Only half a G or so. And only for about ten seconds. After that, once we hit our top speed, well climb smoothly.

And whats the top speed?

Oh, two hundred klicks an hour. The ribbons actually rated for twice that. Ive disabled the speed inhibitor, if we need it.

Lets hope thats not necessary, Bisesa said dryly.

Myra reached over and slipped her hand into her mothers. Do you remember how we went to see the opening of the Aussievator? It was just after the sunstorm. I was eighteen, I think. That was where I got to know Eugene again. Now there are elevators all over the world.

It was quite a day. And so is this. Myra squeezed her hand. Glad I woke you up yet? Im reserving judgment. But her grin was fierce. Who could resist this? Alexei watched this interplay uncertainly.

They were rolling toward the ribbon. Over their heads, with a clumsy clunk, the pulley assembly unfolded itself. The ribbon really was narrow, no more than four or five centimeters across. It seemed impossible that it could support the weight of this car, let alone hundredsthousands?of others. But the spider trundled forward without hesitation.

The roller assembly tipped up, closed itself up around the ribbon, and, with a surge like a punch in the belly, the spider leapt skyward.

11: RIBBON.

In that first moment they left the spider farm behind, and were up and out in the bright sunlight. Glancing up, Bisesa saw the ribbon arrowing off into invisibility in a cloudless sky, with the bright pearls of other spiders going ahead of her, up into the unknown.

And when she looked down, peering around the obstruction of the solar panels, she saw the world falling away from her, and a tremendous view of the Cape opening up. She shielded her eyes from the sun. There were the gantries and blockhouses, and the straight-line roads traveled by generations of astronauts. A spaceplane of some kind rested on a runway, a black-and-white moth. And a bit further on a white needle stood tall beside a rusted gantry. It had to be a Saturn V, perhaps bearing a recreation of Apollo 10, the next precursor of the century-old Moon landings. But she had already risen higher than the Saturns needle nose, already higher than the astronauts climbing their gantries to their Moon ships.

The ascent was rapid, and just kept going. Soon she seemed able to see down the beach for kilometers. Canaveral looked more water than land, a skim of earth on the silver hide of the great ocean that opened up to the east. And she saw cars and trucks parked up on the roads and beside the beach, with tiny American flags fluttering from their aerials.

People still come to see, Alexei said, grinning. Quite a spectacle when the Saturns go up, Im told. But the Ladder is more impressive, in its way There was a jolt.

Sorry about that, Alexei said. End of the acceleration. He tapped his softscreen, and a simple display lit up, showing altitude, speed, air pressure, time. Three hundred meters high, speed maxed out, and from now on its a smooth ride all the way up.

The ground fell away, the historic clutter of Canaveral already diminishing to a map.

A minute into the journey, four kilometers high, and the world was starting to curve, the eastern ocean horizon an immense arc. And with a snap the big solar-cell wings folded down flat.

I dont get it, Bisesa said. This is for power? The solar cells seem to be on the underside. Thats the idea, Alexei said. The spiders power comes from ground-based lasers. You saw them, Mum, Myra said. You leave your power supply on the ground. Okay. So how long is the ride?

To beyond geosynch? All the way out to our drop-off point? Around twelve days, Alexei said.

Twelve days in this box? And Bisesa didnt like the sound of that phrase, drop-off.

This is a big structure, Mum, Myra said, but she was evidently a novice herself and didnt sound convinced.

A few more minutes and they were eight kilometers high, already higher than most aircraft would fly, and there was a clunk, the mildest of shudders. Over their heads the pulley mechanism alarmingly reconfigured itself, bringing a different set of wheels and tracks into play.

And then, suddenly, the ribbon itself changed, from a narrow strip the width of Bisesas hand to a sheet as wide as an opened-out newspaper. It was sharply curved, she saw. Their spider now clung to one outer edge of the ribbon.

Alexei said, This is the standard width of the ribbon, most of the way to orbit. Its kept narrower in the lower atmosphere because of the threat regime down there. Of course most of the bad weather is kept away nowadays. The ribbons worst problems actually come when they launch one of those Saturn s; the whole damn earth shakes, and I can tell you theres a lot of grumbling about that.

Ten kilometers, twelve, fifteen; the distance simply peeled away. Earths curve became more pronounced, and the sky above Bisesas head started to fade down to a deeper blue. She was above the bulk of the atmosphere already, she realized.

Another abrupt transition came when the ribbon turned gold: a plating to protect it from the corrosive effects of high-altitude atomic oxygen, Alexei said, ionized gas in Earths wispy upper air.

And still they rose and rose.

