“Get me a pitcher of water,” he commanded as he pulled up at their house. Mystified, she obeyed. She was even more mystified when he ceremoniously opened the fuel tank and poured the water in, and when he then started the motor and listened pleasurably to its purr, she was totally baffled.
He gave her the explanation Davoodbhoy had given him. “Boron,” he said. “It’s called the Abu-Hamed drive, after I don’t know who, maybe the person who invented it. You know the element boron is so hungry for oxygen that it’ll pull it right out of compounds like water? And when you take the oxygen out of the water molecule, what do you have left?”
Myra frowned at him. “Hydrogen, but—”
Grinning, he touched a finger to her lips. “But boron’s terribly expensive, and burning a carbon fuel’s so much cheaper that nobody ever bothered with it. But here it is! They’ve found out how to regenerate the boron so they can use it over and over. And so we’re driving a car that not only is low-emission, it doesn’t emit anything at all!”
“But—” Myra began again. This time he stopped his wife’s lips with his own.
“Get Natasha and Robert, will you?” he coaxed. “And our baggage? And let’s see how this hydrogen burner works.”
Which turned out to be very well. They did have to stop twice to add water to the fuel tank, under the scandalized stares of the people running the filling stations they stopped at, but the little car performed as well as any fossil-fuel burner.
They were still ten kilometers from the terminal when Robert emitted one of his heart-stopping shrieks. Myra jammed on the brakes, but it wasn’t a sudden danger. It was simply an exciting sight. What Robert was waving at (as he said “Spider!” and “Climb fast!” and “Many, many, many!”) was the cable of the Skyhook itself, barely visible as something that glinted from the sun. But what it carried, once you knew what to look for, was visible enough. There were the cargo-carrying pods, one after another, marching up into the sky and disappearing into the first layer of clouds.
“Huh,” Ranjit said. “Looks like they’ve really got it going, doesn’t it?”
So they had.
The road to the terminal was paired up with a railroad track, and as they were approaching, a train—forty-two freight cars, Natasha counted excitedly—overtook them and disappeared into one of the terminal’s giant sheds. There were guards at the car entrance, but they passed the Subramanian family with a friendly salute, and a wave in the direction of the VIP parking lot.
Where they were met by a handsome Asian woman who introduced herself as Joris Vorhulst’s assistant. “Engineer Vorhulst was looking forward to seeing you very much,” she informed them, “but he didn’t expect you until tomorrow. He’s on his way, though. Would you like something to eat?”
Ranjit opened his mouth to say what a good idea that was, but was overruled by his wife’s faster response. “Not just yet. If we could just look around for a bit—”
They could. They were warned to stay out of the loading sheds and, of course, to beware of the trucks and tractors that were lugging around unidentifiable bits and pieces of no doubt excitingly interesting objects.
Ranjit contemplated all the activity with benign incomprehension. “I’d give a lot to know what some of these things are,” he informed his family in general.
Young Natasha pursed her lips. “Well,” she said, “that lumpy package there is the thruster for an ion rocket. I think the bale next to it is carbon nanotubes in sheet form—I’d say probably part of a solar sail—”
Ranjit gazed at his daughter, openmouthed. “What makes you so sure?” he demanded.
She grinned at him. “While you were talking to that lady, Robert and I poked around, and I read the bills of lading. I think they’re building spaceships up there!”
“And,” called a familiar voice from the unloading shed, “you’re exactly right, Tashy! We’ve got a couple of them working already.”
Joris Vorhulst wouldn’t listen to any objections; he wanted food, decent Sri Lankan food, and if they didn’t want to eat, they could just watch him doing so. Because, it turned out, he had been five weeks on the Skyhook himself, and was just now coming back from supervising the work of those very spacecraft whose existence Natasha had deduced.
