The Foundations of Paradise - Arthur C. Clarke [61]
“It doesn’t matter,” shouted Morgan. “Crash where you can!”
“Will do soonest. Range two zero. Wind force increasing. Losing stabilization. Payload starting to spin.”
“Release the brake. Let the wire run out!”
“Already done,” said that maddeningly calm voice. Duval could have imagined that a machine was speaking, if she had not known that Morgan had borrowed a top space-station traffic controller for the job.
“Dispenser malfunction. Payload spin now five revs per second. Wire probably entangled. Tension one eight zero percent. One nine zero. Two zero zero. Range one five. Tension two one zero. Two two zero. Two three zero . . .”
It can’t last much longer, thought Duval. Only a dozen kilometers to go, and the damned wire has got tangled up in the spinning probe . . .
“Tension zero. Repeat, zero.”
That was it. The wire had snapped, and now must be slowly snaking back toward the stars. Doubtless the operators on Ashoka would wind it in again, but Duval had now glimpsed enough of the theory to realize that this would be a long and complicated task.
And the little payload would crash somewhere down there in the fields and jungles of Taprobane. Yet, as Morgan had said, it had been more than ninety-five percent successful. Next time, when there was no wind . . .
“There it is!” someone shouted.
A brilliant star had ignited, between two of the cloud galleons sailing across the sky. It looked like a daylight meteor, falling down to earth. Ironically, as if mocking its builders, the flare installed on the probe to assist terminal guidance had automatically triggered. Well, it could still serve some useful purpose: it would help in locating the wreckage.
Duval’s Rem slowly pivoted so that she could watch the blazing day-star sail past the mountain and disappear into the east. She estimated that it would land less than five kilometers away. “Take me back to Dr. Morgan,” she said. “I’d like a word with him.”
She had intended to make a few cheerful remarks—loud enough for the Martian banker to hear—expressing her confidence that next time the lowering would be a complete success. Duval was still composing her little speech of reassurance when it was swept out of her mind. . . .”
She was to play back the events of the next thirty seconds until she knew them by heart. But she was never quite sure if she fully understood them.
30
The Legions of the King
Vannevar Morgan was used to setbacks—even disasters—and this was, he hoped, a minor one. His real worry, as he watched the flare vanish over the shoulder of the mountain, was that Narodny Mars would consider its money wasted. The hard-eyed observer in his elaborate wheelchair had been extremely uncommunicative; earth’s gravity seemed to have immobilized his tongue as effectively as his limbs. But now he addressed Morgan before the engineer could speak to him.
“Just one question, Dr. Morgan. I know that this gale is unprecedented—yet it happened. So it may happen again. What if it does after the Tower is built?”
Morgan thought quickly. It was impossible to give an accurate answer at such short notice, and he could still scarcely believe what had happened.
“At the very worst, we might have to suspend operations briefly: there could be some track distortion. No wind forces that ever occur at this altitude could endanger the Tower structure itself. Even this experimental fiber would have been perfectly safe if we’d succeeded in anchoring it.”
He hoped that this was a fair analysis; in a few minutes, Warren Kingsley would let him know whether it was true or not.
To his relief, the banker answered with apparent satisfaction: “Thank you; that was all I wanted to know.”
Morgan was determined, however, to drive the lesson home.
“And on Mount Pavonis, of course, such a problem couldn’t possibly arise. The atmospheric density there is less than a hundredth—”
Not for decades had he heard the sound that now crashed upon his ears, but it was one that no man could ever forget. Its imperious summons,