The curving door of the capsule – the upper half of it transparent plastic – thudded softly shut against its gaskets. Morgan pressed the CHECK-OUT button, and Spider's vital statistics appeared on the screen one by one. All were green; there was no need to note the actual figures. If any of the values had been outside nominal, they would have flashed red twice a second. Nevertheless, with his usual engineer's caution, Morgan observed that oxygen stood at 102 percent, main battery power at 101 percent, booster battery at 105 percent. ..
The quiet, calm voice of the controller – the same unflappable expert who had watched over all operations since that first abortive lowering years ago – sounded in his ear. “All systems nominal. You have control.”
“I have control. I'll wait until the next minute comes up.”
It was hard to think of a greater contrast to an old-time rocket launch, with its elaborate countdown, its split-second timing, its sound and fury. Morgan merely waited until the last two digits on the clock became zeroes, then switched on power at the lowest setting.
Smoothly – si1ently -– the flood-lit mountain top fell away beneath him. Not even a balloon ascent could have been quieter. If he listened carefully he could just hear the whirring of the twin motors as they drove the big friction drive-wheels that gripped the tape, both above and below the capsule.
Rate of ascent, five metres a second, said the velocity indicator; in slow, regular steps Morgan increased the power until it read fifty – just under two hundred kilometres an hour. That gave maximum efficiency at Spider's present loading; when the auxiliary battery was dropped off speed could be increased by twenty-five percent to almost 250 klicks.
“Say something, Van!” said Warren Kingsley's amused voice from the world below.
“Leave me alone,” Morgan replied equably. “I intend to relax and enjoy the view for the next couple of hours. If you wanted a running commentary, you should have sent Maxine Duval.”
“She's been calling you for the last hour.”
“Give her my love, and say I'm busy. Maybe when I reach the Tower. . . . What's the latest from there?”
“Temperature's stabilised at twenty – Monsoon Control zaps them with a modest megawattage every ten minutes. But Professor Sessui is furious – complains that it upsets his instruments.”
“What about the air?”
“Not so good. The pressure has definitely dropped, and of course the CO2's building up. But they should be O.K. if you arrive on schedule. They're avoiding all unnecessary movement, to conserve oxygen.”
All except Professor Sessui, I'll bet, thought Morgan. It would be interesting to meet the man whose life he was trying to save. He had read several of the scientist's widely-praised popular books, and considered them florid and overblown. Morgan suspected that the man matched the style.
“And the status at 10K?”
“Another two hours before the transporter can leave; they're installing some special circuits to make quite sure that nothing catches fire on this trip.”
“A very good idea – Bartok's, I suppose.”
“Probably. And they're coming down the north track, just in case the south one was damaged by the explosion. If all goes well, they'll arrive in – oh – twenty-one hours. Plenty of time, even if we don't send Spider up again with a second load.”
Despite his only half-jesting remark to Kingsley, Morgan knew that it was far too early to start relaxing. Yet all did seem to be going as well as could be expected; and there was certainly nothing else that he could do for the next three hours except admire the ever-expanding view.
He was already thirty kilometres up in the sky, rising swiftly and silently through the tropical night. There was no moon, but the land beneath was revealed by the twinkling constellations of its towns and villages. When he looked at the stars above and the stars below, Morgan found it easy to imagine that he was far from any world, lost in the depths of space. Soon he could see the whole island of Taprobane, faintly outlined by the lights of the coastal settlements. Far to the north a dull glowing patch was creeping up over the horizon like the herald of some displaced dawn. It puzzled him for a moment, until he realised that he was looking at one of the great cities of Southern Hindustan.
He was higher now than any aircraft could climb, and what he had already done was unique in the history of transportation. Although Spider and its precursors had made innumerable trips up to twenty kilometres, no one had been allowed to go higher because of the impossibility of rescue. It had not been planned to commence serious operations until the base of the Tower was much closer, and Spider had at least two companions who could spin themselves up and down the other tapes of the system. Morgan pushed aside the thought of what could happen if the drive mechanism jammed; that would doom the refugees in the Basement, as well as himself.
Fifty kilometres; he had reached what would, in normal times, have been the lowest level of the ionosphere. He did not, of course, expect to see anything; but he was wrong.
The first intimation was a faint crackling from the capsule speaker; then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw a flicker of light. It was immediately below him, glimpsed in the downward-viewing mirror just outside Spider's little bay-window. He twisted the mirror around as far as it would adjust, until it was aimed at a point a couple of metres below the capsule. For a moment, he stared with astonishment, and more than a twinge of fear; then he called the Mountain.
“I've got company.” he said. “I think this is in Professor Sessui's department. There's a ball of light – oh, about twenty centimetres across – running along the tape just below me. It's keeping at a constant distance, and I hope it stays there. But I must say it's quite beautiful – a lovely bluish glow, flickering every few seconds. And I can hear it on the radio link.”
It was a full minute before Kingsley answered in a reassuring tone of voice.
“Don't worry – it's only St. Elmo's Fire. We've had similar displays along the tape during thunderstorms; they can make your hair stand on end aboard the Mark I. But you won't feel anything – you're too well shielded.”
“I'd no idea it could happen at this altitude.”
“Neither did we. You'd better take it up with the Professor.”
“Oh – it's fading out – getting bigger and fainter – now it's gone – I suppose the air's too thin for it – I'm sorry to see it go -”
“That's only a curtain raiser,” said Kingsley. “Look what's happening directly above you.”
A rectangular section of the star-field flashed by as Morgan tilted the mirror towards the zenith. At first he could see nothing unusual, so he switched off all the indicators on his control panel and waited in total darkness.
Slowly his eyes adapted, and in the depths of the mirror a faint red glow began to burn, and spread, and consume the stars. It grew brighter and brighter and flowed beyond the limits of the mirror; now he could see it directly, for it extended halfway down the sky. A cage of light, with flickering, moving bars, was descending upon the earth; and now Morgan could understand how a man like Professor Sessui could devote his life to unravelling its secrets.
On one of its rare visits to the equator, the aurora had come marching down from the Poles.
47. Beyond the Aurora
Morgan doubted if even Professor Sessui, five hundred kilometres above, had so spectacular a view. The storm was developing rapidly; short-wave radio – still used for many non-essential services – would by now have been disrupted all over the world. Morgan was not sure if he heard or felt a faint rustling, like the whisper of falling sand or the crackle of dry twigs. Unlike the static of the fireball, it certainly did not come from the speaker system, because it was still there when he switched off the circuit.