Pillar to the Sky

by William R. Forstchen

  The tower controller looked back at Franklin.

  “Open a line to Eva,” Franklin said. “I want her input.”

  They spoke for less than a minute, Franklin’s features fixed, showing no emotion. Keeping the line open to her, he looked back at the controller.

  “She said if that is how he sees it, then do it.”

  Gary took a deep breath, working the monitor pad, fearful that his trembling hands might hit the wrong icon. He could hear the traction wheels engaging, turning ever so slowly, and watched as a side screen focused on the tube encasing the tower, which kept the pod attached; saw the first errant wire, illuminated by high intensity lighting from the pod, being forced into the guide tube. The exterior patch unit, a small spinner with several hundred meters of wire on board, worked its way around the cable on the upper side of the guide tube. So far it was working: the first severed wire was being wound back in tightly against the main cable.

  The second one behaved the same way, as did the third. He slowed to a stop for a moment. The partial cut was now only several meters below, and he studied it carefully.

  “Pod, you’ve got an upbound wave, estimate thirty seconds.”

  As he hung on, trying to focus on the partial cut, the wave hit with a sharp jolt and he winced, not sure if another wire had loosened or snapped at the partial break.

  “Control, Pod here. How is it going?”

  A pause.

  “We got bad harmonics, Pod.”

  “Getting worse?”

  Another pause, and then just a single-word answer: “Yes.”

  The rocket thruster beneath the pod could rotate 360 degrees. On descent and ascent, it was actually angled several degrees away from the tower itself. It was a scenario they had talked about, using several pods to try to dampen a harmonic at the midpoint. He ran through the plan with Tower Control; they had the computing power to run it through and turn around an answer.

  “Worth a try,” came the final reply. “We’re going to have to let the computers down here run it, and don’t worry, we’ll factor in the time delay for transmit. So keep your hands off the monitor and hang on: you have another wave in four minutes and thirty.”

  He settled back, watching the partial break on his screen and the severed wires below it whipping back and forth, again the mental image of angry snakes.

  “Pod, thirty seconds to the next harmonic wave.”

  He braced himself, saw it coming on the screen, then the jolt and with it the counterthrust of the rocket firing for little more than half a second.

  He watched the wave recede and hoped there was a difference. He waited for the feedback.

  “Not too bad,” Tower Control finally announced, indicating that the pod had dampened the wave down by several meters.

  Gary grinned but then ran through the mental calculations. It was going to take a lot of firings—over a couple of days, perhaps—and one that was even a fraction of a second off could actually make the situation worse. Then he looked back down at the impact point. Were the loose cables separating farther out, given angular momentum by the passing waves, like strands of rope drifting out from a floundering ship, whipped back and forth by the pounding surf?

  “A couple of the waves are synchronizing,” Tower Control said, and he took a hard swallow on that one.

  “How bad is the break down where the missiles impacted?” Gary queried.

  “We’re getting ready to send up a spinner. We think more than half are still intact.

  At that altitude they had already spun the tower out to several centimeters in diameter. He and Eva had designed that section to withstand fairly significant impacts and even upper atmospheric influences, but they had never worked the calculations for a nonnuclear detonation close by. Up here, at nearly 11,000 miles? This was the strange transition point where the downward pull of gravity was all but counteracted by the upward thrust created by the angular momentum of the earth’s rotation on the tower. It was the hardest part on the entire tower to reach with spinners; the upper and lower sections had to be beefed up first. And the fact that the pod was hanging here was not helping the stress loads.

  He made his decision about what to do next and called it in.

  “Tower Control, Pod here. I am going to slowly cross over the impact point up here and try to spin on a patch. Regarding the broken wires below that, I figure the cable lock around the tower as it passes over the place where they are still attached to the tower will either bend them back down against the tower, where the repair unit will spin them down tight, or snap them clear. I’ll work a patch over where they have sheared off, then move back up past the partial break, spin on another patch, then move farther up and resume work on counterthrusting.”

  A long pause this time. He could hear the debate on Franklin’s private comm line, which both had kept open. He’d have fifteen minutes until the next wave hit. They had to strengthen the weakest point on the tower. Someone argued that he could snag on the loose wires and be permanently stuck. Finally Franklin asked if anyone had a better solution, because if not, he was giving it a go.

  “Go for it, Gary.” Franklin announced.

  Gary ever so slowly nudged the pod over the partial break, creeping along at a little more than a tenth of a meter a second. The repair spinner was still working atop the pod, wrapping wire around the cable. He cleared the break, putting down a wrapped single strand of wire on the damaged section. About six meters ahead, one of the loose cables was floating back and forth in an arcing circle, gradually breaking free of the tower. This would be the tricky part: the circular clamp anchoring the pod to the tower would eventually overlap where the broken wire was still attached. It would then either fold it over, pressing it against the tower, where the spinner laying a new wire over it could lock it back in place, or it would snap it off completely. He thought he caught a flash of one of the loose cables swaying back and forth just outside his side porthole. The camera focused on the spinner, and the clamp below it showed that the plan had indeed worked: the broken cable had been folded over and was being wrapped in place!