“Skyhook is really beginning to pull its weight,” he informed them happily. The two robot rocket ships that were already commissioned were working as scavengers, dedicated to combing LEO for abandoned spacecraft or even abandoned fuel tanks of ancient Russian and American ones. Once found, computer-controlled solar sails were mounted on them and they were programmed to sail themselves to Grand Central. There they were transformed. They were no longer dangerous free-flying spaceship killers. Now they were simply the raw materials for anything that needed to be built. “It’s all very well to ship stuff up from the surface,” Vorhulst declared, mouth full of what even Myra had to admit was a really good curry, “but why should we waste what’s up there already?”
“And that’s what you were doing up in LEO? Collecting scrap to build new things?”
Vorhulst looked embarrassed. “Actually,” he said, “I was making sure the third ship was ready to go. That’s the one that’s headed for the moon. You know that the robot explorers have been busy there for a few years now? And they’ve found plenty of those lava tubes I used to talk about in my astronomy class?”
“Actually,” Ranjit complained, “I didn’t. The progress reports they sent the advisory council were pretty sketchy.”
“Yes,” Vorhulst conceded, “I know they were. We’re hoping the big three will loosen up a little now, because those tubes are going to change everything. One of them is right under the Sinus Iridium—the ‘Bay of Rainbows.’ It’s a beaut. It’s eighteen hundred meters long, and ship three will be carrying the machinery to seal it up because Lunar Development has a plan for it. The big three want tourists, you see.”
Myra looked skeptical. “Tourists? Last I heard there were about eleven people living in the lunar colony and it was costing a fortune just to keep them fed and supplied with air to breathe.”
Vorhulst grinned. “In the old days, yes. That was when they had to be supported from Earth’s surface, by rockets. But now we’ve got the Skyhook! Oh, there’ll be tourists, all right. And to give them a good reason to go there, the big three pulled a few strings, and now the Olympics association has made a deal.”
Natasha, previously uncharacteristically silent, perked up. “What kind of a deal?”
“To hold the kind of events they can’t do on Earth, Tashy. You see, lunar gravity’s only 1.622 meters per second squared, so—”
Natasha held up her hands. “Please, Dr. Vorhulst!”
“Well, it’s just about one sixth as much as Earth’s at the surface. That means that the minute anybody does competitive sports on the moon, all the old records that involve running or jumping are just out the window. I’m not sure that even the Sinus Iridium tube is tall enough to let the high jumpers strut their stuff.”
Ranjit was looking skeptical. “You think people are going to travel a couple of hundred thousand kilometers just to watch some athletes jump high?”
“I do,” Vorhulst insisted. “So does Lunar Development. But that’s not the star turn. What would you say to a contest that hasn’t been possible on Earth? Like a race between humans in muscle-powered flight?”
If he expected Ranjit to answer, he was disappointed. There was a crash of dishes as Natasha jumped to her feet. “I would say I’m ready!” she cried. “I want to go! And, you’ll see, I’ll win!”
32
NATASHA’S GOLD
She did go there, too.
Not immediately, of course. A lot had to be done before that first-ever lunar Olympics could be held—a lot done to the moon to make it possible, for example, and a quite large lot that had to be done to the Skyhook to at least make it possible to carry passengers with a reasonable hope that they would get there alive. Now that the briefing texts had become more i
nformative, Ranjit devoured them as soon as they arrived, all the space-cadet fever that Joris Vorhulst had awakened in him flashing back.
Fortunately for Ranjit’s peace of mind the world seemed to have taken a turn for the better. The second dose of Silent Thunder had restrained some of the unruliest of the world’s leaders. His seminars kept going well enough to keep Dr. Davoodbhoy pleased, and his little family continued to be an unfailing delight.
Especially Natasha. The prospect of college looming just a few years before her was no problem, but there was also the lunar Olympics Dr. Vorhulst had promised. Training for that was not easy. It made the athletes’ training for every other Olympics look like ten minutes of morning jumping jacks to keep the love handles away.