So lets get comfortable. Alexei ordered his suitcase to open. The pressure will drop to its spaceside mixlow pressure, a third atmospheric, but high on oxygen. In the meantime I brought oxygen masks. He showed them, and a rack of bottles. And its going to get cold. Your jumpsuits ought to keep you warm. I have heated blankets too. He rummaged about in his suitcase. Were going to be in here a while. I have fold-out camp beds and chairs. A bubble tent in case you dont want to sleep under the stars, so to speak. I have heaters for food and drink. Were going to have to recycle our water, Im afraid, but I have a good treatment system.

No spacesuits, Bisesa said. Shouldnt need them, unless anything goes wrong. And if it does?

He looked at her, as if assessing her nerve. Second worst case is, we get stuck on the cable. There are a whole slew of fail-safe mechanisms to save us until rescue comes, via another spider. Even if we were to lose pressure, we have survival bubbles. Hamster balls. Not comfortable, but practical.

Hamster balls? Bisesa hoped fervently that it wouldnt come to that. And the worst case?

We become detached from the ribbon altogether. You understand that a certain point on the elevator is in geosynchgeosynchronous orbit, turning around the Earth in exactly twenty-four hours. Thats the only altitude that is actually in orbit, strictly speaking. Below that point we are moving too slowly for orbit, and above too fast.

So if the spider were to lose its grip Below geosynch, we fall back to Earth. He rapped the transparent hull. Might not look like it, but it is designed to survive a low-speed reentry.

And after geosynch? Wed fall away from Earth, right? He winked. Actually thats the idea. Dont worry about it. He held up a flask. Coffee, anybody? Myra grunted. Maybe we ought to get your fancy toilet set up first. Good thinking. While they fiddled with the toilet, Bisesa gazed out of the window.

Riding silently into the sky, soon she was a hundred kilometers high, higher even than the old pioneering rocket planes, the X-15s, used to reach. The sky was already all but black above her, with a twinkling of stars right at the zenith, a point to which the ribbon, gold-bright in the sunlight, pointed like an arrow. Looking up that way she could see no sign of structures further up the ribbon, no sign of the counterweight mass that she knew had to be at the ribbons end, nothing but the shining beads of more spiders clambering up this thread to the sky. She suspected she still had not grasped the scale of the elevator, not remotely.

By an hour and a half in, the fast pace of the events of the early moments of the climb was over. Somewhere above three hundred kilometers high, she could already see the horizon all the way around the face of the Earth, with the ribbon arrowing straight down to the familiar shapes of the American continents far beneath her. Though the stars would wheel around her during this extraordinary ascent, she realized, the Earth would stay locked in place below. It was as if she had been transported to a medieval universe, the cosmos of Dante, with a fixed Earth surrounded by spinning stars.

When she stood she felt oddly light on her feet. One of Alexeis softscreen displays mapped the weakening of gravity as they clambered away from Earths huge mass. It was already down several percent on its sea-level value.

The silent, straight-line ascent, the receding Earth, the shaft of ribbon-light that guided her, the subtle reduction of weight: it was a magical experience, utterly disconcerting, like an ascent into heaven.

Two hours after launch the ribbon changed again, spreading out to a curved sheet twice the width of its standard sizestill only about two meters across, and gently curved.

Bisesa asked, Why the extra thickness?

Space debris, Alexei said. I mean, bits of old spacecraft. Lumps of frozen astronaut urine. That sort of stuff. Between five and seventeen hundred kilometers, were at the critical risk altitude for that. So we have a bit of extra width to cope with any impact.

And if we are hit by something Anything so big it would slice the ribbon right through is tracked, and we just move the whole shebang out of the way using the crawler on the ground. Anything smaller will puncture the ribbon, but its smart enough to mend itself. The only problem is if were unlucky enough to be hit by something small coming sideways in, across the face of the ribbon.

Which is why the ribbon is curved, Bisesa guessed.

Yes. So it cant be cut through. Dont worry about it.

Myra, peering up, said, I think I see another spider. On the other side of the ribbon from us. I thinkoh, wow.

The second spider came screaming down out of the sky, passing just half a meter away. They all flinched. Bisesa had a brief reminder of their huge speed.

A builder, Alexei said, a bit too quickly for his studied calm to be convincing. Traveling down the ribbon, weaving an extra couple of centimeters onto the edge.

Bisesa asked, Whats the substance of the ribbon?

Fullerenes. Carbon nanotubes. Little cylinders of carbon atoms, spun into a thread. Immensely strong. The whole ribbon is under tension; the Earths spin is trying to fling the counterweight away, like a kid swinging a rock on a rope. No conventional substance would be strong enough. So the spiders go up and down, weaving on extra strips, and binding it all with adhesive tape.

Mechanical spiders, endlessly weaving a web in the sky.

They rose largely in silence, for the others wouldnt talk.

Come on. Were off the Earth. Now you can tell me whats going on. Why am I here, Myra?

The others hesitated. Then Myra said, Mum, its difficult. For one thing the whole world is listening in.

