It was the time of maximum stresses. The cable, caught tight at head and tail, flexed and contorted along its length like an agonized snake. Local transient stresses were running above a hundred million newtons per square centimeter. Each gauge monitored by the control panels changed and changed again, too fast for any human to follow. The central computer analyzed the incoming data stream, decided on the most critical variables, and passed along a status report simple enough and slow enough to be understood by humans.
There was room in Rob’s head for only three questions: Were the oscillations along the length of the cable in an unstable growth mode? Would the ground tether hold? Was the ballast asteroid secure in its holding cup, a hundred and five thousand kilometers above the Earth?
Five seconds passed. The flickering chaos of signals on the board in front of him began to smooth to a pattern that he could follow even without computer assistance.
Stresses and temperatures were reporting within tolerances.
The ballast was firmly attached at the beanstalk’s upper end.
Signals from Tether Control implied a secure anchor. The final few hundred million tons of rock were falling to the bottom of the pit.
An army of robots stood ready to deploy along the beanstalk.
It was ending, in a mutter of damping stresses and a groan of settling rocks. The beanstalk, stretched tight between the opposing forces of ballast and tether, was molding to a stable configuration, a vast arching bridge between Earth and Heaven. The path was secure between Midgard and Asgard.
Three minutes after Contact, Rob felt comfortable enough to switch displays to the powersat. It was in the right position, lagging the stalk enough to be well out of the way had trouble arisen, close enough to be moved easily to contact with it when the time was right. He signalled it to move in and begin to attach to the superconductors. With ample power for the drive ladder, the robots could begin installation of cargo and passenger transport modules.
As the powersat made its first connection with the beanstalk, Rob switched to yet another camera. This one was set in the powersat itself, near the point where the superconductors would be hooked on.
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.”