Arthur Clarke - The Fountains of Paradise

“We can do it,” said Warren Kingsley with a broad smile. “Spider can reach the Basement.”

“You've been able to add enough extra battery power?”

“Yes, but it's a very close thing. It will have to be a two-stage affair, like the early rockets. As soon as the battery is exhausted, it must be jettisoned to get rid of the dead weight. That will be around four hundred kilometres; Spider's internal battery will take it the rest of the way.”

“And how much payload will that give?”

Kingsley's smile faded.

“Marginal. About fifty kilos, with the best batteries we have.”

“Only fifty! What use will that be?”

“It should be enough. A couple of those new thousand-atmosphere tanks, each holding five kilos of oxygen. Molecular filter masks to keep out the CO2. A little water and compressed food. Some medical supplies. We can bring it all in under forty-five kilos.”

“Phew! And you're sure that's sufficient?”

“Yes – it will tide them over until the transporter arrives from the 10K Station. And if necessary Spider can make a second trip.”

“What does Bartok think?”

“He approves. After all, no one has any better ideas.”

Morgan felt that a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders. Plenty of things could still go wrong, but at last there was a ray of hope; the feeling of utter helplessness had been dispelled.

“When will all this be ready?” he asked.

“If there are no hold-ups, within two hours. Three at the most. It's all standard equipment, luckily. Spider's being checked out right now. There's only one matter still to be decided…”

Vannevar Morgan shook his head. “No, Warren,” he answered slowly, in a calm, implacably determined voice that his friend had never heard before. “There's nothing more to decide.”

“I'm not trying to pull rank on you, Bartok,” said Morgan. “It's a simple matter of logic. True, anyone can drive Spider – but only half-a-dozen men know all the technical details involved. There may be some operational problems when we reach the Tower, and I'm in the best position to solve them.”

“May I remind you, Dr. Morgan,” said the Safety Officer, “that you are sixty-five. It would be wiser to send a younger man.”

“I'm not sixty-five; I'm sixty-six. And age has absolutely nothing to do with it. There's no danger, and certainly no requirement for physical strength.”

And, he might have added, the psychological factors were far more important than the physical ones. Almost anybody could ride passively up and down in a capsule, as Maxine Duval had done and millions of others would be doing in the years ahead. It would be quite another matter to face some of the situations that could easily arise, six hundred kilometres up in the empty sky.

“I still think,” said Safety Officer Bartok with gentle persistence, “that it would be best to send a younger man. Dr. Kingsley, for example.”

Behind him, Morgan heard (or had he imagined?) his colleague's suddenly indrawn breath. For years they had joked over the fact that Warren had such an aversion to heights that he never inspected the structures he designed. His fear fell short of genuine acrophobia, and he could overcome it when absolutely necessary; he had, after all, joined Morgan in stepping from Africa to Europe. But that was the only time that anyone had ever seen him drunk in public, and he was not seen at all for twenty-four hours afterwards.

Warren was out of the question, even though Morgan knew that he would be prepared to go. There were times when technical ability and sheer courage were not enough; no man could fight against fears that had been implanted in him at his birth, or during his earliest childhood.

Fortunately, there was no need to explain this to the Safety Officer. There was a simpler and equally valid reason why Warren should not go. Only a very few times in his life had Vannevar Morgan been glad of his small size; this was one of them.

“I'm fifteen kilos lighter than Kingsley,” he told Bartok. “In a marginal operation like this, that should settle the matter. So let's not waste any more precious time in argument.”

He felt a slight twinge of conscience, knowing that this was unfair. Bartok was only doing his job, very efficiently, and it would be another hour before the capsule was ready. No one was wasting any time.

For long seconds the two men stared into each other's eyes as if the twenty-five thousand kilometres between them did not exist. If there was a direct trial of strength, the situation could be messy. Bartok was nominally in charge of all safety operations, and could theoretically over-rule even the Chief Engineer and Project Manager. But he might find it difficult to enforce his authority; both Morgan and Spider were far below him on Sri Kanda, and possession was nine points of the law.

Bartok shrugged his shoulders, and Morgan relaxed.

“You have a point. I'm still not too happy, but I'll go along with you. Good luck.”

“Thank you,” Morgan answered quietly, as the image faded from the screen. Turning to the still silent Kingsley, he said:

“Let's go.”

Only as they were leaving the Operations Room on the way back to the summit did Morgan automatically feel for the little pendant concealed beneath his shirt. CORA had not bothered him for months, and not even Warren Kingsley knew of her existence. Was he gambling with other lives as well as his own, just to satisfy his own selfish pride? If Safety Officer Bartok had known about this…

It was too late now. Whatever his motives, he was committed.

How the mountain had changed, thought Morgan, since he had first seen it! The summit had been entirely sheared away, leaving a perfectly level plateau; at its centre was the giant “saucepan lid”, sealing the shaft which would soon carry the traffic of many worlds. Strange to think that the greatest spaceport in the solar system would be deep inside the heart of a mountain.

No one could have guessed that an ancient monastery had once stood here, focusing the hopes and fears of billions for at least three thousand years. The only token that still remained was the ambiguous bequest of the Maha Thero, now crated and waiting to be moved. But, so far, neither the authorities at Yakkagala nor the director of the Ranapura Museum had shown much enthusiasm for Kalidasa's ill-omened bell. The last time it had tolled the peak had been swept by that brief but eventful gale – a wind of change indeed. Now the air was almost motionless, as Morgan and his aides walked slowly to the waiting capsule, glittering beneath the inspection lights. Someone had stencilled the name SPIDER MARK II on the lower part of the housing; and beneath that had been scrawled the promise: WE DELIVER THE GOODS. I hope so, thought Morgan.

Every time he came here he found it more difficult to breathe, and he looked forward to the flood of oxygen that would soon gush into his starved lungs. But CORA, to his surprised relief, had never issued even a preliminary admonition when he visited the summit; the regime that Dr. Sen had prescribed seemed to be working admirably.

Everything had been loaded aboard Spider, which had been jacked up so that the extra battery could be hung beneath it. Mechanics were still making hasty last-minute adjustments and disconnecting power leads; the tangle of cabling underfoot was a mild hazard to a man unused to walking in a spacesuit.

Morgan's Flexisuit had arrived from Gagarin only thirty minutes ago, and for a while he had seriously considered leaving without one. Spider Mark II was a far more sophisticated vehicle than the simple prototype that Maxine Duval had once ridden; indeed, it was a tiny spaceship with its own life-support system. If all went well, Morgan should be able to mate it with the airlock on the bottom of the Tower, designed years ago for this very purpose. But a suit would provide not only insurance in case of docking problems; it would give him enormously greater freedom of action. Almost form-fitting, the Flexisuit bore very little resemblance to the clumsy armour of the early astronauts, and, even when pressurised, would scarcely restrict his movements. He had once seen a demonstration by its manufacturers of some spacesuited acrobatics, culminating in a sword-fight and a ballet. The last was hilarious – but it had proved the designer's claims.