The Foundations of Paradise - Arthur C. Clarke [96]
A thirty-second pause.
“Opening the front door—there it goes. Now releasing the seat belt.”
There was an unconscious stirring and murmuring among the watchers. In imagination, every one of them was up there in the capsule, aware of the void that had opened before Morgan.
“Quick-release buckle operated. I’m stretching my legs. Not much headroom . . .
“Just getting the feel of the suit. Quite flexible. Now I’m going out on the porch. Don’t worry! I’ve got the seat belt wrapped around my left arm. . . .
“Phew. Hard work, bending as much as this. But I can see that butterfly nut, underneath the porch grille. I’m working out how to reach it. . . .
“On my knees now—not very comfortable . . .
“I’ve got it! Now to see if it will turn . . .”
The listeners became rigid, silent—then, in unison, relaxed with virtually simultaneous sighs of relief.
“No problem! I can turn it easily. Two revs already. Any moment now. Just a bit more. I can feel it coming off—LOOK OUT DOWN BELOW!”
There was a burst of clapping and cheering. Some people put their hands over their heads and cowered in mock terror. One or two, not fully understanding that the falling nut would not arrive for five minutes and would descend ten kilometers to the east, looked genuinely alarmed.
Only Kingsley failed to share the rejoicing.
“Don’t cheer too soon,” he said to Duval. “We’re not out of the woods yet.”
The seconds dragged by. One minute . . . two minutes . . .
“It’s no use,” said Morgan at last, his voice thick with rage and frustration. “I can’t budge the strap. The weight of the battery is holding it jammed in the threads. Those jolts we gave must have welded it to the bolt.”
“Come back as quickly as you can,” said Kingsley. “There’s a new power cell on the way, and we can manage a turnaround in less than an hour. So we can still get up to the Tower in . . . oh, say, six hours. Barring any further accidents, of course.”
Precisely, thought Morgan; and he would not care to take Spider up again without a thorough check of the much-abused braking mechanism. Nor would he trust himself to make a second trip. He was already feeling the strain of the last few hours, and fatigue would soon be slowing down his mind and his body, just when he needed maximum efficiency from both.
He was back in the seat now, but the capsule was still open to space and he had not yet refastened the safety belt. To do so would be to admit defeat, and that had never been easy for Morgan.
The unwinking glare of the Kinte laser, coming from almost immediately above, transfixed him with its pitiless light. He tried to focus his mind on the problem as sharply as that beam was focused upon him.
All that he needed was a metal cutter—a hacksaw or a pair of shears—he could sever the retaining strap. Once again he cursed the fact that there was no tool kit aboard Spider. Even so, it would hardly have contained what he needed.
There were megawatt-hours of energy stored in Spider’s own battery. Could he use them in any way? He had a brief fantasy of establishing an arc and burning through the strap. But even if suitable heavy conductors were available—and of course they weren’t—the main power supply was inaccessible from the control cab.
Kingsley and all the skilled brains gathered around him had failed to find any solution. He was on his own, physically and intellectually. It was, actually, the situation he had always preferred. . . .
And then, just as he was about to reach out and close the capsule door, Morgan knew what he had to do. All the time, the answer had been right by his finger tips.
52
The other
Passenger
To Morgan, it seemed that a huge weight had lifted from his shoulders. He felt completely, irrationally confident. This time, surely, it had to work.
Nevertheless, he did not move from his seat until he had planned his actions in minute detail. And when Kingsley, sounding a little anxious, once again urged him to