Pillar to the Sky Read online

  After several minutes Fuchida powered down the pistons, then offered the button to Franklin for the compression test, saying that after all he had spent to reach this moment, he deserved the experience. Franklin casually hit the button without comment, eyes fixed on the chamber. The two pistons separated by less than two centimeters appeared to move, and after several seconds Gary actually took Eva by the arm and pulled her back away from the glass wall. The pistons had actually compressed and were now tightly wedged against each other. Something had gone wrong!

  Even Franklin, seeing Gary’s reaction, stepped back, but Fuchida just chuckled.

  “Happens all the time,” he announced. “Those pistons are of the highest-grade tungsten steel to be found anywhere in the world. They are now fused together. The mesh held up; I’ll show you the close-up high-speed film later. The mesh cut right through the pistons when we attempted compression.”

  “So how do we know if we have true compression strength?” Eva asked, relaxing from Gary’s protective grip.

  “Right now, by the rate at which it cuts into the face of the pistons at a given pressure. Believe me, we were a bit bewildered at first until we figured that out. Eventually we’ll coat the pistons with the nanotubing, just to make sure, since they are rather expensive and then useless after a test in which they are fused together, but I’m confident we will exceed what is needed.”

  There was evident pride in his voice and a round of congratulatory comments from the rest of the group. Then Franklin looked at the computer screen, announced that they had to leave, and asked Fuchida and his team to join them for dinner at eight.

  Eva was obviously reluctant to leave. The question of developing a material strong enough to make a tower viable had consumed her for years. She wanted to hear the details, not just of the molecular arrangement, but how Fuchida had finally cracked the mystery of how to actually spin the material out lengthwise from a few millimeters to a strand two meters long and then spin them together into a mesh. Given the fibers’ incredible strength, it was almost a paradox to make something stronger than the machines needed to produce it. Even with high-grade tungsten steel, it was like trying to spin wire rope when your tools were made of butter and the rope being made could rip the machinery apart.

  It would have to wait, she thought, as their British host led them out of the lab and through the inner airlock. Once clear, he removed his respirator and hood; then, still wearing the rest of the jumpsuit and hairnet, he motioned for them to follow him through the middle door and then out into the main building.

  He gestured to the vast open expanse within the four-acre building.

  “You go to some of the museums of the Industrial Age in England,” he said, “and you can see examples of the rope-making and wire-making works of the nineteenth century. They were called ‘rope walks’; they took threads of manila and twisted them into strands and eventually into cables capable of hoisting a ship’s anchor—rope thicker than my leg. A ship of the line in Nelson’s time needed miles upon miles of rope; one whole part of the ship was even known as the ‘cable tier’ where the huge ropes for the anchor were stored. They were spun out in vast open sheds a hundred or more yards in length. When your Yank, Roebling, was making the Brooklyn Bridge, his wire works in Trenton where the suspension cables were first drawn out into thin wire stretched nearly a quarter mile.

  “That is what this will be a year from now if all goes according to plan. Once our friend Fuchida gets up to two millimeters in diameter for our first thread, we’ll start manufacturing it right here.”

  He grinned.

  “Cables thousands of miles in length,” he said proudly.

  “You mean kilometers,” Eva corrected him with a grin. “My prophecy of years ago was true with that Mars mission, what with you English and Americans insisting upon miles, or is it statute or nautical miles?”

  There were reluctant nods of agreement over the now legendary screwup that had sent a mission worth several hundred million crashing into the surface of Mars. That was gone over again and again before the incredible Curiosity mission was launched using standardized metric measurements to ensure such an embarrassing mistake never happened again.

  “Miles are longer,” the Brit said with a grin.

  “You men and your obsessions on that subject,” Eva huffed, and they all laughed, though Victoria seemed a bit embarrassed by her mother’s joke.

  Franklin rolled up the sleeve of his coverall and realized he had removed his old-fashioned wristwatch before going into the clean room.

