Jumping off the Planet

CHANGE OF PLANS

No, we weren't.

At least, not right away.

"What's the matter, Doug?"

"Mom said she was going to call the police." Weird looked genuinely worried.

Dad nodded. "We're seventy-two hundred kilometers away ... and sixteen klicks up."

"She could phone someone," I suggested.

"She could," Dad agreed. "But it's a question of jurisdiction. She'd have to get the local authorities to agree to detain us. And that would require a judge's order and an international warrant. And that would require—" He looked at his watch and thought for a second. "It won't happen this late on a Saturday. Tell you what, though. Before we start looking around the station, let's check our reservations"—Dad led us over to a customer service desk; the woman who was working there had almost no hair at all—"just in case that storm screws things up."

Dad shouldn't have said that. Stinky looked worried. "Are we going to feel the storm up here, Daddy?"

Before Dad or Weird could answer, the hairless woman said, "Nothing to worry about, young man. The orbital elevator was originally designed to withstand wind forces of more than four hundred and fifty kilometers per hour. Since then, its strength has been upgraded to five hundred and fifty."

"Yes, but what are we going to feel?" I asked.

The woman was annoyingly cheerful. She pointed. "Over there by the information center, there's an educational display that will show you exactly what will happen the entire length of the cable. You'll see these big leisurely waves that rise gently up the Line. They're hundreds of kilometers long. We'll get some rocking up here, but the waves will come in such long slow cycles that you won't be able to feel them. If you feel anything at all, it'll be like being on a very large boat on a very gentle ocean. We had a storm four years ago as big as this and it wasn't any problem."

"So there's no danger—?" Dad asked.

"None at all. Only a little inconvenience. But just for safety's sake, everybody is locking down all up and down the Line. It's a standard procedure. Most of the platform towns are already secured. Terminus might take a beating, they did last time, but nothing that couldn't be set right in a few weeks of regular repair duty."

"Will they still be sending up elevators?"

"Only cargo and supply pods. No passengers. It's too uncomfortable. Not the ride, the view. And it takes too long to get above the worst of it. They'll probably be sending up some scientific teams in one of the maintenance pods to look at the inside of the storm, they usually do, and of course the cable engineers like to look at the situation first-hand, but no—we won't be sending up any passengers."

"We were supposed to catch the 2:15 up to Geostationary—" I started to ask.

"Mm," she said, and touched her ear to listen to her communication channel. "Let me check on that for you." She made a face as she listened. "It's likely to be cancelled. Or they might send it up empty. But they're getting some pretty high winds already, so they're more likely to send up a water-pod in that time-slot. Let's see if we can get you onto another car instead." She turned to the workstation at her desk. There was a big vertical display behind her, showing the progress of all of the cars between Terminus and One-Hour. Already the cars lined up at Terminus were colored blue for water-pods instead of pink for passengers.

"The 12:15 will be here in forty-five minutes," she said. "It looks like a full load. 12:30 is full too. A lot of people were trying to get out before the storm hit. They shouldn't have waited so long. All right, let me see if I can do anything earlier. Hm, I can put you on standby for the 12:00, that'll start loading in fifteen minutes. Let me do that right now, but don't get your hopes up ... and then let's see what else we have. You were lucky you came up when you did. The last car out will probably be the 12:30; it's just launching. I'll try and grab you space on the 12:45 or the 1:00, in case they get out, but don't hold your breath. It looks like they're locking down early. There's no danger, but they don't like to scare the passengers." She frowned.

"Is there anything sooner?" Dad asked. "Is there anything open on the car loading now?"

"I don't know. Wait a minute—" She studied her screens, biting her lower lip thoughtfully. "How fast can you run?"

"Huh?"

She picked up her phone. "I've got a cabin open on the 11:00. A no-show. I guess they'll forfeit their deposit. The car is already loading. It's a first class booking, but we'll upgrade you. We don't like sending them up empty—" She explained. "You've got ten minutes left before they seal it for launch. Down this corridor, the gate is at the end. I'll call ahead. They'll be expecting you. Go now! You should be able to make it."

We ran.

It wasn't that far, but halfway there Stinky suddenly started crying and screaming, "Aren't we gonna see One-Hour? You promised! You said we were gonna see One-Hour! I don't wanna go up in anymore elevators! Daddy, you promised! I wanna go on the rides!" Weird tried to shush him, but Stinky was on reverse—the more you shushed him, the louder he got. Then he went limp, refusing to move at all. I'd have walloped him, but then Weird would have walloped me and Dad would have had to break us up and we would have missed the elevator, so I grabbed Stinky's other arm, and Weird and I carried him along, him screaming bloody murder all the time, while Dad ran ahead, shouting and waving our boarding cards.

