Pillar to the Sky (34 page)

If they used the capsule they rode up in to send him back, it would leave the other three truly stranded for at least three months until their replacement crew was scheduled to be lofted. Singh and the others offered the capsule for their comrade to return home in, more pragmatically to get him off the small station before he harmed himself or, by blowing a hatch, killed all of them. However, the capsule also served as a fallout shelter in the event of a major solar storm, its heat shield blocking out the potentially deadly levels of gamma rays produced by a CME. If the capsule was sent back down, all four crew members would have to return together, and work on the upper end of the Pillar would cease for at least three months.

There was only one alternative: the small descent pod used on the tower. Sent up by the last launch, it could house one person and was intended to be used to descend the tower to work on a jammed spinner and then return to geosynch, but if necessary it could go all the way back down to the earth’s surface. It had a rocket pack on board to provide deceleration or lift and the first experimental transmission of energy via the super conductive wires woven into the tower. A friction braking system could actually take it all the way back to the earth’s surface. At least that was the theory but it had to be tried out, for to do so would mean that the spinners, which were operating now at several different levels would have to be cleared. So it was still an untested concept.

Regardless, the following day, after being heavily sedated, the tragic young man who now held the attention of the entire world was bundled aboard the pod, a chamber little bigger than that of an old-fashioned telephone booth, and about the same size as what a
Gemini
astronaut once had. Audio and video transmission except directly to Kiribati control was cut off as he descended, and in one of those rare moments of global unity, there was understanding for one man’s grief, though those in Mission Control had more than a few tense moments with Franklin and a team of psychiatrists talking him through it, convincing him to remain sedated and in the last twelve hours lying to him that his other son was pulling through just fine. They would break that ultimate tragedy once he was safely back on the ground, knowing with certainty that if given the truth that his other son had died as well he would indeed “space” himself. Franklin and so many throughout the world damned all drunk drivers who had destroyed three lives and the life of the young man returning from space as well, and a communications block had indeed been maintained. More than once after Franklin had linked to the young man, he kept the full reality concealed to encourage him to stick it through the last few hours; once off-line there was not a dry eye in the control room, and even Franklin broke down into tears.

Three spinners had to be blown clear of the tower to allow the pod to pass, at a cost of a hundred million each, but that did not matter at the moment, in the same way no one ever spoke of the cost involved in saving
Apollo 13
.

Once the pod landed on the platform, a medical team was waiting and the grieving man was flown home to face the terrible reality of a life and a dream shattered by one drunk, who—as always seemed to be the case—had walked away from the accident unharmed and now some claimed was a victim in all of this because the whole world hated him. Which was indeed deservedly true.

As for the program, there was a pause.

For the first time a human had actually used the tower, traveling its 23,000-mile length to return from deep space back to earth. But never would an account of his story be told out of respect for his privacy, which Franklin went to great lengths to assure and again something which the world respected.

The pod was detached from the wire, cleaned out, and restocked, and it was agreed that it should be returned back to geosynch. The equipment to do so was on hand, but no one had anticipated having to for at least another year or so. It would involve a launch package similar to the spinners’, consisting of a jet engine, which would drop away once all the fuel was expended, and a pulse rocket. The carbon nanotubing that the pod clung to would serve as a guide wire but was nearly friction-free unless a braking clamp was applied during the descent. They had yet to test it all out on the ascent. The rocket to take it all the way out to the geosynch station simply did not exist, and instead a fair portion of the final ascent would be achieved by the clamp adhering to the tower, while energy which so far had only been tested on the conductive wires down the cable would power up the batteries that drove the electric lift motor.

The logic behind using the jet pack and rocket was to get it through the atmosphere and at least part of the way out of the gravity well of earth. The higher it climbed after that, the less electricity it would need as the struggle against gravity lessened with each mile gained above the center of the earth. At least, that is how they thought it would work.

Even as the design was being cooked up, Gary remembered a cartoon series popular when he was a kid that had inspired a yearly competition at Purdue, the Rube Goldberg Competition, involving some strange, overly sophisticated combination of machines to do some absurdly simple task, like fry an egg. The journey up would take over three days, and though the prospect seemed thrilling, most people expressed pity for whoever would ride aboard a pod not much bigger than a coffin. If it failed or jammed, there was no backup, no second “climber” already up there, and the air supply would run out after six days. If all else failed, the pod would be allowed to drop and hopefully brake, and the passenger would do an old-fashioned bailout at 50,000 feet when the pod was blown clear of the tower.

For this worse-case scenario, the betting was that the passenger stood maybe a one-in-ten chance of actually surviving if the pod had to do an emergency return. Zero chance if it became firmly stuck once out into deep space. With an emergency return, chances were they would lose control of the unit as it descended without any power and it would just burn up as it hit the upper atmosphere. Over the next day, as the pod was prepared to send back up, the macabre betting odds in the control room were fifty-fifty that Franklin would not send someone to round out the crew “upstairs.” The workload had been designed for a team of four, with a rotation of watches, including a safety backup whenever there was an EVA. With only three up there, they would soon be worked to exhaustion, and when people were exhausted in space, that was when simple mistakes could turn into fatal mistakes. It was the balancing of one risk, sending someone up the Pillar, versus ratcheting up the workload for those up there and telling them they’d have to tough it out.

But even with the risk involved, all four members of the crew that was scheduled to go up as replacements in another three months clamored for the chance to “ride the pillar to heaven, and odds be damned.”

More than a few media sources, now caught up in the enthusiasm for the tower even as they showed respect and sympathy for the tragic reason the pod had to be used in the first place, pointed out that fifty-fifty odds had been the going rate for Lindbergh, who did make it after several others had died trying, and for Amelia Earhart who did die trying, but it had not stopped aviation from moving forward … the same odds that years later were finally discussed openly regarding
Apollo 11
. More and more the media was shifting from criticism to support of the program.

