The Fountains of Paradise

The illusion lasted only for seconds; then the momentary unstable balance between magnetic fields and incoming electric clouds was destroyed. But for that brief instant Morgan could truly believe that he was ascending out of a chasm that would dwarf even Valles Marineris – the Grand Canyon of Mars. Then the shining cliffs, at least a hundred kilometres high, became translucent and were pierced by stars. He could see them for what they really were – mere phantoms of fluorescence.

And now, like an airplane breaking through a ceiling of low-lying clouds, Spider was climbing above the display. Morgan was emerging from a fiery mist, twisting and turning beneath him. Many years ago he had been aboard a tourist liner cruising through the tropical night, and he remembered how he had joined the other passengers on the stern, entranced by the beauty and wonder of the bioluminescent wake. Some of the greens and blues flickering below him now matched the plankton-generated colours he had seen then, and he could easily imagine that he was again watching the byproducts of life – the play of giant, invisible beasts, denizens of the upper atmosphere…

He had almost forgotten his mission, and it was a distinct shock when he was recalled to duty.

"How's power holding up?" asked Kingsley "You've only another twenty minutes on that battery."

Morgan glanced at his instrument panel. "It's dropped to ninety-five percent – but my rate of climb has increased by five percent. I'm doing 220 klicks."

"That's about right, Spider's feeling the lower gravity – it's already down by ten percent at your altitude."

That was not enough to be noticeable, particularly if one was strapped in a seat and wearing several kilos of spacesuit. Yet Morgan felt positively buoyant, and he wondered if he was getting too much oxygen.

No, the flow-rate was normal. It must be the sheer exhilaration produced by that marvellous spectacle beneath him – though it was diminishing now, drawing back to north and south, as if retreating to its polar strongholds. That, and the satisfaction of a task well begun, using a technology that no man had ever before tested to such limits.

This explanation was perfectly reasonable, but he was not satisfied with it. It did not wholly account for his sense of happiness – even of joy. Warren Kingsley, who was fond of diving, had often told him that he felt such an emotion in the weightless environment of the sea. Morgan had never shared it, but now he knew what it must be like. He seemed to have left all his cares down there on the planet hidden below the fading loops and traceries of the aurora.

The stars were coming back into their own, no longer challenged by the eerie intruder from the poles. Morgan began to search the zenith, not with any high expectations, wondering if the Tower was yet in sight. But he could make out only the first few metres, still lit by the faint auroral glow, of the narrow ribbon up which Spider was swiftly and smoothly climbing. That thin band upon which his own life – and seven others' – now depended was so uniform and featureless that it gave no hint of the capsule's speed; Morgan found it difficult to believe that it was flashing through the drive mechanism at more than two hundred kilometres an hour. And, with that thought, he was suddenly back in his childhood, and knew the source of his contentment.

He had quickly recovered from the loss of that first kite, and had graduated to larger and more elaborate models. Then, just before he had discovered Meccano and abandoned kites forever, he had experimented briefly with toy parachutes. Morgan liked to think that he had invented the idea himself, though he might well have come across it somewhere in his reading or viewing. The technique was so simple that generations of boys must have rediscovered it.

First he had whittled a thin strip of wood about five centimetres long, and fastened a couple of paper-clips on to it. Then he had hooked these around the kite-string, so that the little device could slide easily up and down. Next he had made a handkerchief-sized parachute of rice paper, with silk strings; a small square of cardboard served as payload. When he had fastened that square to the wooden strip by a rubber band – not too firmly – he was in business.

Blown by the wind, the little parachute would go sailing up the string, climbing the graceful catenary to the kite. Then Morgan would give a sharp tug, and the cardboard weight would slip out of the rubber band. The parachute would float away into the sky, while the wood-and-wire rider came swiftly back to his hand, in readiness for the next launch.