Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume18 Chapter 3 (section)

===Part 7===

The elevator car dropped and dropped until it finally came to a stop.

They were less than 2000m above the Turkana District of Africa. That was a significant altitude during a normal life, but it might as well have been right down on the ground for Quenser’s group. Even at that height, the cracked desert was the only thing visible as far as the eye could see.

This land had made Louisiana Honeysuckle who she was, but it was also the land destroyed by that genius girl who insisted she was saving the world.

They could not descend any further.

After removing their cumbersome spacesuits, they opened the thick door and immediately stepped out.

But they did not fall.

They were at the top of the “spear” that jutted up from the ground base in order to gather Mother Lady’s wires. The spear was hollow like macaroni and they were standing on its outer edge. The elevator car moved when exposed to microwaves and those were probably sent directly from within the tube when outside the range of the parabolic antenna, but they were not interested in that.

They had descended all this way without stopping again, so the falling World’s End was still a lot higher up. But they could still see its sinister light shining like a second sun in the sky. In a few more minutes, it would crash into the Turkana District desert as a single large mass.

“Princess!!”

“Yes, Quenser?”

“I want to know the falling Object’s exact course. Share it on my mobile device.”

“Understood.”

“Your anti-air radars can detect everything up there, right? Give me the location of any elevators cars left hanging on the wires.”

“?”

After confirming everyone had disembarked from the elevator car, Quenser taped a small device to its outer wall. It was the computer that had been attached to his spacesuit’s arm. He used its gyro sensor to get data on the wire’s vibration.

“There we go. I’ve got the entire wire’s normal mode frequency.”

“There are three cars left hanging on the wires,” reported the Princess. “Their altitudes are 40km, 38km, and 15km.”

“Focus on that last one!! If we’re doing this, it’s gotta be that one!!”

The space elevator had several wires running in parallel like on a guitar or violin. They were shaped like thin belts about 80cm wide and they were spread fairly far apart so they could handle several elevator cars the size of large buses. They were all gathered here at the top of the spear. The car they wanted was 13,000m above them, but the wire it was connected to was within reach.

Quenser pulled out his Hand Axe plastic explosive and stabbed in a pen-shaped electric fuse. He did not hesitate to attach it to the belt of carbon nanotube.

(I know the timing. 9, 8, 7, 6…)

“Stand back! I’m gonna detonate it!!”

He did so.

An ear-splitting roar burst out.

That military explosive could incapacitate a tank when used right, but it was not enough to snap the carbon nanotube wire.

Louisiana put her hands on her hips and looked up into the blue sky. What did the world look like through the round eyepieces of her gasmask?

“Was one blast enough?” she asked.

“You already know the answer, don’t you? Shaking it randomly would be meaningless. But if you know its normal mode frequency, this can work!”

It was the same as a tin can telephone.

Any kind of impact would travel up a taut wire as a vibration.

And that 100,000km wire was already slowly shaking at a set frequency. That was nothing harmful and the safety device in the space station would negate it if it ever exceeded acceptable limits.

That was where the Hand Axe came in.

However.

If one vibration could be used to cancel out another, one could also be used to amplify another.

“The wires aren’t just blowing in the wind. After moving in one direction, they’re brought back to their original position by a restoring force.”

“Will this really work?” asked Heivia.

There was no missing the light of the falling Object at this point. It was brighter than the real sun as it spiraled down toward the surface.

“You’re talking about using the space elevator itself as a giant bow and destroying that giant meteor with the power of the bowstring, right? That’ll never actually work!!”

This was a crazy plan and Quenser himself knew it.

But only now had he matched the colossal scale of the 200,000ton mass falling from outside the atmosphere. He could reach its level. At the very least, this had to be better than continuing to fire the occasional rifle bullet or shoulder-fired missile despite knowing that would have no effect.

Sound and vibrations traveled through solids much faster than through gasses.

Quenser was viewing the 100,000km wire as an enormous bow, but he was not a giant and he could not nock a colossal arrow on that bow. That meant he had to use what was already there. In other words, the unmanned elevator car loaded with cargo and left hanging on the wire.

The shock of his explosion joined with the wire’s existing movement. Instead of canceling each other out, the two waves joined to produce a massive amplitude well beyond what the wire was designed for.

The hanging car was shaken side to side and it failed to survive the force of the impact.

So…

“Get down everyone!! It’s starting!!”

It exploded and something scattered horizontally like a shotgun blast.

The shaking was a miniscule thing when compared to the entire elevator that boasted a length more than twice the circumference of the earth, but it was well beyond the design limits of the metal car, tearing it apart.

And its pieces spread out horizontally thanks to the horizontal shaking of the wire.

Which meant out toward the World’s End that was just about to pass by along its spiraling path down.

There was a bright light.

That colossal weapon was glowing brighter than the sun, but even that light was swallowed up by this new one.

Quenser’s calculations said it should have reached an instantaneous max speed of 14,000m/s, so this was far worse than a downpour of razor-sharp shrapnel. Most of the pieces were vaporized the instant they were launched, turning them to plasma. And this was not soft water or plastic; it was heat-resistant metal meant to escape the atmosphere.

“Ghhhh!!”

Quenser could not even see Heivia’s face as the boy groaned and clung to the railing next to him.

The explosive light acted as a white screen that stole away the puny humans’ senses.

And.

“It wasn’t enough,” groaned Heivia while looking overhead. “It’s still in one piece!! You hit it with all that and it didn’t break. The World’s End is still coming down!!”