  “I do think we are on a tight schedule, my friends. Gary, Eva, Miss Victoria, if you will excuse us, the three of us have some contracts and legal stuff to hammer out, which I know bores the two of you no end.”

  Gary actually felt a bit cut out by the comment. It was obvious that Franklin was separating them from the others.

  He and Eva stood silently, both feeling a bit embarrassed, not sure if they should just go and put their clothes back on, then go stand in the hot Mojave sun.

  Conspiratorial smiles were suddenly exchanged between the other three.

  “You’ve got a flight to catch, so why don’t you go change,” the Brit said, as if shooing them off. Gary only nodded and started to turn back to the outer door of the airlock.

  “No, you’re heading the wrong way,” the Brit said, and Gary looked back at him in confusion, then felt a flush of anger, sensing he was being teased.

  “Oh, for God’s sake, just tell them,” the aircraft designer said, starting to laugh.

  The Brit and Franklin looked at each other and Franklin nodded to his friend.

  “You tell them.”

  The Brit flashed his winning smile.

  “I hear, young lady, that you soloed this morning,” the Brit said, looking at Victoria.

  “Yes, sir.”

  He extended his hand and patted her on the shoulder.

  “Shirttail still missing?”

  She blushed a bit and nodded.

  “Well, you got another first ahead of you today.”

  “How is that?”

  “A driver is waiting outside to take you to hangar number one. We’ll fetch along your street clothes after you get back.”

  “Back from what?”

  The Brit now broke into a broad grin, like a parent about to give an ultimate gift on Christmas morning.

  “Sadly, three of our passengers for this afternoon’s flight had to cancel out. Transferring through a flight from Detroit, they ate at the wrong restaurant and are now in our infirmary with a nasty dose of food poisoning. Poor souls. Not their fault, and insurance covers it all, so they’ll fly a few months from now. So there are three empty seats on today’s suborbital flight.”

  Victoria looked at him wide-eyed.

  “What are you saying?” Eva asked, with an excited but nervous edge to her voice, and she instinctively put a protective arm around Victoria, as if about ready to hold her back.

  “Oh, just that there are three empty seats for this evening’s flight to watch sunset from space. Those seats are yours.”

  “Bozhe miĭ,” Eva gasped.

  “You barely got time to suit up and fall in with the others.”

  Eva looked at Gary and her expression changed.

  “But … but, I thought passengers had to have flight physicals,” she said, looking at her husband.

  “He’s already had one,” Franklin replied. “I asked Dr. Bock to check him out for this and he’s cleared. As for Miss Victoria, I’ll take a chance on a pilot who has already passed her class-three physical and flew solo today. Now haul out of here.”

  “But what about me?” Eva asked.

  “You had a company physical three months ago and you check out OK as well,” Franklin replied, sounding a bit exasperated. “That is, unless the two of you have another child on the way.”

  She looked at him angrily and blushed, then shook her head emphatically no.

  “Dinner at eight,” Franklin s
aid.

  The Brit pointed to the door leading out of the vast open building.

  Victoria, with a shout of delight, was already heading for the door, but Eva protectively snagged her. She had already gone through one white-knuckled moment this morning and now their somewhat crazed friend was pushing their daughter into another adventure?

  Franklin smiled with delight, but then his features turned serious under Eva’s icy gaze and he looked at the Brit.

  “You are one hundred percent sure this is safe?” he asked. “As I think about it now, looking at these three, I lose them and we are all screwed.”

  “I’ll bet my life on it,” the designer said. “Besides, it’s good training, they’ll be spending a lot of time up there soon. Victoria, do you have your logbook with you? We might give you a few minutes in the copilot seat and it should be noted.”

  The young woman was standing before one of the greatest heroes of the current aviation age.

  “It’s on board Mr. Smith’s plane,” she said. “I can go get it.”

