Far from Home | Page 7

down but Able Jake was an ultra-streamlined object with many times the mass and weight of Johnny and his rig; furthermore the ships were controllable to a certain degree while Johnny was not. Beyond the certain knowledge that the effect of the chutes would be quite violent and probably short-lived, the rest was unpredictable.
He tried to shake off gloomy speculation, uneasily aware that much of the carefree confidence of the last hour had deserted him. In a more normal state of mind again he became prey to tension once more, a pounding heart and dry mouth recalling mercilessly the essential frailties of his kind. So, with aching neck and burning eyes he strained for a clear view past the length of the cylinder and--
There! The preliminary to the visual changes, a sudden sweep of distortion over the landscape as his angle of sight through the refracting particles became more shallow. Now was the time he had judged the throat vane gyros should begin their run-up.
He worked the lanyard back carefully, fearful an awkward movement might upset the cylinder's line-up, pulling the trigger lever over to half-cock where the micro switch should complete circuit with the dry power pack. There should be approximately one minute before the major color changes began, which was also the minimum time for gyro run up. Johnny resumed the watching and the waiting.
How long is a minute?
Is it the time it takes the fear-frozen trainee, staring glass-eyed at the fumbled grenade to realize that this one at his feet is a dud?
Or is it the time before the rock-climber, clinging nail and toe to the rock face with the rope snapped suddenly taut, feels it at last slacken and sees the hands gripping safely come into sight?
Perhaps the greenhorn, rifle a-waver, watching the glimpse of tawny color in the veldt-grass and waiting the thunder and the charge, could say.
They'd all be wrong. It's much longer.
Long enough for Johnny to think of a dozen precautions he could have taken, a dozen better ways to rig this or that. Long enough to worry about whether the gyros were really running up as they should. A thousand queries and doubts piled mountainously upward to an almost unbearable peak of tension till suddenly the browns and greens below flashed a shade lighter and it was time, and the savage snap on the lanyard a blessed relief and total committal.
* * * * *
In the few seconds after the firing of the prime and before the busy little timer snapped the valves wide open Johnny managed to slip his toes under the jet pedals to avoid accidental firing. At the same time he braced himself as rigidly as possible with aching arms against the walls of the cylinder.
He saw briefly the flare of the jet reflected off the remnants of his cloud of station stores before deceleration with all its unpleasantness began.
The lip of the cylinder's mouth swept up past his helmet as he was rammed deep into the absorbent mass of ribbon chute. This wasn't a padded contour chair under a mild 3G lift. The chutes took the first shock, but Johnny took the rest the hard way, standing bolt upright.
He found with some surprise his head was right down through the neck ring and inside the suit proper, his arms half withdrawn from the sleeves, knees buckled to an almost unbelievable angle considering the dimensions of the lower case.
He had time to hope fervently the cheap expendable motor wouldn't burn out its throat and send him cart-wheeling through space, or blow the surrounding tanks before the blackout came down.
He came out of it sluggishly, to find the relief from the dreadful pressure almost as stupefying as the deceleration itself. While his conscious mind screamed the urgency of immediate action, his bruised and twisted body answered but feebly. The condition of complete weightlessness and the springy reaction of the ribbon mass was all that allowed him finally to claw himself out of the cylinder to where he could use the suit jet without fear of burning the precious chutes.
He was so tired. His muscles of their own accord seemed to relax intermittently, interfering with the control of his movements. Only the sudden sight of the Earth, transformed by a weird illusion of position from a bright goal to an enormous, distorted thing, looming, apparently, over him with glowing menace, spurred his flagging resolution to frantic activity.
He jetted straight back trailing his string of chutes behind him, then, before the last was free of the cylinder, kicked himself around to assume the original course once more.
At this stage it was no longer possible, even granted the time, to judge visually how near he was to the atmosphere. The uneasy feeling that he must already be brushing the Troposphere jarred his nerve