Seveneves - Страница 113

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Knots in the tapestry of sound told her of other solid objects above and below, left and right. She was able to pick them out visually as the setting sun lit up their fuselages and wingtips against the deep purple of the sky.

Higher yet — unfathomably far above, and yet only in “low” Earth orbit — were larger structures, moving more slowly, like the minute hands of great clocks. Linear constellations with fatter, brighter lights on their ends. One of them was sweeping across the sky directly south of her, and she knew she was already too late to catch it. But looking off to the west she saw another approaching, like a giant leg striding across the sky, its foot swinging downward, not yet planted. She didn’t even need to check the params to know that this was the hanger for her. But she ran the calculation anyway, partly to confirm her guess and partly as a courtesy to other aircraft in this crowded space that might be aiming for the same one.

Darkness fell before she reached it. The hanger — it was a pun on “hangar,” a term from Old Earth aviation — was a big hollow pod hanging on the end of a tether that, just now, extended far up into space. At its opposite end, thousands of kilometers above, was another hanger just like it, serving as a counterweight. The two hangers formed a bolo, rotating around each other to keep the tether stretched tight between them. The bolo orbited the Earth just like any other satellite, the difference being that the height of that orbit, and the length of the tether, had been tuned so that on every rotation — or, as it appeared from Kath Two’s point of view, each long stride across the heavens — the hanger on the low end would swing down into the uppermost reaches of the atmosphere and seem to hover, almost still, for a minute. Somewhat analogous to the way that a runner’s foot will remain planted on the ground, unmoving, for an instant during each stride, even though the runner is traveling swiftly. In any case it came low enough and went slowly enough that a glider, pumped to great velocity and brought high into the atmosphere by the power of the mountain wave, could catch it and match it.

Kath Two’s eyes and ears told her of other vehicles converging on the same target. A few minutes prior to rendezvous, it became obligatory to hand control of the craft over to a version of the ancient program Parambulator, which managed the final approach. Kath Two could have stuck the landing without assistance, had she been alone. But coordinating her approach with the other vehicles was the sort of task best left up to a five-thousand-year-old algorithm.

At the time she ceded control, the hanger still seemed impossibly far away, but over the next few minutes it loomed out of the sky like a slow-motion meteorite, studded with red running lights. It was shaped like a rugby ball, streamlined fore and aft, with stubby winglets that were finding traction in the thin air, adjusting their angles of attack to stabilize its flight. Kath Two and the other aircraft were converging on it from behind, overtaking it rapidly as it slowed almost to a stop.

Most of the hanger’s aft end was a broad aperture that now irised open to reveal a spacious deck, brightly illuminated, like a magic doorway hanging in the sky. In front of her she could see the lights of other vehicles sidling into the queue ahead of her.

The hanger’s bright orifice grew huge, like a chilly sun falling out of the sky. One by one the vehicles slipped into its lee and bounced and skidded to a stop on its deck. From a distance this appeared level. In fact it was angled slightly upward, so that the aircraft climbed a gentle ramp as they rolled into it. This helped them kill their excess velocity. Her glider bounced twice before the ramp took its weight. Then gravity — real and simulated — came down like a fat hand on her back, and she felt a rush of blood to the head as the glider slowed sharply.

Visually, she was at rest now. In truth, she was contained in a revolving object: one extremity of a bolo four thousand kilometers long. Even though its revolution, seen from a distance, had looked ponderous, the bolo as a whole was wheeling fast enough to produce two gees of simulated gravity. That plus the one gee of real gravity she was feeling from New Earth added up to a massive amount of down force pressing her into the water-filled ballast sacs that made up the glider’s belly.

A human-sized grabb, untroubled by the weight, dragged her glider off to the side, making way for other aircraft coming in for a landing behind. All told, the hanger collected eight aircraft during this pass. Besides Kath Two’s, two others were piloted by humans. Each was of a different design; both were powered. The other five were robot gliders, looking similar to Kath Two’s, but solid rather than inflatable. As soon as the last of these was stowed, the hanger’s tailgate constricted and closed behind them. Its stride complete, the hanger was already swinging back, gaining altitude “heel” first, rising back up toward space.

