The Foundations of Paradise - Arthur C. Clarke [58]
Like all great reporters, Maxine Duval was not emotionally detached from the events that she observed. She could give all points of view, neither distorting nor omitting any facts she considered essential. Yet she made no attempt to conceal her own feelings, though she did not let them intrude.
She admired Morgan enormously, with the envious awe of someone who lacked all real creative ability. Ever since the building of the Gibraltar Bridge, she had waited to see what the engineer would do next; and she had not been disappointed.
But though she wished Morgan luck, she did not really like him. In her opinion, the sheer drive and ruthlessness of his ambition made him both larger than life and less than human. She could not help contrasting him with his deputy, Warren Kingsley. Now there was a thoroughly nice, gentle person (“and a better engineer than I am,” Morgan had once told her, more than half seriously). But no one would ever hear of Kingsley; he would always be a dim and faithful satellite of his dazzling primary. As he was perfectly content to be.
It was Kingsley who had patiently explained to Duval the surprisingly complex mechanics of the descent. At first sight, it appeared simple enough to drop something straight down to the equator from a satellite hovering motionless above it. But astrodynamics was full of paradoxes. If you tried to slow down, you moved faster. If you took the shortest route, you burned up the most fuel. If you aimed in one direction, you traveled in another. . . . And that was merely allowing for gravitational fields. This time, the situation was much more complicated. No one had ever before tried to steer a space probe trailing forty thousand kilometers of wire. But the Ashoka program had worked perfectly, all the way down to the edge of the atmosphere. In a few minutes, the ground controller on Sri Kanda would take over for the final descent. No wonder Morgan looked tense.
“Van,” said Duval softly but firmly over the private circuit. “Stop sucking your thumb. It makes you look like a baby.”
Morgan registered indignation, then surprise—and finally relaxed with a slightly embarrassed laugh.
“Thanks for the warning,” he said. “I’d hate to spoil my public image.”
He looked with rueful amusement at the missing joint, wondering when self-appointed wits would stop chortling “Ha! The engineer hoist by his own petard!” After all the times he had cautioned others, he had grown careless and had managed to slash himself while demonstrating the properties of hyperfilament. There had been practically no pain, and surprisingly little inconvenience. One day he would do something about it; but he simply could not afford to spend a whole week hitched up to an organ regenerator, just for two centimeters of thumb.
“Altitude two five zero,” said a calm, impersonal voice from the control hut. “Probe velocity one one six zero meters per second. Wire tension nine zero percent nominal. Parachute deploys in two minutes.”
After his momentary relaxation, Morgan was once again tense and alert—like a boxer, Duval could not help thinking, watching an unknown but dangerous opponent.
“What’s the wind situation?” he snapped.
Another voice answered, this time far from impersonal.
“I can’t believe this,” it said in worried tones. “But Monsoon Control has just issued a gale warning.”
“This is no time for jokes.”
“They’re not joking. I’ve just checked back.”
“But they guaranteed no gusts above thirty kilometers an hour!”
“They’ve just raised that to sixty—correction, eighty. Something’s gone badly wrong. . . .”
“I’ll say,” Duval murmured to herself. She instructed her distant eyes and ears: “Fade into the woodwork. They won’t want you around—but don’t miss anything.” Leaving her Rem to cope with these somewhat contradictory orders, she switched to her excellent information service.
It took her less than thirty seconds to discover which meteorological station was responsible for the weather in the Taprobane area. And it was frustrating, but not surprising, to find that it was not accepting incoming calls from