The elevators up to Geostationary run every fifteen minutes. As each one arrives, it slides off the track and into a loading bay. It has a one-hour layover, during which time it's serviced and loaded for the rest of its journey up to Geostationary. Fifteen minutes before launch, it's sealed and weighed and checked for hull integrity again—same like at Terminus. If it doesn't get triple green lights, a standby pod goes up instead; then depending on the seriousness of the problem, it either has to wait until the slack time at the end of the shift, or every other pod on the Line gets delayed fifteen minutes.

We made it—in fact, we made it with five minutes to spare, but Stinky was howling like a banshee, and if there had been an open balcony—not likely at this height—Weird and I would have been happy to toss him over the edge. Well, I would have, but I suspected Weird was starting to think like a grownup and would have probably hesitated on the third swing over the railing.

Anyway, we made it—almost—except right next to the boarding ramp Stinky broke free of both Weird and me and went running back down the ramp, his monkey bouncing along behind him. "Run away, Toto!" He shouted. "Run away!" Weird threw himself after Stinky, catching him in a flying tackle, but the monkey kept going. Of course. Stinky had given it orders. I went chasing after it, careening around people and robots, while behind me Stinky crowed, "He got away! He got away!" I don't know how Stinky had programmed the little monster, but I couldn't get near it—

I stopped where I was, gasping for breath, and looked back to Dad. He pointed and gestured. "Get that damn thing!" I couldn't believe it. I chased the monkey around and around the souvenir booths and the newsstand and the little pizza kiosk, but I couldn't get near it—and the monkey started singing and whistling like a calliope. Only after a moment did I recognize the song and realized that everybody who was watching was laughing like crazy. Pop Goes The Weasel. "All around the cobbler's bench, the monkey chased the weasel ... "

"Three minutes, Chigger!"

The hell with it. It was Stinky's monkey, not mine. I stopped chasing, took three deep breaths, and then started loping back toward the boarding ramp. If Stinky started screaming about his monkey, it was his own damned fault. And sure enough: "Where's my monkey? I want my monkey—"

"Go get it yourself," I yelled at him. So of course he did. That is, he tried to, but Weird grabbed him in mid-leap and pulled him backward off his feet. He screamed in rage, as loud as he could, and people all over the lobby turned to stare. Then Dad demanded as I came running up to the door, "Where's the goddamned monkey?" And I said, "Screw the goddamned monkey! Stinky programmed it to run away. You want it? You go get it."

For a moment, Dad looked like he was going to hit me—

"Go ahead!" I shouted. "Prove Mom right!"

He put his hand down, glaring at me.

"It's not my fault, Dad. He's a goddamned spoiled brat and you shouldn't have bought him the goddamned monkey in the first place. And now that it ran away, the hell with it—he's had his three hundred dollars worth of fun. Let it go for all I care. Isn't it about time he learned about consequences? I never got a goddamned programmable monkey—" I pushed past Dad into the elevator.

Dad looked like he wanted to kill something, but he knew I was right. He also looked like he wanted to go after the monkey, but the attendant said, "I'm sorry, sir. We're closing the door in thirty seconds. You won't have time." So Dad and Weird and screaming-Stinky came grumbling in after me. Dad looked apoplectic. And justifiably so. But I'd just about had it with Stinky shrieking and Stinky running away and me always being expected to chase after him and drag him back. Dad was treating me like a full-time baby-sitter, and instead of paying me, he bawled me out whenever anything went wrong. Well, the hell with that!

And then, just as the triple doors started sliding shut, the damned monkey came hurtling through it like a hairy torpedo. The launch attendant—he was another guy with no hair—hit his button and the doors bounced back open; he gave us a dirty look as the monkey leapt over a couch and launched itself into Stinky's arms. I ignored him. Dad had told us they always tried to close the doors a few minutes early to give themselves a margin of error for launch checks. Meanwhile, the monkey was clinging desperately to Stinky, screaming, "Bobby, no run ray! No run ray!" Right then, I promised myself that as soon as I found a screwdriver, I would dismantle the damn thing, but Weird spoke up first. "After he goes to sleep, I'll install override commands, Dad. This won't happen again."

Dad didn't answer. I turned around to look, and he was leaning up against the back of a chair, just breathing hard and looking so pale I thought he was having a heart attack or something.

Anyway, we were aboard.