two hundred kilometers an hour. That gave maximum efficiency at Spider’s present loading. When the auxiliary battery was dropped off, speed could be increased by twenty-five percent, to almost two-fifty klicks.
“Say something, Van!” called Kingsley’s amused voice from the world below.
“Leave me alone,” Morgan replied equably. “I intend to relax and enjoy the view for the next couple of hours. If you wanted a running commentary, you should have sent Maxine.”
“She’s been calling you for the last hour.”
“Give her my love, and say I’m busy. Maybe when I reach the Tower…What’s the latest from there?”
“Temperature’s stabilized at twenty. Monsoon Control zaps them with a modest megawattage every ten minutes. But Professor Sessui is furious—complains that it upsets his instruments.”
“What about the air?”
“Not so good. The pressure has definitely dropped, and of course the CO2’s building up. But they should be O.K. if you arrive on schedule. They’re avoiding all unnecessary movement, to conserve oxygen.”
All except Sessui, I’ll bet, thought Morgan. It would be interesting to meet the man whose life he was trying to save. He had read several of the scientist’s widely praised popular books, and considered them florid and overblown. He suspected that the man matched the style.
“And the status at 10K?”
“Another two hours before the transporter can leave. They’re installing some special circuits to make quite sure that nothing catches fire on this trip.”
“A good idea—Bartok’s, I suppose.”
“Probably. And they’re coming down the north track, just in case the south one was damaged by the explosion. If all goes well, they’ll arrive in—oh—twenty-one hours. Plenty of time, even if we don’t send Spider up again with a second load.”
Despite his only half-jesting remark to Kingsley, Morgan knew that it was far too early to start relaxing. Yet all did seem to be going as well as could be expected; and there was certainly nothing else that he could do for the next three hours except to admire the ever-expanding view.
He was already thirty kilometers up in the sky, rising swiftly and silently through the tropical night. There was no moon, but the land beneath was revealed by the twinkling constellations of its towns and villages. When he looked at the stars above and the stars below, Morgan found it easy to imagine that he was far from any world, lost in the depths of space.
Soon he could see the whole island of Taprobane, faintly outlined by the lights of the coastal settlements. Far to the north, a dull glowing patch was creeping up over the horizon like the herald of some displaced dawn. It puzzled him for a moment, until he realized that he was looking at one of the great cities of southern Hindustan.
He was higher now than any aircraft could climb, and what he had already done was unique in the history of transportation. Although Spider and its precursors had made innumerable trips up to twenty kilometers, no one had been allowed to go higher because of the impossibility of rescue. It had not been planned to begin serious operations until the base of the Tower was much closer, and until Spider had at least two companions who could spin themselves up and down the other tapes of the system. Morgan pushed aside the thought of what could happen if the drive mechanism jammed. That would doom the refugees in the Basement, as well as himself.
Fifty kilometers. He had reached what would, in normal times, have been the lowest level of the ionosphere. He did not, of course, expect to see anything; but he was wrong.
The first intimation was a faint crackling from the capsule speaker. Next, out of the corner of his eye, he saw a flicker of light. It was immediately below him, glimpsed in the downward-viewing mirror just outside Spider’s little bay window.
He twisted the mirror around as far as it would adjust, until it was aimed at a point a couple of meters below the capsule. For a moment, he stared with astonishment, and more than a twinge of fear. Then he called the mountain.
“I’ve got company,” he said. “I think this is in Professor Sessui’s department. There’s a ball of light—oh—about twenty centimeters across, running along the tape just below me. It’s keeping a constant distance, and I hope it stays there. But I must say it’s quite beautiful—a lovely bluish glow, flickering every few seconds. And I can hear it on the radio link.”
It was a full minute before Kingsley answered, in a reassuring tone of voice.
“Don’t worry. It’s