The Fountains of Paradise - Arthur C. Clarke Page 0,61

chance. Donald Duck made it sound so reasonable.

He had begun by saying, in a display of modesty as unusual as it was spurious, that he would not presume to criticize the engineering aspects of the Space Elevator. He wanted to talk only about the psychological problems it would pose. They could be summed up in one word: vertigo.

The normal human being, he had pointed out, had a well-justified fear of high places. Only acrobats and tightrope artistes were immune to this natural reaction. The tallest structure on earth was less than five kilometers high—and there were not many people who would care to be hauled vertically up the piers of the Gibraltar Bridge.

Yet that was nothing compared to the appalling prospect of the Orbital Tower. “Who has not stood,” Bickerstaff declaimed, “at the foot of some immense building, staring up at its sheer precipitous face, until it seemed about to topple and fall? Now imagine such a building soaring on and on through the clouds, up into the blackness of space, through the ionosphere, past the orbits of all the great space stations—up and up until it reaches a large fraction of the way to the moon! An engineering triumph, no doubt, but a psychological nightmare. I suggest that some people will go mad at its mere contemplation. And how many could face the vertiginous ordeal of the ride—straight upward, hanging over the empty space, for twenty-five thousand kilometers, to the first stop, at the Midway Station.

“It is no answer to say that perfectly ordinary individuals can fly in spacecraft to the same altitude, and far beyond. The situation then is completely different, as indeed it is in ordinary atmospheric flight. The normal man does not feel vertigo even in the open gondola of a balloon floating through the air a few kilometers above the ground. But put him at the edge of a cliff at the same altitude, and study his reactions then!

“The reason for this difference is quite simple. In an aircraft, there is no physical connection linking the observer and the ground. Psychologically, therefore, he is completely detached from the hard, solid Earth far below. Falling no longer has terrors for him. He can look down upon remote and tiny landscapes that he would never dare to contemplate from any high elevation.

“That saving physical detachment is precisely what the Space Elevator will lack. The hapless passenger, whisked up the sheer face of the gigantic Tower, will be all too conscious of his link with Earth. What guarantee can there possibly be that anyone not drugged or anesthetized could survive such an experience? I challenge Dr. Morgan to answer.”

Dr. Morgan was still thinking of answers, few of them polite, when the screen lit up again with an incoming call. When he pressed the ACCEPT button he was not in the least surprised to see Maxine Duval.

“Well, Van,” she said, without any preamble, “what are you going to do?”

“I’m sorely tempted, but I don’t think I should argue with that idiot. Incidentally, do you suppose that some aerospace organization has put him up to it?”

“My men are already digging. I’ll let you know if they find anything. Personally, I feel it’s all his own work. I recognize the hallmarks of the genuine article. But you haven’t answered my question.”

“I haven’t decided. I’m still trying to digest my breakfast. What do you think I should do?”

“Simple. Arrange a demonstration. When can you fix it?”

“In five years, if all goes well.”

“That’s ridiculous. You’ve got your first cable in position….”

“Not cable—tape.”

“Don’t quibble. What load can it carry?”

“Oh—at the Earth end, a mere five hundred tons.”

“There you are. Offer Donald Duck a ride.”

“I wouldn’t guarantee his safety.”

“Would you guarantee mine?”

“You’re not serious!”

“I’m always serious, at this hour of the morning. It’s time I did another story on the Tower, anyway. That capsule mock-up is very pretty, but it doesn’t do anything. My viewers like action, and so do I. The last time we met, you showed me drawings of those little cars the engineers will use to run up and down the cables—I mean tapes. What did you call them?”

“Spiders.”

“Ugh—that’s right. I was fascinated by the idea. Here’s something that has never been possible before, by any technology. For the first time you could sit still in the sky, even above the atmosphere, and watch the Earth beneath. Something that no spacecraft can ever do. I’d like to be the first to describe the sensation. And clip Donald Duck’s wings at the same