“Regulo insists that this is just the beginning. As soon as we have easy mass transfer from Earth we can really go to work on the System. We’ll put some of Earth’s water out on Mars, or bring asteroids down to the surface, bit by bit.”
“You’d need a Martian beanstalk, too.”
“That’s easy. We could have put one there long ago if we wanted one. You don’t need anything like as much strength in a Mars beanstalk — you could build one using ordinary graphite whiskers for the load-bearing cable. Anyway, Howard, I wasn’t serious about shipping Earth water to Mars. That wouldn’t be economical. It’s cheaper and easier to fly a comet in from the Outer System.”
“Could you do that?”
“I don’t know, but I expect so. I’m playing Regulo’s game, speculating in all directions.” Rob leaned back in his seat and rubbed at his reddened eyes. “I find I do that better when I’m tired out.”
“Of course you do.” Anson saw Rob take a quick look at his watch, and realized that the beanstalk’s schedule would control everything in Merlin’s life until the fly-in and tether. “It’s only when you’re tired out that you can let your mind run free. After this job is over, Rob, you’d better plan on a long holiday. You need a re-charge.”
“We can talk about that after the beanstalk is in position and working. Twenty more days. I leave for Atlantis in just a few hours. Will you look at a couple of other things for me while I’m away? I just don’t have time to follow them myself.”
Rob’s manner was becoming increasingly restless. His schedule was calling.
Anson nodded. “Tell me what you need.”
“I’m not quite sure. More about Cancer pertinax, that’s one item. I need to know how many people suffer from it, what the treatments are, and how close we are to finding a cure. It tends to be hereditary, but I’d like you to find out if there’s an infection possibility, too.”
“That should all be easy. The information will all be in public data banks or in research programs. Hmm. Unless Morel has treatments that he hasn’t reported yet. He might have. He always preferred to wait until his techniques were perfected before he would talk about them. But I’ll see what I can find. Anything else?”
Rob hesitated. “I don’t think this will be in any data banks, but I want to know about Corrie. Senta says she’s Regulo’s daughter. Corrie says she doesn’t believe it. Is there any way of finding out for sure, through chromosome tests or genetic matching?”
“Ah.” Howard Anson rubbed at his chest thoughtfully, running a lightning search of some internal data bank. “Sure there is, in principle. It would be dead easy if the genetic data banks were open, but they’re closed so tight I don’t know if I can crack them. It’s a privacy issue. I know there won’t be anything in the public files. A couple of years ago I talked about the same thing with Senta. I had the same reaction as you when I was told that Corrie is Regulo’s daughter. There’s nothing to support it in the birth records, and no other direct evidence. I asked Senta for more details, but she has big blanks in what she can remember. It’s probably part of the same set of memories that we’ve been trying to tap through the taliza trances.” He shrugged. “I’ll dig again, but don’t hold your breath waiting for answers. Can you think of any reason why Senta wouldn’t be telling the truth?”
“No.” Rob was reaching out to cut the connection switch. “No reason at all. Put it the other way round, though. Can you think of any reason why Corrie would be lying? They can’t both be right.”
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.”