SLINGSHOT, page 33
part #1 of The Starchild Saga Series
BAKER ISLAND
K
laus had his hands full as the rail continued its inexorable descent. Shortly before the descent commenced, he had de-energized the lift cable, using the boost cable to brake it. Then he de-energized the boost cable, transferring some of its energy back to the lift cable, so that over a couple of hours, the entire system came to a halt. Then his team disconnected the skytower cable bundle from the socket. In the meantime, the Sikorsky Skycrane got underway, and flew to a parking position, hovering as close as possible to the skytower. When the skytower cable bundle was fully disconnected from the socket, the Skycrane lowered a special harness that the crew attached to the end of the bundle. The Skycrane lifted the end of the bundle into the air, and as the rail high above descended, the Skycrane carried the bundle over to the barges while keeping the catenary twenty to thirty meters off the ground. The Skycrane pilot carried the end of the bundle past the barges and the breakwater for a full three barge lengths. Then he laid the catenary on one end of the linked barges, and flew back along the barges laying the cable along their length. As soon as he placed the end of the bundle on the third barge, he flew back to the socket to pick up another loop and carry it out to the barges…out and back, out and back—seventy-one kilometers’ worth.
Each section was heavy, so much so that the Skycrane could only rise to about fifty meters. The pilot’s job was to keep the bundle out of the dirt, and, if possible, out of the water as well. It was tricky, but Klaus had some control over the descent rate by slowing or speeding up the ribbon. Every couple of hours, the Skycrane needed refueling. Although the actual refueling took only fifteen minutes, the entire fueling operation was closer to thirty minutes. For this, Klaus had to halt the descent, but the tensioners were holding tight, and the ribbon remained stable during the stops.
During each refueling, the maintenance crew that arrived with the Skycrane ran a different diagnostic, ensuring nothing went wrong. Bobby Pfaff hung around the maintenance crew, soaking up every bit of knowledge he could. Klaus finally had to send him to his quarters for a sleep break. When Klaus told Alex about Bobby’s enthusiastic participation, Alex told him, “You need a sleep break yourself, Klaus. Take a couple of hours. I’ll spell you from here. If things get out of hand, I’ll stop the descent while we straighten it out.”
Reluctantly, Klaus agreed. Although he could have gone on a while longer, he knew that without sleep, he would not be at his peak. He officially turned things over to Alex and crashed on a cot in the back of the Jarvis Operations Center.
It seemed like no more than a few minutes when a team member shook him awake. “It’s been three hours, Sir. The Boss is calling.”
“Yeah, Alex, what is it?”
“I need you to spell me for a couple of hours,” Alex said, peering from the holodisplay with bleary eyes.
Klaus shifted half of the holodisplay covering the Control Center wall to Alex’s display. “I got it, Alex,” he said, sipping on a scalding cup of coffee somebody handed him. “Get some sleep, friend.” He surveyed the Baker display, noticing the storm picture at one end. It still was well to the east of Baker, but it was gaining momentum, and the winds were picking up.
BAKER ISLAND—CONTROL CENTER
T
hree hours later, Alex stumbled into the Baker Control Center. The ribbon was at twenty kilometers—eleven more to go. He checked the storm. It was definitely on a direct path toward Baker—twelve to eighteen hours away. That sucks! He thought. We need to attach the skytower right about then…shit!
“Klaus,” Alex said over their Link, “can you speed up the descent?”
“What’s up?” Klaus asked.
“I’m looking at that storm…”
“Yeah, me too,” Klaus said. “What’s the timeline?”
“Twelve to eighteen hours,” Alex told him.
“That’s not good.” Klaus paused, his face thoughtful. “We’re getting pretty good with the Sikorsky. We have refueling stops down to just under twenty minutes. I think I can give you four, maybe five hours.”
“If the storm stays on track, that just might be enough,” Alex said. “Let’s do it…and, thanks.”
Alex pondered the situation. Normally, equatorial storms started near the equator, moving west, and tracked off either to the north or south. Only rarely did they stay near the equator. But this one had formed west of Jarvis, and stayed right on track for Baker, growing as it traveled. It was now about 500 kilometers out, moving at about thirty kilometers per hour, and it packed winds of over sixty knots. Unless something changed, it would cross Baker in sixteen hours or so, with winds in the eighty-knot range. They would begin to feel the effects in about five hours.
