equator, but no, it had to be here. The irony is that to launch the new Saturns that are taking the Apollo retreads into orbit, they had to build a new pad altogether.
Bisesa still didnt know what they were talking about. They used the pad for what? Carelhow do I know that name?
You may have met my father. Bill Carel? He worked with Professor Siobhan McGorran.
It was a long time since Bisesa had heard that name. Siobhan had been Britains Astronomer Royal at the time of the sunstorm, and had ended up playing a significant role in mankinds response to the crisisand in Bisesas own destiny.
My father was with her as a graduate student. They worked together on quintessence studies.
On what?...Never mind.
That was before the sunstorm. Now Dads a full professor himself. The cart slowed. Here we go. He hopped nimbly off the cart before it had stopped. The women and the suitcase followed a bit more cautiously.
They gathered on a block of tarmac. A lid opened above them with a metallic snap, revealing a slab of blue sky.
Alexei said, We shouldnt be challenged aboveground. If we are, let me do the talking. Hold tight, now. He snapped his fingers.
The tarmac block became an elevator that surged upward with a violence that made Bisesa stagger.
They emerged into sunlight. Alexei had seemed more comfortable underground; now he flinched from the open sky.
Bisesa glanced around, trying to get her bearings. They were at the focus of roads that snaked out over the flat coastal plain of Canaveral, crammed with streams of vehicles, mostly trucks. There was even a kind of monorail system along which a train of podlike compartments zipped, glistening and futuristic. All this traffic poured into this place.
And before her was a vast rusting slab, a platform that reminded her oddly of an oil rig, but stranded
on the land, and mounted on tremendous caterpillar tracks. The crude metal shell of the thing was stamped with logos: mostly Skylift Consortium, a name that rang faint bells. Close by stood more strange assemblies, squat tubes that stood erect in mobile stands, like cannon pointing up at the pale blue sky.
This platform looks for all the world like one of those old crawlers they used to use to haul the Saturns and the shuttles out to the pad.
Thats exactly what it is, Alexei said. A mobile launch platform, reused. And what are those cannon? Weapons? No, Alexei said. Theyre the power supply. For what?
Myra said gently, Things have changed, Mum. Look up.
Mounted on top of the big crawler was what looked like a minor industrial facility, where unlikely-looking machines rolled around in a kind of choreography. They seemed to be trucks, basically, but with solar-cell wings on their flanks, and on their roofs were pulleylike mechanisms that made them look like stranded cable-cars. Their hulls were all stamped with the Skylift logo.
These peculiar engines were lining up before a kind of ribbon, shining silver, looking no wider than Bisesas hand, that rose up from the platform. Each truck in turn approached the ribbon, dipped its pulley spindle, clung to the ribbon, and then hauled itself off the ground, rising rapidly.
Bisesa stepped back and lifted her face, trying to see where the ribbon went. It rose on up; Bisesa could see the trucks climbing it like beads on a necklace. The ribbon arced upward, narrowing with perspective, becoming a shining thread tilted slightly from the vertical, a scratch ruled across the sky. She tipped her head back higher, looking for whatever was holding the ribbon up
Nothing was holding it up.
I dont believe it, she said. A space elevator.
Alexei seemed interested in her reaction. We call it Jacobs Ladder. In 2069, its an everyday miracle, Bisesa. Welcome to the future. Come on, time to find our ride. Are you up to a little climbing?
They had to scramble up rusty rungs, fixed to the side of the mobile platform. Bisesa struggled, Hibernaculum-enfeebled, encased in her suit. The others took care of her, Alexei going ahead, Myra following.
Once on the upper surface of the platform they gave her a few seconds to catch her breath. The trucks rolled to and fro in their orderly way, their motors whirring gently.
Embarrassed, she tried to say something intelligent. Why use a crawler?
Alexei said, Its best to keep the base of your elevator mobile. Most of them are based on facilities at sea, actuallyreused oil rigs and the likeincluding Bandara, the first.
Bandara?
The Aussie elevator, off Perth. They call it Bandara now.