Of course, Natasha was not the only one training for that unprecedented match. All over the world young athletes were wondering if they could get themselves fit enough for the flying events. Since the task of training would have to be accomplished within the tyranny of Earth’s uncompromising 1-G gravity, a good deal of ingenuity was going to be required.
There were two lines of approach to the problem of muscle-powered flight. The “balloonatics” believed in employing gas bags of various shapes, so that the athlete was supported in flight, using all his muscle power to crank a propeller without the need of expending any effort simply to stay aloft. The sky-bikers, on the other hand, preferred to do everything by their muscles alone. For them sporting goods manufacturers had rapidly invented a whole array of propeller-driven devices. Thanks to carbon-60 nanotubes, the same molecules that made the Skyhook a working means of transportation instead of an idle dream, these devices were so light that even on Earth they could be lifted with one hand—on the moon, with a single finger!
What none of these ambitious athletes had was a true one-sixth gravity practice arena. They had to do the best they could, usually by using equipment counterweighted to give the equivalent of lunar gravity. All of which meant that it was not only ingenuity that was called for. Also required was quite a lot of money.
That would have exceeded the purchasing capacity of a college professor by a considerable margin, but for those purposes, Natasha’s needs got considerable support from Sri Lankans in high places. Even those who had no particular interest in sporting events enjoyed calling attention to the fact that Sri Lanka had become the world’s doorway to space. So the money was pledged, and a great lunar-gravity gym was built on the outskirts of Colombo. There Natasha practiced sky-biking to her heart’s content.
The gym was only a ten-minute drive from their home, and so Natasha’s family were often present as spectators. Sometimes more than spectators; Robert loved watching his big sister pump her way across the “sky” of the gym—loved even more when at last there was a little bit of open time on the machines. Then Robert, too, got his chance to fly.
Of course it was not only Natasha who was given the use of the lowgrav gym. Hopeful candidates from all over the island begged for the chance to try their own skills on the machines, and more than thirty of them won the opportunity. But it was Natasha Subramanian who consistently outperformed every challenger.
And, on the day when the Sri Lankan team at last assembled at the Skyhook terminal to be elevated to their first experience of space, it was Natasha who carried the island’s hope of victory.
When Myra got a look at the prices the tour companies were advertising for the lunar Olympics, she gasped. “Oh, Ranjit,” she moaned, one hand pressed to her heart. “We can’t let Tashy fly that race without us there, but how can we go?”
Ranjit, who had been expecting no less, was quick to reassure her. Families of contestants received a substantial discount. So did members of the advisory board, himself included, and when you put the two discounts together, the cost of the tickets was no more than outrageous.
Not impossible, though. Accordingly, Myra, Ranjit, and young Robert presented themselves at the terminal. Like everybody else in the world who owned a telescreen—which, to a close approximation, was pretty much everybody in the world—they had seen the rapturous news stories that had accompanied the Skyhook’s evolution to passenger-carrying. They knew how the passenger capsules worked, and what it would feel like to be borne skyward at a steady rate of meters per second.
What they had not entirely appreciated, though, was quite how many seconds, even at that speed, it was going to take to get from Sri Lanka to the Sinus Iridium. This was not a weekend trip.
In the first half dozen days they had got only as far as the lower Van Allen belt, when the Subramanians—along with other families aboard, namely, the Kais, the Kosbas, and the unpronounceably named Norwegians—had to hustle into shelter against the murderous Van Allen radiation. The shelter consisted of the triple-walled sleep-and-sanitation chambers of the capsule. Those contained the toilets, the laughably named “baths,” and twenty—count ’em, twenty—extraordinarily narrow bunks arrayed in ranks of five. When you had to head for the shelter, what you brought with you was the skimpy Skyhook special garments you were wearing (nearly weightless, to save on load, and as close to unsoilable as fabric technology could make them, since there was no hope of laundry), your medications, if any, and yourself. You could bring nothing else. Least of all, modesty.