The storm system was 150 kilometers across and three, maybe four kilometers high. It didn’t have a lot of structure, but the winds were anti-cyclonic, and it contained a poorly formed center about twenty kilometers across that was relatively calm. The Chinook could handle such weather, but Alex’s problem was that the action would be taking place five to six kilometers above the top of the storm, and the chopper would be hauling the pilot line up through the storm. Hovering at nine kilometers was virtually at the upper hover limit for a modern Chinook, stripped of everything but what was necessary for the job. In this case, however, the hookup would take place right in the middle of the high-level trade winds that blew a steady 60 to 80 knots east to west. This meant an easier hover resulting in greater flight time. Normally, a Chinook carried about six hours of fuel, but at nine kilometers altitude, engine efficiency dropped way off as fuel consumption skyrocketed. He figured they had a maximum of thirty minutes to hand off and secure the pilot line.
The storm appeared to be tracking directly over Baker, bringing the eye across the island, with a window of relative calm lasting about an hour. Logistically, it was easier to feed the pilot line from the Chinook than to haul it up from the ground. The Chinook carried a reel that held the entire nine kilometers of line that would unreel as the chopper ascended. The upper end of the pilot line was attached to a lightweight 300-meter line with a small chute at its end. The large reel was designed to detach a face and dump its entire contents into the air on order.
With about eight hours before he sent the Chinook into the sky, Alex ordered Klaus to take a four-hour sleep break. He assumed control of the Jarvis operation while Klaus rested, but a scant three hours later, Klaus reported back to duty, sipping from a steaming cup of coffee. When Alex raised an eyebrow, Klaus grinned. “Yep...one cream, two sugars…as always.” Then he added, “Get some rest yourself, Alex. We’ll both need it in the next few hours.”
Thankfully, Alex dropped to the cot behind him and was instantly asleep.
Minutes later, it seemed to Alex, Margo shook him awake. He could hear the wind howling outside and the rain drumming fiercely against the windows. She handed him a black coffee. “It’s stronger than usual,” she said. “You’re gonna need it.”
“Thanks, Doll. Is everything ready at your end?” He knew it was, but he asked the question anyway.
Margo nodded. “We even have boat crews standing by in case something happens to the Chinook,” she told him. “Bad break, this storm, but we’re as ready as can be.”
Alex looked at the storm display that now dominated his holodisplay. He checked the time. “It’s tracking true. We’ve got about an hour before we send up the Chinook. I’m going to check the setup personally.”
“Alex…No! The wind’s way too strong. You can’t do anything the guys haven’t already done. Please…”
Alex walked over to the outside door and cracked it open. A blast of wind and rain entered through the crack, and it took all his strength to shut the door again. He grinned at Margo. “I guess you’re right.” He shook water from his hair and face. “I guess I have to rely on the chopper crew.” He checked the time again—almost six AM. The sun was rising, but it was not apparent from Baker. Heavy rain clouds blotted it out completely. As the hour passed, however, the sky brightened and the winds lessened. Then the rain stopped and the winds died away.
“Get the chopper underway,” Alex ordered on All-Call. He stepped outside to watch under a mostly blue sky absolutely swarming with skreeghing birds. To the east, the ocean was open, filled with choppy waves. To the north, south, and west, however, walls of dark clouds blocked the view. The distinctive whine and characteristic syncopated woop-woop sound of the Chinook filled the air as the big bird rose into the morning sky, trailing the pilot line from its side door. Alex checked the time again as he watched it rapidly shrink with height until he could no longer see it.
“The Chinook will be there in twenty minutes,” Alex announced to Dybo and Chrietzberg, high above.
