Pillar to the Sky Read online

  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.

  “As for Eva, she’s got a lot of healthy years ahead, and I think for this moment I would prefer her to still be close by Victoria and guide her.”

  Franklin gazed at him, eyes filled with concern.

  “You speak as if you have no plans to come back.”

  Gary leaned back and laughed hoarsely.

  “Of course I do. I’ll return with the next crew transfer.”

  “Why not go up with them? Let the astronaut I’ve selected ride the pod and I’ll consider giving you the empty chair in his launch capsule.”

  “You got a lift pod sitting there,” Gary replied, pointing out the window. “What the world should have witnessed as a triumph—the first person to actually journey from geosynch to the earth’s surface via the tower—was essentially a news blackout, and rightly so out of respect for what that poor man was enduring. I’m offering you a public relations coup now. ‘Co-designer of the Tower Goes Aloft to Inspect and Help with Guiding the Beginning of Pillar Two.’ And yeah, throw in that I have Parkinson’s and long for zero gravity to free me of its infirmity. What the hell, we might even find that exposure to zero-g and solar radiation might actually have a palliative effect.”

  “Damn you,” Franklin sighed.

  “I am the perfect candidate to go up and you know it, Franklin. No need for training, I helped design the damn thing, though I must confess the whole toilet arrangement is rather crude. You’ll have world press focused on it; I’ll do the usual announcements and interviews, and throw in how eventually, besides everything else, I believe the real tower will be a destination for those in my situation or with other debilitating infirmities to free us from gravity and again float and play like a child. I’d rather like that, my friend…”

  He hesitated.

  “… while I still have a mind that can enjoy it.”

  In tears, all Franklin could do was nod in agreement.

  “Gary, you are one royal pain in the butt at this moment,” he sighed, swiveling about in his chair to look out across the platform. “We had to drop three spinners to clear the way for the pod to come down. I’m not complaining about that—we always had that as a contingency plan anyhow—and that poor guy, no one can blame him for wigging out. I’m not blessed as you are to be a parent, but I think I do understand the anguish.”

  “I honestly think neither of us can fully grasp the intensity of his loss; even trying to grasp it brings me to tears,” Gary said quietly. “Thank God we have not had to face it, but Eva and I sweat bullets every time Victoria goes off on some new flight escapade, or her recent trick of trying out base jumping in one of those damn squirrel suits. Even Jason was flipping out over that one.”

  Franklin looked back at him and chuckled.

  “Didn’t tell you this before, but I threatened to fire her from the company if she did that crazy stunt. She laughed—actually laughed—though most respectfully argued it gave her a better ‘perspective’ on certain things and more respect for her position with the company at such a young age. It was proving to others that she had the ‘right stuff’ to eventually help oversee operations in space.”

  Gary laughed softly.

  “And, damn it, your public relations team was there to film the whole thing and ensure it went viral,” he pointed out. “I damn near resigned that day myself in protest.”

  The two laughed once more, and it touched Gary’s heart yet again, as it had on their first night together—flying to Seattle with his daughter up in the jump seat, peppering Franklin with questions—that this man loved Victoria as if she was his own daughter … and worried about her as much as Gary did.

  “A brain like hers—the best of both of you—doing silly stunts like that. But then again, it does play well with the press.

  “Then I read the final draft of her dissertation. To think that kid has worked out the model for energy transfer from geosynch to anywhere on earth … Once they stamp her paperwork at her dissertation defense, I’m giving her control of that division.”

  “What division?”

  “Exactly that, my ultimate goal all along with the Pillar rates right up there with perpetual motion … and that is limitless energy. She’s going to run it. Hell, from the first day I met her as a gangly high schooler, I knew she had a future that might be even more brilliant than that of her parents.”

  Gary could not help swelling with pride at this news. And then it struck him.

  “And you are telling me this now to talk me out of what I am asking for.”

  “Ah, Gary, you are mastering the art of political persuasion. That has always been the problem where I felt I fit in. The minds of engineers like you, Eva—the team that once flourished at Goddard—always left me overawed, humbled. But, damn it, it was rare that one of you could translate what you were doing into the elegant beauty and wonder of it all and then fill the public’s imagination with dreams. Think of the irony of it. Even as the public turned its back on Apollo, at the same time they were enthralled with the adventures Hollywood portrayed of our future in space.

  “Eva is heading more in t
hat direction with her increasing talk about sociological change, impact on the arts, and the way we perceive ourselves in relationship to the universe that awaits us. During the Apollo program, one of the mistakes they made was that they should have sent up Walter Cronkite himself with his ‘Gee whiz, this is incredible’ schoolboy enthusiasm, which was so infectious. Or a poet—I mean a real poet, like Frost, Sandburg, or my favorite, Bradbury—someone who could capture in words the wonder of it all.”

  “So is that an argument against my taking that pod back up?”

  “One of them. Though I daresay Victoria will have that eloquence when her day comes to go up.”

  “I can do it. I’ll never be as good as my daughter, but I’ll open up the way I do in private, just as long as a camera is not sticking in my face. The guy you selected is a darn good space structural engineer”—Gary sighed—“and is about as exciting as watching paint peel from a wall.”

  “Oh, that is rather cruel,” Franklin said, even as he laughed at the very apt description. “Come on, Gary, you are no poet; you dread even getting in front of a microphone in public. On the basis of that, if that was the criterion, I’d send up Eva rather than you.”

  “Eva is not dying; I am,” Gary said coldly.

  Franklin swiveled his chair around to Gary, who was sitting hunched over, embarrassed that an uncontrollable tremor was causing his right leg to shake.

  “We are all dying, Gary,” Franklin replied seriously.

  “Well, the difference is, for most of us, it’ll come as a surprise. As for me, I can feel the clock winding down within me. Franklin, I can come to terms with some of it. The fact is I can barely walk and a flight of stairs looks like Mount Everest now; I’ve noticed that decline just in the months since we climbed but three flights to touch our first strand.”

  Franklin said nothing. Though he had never discussed it with Gary, Franklin had made sure that every square foot of the platform was handicapped accessible, with Gary specifically in mind. And no longer did he even try to put on a show of climbing a flight of stairs, let alone join in the evening walks around the platform at sunset to enjoy the view in what had become semiformal staff meetings. He took the specially installed elevator up to join the group.