Firstborn

spending rather a long time in the van Allen belts. We’ll be fine with the gear I brought along. It was thought best to get you off the planet as fast as possible, Bisesa.”

“Why? Myra, are you on the run? Am I?”

“Sort of,” Myra said.

Alexei said, “Let’s move it. We’re nearly at the ribbon.”

Once the cargo was cleared, Alexei summoned his suitcase. It extended little hydraulic legs to jump without difficulty into the spider’s hull. Myra followed, and then only Bisesa was walking alongside the trundling spider.

Mura held out her hand. “Mum? Come on. It’s an easy step.”

Bisesa looked around, beyond the jungle of spiders, to the blue sky of Canaveral, the distant gantries. She had an odd premonition that she might never come this way again. Might never set foot on Earth again. She took a deep breath; even among the scents of oil and electricity, she could smell the salt of the ocean.

Then she stepped deliberately off the crawler platform and into the hull, one step, two. Myra gave her a hug, welcoming her aboard.

The hull’s interior was bare, but it was meant for at least occasional human use. There was a handrail at waist height, and little fold-down seats embedded in the walls. The view through the transparent hull was obscured by those big folded-away solar panel wings.

Alexei was all business. He spread a softscreen over the inner hull, tapped it, and the door slid shut. “Gotcha.” He took a deep breath. “Canned air,” he said. “Nothing like it.” He seemed relieved to be shut up in the pod.

Bisesa asked, “You’re a Spacer?”

“Not strictly. Born on Earth, but I’ve lived most of my life off the planet. I guess I’m used to environments you can control. Out there in the raw, it’s a little — clamoring.” He reached up and peeled his tattoo off his face.

Bisesa touched her cheek, and found her own tattoo came away like a layer of wax. She tucked it in a pocket of her suit.

Alexei advised them to sit down. Bisesa pulled down a seat, and found a narrow pull-out plastic belt that she clipped around her waist. Myra followed suit, looking apprehensive.

The spiders before them in the line were clearing away now, revealing the ribbon, a vertical line of silver, dead straight.

Alexei said, “What’s going to happen is that our spider will grab onto the ribbon with the roller assembly above our heads.

Okay? As soon as it has traction it will start to climb. You’ll feel some acceleration.”

“How much?” Bisesa asked.

“Only half a G or so. And only for about ten seconds. After that, once we hit our top speed, we’ll climb smoothly.”

“And what’s the top speed?”

“Oh, two hundred klicks an hour. The ribbon’s actually rated for twice that. I’ve disabled the speed inhibitor, if we need it.”

“Let’s hope that’s not necessary,” Bisesa said dryly.

Myra reached over and slipped her hand into her mother’s. “Do you remember how we went to see the opening of the Aussievator?

It was just after the sunstorm. I was eighteen, I think. That was where I got to know Eugene again. Now there are elevators all over the world.”

“It was quite a day. And so is this.”

Myra squeezed her hand. “Glad I woke you up yet?”

“I’m reserving judgment.” But her grin was fierce. Who could resist this?

Alexei watched this interplay uncertainly.

They were rolling toward the ribbon. Over their heads, with a clumsy clunk, the pulley assembly unfolded itself. The ribbon really was narrow, no more than four or five centimeters across. It seemed impossible that it could support the weight of this car, let alone hundreds — thousands? — of others. But the spider trundled forward without hesitation.

The roller assembly tipped up, closed itself up around the ribbon, and, with a surge like a punch in the belly, the spider leapt sky-ward.

11: Ribbon

In that first moment they left the spider farm behind, and were up and out in the bright sunlight. Glancing up, Bisesa saw the ribbon arrowing off into invisibility in a cloudless sky, with the bright pearls of other spiders going ahead of her, up into the unknown.

And when she looked down, peering around the obstruction of the solar panels, she saw the world falling away from her, and a tremendous view of the Cape opening up. She shielded her eyes from the sun. There were the gantries and blockhouses, and the straight-line roads traveled by generations of astronauts. A spaceplane of some kind rested on a runway, a black-and-white moth.

And a bit further on a white needle stood tall beside a rusted gantry.

It had to be a Saturn V, perhaps bearing a recreation of Apollo 10, the next precursor of the century-old Moon landings. But she had already risen higher than the Saturn’s needle nose, already higher than the astronauts climbing their gantries to their Moon ships.

The ascent was rapid, and just kept going. Soon she seemed able to see down the beach for kilometers. Canaveral looked more water than land, a skim of earth on the silver hide of the great ocean that opened up to the east. And she saw cars and trucks parked up on the roads and beside the beach, with tiny American flags flutter-ing from their aerials.

“People still come to see,” Alexei said, grinning. “Quite a spectacle when the Saturn s go up, I’m told. But the Ladder is more impressive, in its way—”

There was a jolt.

“Sorry about that,” Alexei said. “End of the acceleration.” He tapped his softscreen, and a simple display lit up, showing altitude, speed, air pressure, time. “Three hundred meters high, speed maxed out, and from now on it’s a smooth ride all the way up.”

The ground fell away, the historic clutter of Canaveral already diminishing to a map.

A minute into the journey, four kilometers high, and the world was starting to curve, the eastern ocean horizon an immense arc. And with a snap the big solar-cell wings folded down flat.

“I don’t get it,” Bisesa said. “This is for power? The solar cells seem to be on the underside.”

“That’s the idea,” Alexei said. “The spider’s power comes from ground-based lasers.”

“You saw them, Mum,” Myra said.

“You leave your power supply on the ground. Okay. So how long is the ride?”

“To beyond geosynch? All the way out to our drop-off point?

Around twelve days,” Alexei said.

“Twelve days in this box?” And Bisesa didn’t like the sound of that phrase, drop- off.

“This is a big structure, Mum,” Myra said, but she was evidently a novice herself and didn’t sound convinced.

A few more minutes and they were eight kilometers high, already higher than most aircraft would fly, and there was a clunk, the mildest of shudders. Over their heads the pulley mechanism alarmingly reconfigured itself, bringing a different set of wheels and tracks into play.