The Foundations of Paradise - Arthur C. Clarke [71]
“On the other hand, it did discuss many matters of philosophy and religion, and in these fields its influence was profound. Although the phrase nowhere occurs in the transcripts, Starglider is generally credited with the famous aphorism ‘Belief in God is apparently a psychological artifact of mammalian reproduction.’
“But what if this is true? It is totally irrelevant to the question of God’s actual existence, as I shall now proceed to demonstrate. . . .”
Swami Krisnamurthi (Dr. Choam Goldberg)
36
The Cruel Sky
The eye could follow the tape much farther by night than by day. At sunset, when the warning lights were switched on, it became a thin band of incandescence, slowly dwindling away until, at some indefinite point, it was lost against the background of stars.
Already, it was the greatest wonder of the world. Until Morgan put his foot down and restricted the site to essential engineering staff, there was a continual flood of visitors—pilgrims, someone had ironically called them—paying homage to the sacred mountain’s last miracle.
They would all behave in exactly the same way. First they would reach out and gently touch the five-centimeter-wide band, running their finger tips along it with something approaching reverence. Then they would listen, an ear pressed against the smooth cold material of the ribbon, as if they hoped to catch the music of the spheres. There were some who claimed to have heard a deep bass note at the uttermost threshold of audibility, but they were deluding themselves. Even the highest harmonics of the tape’s natural frequency were far below the range of human hearing.
And some would go away shaking their heads, saying, “You’ll never get me to ride up that thing!” But they were the type who had made similar remarks about the fusion rocket, the space shuttle, the airplane, the automobile—even the steam locomotive.
To these skeptics, the usual answer was: “Don’t worry—this is merely part of the scaffolding, one of the four tapes that will guide the Tower down to Earth. Riding up the final structure will be exactly like taking an elevator in any high building. Except that the trip will be longer, and much more comfortable.”
Maxine Duval’s trip, on the other hand, would be very short, and not particularly comfortable. But once Morgan had capitulated, he had done his best to make sure that it would be uneventful.
The flimsy spider—a prototype test vehicle that looked like a motorized bo’sun’s chair—had already made a dozen ascents to twenty kilometers, with twice the load it would be carrying now. There had been the usual minor teething problems, but nothing serious; the last five runs had been completely trouble-free. And what could go wrong? If there were a power failure—almost unthinkable in such a simple battery-operated system—gravity would bring Duval safely home, the automatic brakes limiting the speed of descent. The only real risk was that the drive mechanism might jam, trapping the spider and its passenger in the upper atmosphere. And Morgan had an answer even for this.
“Only fifteen kilometers?” Duval had protested. “A glider can do better than that!”
“But you can’t, with nothing more than an oxygen mask. Of course, if you’d like to wait a year, until we have the operational unit with its life-support system. . . .”
“What’s wrong with a spacesuit?”
Morgan had refused to budge, for his own good reasons. Though he hoped it would not be needed, a small jet crane was standing by at the foot of Sri Kanda. Its highly skilled operators were used to odd assignments; they would have no difficulty in rescuing a stranded Duval, even at an altitude of twenty kilometers.
But there was no vehicle in existence that could reach her at twice that height. Above forty kilometers was no man’s land—too low for rockets, too high for balloons.
In theory, a rocket could hover beside the tape, for a very few minutes, before it burned up