The Last Theorem - Arthur Charles Clarke [114]
“Huh,” Ranjit said. “Looks like they’ve really got it going, doesn’t it?”
So they had.
The road to the terminal was paired up with a railroad track, and as they were approaching, a train—forty-two freight cars, Natasha counted excitedly—overtook them and disappeared into one of the terminal’s giant sheds. There were guards at the car entrance, but they passed the Subramanian family with a friendly salute, and a wave in the direction of the VIP parking lot.
Where they were met by a handsome Asian woman who introduced herself as Joris Vorhulst’s assistant. “Engineer Vorhulst was looking forward to seeing you very much,” she informed them, “but he didn’t expect you until tomorrow. He’s on his way, though. Would you like something to eat?”
Ranjit opened his mouth to say what a good idea that was, but was overruled by his wife’s faster response. “Not just yet. If we could just look around for a bit—”
They could. They were warned to stay out of the loading sheds and, of course, to beware of the trucks and tractors that were lugging around unidentifiable bits and pieces of no doubt excitingly interesting objects.
Ranjit contemplated all the activity with benign incomprehension. “I’d give a lot to know what some of these things are,” he informed his family in general.
Young Natasha pursed her lips. “Well,” she said, “that lumpy package there is the thruster for an ion rocket. I think the bale next to it is carbon nanotubes in sheet form—I’d say probably part of a solar sail—”
Ranjit gazed at his daughter, openmouthed. “What makes you so sure?” he demanded.
She grinned at him. “While you were talking to that lady, Robert and I poked around, and I read the bills of lading. I think they’re building spaceships up there!”
“And,” called a familiar voice from the unloading shed, “you’re exactly right, Tashy! We’ve got a couple of them working already.”
Joris Vorhulst wouldn’t listen to any objections; he wanted food, decent Sri Lankan food, and if they didn’t want to eat, they could just watch him doing so. Because, it turned out, he had been five weeks on the Skyhook himself, and was just now coming back from supervising the work of those very spacecraft whose existence Natasha had deduced.
“Skyhook is really beginning to pull its weight,” he informed them happily. The two robot rocket ships that were already commissioned were working as scavengers, dedicated to combing LEO for abandoned spacecraft or even abandoned fuel tanks of ancient Russian and American ones. Once found, computer-controlled solar sails were mounted on them and they were programmed to sail themselves to Grand Central. There they were transformed. They were no longer dangerous free-flying spaceship killers. Now they were simply the raw materials for anything that needed to be built. “It’s all very well to ship stuff up from the surface,” Vorhulst declared, mouth full of what even Myra had to admit was a really good curry, “but why should we waste what’s up there already?”
“And that’s what you were doing up in LEO? Collecting scrap to build new things?”
Vorhulst looked embarrassed. “Actually,” he said, “I was making sure the third ship was ready to go. That’s the one that’s headed for the moon. You know that the robot explorers have been busy there for a few years now? And they’ve found plenty of those lava tubes I used to talk about in my astronomy class?”
“Actually,” Ranjit complained, “I didn’t. The progress reports they sent the advisory council were pretty sketchy.”
“Yes,” Vorhulst conceded, “I know they were. We’re hoping the big three will loosen up a little now, because those tubes are going to change everything. One of them is right under the Sinus Iridium—the ‘Bay of Rainbows.’ It’s a beaut. It’s eighteen hundred meters long, and ship three will be carrying the machinery to seal it up because Lunar Development has a plan for it. The big three want tourists, you see.”
Myra looked skeptical. “Tourists? Last I heard there were about eleven