AMELIA EARHART SKYPORT
D
ybo and Chrietzberg had not slept the past few hours. There was not a lot to do, but they discovered to their considerable surprise that as the skyport lowered into the atmosphere, things got pretty noisy. Dybo had not given it much thought before, but on reflection, it seemed pretty obvious. Intense equatorial sunshine heated the surface air, causing it to rise. This rising air was replaced by air moving along the surface toward the equator. Because the Earth rotated toward the east, the air flowing toward the equator on the surface turned west, forming the trade winds. At about twelve kilometers or so, the rising air moved away from the equator, turning eastward due to the Earth’s rotation. It got pretty complicated after that, but it was pretty obvious that the skyport was being buffeted by some strong winds out of the west. Fortunately, the air was thin enough that the structure could withstand the generated forces. It was noisy as hell, though, as the wind vibrated structural elements in passing, creating a cacophony of sounds that sounded mostly like a symphony orchestra tuning up before a concert.
They were already suited up when Alex announced the departure of the Chinook. “Let’s go do this, cousin,” Dybo said, giving his friend a high five as they locked onto the capsule dock.
Dybo took the lead, ending up at the bottom of the ten-meter platform hanging from the terminus. Chrietzberg placed himself a couple meters above Dybo. They both clipped themselves to the framework and awaited the Chinook. The wind was easily 60-knots, perhaps a bit more. It buffeted them fiercely, pressing them into the framework. Dybo looked down at the storm. He could see the entire thing, and the clear water and sky beyond its limits. Directly below, the twenty-kilometer-wide ill-defined eye revealed a clear view of Baker, near its western edge. The rest of the storm was a roiling mass of surprisingly white clouds, illuminated by the rising sun. He strained his eyes and saw a glint directly over the island center.
“I see it, Critz,” Dybo said, pointing down.
“Where?”
“Right there.” Pointing.
“You’re blocking the view!”
Dybo was surprised at how rapidly the big helicopter took shape. In three minutes, he could clearly see the trailing pilot line with a huge catenary billowing to the east. The chopper pilot waved at him and carefully stationed the bird about 300-meters to the west with the open door facing the skyport. A suited figure in the door waved at them, and then began feeding the lightweight line out the door. Immediately the wind caught the chute as the cable paid out to its full length. The air-filled chute seemed to float about thirty meters down and some fifty meters to the east.
Dybo resisted the temptation to shout instructions to the pilot. The chute and the bottom of the platform carried precise locator beacons that the pilot used to manipulate the chute to Dybo. As Dybo watched, the chute began to inch its way west, until two minutes later, it was thirty meters directly below him. Dybo glanced over at the Chinook and saw that it was dangerously close to the downslope. Apparently, the pilot saw it as well, because the chute drifted east again a full fifty meters or so as the chopper moved east. Then the guy in the open door cranked the line back into the Chinook fifty meters, so the chute once again was directly below, while the Chinook was fifty meters further east. Then, ever so slowly, the pilot lifted the bird, bringing the chute closer and closer to Dybo. Dybo reached out, but missed it as a gust of wind moved it a meter down. The chute eased up again, and this time, Dybo grabbed it and hauled it to the platform. They had to be very careful, since any major shifting of the Chinook while the line was still connected could spell disaster.
Dybo passed the line around a pulley and up to Chrietzberg, who wrapped two turns around an electric winch. As Chrietzberg ran the winch, he let the wind in the chute pull the line out and away. The end of the pilot line attached to the lightweight line left the chopper door, and the heavier line dropped into a catenary as it traveled the distance. As the pilot line approached the platform, the Chinook began a very slow descent to give a more vertical aspect to the pilot line. The pilot line passed over the pulley and up and around the winch. Chrietzberg let it continue for another twenty meters, and then stopped the winch and cinched the cable, winding it around a cleat. He pulled the bitter end from the sky behind him and cut loose the lightweight line. The line disappeared immediately, flung away by the 60-knot wind.
While Dybo waited at the end of the platform with a sharp knife poised to slice through the Kevlar line should anything go wrong, Chrietzberg hauled the end of the pilot line up to the terminus, around the pulley, and over to the winch, where he took several wraps, and tied off the bitter end.
“Hey, AJ. I need you to take the pilot line off the winch and cleat. I’m ready up here.”
“Got it.” Dybo sheathed his knife and climbed to the winch. He took the line off the cleat and then slipped it off the winch. It pulled back with a snap. “Take up the slack, Critz.”
“I’m on it.”
