They were now close enough to the tower that Lamont felt he was beginning to grasp a real sense of its scale. He remembered seeing Westward for the first time in orbit around Mars and being astounded by its size, which rivaled the space lift station to which it was attached in terms of sheer bulk. Mankind had put bigger things into space, perhaps, but they were loose assemblages of rockets, storage bays and habitation units strung together by skeletal superstructures. The elegant cohesion of Westward, comprising roughly half a city block and three stories, was something new.
The tower’s circular width would accommodate two Westwards, side-by-side. Despite this, its surface betrayed no visible planks or seams as the asteroid pod approached within several hundred feet of it. Its top appeared to be molded out of a single sheet of dull, bronze-like metal that reflected the pod’s spotlights smoothly. What really made Lamont’s mind reel, though, was the length of the tower. Rising—what was it, 300 miles?—from the misty surface of the moon below, the overall proportions of the structure, despite its amazing size, were needle-like. This created a strange foreshortening effect that only became more extreme as they drew closer.
Although the surface was apparently smooth, it was not an unbroken cylinder. Not far from the top, Lamont estimated perhaps half a mile, the silhouette was disrupted by a stack of copper-colored rings that reminded him of electric coils. Projected out of this area on arms that extended beyond the radius of the tower were four equally spaced metal spheres, chrome-colored and highly reflective. Further down the shaft of the tower there appeared to be other variations or projections that were harder to make out against the gloomy backdrop of the moon below.
“Do you suppose those are the broadcasting antennae?” Rosemary asked from where she sat beside Rico, leaning forward into the space between the control seats.
“The globes?” Ed clarified. “I don’t think so. If I were to guess, I’d say that the signal is being broadcast straight from that.” His finger pointed toward the clover-shaped beacon (as Lamont had come to think of it) cut into the surface of the tower’s dome-shaped tip. “It’s being directed in a tight beam in a single direction.”
“Toward what?” Lamont asked.
Ed shrugged.
“It’s changing colors,” Ashton observed.
All eyes turned toward the beacon. So far it had appeared to shine a steady gold color, an effect that was compounded by the amber tint of the asteroid pod’s viewports. A closer inspection, however, indeed revealed that the reality was more complex. A subtle variety of shades and colors, ranging from yellow to red, appeared to be swimming in kaleidoscopic patterns in the depths of the beacon. Lamont wondered if his subconscious recognition of this had been the source of his feeling that the beacon held a hypnotic quality.
“I’m seeing some variations on the surface not far from the top of the tower,” Ed noted. “I’m going to see if we can go in for a closer look, maybe learn something about its construction.”