  “Got one of the loose cables,” Gary announced. “Wrapping it in place. Two more to go.”

  “That’s my man, Doc! Couldn’t have done it better myself!” It was Kevin up in the station, and Gary felt himself swell with pride at having earned a compliment from his friend.

  “Get a move on, Pod, next wave is only five minutes out.”

  He spotted the second loose cable where it was attached to the tower, but as the circular clamp eased over it, the wire snapped off. With it gone, wrapping the damaged section would become easier.

  But then, only a few seconds later, the pod lurched to a stop.

  “What the hell?” Gary muttered, and he carefully, because of his trembling, hit the button to activate the drive.

  A grinding noise echoed in the pod, but zero motion. He hit the button several more times. Nothing.

  “Pod, we’re reading your problem. Wave due in one minute and forty-five seconds. Hang on, then let’s try to sort it out.”

  The next wave, bouncing up from below, was not as intense as the last one. The programmed thruster fired to try to dampen it. He wasn’t sure of the effect, but after the wave passed, he focused a camera in on the partial break and took it up in magnification. The spinning was not resulting in a flat overlay; it looked like a bandage that was splitting apart down the middle.

  “You get the feed?” Gary asked, and there was an acknowledgment.

  “I’m jammed here,” he said, and as he focused a camera on the drive wheels, he caught glints of reflected light. The damn broken wire had wrapped around a wheel, locking it in place.

  He took a deep breath, thoughts racing, but staying focused.

  “You see this, Tower Control?”

  “Got it.”

  “I’m going to try to reverse and climb back up; maybe it will unwind the jam.”

  “Pod, we concur.”

  He was beginning
to sweat, and he opened the faceplate on his EVA suit to wipe his eyes clear so he could focus on the monitor. He carefully punched in the reverse command, ignoring Tower Control’s suggestion that they handle the controls from down there.

  He tapped the engage button, programmed to reverse climb at ten centimeters a second. The wheel actually made several revolutions, but then, perversely, the wire unraveling from the top wheel now spun into the gearing of the second wheel and he lurched to a stop yet again.

  He was truly stuck.

  The decision was obvious. He clicked up to Kevin, who gave an immediate concurrence and said he’d “walk” Gary “through it.”

  The next wave hit. This was indeed a bad one. The spinner patch he had put over the partial break was definitely separating, while nearly 12,000 miles below, the crew on the ground was racing to send an automated spinner up to try to patch the partial break from the missile strike and act as another thruster unit to dampen out the waves.

  “Tower Control, Pod. I’m going EVA.”

  “What in hell are you doing, Gary?” It was Franklin.

  “You got any other suggestions, then tell me,” Gary snapped back.

  Silence on the other end.

  “OK, Doc, punch up the decompression-of-pod checklist now. I’ll talk you through it,” Kevin interjected. “We don’t have time to screw around with this and arguing with those down below.”

  A minute later he popped the hatch, an ever-so-slight rush of air pressing against the inside of the hatch nearly causing him to lose his grip.

  “You got handholds all over the place out there,” Kevin said. “Just don’t look down for starters; it can get disorienting. Time later to play sightseeing. Now work your way up over the top of the pod; just use your hands, let your legs float free.”

  He did as instructed, saying nothing, but it certainly was damn exhilarating. He was actually outside the pod. Kevin guided him to the tool compartment atop the hatch, its contents having been thought out and argued about long before the first strand was ever lofted. There was even an old-fashioned roll of duct tape inside. He was reminded of how such a roll of tape had helped save Apollo 13.

  There was also a roll of the new “ribbon” with an adhesive attachment. A momentary debate ensued on the comm link between Tower Control and Kevin as to whether Gary should just unjam the wheels and then get back inside or actually do a hand over hand the half dozen meters up to the fracture and try to manually wrap the tape around it. The side in favor of unjamming the wheels and getting back inside won out. The tape would have to be wound on with a pressure no human could apply. He needed the spinner unit to do that, but first he had to position it back over the damaged section.

  Now, to unjam the wheels …

  Kevin guided him to what looked almost like ordinary cable cutters, though far more high-tech, with blades of nanotubing: just guide the blade in, press a button, and the motorized unit would compress and shear. To do so manually would be darn near impossible, and also require using both hands. This was going to be tricky and dangerous: the bits of wire that would float about, if propelled point first, could easily puncture his space suit.

  It was nearly impossible to see the individual strands that jammed the wheels. He guided the cutter around them, repeatedly pressing the activation button, hoping he was doing something constructive to clear the jam. It was tense work, made infinitely more difficult by the tremors of Parkinson’s. He had nightmare flashes that he might accidentally cut the entire tower, but the shears were torsion stressed not to cut more than one wire.

  He caught a glimpse of a shard, a foot or more in length, drifting past his faceplate.

  “You got five minutes to get back inside,” Kevin whispered. “Next wave is coming down fast. Don’t want you knocked off, Doc. Have your butt inside the pod when it hits, then head back out again if you need to finish your job.”

  “Got that.”