The hull is smart. Alexei spun a finger. All round surveillance.

Oh.

And for another, Myra said, you already know.

Alexei said, Believe me, well have plenty of time to talk, Bisesa. Even when we get to the drop-off, its only the start of the journey.

A journey to where? No, dont answer that.

Myra said, I think youll be surprised by the answer, Mum.

Bisesa would have welcomed the chance to talk to Myra, not about high-security issues and the fate of the solar system, but simply of each other. Myra had told her hardly anything of her life since Bisesa had gone into the tank. But, it seemed, that wasnt going to happen. Myra seemed oddly inhibited. And now the presence of Alexei sharing this little capsule with them inhibited her even further.

Bisesa started to feel tired, her face and hands cold, her stomach warmed by coffee, her mind dulled by the relentless climb. She pulled on the hat and gloves she found in her pockets. She piled up blankets from the suitcase onto the floor, pulled one over herself, and lay down. There was no sound, no sense of motion; she might have been stationary, suspended above the slowly receding Earth. She gazed up at the ribbon, seeing how far she could follow its line.

There was another transition when the ribbon reverted from gold to its customary silver. And later the width narrowed. More than seventeen hundred kilometers high, eight hours since leaving Earth, they were higher than almost all mankinds satellites had ever flown. Bisesa was vaguely, peripherally aware of all this. Mostly she dozed.

She was woken with a jolt, a brief surge of acceleration that pressed her down into her blankets.

She sat up. Alexei and Myra sat on their fold-down seats. Myra was wide-eyed, but Alexei seemed composed. Alexeis softscreen on the wall flashed red.

They were thirteen hours into the journey, more than twenty-six hundred kilometers up. When Bisesa moved she felt as if she was going to float into the air. Gravity was down to about half sea level. Earth seemed trivial, a ball dangling at the end of a silver rope.

Other spiders flashed past them, overtaken by their own rapid climb.

We sped up, right? So whats wrong?

Were being pursued, Alexei said. We had to expect it. I mean, they know were in here.

Pursued? Bisesa had a nasty vision of a missile clambering up from a derelict Canaveral launch pad. But that made no sense. They wouldnt risk damaging their ribbon.

Youre right, Alexei said. The ribbon is a lot more precious than we are. Likewise they wont want to spoil the flow of spiders. They could do that, block us off. But there is cargo worth billions being carried up this line.

Then what?

They have super-spiders. Capable of greater speeds. It would take a few days, but the super-spider would catch us up.

Myra thought that over. How does it get past all the other spiders in the way?

The same way we do. The others just have to get out of the way. Were matching the super-spiders ascent rate, twice our nominal. In fact I slaved us to the super-spider, so well mirror its ascent. It cant possibly catch us. As soon as the ground authorities realize that, theyll give up.

Twice nominal. Is that safe?

These systems are human-rated; they have heavy safety margins built in. But he didnt sound terribly sure.

It only took a few minutes for the softscreen to chime and glow green. Alexei smiled. They got the message. We can slow down. Hold onto something.

Bisesa braced against a rail.

They decelerated for a disconcerting few seconds. Blankets floated up from the floor, and the chemical toilet whirred as suction pumps labored to keep from spilling the contents into the air. Myra looked queasy, and Bisesa felt her stomach turn over. They were all relieved when gravity was restored.

But the screen flashed red again. Uh oh, Alexei said.

Bisesa asked, What now?

He worked his softscreen. Were not climbing as we should.

Some fault with the spider?

Not that. They are reeling in the ribbon.

Reeling it in? Suddenly Bisesa saw the spider as a fish on the end of a monstrous anglers line.

Its kind of drastic, but it can be done. The ribbon is pretty fine stuff.

So what do we do?

You might want to close your eyes. And hold onto something again. He tapped his softscreen, and Bisesa had the impression that something detached itself from the hull.

She clamped her eyes shut.

There was a flash, visible even through her eyelids, and the cabin rocked subtly.

A bomb, Bisesa said. She felt almost disappointed. How crude. I think I expected better of you, Alexei.

It was just a warning shot, a micro fusion pulse. No harm done. But very visible from the ground.

Youre signaling your intent to blow up the ribbon if they dont leave us alone.

It wouldnt be difficult. Kind of hard to protect a hundred thousand kilometers of paper-thin ribbon against deliberate sabotage...

Bisesa asked, Wouldnt people get hurt?

Not in the way youre thinking, Mum, Myra said. Isolationist terrorists attacked Modimo a few years back.

Modimo?

Alexei said, The African Alliance elevator. Named for a Zimbabwean sky-god, I think. Nobody got hurt, and they wouldnt now. Im making an economic threat. But he glanced uncertainly at his softscreen.

Bisesa said sharply, And if they call your bluff? Will you go through with it?

Actually I dont think I would. But they cant afford to take the risk, can they?