Robert didn’t care for the shelter. He cried. So did the Kai grandson. Ranjit didn’t much care for it, either. When he was in the shelter, he yearned for the greater (though minimal) freedom of the unsheltered capsule, with its dark corners and its exercise elastics and its windows—long, narrow, and thick ones, but still rewardingly transparent. And, most of all, he yearned for their regular bunks that had their own lights and their own screens and almost as much space to turn around in as an average coffin. Enough, indeed, to allow for having company in them now and then, provided you were on extremely intimate terms with the company.
That first sentence to shelter was only for four days. Then they were in clear space again…for another nine days, until the warning squeals went off once more and it was time to seek shelter from the upper Van Allen.
Space travel had become possible for almost anyone. It certainly had not become easy, though. Or, come to that, particularly pleasant.
A funny thing happened as they came out of the upper Van Allen. Robert had made a dash for his favorite spot, the two-meter-long ribbon of thick plastic that was their main window to the universe outside. Myra was already climbing into the exercise straps and Ranjit was considering heading for his personal bunk and some untroubled sleep, when Robert came bouncing back to them, shrieking in excitement. Excited Robert was even harder to understand than the relaxed one. All either Myra or Ranjit could make out was the one word “fish.” Robert could not, or would not, do much in the way of clarifying, and there was no Natasha on hand to translate. What there was was the three-year-old girl who had come with one of the other families in their capsule. She listened silently to their talk for a moment and then, still silent, took Robert away to learn how to do what Myra recognized as tai chi.
That was little Luo, daughter of the couple from Taipei, who were one fragment of their fellow passengers in the capsule. There were six of the Kais in all, including the elderly mothers of both Mr. and Mrs. Kai, who were in the hotel business. This had made them filthy rich, as they needed to be to afford being among the first of the actual tourists the Olympics people were counting on. So were the family from South Korea, so also the young couple from Kazakhstan. The Norwegians weren’t, particularly, but they were the parents and siblings of one of their nation’s broad jumpers and thus were entitled to the discounted fare.
What was wrong with the seventeen other human beings who shared their capsule was that not one of them spoke English, much less either Tamil or Sinhalese. The younger Mrs. Kai was fluent in French, so Myra had someone to talk to. The others talked to each other in Russian, Chinese, and what Ranjit thought was probably German, none of which were of much use to him.
Not at first, anyway. But what they had a l
ot of was time. Weeks to the midpoint, weeks more to the far end, where their capsule was whipped off on its lunar trajectory, and then a day or two more until their landing at Sinus Iridium.
It was during that last lap when the Subramanians were never more than a few steps from the news screens, because that was when the eliminations were taking place on the moon. The final race would be mano a mano, just one winged flyer against one balloonist. Seven wingers had made the trip to take part in the trials…and as the Subramanians were coming up on the end of their last flight, luna itself hanging gigantic out their windows, they heard their daughter announced as the winner of the trials.
By then all of the adults had become capable of speaking at least a few words each of all their home languages, and they used them to congratulate the Subramanians.
Natasha met her family at the elevator from the surface to Olympic Village, talkative, happy, and, Ranjit was a bit surprised to find, accompanied by a tall coffee-colored young man from Brazil. Both wore the minimal garments that everyone wore in an environment that never altered much from 23°C. “This is Ron,” she told her parents. “That’s short for Ronaldinho. He’s hundred meter dash.”
It wasn’t until Ranjit made the experiment of trying to see his daughter through the eyes of Ronaldinho from Brazil that he really noticed how much a fifteen-year-old girl could resemble an attractive adult woman. To his surprise, Myra did not seem perturbed. She shook this Ronaldinho’s hand with apparently genuine warmth, while young Robert took notice of the runner only to shove him out of the way as, roaring, he threw himself into the arms of his big sister.
After covering the top of Robert’s head with kisses, Natasha said something in Ron’s ear; he nodded, said to her parents, “It is a pleasing to meet you,” and disappeared, loping in the slow-motion stretched-out walk that the lunar gravity encouraged.