It was much too large a volume to be pressurized. What little air it had scooped up during its dip into the atmosphere rapidly leaked out. So Kath Two was effectively in outer space now. Knowing this, the fabric of the suit had contracted against her skin to supply the back pressure that was no longer provided by the atmosphere. It was porous, and so the only thing really between her skin and the void was Space Grease. The combined effects of that and the nat mesh fooled her skin and muscles into believing that they were under a nice thick blanket of air — the way humans were meant to live. The only part of the outfit that was pressurized like an old-fashioned space suit was the helmet.

Dangling above the middle of the hanger’s landing deck were four flivvers of various sizes and designs — the latest iterations of a vehicle type that had been in existence since before the onset of the Hard Rain. During the series of landings just completed, these had been kept up and out of the way. As soon as the door of the hanger closed, one of them — a medium-sized, four-passenger model — was lowered to the ramp by winches. It came to rest about ten meters away. Incongruously for a space vehicle, it seemed to have wheels. It was, in fact, resting on a low, wheeled sled that was designed to roll up and down the ramp.

Green lights beside the flivver’s airlock door told her that all was well on the other side. Kath Two had about ten minutes to reach it. That would be plenty of time if she didn’t pass out. She issued a command that allowed the glider’s body to deflate. She felt rather than heard the air escaping and the water draining. The soft top of the fuselage parted over her shoulders, back, butt, and thighs. Meanwhile she was wriggling her arms in from the insulated sleeves where they had been spread like a pair of wings. This was good exercise, given that they weighed three times as much as normal.

By the time that was all done, the glider was just a wrinkled cross of fabric, flat on the deck. Kath Two disconnected herself from its air scrubber and its urine collection system, then unplugged the power and data from her collar. She gathered her arms under her and began to belly-crawl toward the flivver, sliding one knee, then the other forward along the deck plates, like a lizard. A big siwi corkscrewed out and kept pace with her, tracking her vital signs, ready to supply extra air or other forms of assistance if needed. But Kath Two made adequate progress. She probably could have crawled on hands and knees, as one of the other human pilots was doing, but she saw no need.

Something strange caught her eye, and she went to the effort of rotating her head slightly just to verify it was real: the third pilot was actually walking upright. He was trudging along with short deliberate strides, carefully judging his balance and the loads he was placing on his joints, while somehow managing to keep enough blood in his brain to remain conscious.

Kath Two could never have stood up, let alone walked, under three gees. The same was true of most of her race. This man, however, was a Teklan. That was obvious from his size, as well as his coloration and the shape of his head, which were visible through his helmet. It was hinted at by his musculature and by the style of the suit he was wearing — heavier, partly armored, slung about with load-bearing straps made to support various burdens. His scabbards, holsters, and bandoliers were vacant. Even without any of those clues, however, she could have guessed his race from the fact that he had chosen to perform the feat of walking when he could have more safely and more easily crawled.

Had it not been for the racial bond that joined Moirans and Teklans, Kath Two might have rolled her eyes and muttered a joke about it. Teklans didn’t need blood in their brains to keep dutifully trudging forward. Something along those lines. But that kind of stereotyping could just as well have been turned back on her. The Teklan had piloted his vehicle into the hanger under power. The thing had engines. Why not use engines if you belonged to a civilization that knew how to make them? Kath Two, on the other hand, had reached the same destination in an unpowered glider, using skill and wit to draw energy from the atmosphere. She could have turned pilot’s duties over to an algorithm anytime she wanted. Instead, she had chosen to do most of it herself. In its own way, this was no less an act of pointless bravado than what the Teklan pilot was doing right now. She had been testing and sharpening a set of skills that was important to her. Mutatis mutandis, this Teklan was doing the same.

Kath Two got to the airlock with time to spare. Its floor was padded as a courtesy to people who, like her, were experiencing it through all the body’s boniest parts. She rolled heavily onto her back, slightly bumping the pilot who had reached it on hands and knees, and connected her air tube to a socket on the airlock wall. New air flooded her helmet. The Teklan entered and allowed himself to collapse onto a bench. The outer hatch closed and locked. The air pressure rose and the nat mesh reduced its fierce clutch on her body. It became no tighter than an athletic jersey as the pressure approached one standard habitat atmosphere — a thinnish concoction of gases similar to what humans of Old Earth had breathed in places like Aspen, Colorado.

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