As they accomplished this, the Chinook bay attendant, who had been monitoring their conversation, dropped the outer face of the reel, and the remaining pilot line tumbled into the wind, and was immediately carried away from the helicopter. Simultaneously, the Chinook dropped down and away, and headed back to Baker.
Hauling in the pilot line was not particularly difficult. They let the accumulating line trail in the wind. The only problem was that the task was slow. Their haul rate was about 2.5 meters per second, so they were at it for an hour, before the skytower cable finally hove into view, bringing with it a second pilot line. Attaching the skytower took an hour. The attachment held the weight of the entire skytower bundle—all eighty kilometers. In effect, when Dybo and Chrietzberg were done, it had become an integral part of the track itself. With that accomplished, they commenced hauling in the next pilot line with its deflector payload. An hour later, they began attaching the deflector to the terminus. Like the skytower cable, it became an integral part of the track.
The deflector arrived with a pilot line passed through it and leading back down to Baker. Once the deflector was securely attached, Baker commenced pulling the pilot line through the deflector. They did this at a much higher rate than Dybo and Chrietzberg were able to on the skyport. In less than a half-hour, the lift cable was in place. This signaled the commencement of the ascent back into space.
While Klaus’ linear drivers began to increase their load, running the ribbon ever faster, Dybo and Chrietzberg commenced disassembling the platform they had built only three days earlier. Since they didn’t want to drop the pieces, even though the chances of their striking anyone or anything were remote, the task went slowly. They removed a piece, hauled it into the skyport, removed another, and so on, until they finally reached the last few pieces directly beneath the terminus. Chrietzberg grabbed a stanchion, unhooked his safety line from the remaining platform, and attached it to a ring extending from the bottom of the skyport. Then Dybo grabbed the same stanchion with his left hand, and unhooked his safety line with his right.
At that moment, the entire skyport gave a mighty shake as a sudden gust of wind slammed into it. Dybo missed the ring with his safety line carabiner as his body swung away from the platform. “Help me, Critz!” Dybo shouted as he grabbed for a stanchion with his free hand, missing. The skyport shook again sharply as another gust passed. Dybo strained with every bit of strength he had to extend his hand to Chrietzberg, who reached out with both his hands, trying to catch Dybo.
“I’m losing my grip, Critz! I can’t hold on!”
Another shake, and Dybo lost his grip. “Ohmygod…Critz…I’m falling…”
Almost instantly, Dybo lost his feeling of weight. He turned to see the skyport disappear above him off to the west as he plummeted Earthward. Oddly enough, he did not have a sense of falling so much as a feeling of floating. He thought of the holocasts he had seen of skydivers doing all kinds of stunts in the air. I got nothing better to do, he thought as he twisted and turned in the air, trying to find a stable position. As he fell, the air around him thickened causing him to feel the increasing pressure of the air against his suit as it rushed up to meet him. The wind had carried him to the east, and the storm was directly below him, spread out in all directions. The roiling clouds did not form a smooth surface. Near the leading edge of the storm and again near the leading edge of the eye, massive thunderheads pushed their way to his present height, dwarfing him as he plummeted downward, arms and legs spread-eagled into the wind. He wrapped his hand around the manual chute release in case the automatics didn’t work. One moment he was mostly above the storm with thunderheads for company, the next, he had passed the edge of the eye and into the relatively clear center. His horizon became limited by walls of cloud in all directions, clouds that got darker and darker as he fell. The sky immediately above him remained blue, but the only thing below was black, wave-tossed water. He had no reference to determine wave height, but they looked big, and they were rushing up to meet him.
With a pop and a jerk, his chute opened and blossomed into a shaped canopy over his head. Weight returned, and with it a very real sense of hanging from a harness. And then he saw how close the waves were, and then his booted feet hit the water, and his chute automatically detached. He sank into the water so that it covered his helmet, and all he saw was green-blue water everywhere. He began to feel a bit of panic rising from his inner seat of consciousness, imagining himself continuing down to the seafloor, another five kilometers below. But shortly, his descent stopped, and he popped up out of the water to his chest, and remained there, half in and half out of the water. Struggling was useless, and there was no way he was going to remove his suit. He tilted himself back, and found that he could practically lie on the surface. He lay there, glad to be alive, not entirely sure how he got there, wondering what was next.