  “No time for that now. But we’ll have the captain of your flight make a log entry after you get back. Now come on, either get a move on or we’ll call down and have them take off without you.”

  The way Victoria looked at her parents, Gary knew they’d never be forgiven if they backed out. And besides, he wanted to go, too: it was a childhood dream about to be fulfilled.

  The prospect even overwhelmed Eva’s protective motherly instincts, and the three ran out the door like kids embarking on the adventure of a lifetime … which it most certainly was.

  9

  The Flight

  “Sixty seconds to separation and drop.”

  Victoria was unable to even remotely contain her excitement. The six passenger seats were arrayed port and starboard along the bulkhead walls, each with its own window, surprisingly large, oval, and slightly bigger than a standard airplane window, while overhead were half a dozen more view ports, which at the moment showed only the underside wing of the mother ship that was hauling them up to the drop altitude of 53,000 feet.

  For the last hour they had climbed in a wide circular pattern, clearing past 40,000 feet, near the maximum altitude for commercial airlines, then up through 50,000, their pilot announcing that if they looked forward, literally over his shoulder (there was no barrier or door between pilot, copilot, and the six passengers), they could actually begin to detect the curvature of the earth.

  It was a far cry from the thrill of being nine hundred feet above sea level on her solo flight of this morning. Victoria grinned, wondering what Professor NeSmith would say at this moment! Her parents were sitting behind her, and she craned her head to try to look back, but was securely locked in with a four-point harness and could barely move. From the corner of her eye she caught a nervous smile on her mother’s face; behind her, her father was actually grinning and gave her a thumbs-up, which she returned.

  The aisle separating the port and starboard side of the cabin was ninety inches wide, a bit more cramped than Franklin’s Gulfstream. Getting aboard and strapped in had required a bit of gymnastics, including maneuvering through a very narrow pathway between the six seats. Across from her was a middle-aged couple, Brits and relatives of the owner, accompanied by their son, Jason, a history major at Oxford with a keen interest in early aviation and turn-of-the-twentieth-century industrial technology who had interned with Franklin to do historical research on nineteenth-century technological advances and their societal impacts. She caught his eye; he was nervous, eyes wide, but forced a smile and gave her a thumbs-up as well.

  “Thirty seconds to drop,” the pilot announced. “Keep your arms folded across your torso. Legs tucked in under your seats. The mother ship will nose over ten degrees and then release us. We’ll be in free fall for ten seconds, just like if you were skydiving, and then I’ll fire up our engines. Then the fun really starts! The pad screen mounted in the seat in front of you will provide readouts of engine performance, velocity, g-force, and elevation. Emergency sickness bags are in your right vest pocket.”

  He chuckled.

  “Don’t be embarrassed; use them if you need them, though you’ll all be OK: that little shot we gave you before you boarded usually does the trick.

  “Ten seconds to drop,” and even as he spoke, the mother ship, with their craft still secured, nosed over into a shallow dive.

  Victoria had been reluctant to take the shot, but when running over her flight experience, the medical tech urged it, assuring her she might feel a touch drowsy but not like the old days when the med would all but knock you out. She felt secure and ready.

  “Edith, I don’t give a bloody damn if he is your cousin who built this damn contraption,” the elder Brit snapped to his wife, who just laughed with delight as they continued to nose over.

  “Drop in five, four…”

  Victoria looked out the window again. The pilot of the mother ship was looking down at them and actually gave a formal salute, which was quickly returned by their pilot.

  “Drop!”

  All six of the passengers let out a yell; for some it was a yell of delight, like that of passengers on a roller coaster topping the first climb; for a couple—and Victoria could tell that one was her mother—it was a yell of distress as Enterprise dropped free of the mother ship and let gravity do its work. Several seconds later Victoria was looking straight up at the mother ship through a topside window as it banked into a port-side turn at the same time Enterprise banked to starboard, the same as with a glider release. The free fall continued for ten seconds, nose pitching down, as they fell a couple of thousand feet and gradually started to level out, now well clear of the mother ship.

