The Foundations of Paradise - Arthur C. Clarke [91]
With what envy he had watched his flimsy creations drift effortlessly out to sea! Most of them fell into the water before they had traveled even one kilometer, but sometimes a little parachute would be bravely maintaining altitude when it vanished from sight. He liked to imagine that these lucky voyagers reached the enchanted islands of the Pacific; but though he had written his name and address on the cardboard squares, he never received any reply.
Morgan could not help smiling at these long-forgotten memories; yet they explained so much. The dreams of childhood had been far surpassed by the reality of adult life. He had earned the right to his contentment.
“Coming up to three eighty,” Kingsley said. “How is the power level?”
“Beginning to drop—down to eighty-five percent. The battery’s starting to fade.”
“Well, if it holds out for another twenty kilometers, it will have done its job. How do you feel?”
Morgan was tempted to answer with superlatives, but his natural caution dissuaded him.
“I’m fine,” he said. “If we could guarantee a display like this for all our passengers, we wouldn’t be able to handle the crowds.”
“Perhaps it could be arranged.” Kingsley laughed. “We could ask Monsoon Control to dump a few barrels of electrons in the right places. Not their usual line of business, but they’re good at improvising . . . aren’t they?”
Morgan chuckled, but did not answer. His eyes were fixed on the instrument panel, where both power and rate of climb were now visibly dropping. But this was no cause for alarm. Spider had reached three hundred eighty-five kilometers out of the expected four hundred, and the booster battery still had some life in it.
At three hundred ninety kilometers, Morgan started to cut back the rate of climb, until Spider crept more and more slowly upward. Finally, the capsule was barely moving, and it came to rest just short of four hundred five kilometers.
“I’m dropping the battery,” Morgan reported. “Mind your heads.”
A good deal of thought had been given to recovering that heavy and expensive battery, but there had been no time to improvise a braking system that would let it slide safely back, like one of Morgan’s kite riders. And though a parachute had been available, it was feared that the shrouds might become entangled with the tape. Fortunately, the impact area, just ten kilometers east of Earth Terminal, lay in dense jungle. The wildlife of Taprobane would have to take its chances, and Morgan was prepared to argue with the Department of Conservation later.
* * *
He turned the safety key and pressed the red button that fired the explosive charges. Spider shook briefly as they detonated. Then he switched to the internal battery, slowly released the friction brakes, and again fed power into the drive motors.
The capsule started to climb on the last lap of its journey. But one glance at the instrument panel told Morgan that something was seriously wrong. Spider should have been rising at over two hundred klicks; it was doing less than one hundred, even at full power.
No tests or calculations were necessary. Morgan’s diagnosis was instant, because the figures spoke for themselves. Sick with frustration, he reported back to Earth.
“We’re in trouble,” he said. “The charges blew—but the battery never dropped. Something’s holding it on.”
It was unnecessary to add that the mission must now be aborted. Everyone knew perfectly well that Spider could not possibly reach the base of the Tower carrying several hundred kilos of dead weight.
48
Night at the Villa
Ambassador Rajasinghe needed little sleep these nights; it was as if a benevolent Nature was granting him the maximum use of his remaining years. And at a time like this, when the Taprobanean skies were blazing with their greatest wonder for centuries, who could have stayed abed?
How he wished that Paul Sarath were here to share the spectacle! He missed his old friend