The Fountains of Paradise

Time to go inside – his air must be getting low and there was nothing more to see. That was a disappointing irony, considering the spectacular view one would normally have here, by day or by night. Now, however, the planet below and the heavens above were both banished by the blinding glare from Sri Kanda; he was floating in a tiny universe of light, surrounded by utter darkness on every side. It was almost impossible to believe that he was in space, if only because of his sense of weight. He felt as secure as if he were standing on the mountain itself, instead of six hundred kilometres above it. That was a thought to savour, and to carry back to earth.

He patted the smooth, unyielding surface of the Tower, more enormous in comparison to him than an elephant to an amoeba. But no amoeba could ever conceive of an elephant – still less create one.

"See you on earth in a year's time," Morgan whispered, and slowly closed the airlock door behind him.

57. The Last Dawn

Morgan was back in the Basement for only five minutes; this was no time for social amenities, and he did not wish to consume any of the precious oxygen he had brought here with such difficulty. He shook hands all round, and scrambled back into Spider.

It was good to breathe again without a mask – better still to know that his mission had been a complete success, and that in less than three hours he would be safely back on Earth. Yet, after all the effort that had gone into reaching the Tower, he was reluctant to cast off again, and to surrender once more to the pull of gravity – even though it was now taking him home. But presently he released the docking latches and started to fall downwards, becoming weightless for several seconds.

When the speed indicator reached three hundred klicks, the automatic braking system came on and weight returned. The brutally depleted battery would be recharging now, but it must have been damaged beyond repair and would have to be taken out of service.

There was an ominous parallel here: Morgan could not help thinking of his own overstrained body, but a stubborn pride still kept him from asking for a doctor on stand-by. He had made a little bet with himself; he would do so only if CORA spoke again.

She was silent now, as he dropped swiftly through the night. Morgan felt totally relaxed, and left Spider to look after itself while he admired the heavens. Few spacecraft provided so panoramic a view, and not many men could ever have seen the stars under such superb conditions. The aurora had vanished completely, the searchlight had been extinguished, and there was nothing left to challenge the constellations.

Except, of course, the stars that man himself had made. Almost directly overhead was the dazzling beacon of Ashoka, poised forever above Hindustan – and only a few hundred kilometres from the Tower complex. Halfway down in the east was Confucius, much lower still Kamehameha, while high up from the west shone Kinte and Imhotep. These were merely the brightest signposts along the equator; there were literally scores of others, all of them far more brilliant than Sirius. How astonished one of the old astronomers would have been to see this necklace around the sky; and how bewildered he would have become when, after an hour or so's observation, he discovered that they were quite immobile – neither rising nor setting while the familiar stars drifted past in their ancient courses.

As he stared at the diamond necklace stretched across the sky, Morgan's sleepy mind slowly transformed it into something far more impressive. With only a slight effort of the imagination, those man-made stars became the lights of a titanic bridge.

He drifted into still wilder fantasies. What was the name of the bridge into Valhalla, across which the heroes of the Norse legends passed from this world to the next? He could not remember, but it was a glorious dream. And had other creatures, long before Man, tried in vain to span the skies of their own worlds? He thought of the splendid rings encircling Saturn, the ghostly arches of Uranus and Neptune. Although he knew perfectly well that none of these worlds had ever felt the touch of life, it amused him to think that here were the shattered fragments of bridges that had failed.

He wanted to sleep but, against his will, imagination had seized upon the idea. Like a dog that had just discovered a new bone, it would not let go. The concept was not absurd; it was not even original. Many of the synchronous stations were already kilometres in extent, or linked by cables which stretched along appreciable fractions of their orbit. To join them together, thus forming a ring completely around the world, would be an engineering task much simpler than the building of the Tower, and involving much less material.