When the cab finally stopped, a chime sounded and a synthesized female voice announced, “Level one: Low Earth Orbit.”
And all three of them floated slowly upward toward the ceiling.
“We’re in orbit now,” Bracknell said, pushing lightly against the wall to force himself down. “Zero-g. Weightless.”
Lara looked fine, but Molina was pale. Bracknell fished a pillbox out of his trousers pocket. “Here, Victor. Take one of these. It’ll help get your stomach out of your throat.”
The elevator doors slid open and the din of work teams immediately assailed their ears as they floated out of the elevator cab. Bracknell hooked a floor loop with the toe of his boot and pulled Lara down to the floor, then Molina. Standing there anchored to the floor and weaving slightly like a sea anemone, Lara saw a wide expanse of bare decking topped by a dome that looked hazy in the dust-filled air. A drill was screeching annoyingly in the distance and the high-pitched whine of an electrical power generator made her teeth ache: Sparks from welding torches hissed off to her right. The dust-laden air smelled of burnt insulation and stranger odors she could not place. Men and women in coveralls were putting up partitions, most of them working in small groups and tethered to the deck, although she spotted several floating weightlessly along the scaffolding, high above. An electrically powered cart scurried past on a rail fastened to the deck plates, its cargo bed piled high with bouncing sheets of what looked like honeycomb metal. Everyone seemed to be yelling at everyone else:
“Hold it there! That’s it!”
“I need more light up here; it’s darker than a five-star restaurant, fer chrissakes!”
“When the hell were you ever in a five-star restaurant, bozo?”
“I’ve got it. Ease up on your line.”
Bracknell made a sweeping gesture and hollered over the din, “Welcome to level one.”
Molina scowled out at the noisy activity, his face still slightly green. Lara clapped her hands over her ears; the motion made her bob sideways in her floor loops.
Pointing off to their left, Bracknell led them carefully, one set of loops to the next, past a gaggle of workers gathered around a small table that held a large stainless steel urn of coffee. At least, Lara assumed it was coffee. Several of the workers raised their covered plastic squeeze bulbs to Bracknell as he led them past. Mance nodded and grinned at them in return.
“Sippy cups,” Lara said, with a giggle. “Like babies use.”
“You need them in zero g,” Bracknell said.
There were curved partitions in place here, and the noise abated a little. As they walked onward, the partitions became roofed over like an arched tunnel and the din diminished considerably.
“As you can see—and hear,” Bracknell said, “level one is still very much under construction.”
“My ears are ringing,” Lara said.
“They’re a noisy bunch, all right,” Bracknell conceded. “But if they were quiet they wouldn’t be getting any work done.”
Molina gave a half-hearted nod.
Pointing to the curved metal overhead, Bracknell said with a hint of pride in his voice, “These partitions were scavenged from the heavy-lift boosters that brought most of the materials up here.”
Lara grinned at him. “Waste not, want not.”
“In spades. Nothing of the boosters was returned to Earth except their rocket engines.”
She pointed to the floor. “There aren’t any floor loops set into the floor.”
With a nod that sent his whole body bobbing, Bracknell said, “The crew hasn’t gotten this far yet. We swim the rest of the way.”
“Swim?”
“Just push yourself along the wall with your fingertips. It’s easy.” Then Bracknell saw Molina’s grim expression. “Victor, will you be okay?”
“I think so,” Molina said, without much conviction.
As they floated along the bare decking of the corridor, brushing the curving metal wall with their fingers, Bracknell explained, “Back there where we came in, the biggest area will be a preparation center for launching satellites.”
Lara said, “You’ll carry them up here on the elevators and then launch them at this altitude?”
“It’ll be a lot cheaper than launching them from the ground with rockets,” Bracknell said. “All we need is a little kick booster to place the satellite in the orbit its owners want.”
“You’ll launch geostationary satellites from the platform up at that level, right?” Lara asked.
“Right. Again, with a little maneuvering thrust to place them in their proper slots.”
“Masterson Aerospace and the other rocket companies aren’t going to like you,” she said.
“I guess not. The buggywhip makers must have hated Henry Ford.”
Lara laughed.
The noise was far behind them now, still discernable, but down to a background level. They came to a heavy-looking hatch set into a wall. Bracknell tapped out the proper code on the keypad set into the wall and the hatch sighed open. Lara felt a slight whisper of air brush past her from behind.
“You wanted a window?” Bracknell said to her. “Here’s a window for you.”
They stepped through and Lara’s breath caught in her throat. They were in a narrow darkened compartment. One entire wall was transparent. Beyond it curved the gigantic bulk of Earth, sparkling blue oceans gleaming in the sunlight, brilliant white clouds hugging the surface, wrinkles of brown mountains.
“Oh my god,” Lara gasped, gliding to the long window.
Molina hung back.
Bracknell rapped his knuckles against the window. “Glassteel,” he said. “Imported from Selene.”
“It’s so
“That’s Central America, all right,” Bracknell said. Pointing to a wide swirl of clouds, “And that looks like a tropical storm off in the Pacific.”
Molina pushed up behind him and peered at the curling swath of clouds. “Will it affect the tower?”
“Not likely. Tropical storms don’t come down to the equator, and we’re well away from the coast anyway.”
“But still…”
“The tower can take winds of a thousand kilometers per hour, Victor. More than three times the most powerful hurricane on record.”
“I can’t see straight down,” Lara said, almost like a disappointed child. “I can’t see the base of the tower.”
“Look out to the horizon,” said Bracknell. “That’s the Yucatan peninsula, where the ancient Mayas built their temples.”
“And those mountains to our right, they must be the Andes,” she said. The peaks were bare, gray granite, snowless since the greenhouse warming had struck.
“Mance,” said Lara, “you could use glassteel to build a transparent elevator tube.”
He snorted. “Not at the prices Selene charges for the stuff.”
Molina glided back toward the open hatch. “This door is an airtight seal, isn’t it?”
“That’s right,” Bracknell answered. “If the outside wall of this compartment is punctured and there’s a loss of air pressure, that hatch automatically closes and seals off the leak.”
“And traps anybody in this compartment,” Molina said.
“That’s right,” Bracknell replied gravely.
Lara said, “But you have spacesuits in here so they can save themselves. Don’t you?”
Bracknell shook his head. “It would take too long to get into the suits. Even the new nanofiber soft suits would take too long.”
“What you’re telling us,” Molina said, “is that we’re in danger in here.”
“Only if the outer shell is penetrated.”
“How likely is that?” said Lara.
Smiling tightly, Bracknell said, “The tower’s been dinged by micrometeorites thousands of times. Mostly up