  “Engine ignition in five … four…”

  She took a deep breath, a bit nervous now. This was a hell of a lot different than being in a 172 or even Franklin Smith’s plane. She was strapped in as a passenger, with no control, and did not like the sensation.

  And then the hybrid liquid-and-solid-fuel engine ignited.

  A “Yeah haaa!” barely escaped her when within five seconds they accelerated up to over two and a half g’s. Enterprise, a glider only seconds before, was now a true rocket ship, accelerating with startling rapidity, nose above the horizon, and then just continuing to climb and climb, nose pointed up at forty-five degrees, still accelerating.

  “Mach one and climbing!” the pilot announced, his calm voice audible through her headphones, the ship buffeting slightly, nose continuing to point up. A moment of tension on Victoria’s part: at this attitude, her Cessna 172 would be into a full stall and plummeting back to earth.

  “Mach 2!”

  She could sense the excitement of the pilot even though he was thoroughly trained, like the most seasoned airline pilot, to sound calm and nonplussed no matter what the situation. The nose of the ship continued to rise, the horizon ahead no longer visible. They were heading nearly straight up and still accelerating!

  She looked out the side window and gasped. She could see the curvature of the earth! And above it, the light blue band of the atmosphere, the sky above it darkening. On the port side, the sun still shone, kissing the horizon, but on her side it was darkness. And then …

  “Oh my God,” she whispered, even as the pilot announced they had just punched through 100,000 feet and were at full thrust, the velocity now at Mach 3, over 2,200 miles per hour. At this speed, if they leveled out, they could hop clear to New York in less than an hour.

  The view from the pilot’s position though … The darkening sky was a sea of stars.

  “Maximum velocity 2,423 miles per hour.”

  They were heading nearly straight up, the three g’s of thrust keeping her wedged in her seat. The pilot offered a soft reassuring commentary, announcing the 150,000-foot mark, 200,000 …

  In spite of the headphones she could hear her mother behind her, saying a prayer in Ukrainian, but then repeatedly exclaiming, “My God, ohhh my God,” not in fear, her voice filled with aw
e.

  She wished she could turn around and see her father’s expression but already knew what it was. That wondrous nerdy childlike grin of his. So loving for his daughter, so reassuring when she needed it, so delighted when he knew she was happy, so calming in moments of stress and fear. Her heart filled with love knowing that he was embraced by his childhood dream to reach to the stars.

  “Love ya, Dad!” she shouted, and she thought she could hear his reply.

  “Five seconds to shutdown!”

  It hit with a jolt. One second she was slammed back into her seat, pulling g’s, and then, with the shutdown of the engine, a second later weightless. They were not yet in free fall. The velocity of the ship would continue to carry it heavenward until gravity finally canceled out upward thrust. They would now enter a long parabolic curving climb and then eventual drop. But now came the six minutes or so of total freedom and she did feel a twinge of fear. Can I handle this?

  She had experienced free fall before and never really liked it when Brandon had put her through full-power stalls and accelerated stalls, and, contrary to what most flight instructors did these days, had even taken her through a spin. But at 3,000 feet up in a 172, the sensation lasted only a couple of seconds. In spite of her wild enthusiasm for this flight, the next few moments did scare her a bit.

  She felt her stomach rise up. The deep undertone of the rocket astern fell silent. In fact, all was silence for a moment.

  “Welcome to space,” their pilot announced, turning to look back at his passengers.

  “Everyone OK? If so, give me a thumbs-up!”

  She offered a thumbs-up. Turning to look back, she saw her mother, eyes wide with wonder, thumb up, and her father, that beautiful, childlike smile creasing his face. Jason on the other side by her father, thumb up. Poor Edith suddenly did not look so happy, though her husband, complaining a few minutes before, was laughing.

  “Bloody hell, yes!” he cried.