The Fountains of Paradise

Like all great reporters, Maxine Duval was not emotionally detached from the events that she observed. She could give all points of view, neither distorting nor omitting any facts which she considered essential. Yet she made no attempt to conceal her own feelings, though she did not let them intrude. She admired Morgan enormously, with the envious awe of someone who lacked all real creative ability. Ever since the building of the Gibraltar Bridge she had waited to see what the engineer would do next; and she had not been disappointed. But though she wished Morgan luck, she did not really like him. In her opinion, the sheer drive and ruthlessness of his ambition made him both larger than life and less than human. She could not help contrasting him with his deputy, Warren Kingsley. Now there was a thoroughly nice, gentle person ("And a better engineer than I am," Morgan had once told her, more than half seriously). But no-one would ever hear of Warren; he would always be a dim and faithful satellite of his dazzling primary. As, indeed, he was perfectly content to be.

It was Warren who had patiently explained to her the surprisingly complex mechanics of the descent. At first sight, it appeared simple enough to drop something straight down to the equator from a satellite hovering motionless above it. But astrodynamics was full of paradoxes; if you tried to slow down, you moved faster. If you took the shortest route, you burned up the most fuel. If you aimed in one direction, you travelled in another… And that was merely allowing for gravitational fields. This time, the situation was much more complicated. No-one had ever before tried to steer a space-probe trailing forty thousand kilometres of wire. But the Ashoka programme had worked perfectly, all the way down to the edge of the atmosphere. In a few minutes the controller here on Sri Kanda would take over for the final descent. No wonder that Morgan looked tense.

"Van," said Maxine softly but firmly over the private circuit, "stop sucking your thumb. It makes you look like a baby."

Morgan registered indignation, then surprise – and finally relaxed with a slightly embarrassed laugh.

"Thanks for the warning," he said. "I'd hate to spoil my public image."

He looked with rueful amusement at the missing joint, wondering when the self-appointed wits would stop chortling: "Ha! The engineer hoist by his own petard!" After all the times he had cautioned others, he had grown careless and had managed to slash himself while demonstrating the properties of hyperfilament. There had been practically no pain, and surprisingly little inconvenience. One day he would do something about it; but he simply could not afford to spend a whole week hitched up to an organ regenerator, just for two centimetres of thumb.

"Altitude two five zero," said a calm, impersonal voice from the control hut. "Probe velocity one one six zero metres per second. Wire tension ninety percent nominal. Parachute deploys in two minutes."

After his momentary relaxation, Morgan was once again tense and alert – like a boxer, Maxine Duval could not help thinking, watching an unknown but dangerous opponent.

"What's the wind situation?" he snapped.

Another voice answered, this time far from impersonal.

"I can't believe this," it said in worried tones. "But Monsoon Control has just issued a gale warning."

"This is no time for jokes."

"They're not joking; I've just checked back."

"But they guaranteed no gusts above thirty kilometres an hour!"

"They've just raised that to sixty – correction, eighty. Something's gone badly wrong…"

"I'll say," Duval murmured to herself. Then she instructed her distant eyes and ears: "Fade into the woodwork – they won't want you around – but don't miss anything." Leaving her Rem to cope with these somewhat contradictory orders, she switched to her excellent information service. It took her less than thirty seconds to discover which meteorological station was responsible for the weather in the Taprobane area. And it was frustrating, but not surprising, to find that it was not accepting incoming calls from the general public.

Leaving her competent staff to break through that obstacle, she switched back to the mountain. And she was astonished to find how much, even in this short interval, conditions had worsened.

The sky had become darker; the microphones were picking up the faint, distant roar of the approaching gale. Maxine Duval had known such sudden changes of weather at sea, and more than once had taken advantage of them in her ocean racing. But this was unbelievably bad luck; she sympathised with Morgan, whose dreams and hopes might all be swept away by this unscheduled – this impossible – blast of air.

"Altitude two zero zero. Probe velocity one one five metres a second. Tension ninety-five percent nominal."