Starquake.pdf

that held it up over the East Pole mountains. As he watched, a glowing dot rose from the platform below
him. It started to drift off to the west, but thrusters brought it back under the space station. The speck
grew larger, turned into a Web Construction shuttlecraft, and settled on the launch deck. Cliff-Web
recognized the pilot as Heavy-Egg, one of the shift supervisors for the Topside Platform crew. With the
two stations this close together, it didn't require a trained space pilot to move from one to the other. Just
another example of how the Space Fountain was going to revolutionize space travel on Egg.
Cliff-Web moved along the curved ramp that allowed his body to transition from the gravity field of the
black hole in the center of the space station to the field of the tiny black hole in the center of the
four-cheela shuttiecraft.
"How is the job going, Heavy-Egg?" Cliff-Web asked.
"Like a greased Swift, Boss," Heavy-Egg replied, lifting the shuttlecraft vertically out of its dimple in the
launch ramp area. "We're way ahead of schedule. We stopped 100 meters short of top-out three turns
ago. I've got the crew making Topside Platform look decent for the topout ceremony. The Chief En-
gineer says there's going to be a bunch of big badges from Bright's Heaven and the Space Force coming
for it."
Cliff-Web was not looking forward to another formal reception, especially one he would be paying for;
but it was all part of doing business. They berthed in a hemispherical cradle near the middle of a
50-millimeter flat disk covered with busy workers engaged in the long task of expanding the disk into a
large, 200-millimeter diameter platform that would have low walls to divide the deck into offices and
compounds for the operations crew, and shops and eating places for the passengers and tourists. This
was the top of the three decks in Topside Platform where the passengers and cargo would be transferred
from the Fountain to various space stations and spacecraft and back again.
Cliff-Web and Heavy-Egg glided off the spherical shuttlecraft onto the flat deck.
"It sure feels good being on a flat surface again after all that time in space on curved decks," Cliff-Web
remarked.
"I know what you mean," Heavy-Egg agreed. "I never did trust them black holes. I like to be under Egg
gravity, even if it is kind of weak."
"During top-out just make sure you stop your crew after 100 meters," said Cliff-Web. "The gravity from
Egg will still be strong enough to keep us together. But if you go 300 meters more, the gravity will drop
to zero...."
"Andwhooshl We get as big as humans."
"Become a cloud of plasma, is more like it," said Cliff-Web. "Things are progressing well here on
Topside, let's take the elevators to the middle deck."
They went to a special freight elevator reserved for the operations personnel. The tread pad in front of
the elevator door recognized Heavy-Egg's tread and let them board. They stopped at the middle deck
and moved off into a cavernous room. The deck beneath their tread vibrated with energy. The bottom of
the deck above was not cooled to simulate sky, but was only covered with silver paint. It helped some,
but even though he was an experienced engineer, having something overhead still bothered Cliff-Web.