Майкл Крайтон - The Andromeda Evolution

In particular, the astronaut seemed to understand that Stern, as the father of four children, had a practical and rather plodding defensive mindset. The brunt of his focus had always been on protecting his nation from the machinations of other people , above all else.

“We must protect our country, General,” she said. “At some point in the past, our atmosphere was seeded with a hostile extraterrestrial microparticle. For over fifty years we’ve known about it . . . and been able to do nothing. The struggle of trying to understand the Andromeda Strain became its own fight. Questions that were once complicated and profound eventually became very simple: Which nation will figure out Andromeda first?

“Well, I have your answer. We did. The United States of America.”

The general was listening now. He was listening very intently.

“Get to the point,” he urged.

“I made a key and I unlocked the door, General. The knowledge of how to reverse-engineer the Andromeda Strain is inside my head; the data is inside the Wildfire Mark IV laboratory module on board this station; and the experiment itself is unfolding on a grand scale over one of the most uninhabited areas on earth. The Amazon basin is a sacred ecological hub where any nation will think twice about deploying nuclear weapons, and it’s the place where we can most efficiently reap the benefits of our discovery.”

“This is manipulative, even for you, Doctor,” said Stern, putting a hand to his forehead and wiping away cold sweat. “You’ve taken ‘act first and ask forgiveness later’ to an entirely new level.”

“ We’ve got it . Do you understand, General? This genie is out of its bottle, and it can’t be put back. But the genie is ours .”

“Okay, I’ll bite. What have you made?”

“The Andromeda Strain tried to trap us on this planet. Instead, I hijacked its incredible physical properties to build a ladder to the heavens. General, we own a fully functional space elevator, with this space station acting as counterweight. The United States now has the capacity to put thousands of tons of material into orbit for next to nothing in cost. It’s a new manifest destiny, and it will be our people who spread to every corner of this solar system.”

“A space elevator,” said Stern, sitting down.

“The instructions were just under the surface. Andromeda is a machine, and not a particularly complex one. Reverse engineering the strain is my gift to the human race, and in particular to the United States of America. General . . . I defy anyone to stop me—to stop us, I mean. We, as a species, we will ascend .”

Stern was quiet for a long moment, one hand again pressed to his forehead. He had not missed the mania lurking under Kline’s passionate voice. Her proclamations were pompous to the point of absurdity. He later reported his striking realization: “Having overcome the personal barrier of physical disability, Sophie Kline had focused all her genius on destroying what she saw as the civilizational barrier presented by the Andromeda Strain.”

And the implications were staggering.

It was dawning on the general that if it really worked, Kline had created a machine more valuable than anything that had existed in the history of humanity. An asset of such incredible utility would instantly upset the balance of world power. To protect and exploit such an asset would require staggering economic incentives to the other superpowers; it would hinge on the naked threat of sheer military muscle; and it would call for a thousand ludicrous promises to everyone else.

These were all things the United States had in surplus.

Stern seriously considered the proposal for a moment.

Kline had been correct in predicting that, as a father, Stern would be a devoted protector. However, she had not considered the fact that, like most parents of teenagers, the general had also become an expert at constantly and soberly considering insane demands—and then denying them.

“Kline, you’ve put our species at risk. Your elevator is built from something we don’t fully understand. It could easily wipe out every living thing on this planet. Right now, I want you to focus on getting yourself and your crewmates safely back to Earth. I’d very much like for you to avoid the death penalty.”

“I’ve been living under a death penalty since I was a child,” replied Kline. “That threat doesn’t scare me, so here’s a threat of my own. I’ve already informed the Russian and Chinese governments of exactly what I just told you. They are mobilizing substantial military resources to determine who this machine truly belongs to. Make no mistake, they will claim it if they can. So you can either take my offer, or rest assured they will .”

“So the patriotic talk was all posturing,” said Stern. “You’ve got no real loyalty to anyone.”

“My loyalty is to humanity, General,” responded Kline. “I suggest you make history with me. Or get out of my way.”

Ten seconds of tense silence passed.

“I understand,” said Stern, finally. “But a decision like this is above even my pay grade, Kline. I’ll contact you again in a little while.”

“You have thirty minutes,” responded Kline, disconnecting.

Stern put down the phone. He stepped to the glass door of his back office, letting it swing open into the command center. An entire room of analysts looked up at once, conversations ceasing. Nodding at the closest analyst, Stern spoke in a calm, even voice.

“I’ll need another cup of coffee, please,” he said, moving into the room slowly and rubbing his eyes. As he reached the command console, Stern added one more thing, as if he had just remembered.

“Oh, and I suppose I’ll need to speak to the president. As soon as possible.”

Z-Axis

THE THREE SURVIVORS SAT TOGETHER IN THE CENTRAL chamber, listening to the wind whistling high above. The sight of the bright shaft in the ceiling and the spire rising through it had grown no less bizarre and exhilarating.

And if nothing changed soon, Stone knew the view would be his last.

The chamber was beginning to feel more and more like a tomb. An exhaustive search had revealed only a single half-finished opening: another hexagonal tunnel opened at an angle through the wall, likely used to bring in the supplies. Only the size of a wooden crate, the passage was too narrow to imagine squeezing through. He supposed eventually they would have to try.

The prospect of survival was growing dim.

Stone and Vedala had at least worked out how the structure functioned. The concept of a space elevator wasn’t novel, having first been proposed in 1895 by the Russian scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky. Generations of physicists since then had repeatedly determined that the idea was scientifically possible, but not plausible—not without radically advanced construction materials.

Most important, the tether needed to be incredibly strong and flexible—each individual thread able to sustain at least 150 GPa (gigapascals) of force. Meanwhile, the counterweight needed to have hundreds of tons of mass and be parked beyond geostationary orbit. And finally, a mile-high compression tower had to be built on Earth’s equator.

These were all impossible requirements, or had been.

Armed with the reverse-engineered Andromeda Strain, Kline had grown a ground-based compression tower and tethered it to the only large enough counterweight available to humankind—the International Space Station. Currently, she was accelerating just beyond geostationary orbit. The distance of over twenty thousand miles had been formidable, but newly launched communications satellites routinely reached it in a matter of hours.