  He felt he had cleared the tangle of wire and fumbled to put the shears back into the toolbox, Kevin urging him to hurry and be certain to seal the lid of the box.

  He did so with two minutes to spare, sweating profusely, breathing hard; moving about in zero g was far tougher than he imagined. He tried to jackknife himself back into the open pod door.

  He was halfway in when the wave hit.

  For the first time in his life he actually did feel pure terror. The entire unit lurched. He lost his grip but kept his legs locked around the inside of the hatchway. The pod was then whipped back the other way, a hundred meters or more, and then … the momentum just kept carrying it.

  He looked up and gasped.

  Merciful God, the tower had snapped in half.

  The lower half, to which the pod was attached, was now drifting away at a dozen or more meters per second from the upper half.

  He fought down a blind urge, like a drowning sailor, to try to leap to a distant lifeboat on a storm-tossed sea, but already knew it was out of reach.

  An impulsive thought flashed to get out of the pod, secure an emergency spool of cable from the tool box, hold on to one end then leap and try to grab the still-dangling strand of the upper half that was drifting away.

  Absurd, with the thousands of tons of forces now at work. It would be like using a kite string to try to hold on to a battleship and tie it back in place.

  The distance widened with every passing second. The upper half of the tower would actually remain “up” coiling about. There was enough mass in orbit farther up the line to keep it in orbit.

  But he was now attached to the lower half, and he had a chilling thought.

  At least this is better than dying of Parkinson’s.

  19

  “It’s gone!”

  Franklin tore his gaze from a side monitor supplying video from Gary’s pod, pointed straight up, showing the separation.

  “Silence in this room!” Franklin shouted. “Secure the doors; no one is to leave the room. I want calm analysis and no other comments.”

  Several people looked back at him. One of the controllers lowered his head and tried to stifle his sobs. There was a numbed silence.

  “Kill any outside feeds,” Franklin ordered. In the moments after he thought they had control of the harmonics due to the shifting of the tower to avoid two collisions, he had again allowed an open feed to the world. It was another demonstration of the Pillar’s viability. And he had allowed, as well, the entire world to witness the submarine-launched missile strike. He had already received word from the president of the United States, the prime minister of Great Britain, and even the Chinese government that they were dispatching ships to track down the sub.

  But in the hours since the incident, the sub could already be anywhere within 15,000 or more square miles of ocean, and with each passing hour that search area would nearly double yet again. And even if they cornered it, what then? Fire on it? Perhaps trigger a world war?

  The damage had been done.

  “Can we keep a secured feed to Dr. Petrenko’s flight?” he asked.

  “We can encrypt but others will listen in and try to unscramble,” someone replied.

  He nodded. He’d make an open-line call to her, though she without doubt already knew.

  “Patch me through to Dr. Petrenko and to Miss Victoria Morgan, and do it now. And the rest of you, work the problem. Is there any way we can perhaps use the thruster on the pod to try to maneuver back to a position to reconnect?”

  His question was greeted at first with blank stares. No one had ever thought of this desperate scenario.

  “We could at least try, sir.” It was Gretchen, tears streaming down her cheeks.

  Gary accepted the rapid fire orders coming up from Tower Control without comment. After the terrifying moment of dangling half out of the pod, he had used what little strength he had left to ease his way back in, pulling the hatch shut and repressurizing the unit, with Kevin coaxing him along every inch of the way.

  He patched in to Tower Control, offering a r
unning observation as the upper and lower halves of the tower drifted farther and farther apart. He knew the dynamics better than anyone except Eva. If the tower ever snapped, the angular velocity imparted by the rotation of the earth would still hold sway. The section of the tower above 12,700 miles would actually remain in orbit. Every part of the tower below that point would eventually fall back to earth.

  And it would bring with it an incredible mess of thousands of miles of dangerous wire. Most would actually burn up on reentry, but enough would just slowly coil down through the atmosphere to create one hell of a problem on the surface, frightfully dangerous to any who might step on it or try to pick a section up barehanded, and absolutely deadly for any air traffic as it rained down.

  “Gary…” It was Franklin, now four minutes after the separation. “How you doing?”

  “I’ve had better days,” Gary replied, trying to keep the trembling out of his voice, triggered by Parkinson’s and outright fear.

  “We’ve come up with two options here.”

  “Why do there always seem to be two options at moments like this?” Gary replied, and then added, “Are we on an open or closed mike?”

  “I think closed.”

  “OK, go ahead, Franklin.”

  “You know you are below the demarcation point for eventual reentry, and you know what that means?”

  “Crispy critter,” Gary said softly.

  “I wouldn’t put it that crudely, my friend, but yeah, you’re right.

  “Option one: break free of the lower half now. Every second counts. Your rocket pack just might have enough energy to get you back to the severed end of the upper tower. Hook back on to it. Take a deep breath, let batteries charge up, and start to climb back up. With luck, you’ll be back in the station in four days and then you return with the crew up there.”

  “Anyone work the math on that yet?” Gary asked. “Disconnect from the tower, then chase the upper strand, rendezvous and lock on to it. Sounds doubtful. Give me the second option.”