through the cameras of his EVA team. It matched the specs in his files almost exactly; there were always slight deviations between the blueprints and the actual construction. Nobody can build anything this big without straying from the plans here and there, at least a little bit.
Zach knew that the tower’s main support came from these cables, stretched taught by centrifugal force as the whole gigantic assembly swung through space in synchrony with the Earth’s daily spin. Break that connection here at the geostationary level and the stretching force disappears. The tower will collapse to the ground while the equally-long upper section goes spinning out into space.
Fifty cables, he repeated to himself. Let those nanobugs eat through fifty cables and the others won’t have the strength to hold the rig together. Fifty cables.
Emerson’s ear plug chimed softly with the tone he knew came from the safety officer.
“Go ahead,” he said into his lip mike.
“Got something strange goin’ on here.”
“What?”
“That Clipper you’ve got docked. It’s venting gases.”
“Venting?”
“Hydrogen and oxygen, from what the laser spectrometer tells me.”
Emerson thought a moment. “Bleeding a nearly-empty tank, maybe?”
The safety officer’s voice sounded troubled. “This isn’t a bleed. They’re pumpin’ out a lot of gas. Like the propellant they’d be using for their return trip.”
“Curiouser and curiouser,” Emerson quoted.
Zach licked his lips. The fifty cables were now being eaten away by the gobblers. He had calculated that blowing thirty of the cables would be enough to do the job, but he’d gone for fifty as an extra precaution. Okay, we’ve got fifty and we’re all set.
He looked up at the two Asian pilots, still wearing those cool dark shades. “The nanomachines are in place.”
“Good.”
“All the EVA guys are back inside?”
“That is not your responsibility.”
Zach felt the pilot was being snotty. “Okay,” he said, “if any of them get eaten by the bugs, you write the condolence letters.”
“Start the nanomachines working,” the pilot said, without turning to look at Zach.
“They are working.”
“Very well.”
“Shouldn’t we disconnect from the dock now?”
“No. Not yet.”
THE COLLAPSE
Zach thought it was a little weird to stay connected to the tower’s geostationary docking tunnel while the nanomachines were chewing away at the cables, but he figured the pilot knew what he was doing. The bugs won’t get the chance to damage the Clippership; we’ll disconnect before we’re in any danger, he was pretty certain.
Besides, these two black-goggled pilots aren’t going to kill themselves, Zach further assured himself. Not knowingly.
Outside the ship there was no sound. No vibration. Nothing.
For the first time, the pilot turned in his seat and lifted his glasses to glare directly at Zach. “Well? Have you done it?”
“Yeah,” Zach replied, feeling nettled. “It’s done. Now get us the hell out of here before the upper half of the tower starts spinning off to Alpha Centauri.”
“That won’t be necessary,” said the pilot.
In the geostationary operations center, Emerson felt a slight tremor, a barely sensed vibration, as if a subway train had passed below the floor he stood on.
“What was that?” he wondered aloud.
His assistant’s voice responded, “Yeah, I felt it too.”
Tremors and vibrations were not good. In all the hours he’d spent in the tower at its various levels, it had always been as solid and unmoving as a mountain. What the hell could cause it to shake?
“Whatever it was,” his assistant said, “it stopped.”
But Emerson was busy flicking his fingers along his keyboard, checking the safety program. No leaks, no loss of air pressure. Electrical systems in the green. Power systems functioning normally. Structural integrity—
His eyes goggled at the screen. Red lights cluttered the screen. Forty, no fifty of the one hundred and twenty main cables had been severed. For long moments he could not speak, could hardly breathe. His brain refused to function. Fifty cables. We’re going to die.
As he stared at the screen’s display, another cable tore loose. And another. He could fell the deck beneath his feet shuddering.
“Hey, what’s going on?” one of the technicians yelled from across the chamber.
“Let’s to it, pell mell,” Emerson whispered, more to himself than anyone who might hear him. “If not to heaven, then hand in hand to hell.”
Bracknell was standing by the ceiling-high window at the Quito airport terminal gate, waiting for the Clippership for Paris to begin boarding. It sat out on its blast-scarred concrete pad, a squat cone constructed of diamond panels, manufactured by lunar nanomachines at Selene. They can use nanomachines up there but we can’t here, Bracknell thought. Well, we’ve gotten around that stupid law. Once we get the patent—
A flash of light caught his eye. It was bright, brilliant even, but so quick that he wasn’t certain if he’d actually seen anything real. Like a bolt of lightning. It seemed to come from the skytower, standing straight and slim, rising from the mountains and through the white clouds that swept over their peaks.
Lara came up beside him, complaining, “They can fly from Quito to Paris in less than an hour, but it takes longer than that to board the Clipper.”
Bracknell smiled at her. “Patience is a virtue, as Rev. Danvers would say.”
“I don’t care. I’m getting—” Her words broke off. She was staring at the skytower. “Mance … look!”
He saw it, too. The tower was no longer a straight line bisecting the sky. It seemed to be rippling, like a rope that is flicked back and forth at one end.
His mind racing, Bracknell stared at the tower. It can’t fall! It can’t! But if it does…
He grabbed Lara around the shoulders and began running, dragging her, away from the big windows. “Get away from the windows!” he bellowed. “
“Nothing is happening,” said the pilot accusingly.
“Yes it is,” Zach answered. He was getting tired of the Asian’s stupidity. These guys are supposed to be patient; didn’t anybody ever give them Zen lessons? “Give it a few minutes. Those cables are popping, one by one. The more that snap, the faster the rest of ’em go.”
“I see nothing,” insisted the pilot, pointing toward the cockpit window.
Maybe if you took off those flicking glasses you could see better, creep, Zach grumbled silently. Aloud, he snapped, “You’re gonna see plenty in two-three minutes. Now get us the flick outta here or else we’re gonna go flipping out into deep space!”
“So you say.”
A blinding flash of light seared Zach’s eyes. He heard both pilots shriek. What the fuck was that? Zach wondered, pawing at his eyes. Through burning tears he saw the Clippership’s cockpit, blurred, darkened, everything tinged in red. Rubbing his eyes again Zach squinted down at his laptop. The screen was dark, dead.
Then he realized that both pilots were jabbering in their Asian language.
“What happened?” he screeched.
