this on the schedule, but we have an incoming signal forwarded through lunar relay. Here comes the video.”
The communicator screen lit up. Darius Regulo’s battered countenance appeared.
While Senta Plessey gasped and Rob went rigid, Regulo spoke. “I’m sure it’s looking good. Better than good, Rob — perfect, everything on the button. Congratulations. I’ve watched you do it, but the beanstalk is all yours. Twenty years from now, people are going to marvel at the way that Earth managed to struggle along without it. Go out and enjoy yourself, savor the moment. You won’t get a feeling like this many times in your life. I wish I could be there to help you celebrate, instead of being stuck here on Atlantis.”
Senta said, “But Regulo is dead.”
“It was pre-recorded.” Anson was staring at the image caption. “More than a month ago. Regulo had that much confidence.”
“Confidence in me.” Rob, unsteady on his feet, placed his right hand against the wall. “More confidence than I had. It wasn’t ever supposed to end like this.”
Corrie entered Control Center. She had missed the message from Regulo, and saw only Rob’s agonized look and rigid posture.
“I knew it.” She went to his side and placed an arm around him in support. “Just look at you, you’re a wreck. The beanstalk is a great success, but it could have waited until you had recovered. No more excuses. It’s operation time. You want to celebrate? You can do it in the hospital.”
She expected an argument. Instead, Rob meekly allowed himself to be led away. As he went, he muttered — to her, or to himself? — “It’s over. It’s all over.”
By nightfall, the last traces of oscillation had damped below the detection level of any of the monitors. Earth had adjusted to the presence of its newest bridge. As the stars appeared, Luis Merindo could see the bright thread of the beanstalk, still illuminated by the setting sun, disappearing into the night sky.
He walked to the perimeter of the guard fence and looked up. Far above his head, catching the sunlight until the final sweep into Earth’s shadow, the patient robots continued their work of installing the ore and passenger carriers. Their night would not come for another five hours, until the deep shadow had climbed the beanstalk all the way to synchronous altitude. Even then the ballast weight would still swing in full sunlight, until it too dipped at last behind the Earth for its brief half-hour of night.
Merindo stood alone, gazing upward. Broad, dark, heavily built, he had been a ground-hog all his life, moving the earth and planting the caissons. Rockets out to a cold and empty space had never offered any attraction, not to a man who felt his roots so deep in earth. But now the way to space was a part of Earth itself, and with a firm highway standing ready to be taken…
The thin filament of the illuminated cable moved higher in the sky, even as the lower parts drifted into shadow. The thread drew his vision outward. He did not realize it then, but when Luis Merindo finally lost sight of the beanstalk against the background of the tropical star field, and turned his weary way back to the air car and Tether Control, a decision had been made at some deep level within him.
He was the first of the billions who would feel the lure of that shining road, and follow it outward.