At least the farther from earth, gravity would drop off, and there was even a new iPad system on board to provide communications and entertainment, a system jammed for the passenger on the way down who was told it had glitched off. Some called it a flying coffin; others pointed out that at least the passenger would have one hell of a view and adventure before checking out of this life and could give the world a first glimpse of what the future would hold when anyone “rode the pillar.”

The question that consumed the media and Internet chats in the hours after the pod had reached earth with its heartbreaking passenger: Who would be the first one to ride it back up?

*   *   *

And then Gary, needing crutches, came into Franklin’s small office on the platform.

Franklin pointed to a chair next to his desk. Gary, Eva, and Victoria were just about the only personnel on the island or platform who did not need an appointment days in advance; indeed, absorbed in their own work, rare was the time they would impose during work hours, although many an evening, in a ritual that Franklin insisted on, there would be a “happy hour” atop the observation deck (no alcohol, of course, since it was still banned on the island) to enjoy the slight cooling of the equatorial breeze, to gaze in contemplation at the Pillar, and to freely exchange ideas, some logical, some off-the-wall entirely. More than one major breakthrough had occurred during those happy hours, which any good manager knew was when at times the best work really occurred because people felt free to speak their minds.

The fact that Gary had timed his arrival for the half hour that he knew Franklin usually took off to just sit and meditate or, of all things, relax, playing a game of chess against the computer, was a tip-off that this was serious, and his friend suspected what was to come.

Gary nodded as he took the chair, laying his crutches to one side, shoulders slightly hunched over, another indicator of the advancing ravages of Parkinson’s. Over the last few months Franklin could not help but note that Gary’s face had begun to assume a mask-like appearance and that he stuttered more and more.

“I want to take the pod back up to geosynch,” Gary announced without any preamble.

Franklin blew out noisily and sat back in his chair.

“Come on, Gary, you know we already have someone picked: one of the rotation crew. He’s well trained and we need him up there for when we finally start unspinning the first reel of ribbon for deployment and to weld it together as each reel reaches the end of its load and the next one has to be hooked in.”

“And remember, I wrote the concept and the plans for it years ago.”

Franklin could not deny that.

“Have you talked to Eva and Victoria about this?” he fell back upon.

“Not yet, but I know they will understand.”

“Oh, really. I think both of them will, as we used to say, freak out.”

“Then let them. Victoria is well launched, thank God,” and even in that rigid face there was a look of pride. “She defends her dissertation in another two and a half months, and we know that is a walk-in, and then her plans are to marry Jason the week after.”

“Don’t you want to be there for that?”

“Of course I do, but I can do so just as easily from up there. Besides if I’m actually present, I fear I’ll get too emotional the way some fathers do, so it is a good excuse.”

And as he spoke he looked past Franklin to the Pillar reflecting the mid-afternoon sun.

“Why, then?”

Gary actually laughed.

“If you could find a legitimate excuse, wouldn’t you go, my friend?”

“In a heartbeat.”

“Well, this is my heartbeat now. Come on, Franklin, we both know where this game is going with me. I can barely walk; to go more than a hundred yards, I need a wheelchair. That I can deal with. But of late, Franklin, I can feel that it is at last beginning to attack my mind.”

He paused, and his eyes filled with tears of frustration.

“My mind, Franklin—my
mind
. Take my body away from me, and maybe I can deal with that, though for dear Eva I know it is torture to see it happen.”

He smiled sadly, remembering what only seemed to be yesterday: their second summer together as graduate students on internships at Goddard, and what it was like to be twenty-two years old and in love. Was that only yesterday?

“Remember the movie
2001,
with HAL, when the astronaut began to turn his brain off and HAL begged him to stop, to please stop, that he could feel his mind slipping away?”

Franklin could only nod, gaze fixed on this man, who along with his wife and their departed mentor, Erich, had kindled this dream to reach for the stars.

“I am slipping, Franklin. Little things, but I know it is starting. Not enough yet to affect my work, but in six months, a year? When I know I have reached that point, you will have my resignation.”

“Like hell.”

“Come on, Franklin, you don’t need me helping to head up a team that, if we make one mistake, this whole thing comes crashing down. Oh, sure, you’ll name me ‘emeritus’ or something like that, but we both know what that means and, damn it, I am not even fifty yet. Not like Erich, who still had it with him well into his nineties, and it was only his heart and lungs that gave out first, not his mind. For me it is the reverse.”

Franklin remained silent, and finally Gary continued.

“I am still putting the project first. We have three good personnel up there at geosynch; hell, Singh is worth two or three in herself. It is time that the person who helped design it all had a personal look. Just on the ascent stage I can pick up nuances others might not catch. Once up there, I can observe every step of what is going on, with the wrapping up of the spinning and the beginning of deployment of the ribbon. I have been living this dream for over twenty-five years and know every nuance inside and out. What better pair of eyes to have on it?”

Franklin could not argue with that point.

Gary sighed.

“In a year at most, I will have to be replaced, and thus, my dearest of friends, I am now asking for this final chance, which at the same time I know you will turn into a beautiful publicity coup to garner continued support, which is my goal as well.”

“Gary, I could argue the exact opposite, then. My going up would prove the viability of the entire project.”

Gary shook his head in sharp response.

“Oh, come on, buddy. You are the financial brains for this. A helluva lot of good you’d do 23,000 miles up while trying to con someone out of a few billion more or arguing with Fuchida about the cost of ribbon.”

He hesitated.