Far from Home | Page 6

the mad idea was conceived,
flared up into an irrepressible brilliance and exploded in a harsh bark of
laughter.
One last push to his luck then, hardly worse than a gambler's last chip
except that the consequences of failure were somewhat more certain.
Either way he'd have what he wanted--survival or, in the brief
incandescence of friction's heat, a declaration of his passing.

A waste disposal cylinder will carry the equivalent of about three tons
of refuse. Its motor is designed to decelerate that mass by 1,075 mph in
order to allow it to assume a descending orbit.
Less the greater part of the customary mass, it should be considerably
more effective, and since he was already in what constituted a descent
path, but for a few miles and a little extra velocity, there would not be
the long fall afterwards to pick up what he'd lost.
* * * * * From there on his plan entered the realm of pure hypothesis;
except for the broad detail the rest depended on luck and whatever
freakish conditions might arise in his favor during the operation. These,
too, would be beyond his control and any move to take advantage of
them would have to be instinctive, providing he was in any shape to do
so.
The tendency to gnaw worriedly at a thousand disturbing possibilities
drowned quickly in a rapidly rising sense of reckless abandon that
possessed him. The prospect of positive action of any sort served to
release any tension left in him and almost gayly he moved to set his
plan in action.
He jimmied the timer on the rocket motor so it would fire to the last
drop. The string of ribbon chutes he reeled in hand over hand stuffing it
into the cylinder, discovering in the process why the chute Section
hands at Base wore that harried look. The mass of slithering,
incompressible white-and-yellow ribbon and its shrouds resisted him
like a live thing; in the end Johnny managed to bat and maul the
obstreperous stuff down the length of the tank. Even so, it filled it to
within a couple of inches of the opening.
[Illustration]
Now he cut off a length of his life line and attached one end to the
spring-loaded trigger release on the motor control, leaving enough to
trail the length of the cylinder and double back inside when he wanted
it. He blessed the economically minded powers that insisted on manual
firing control on these one-shot units instead of the complex radio

triggers beloved of the technical brains.
Making fast to the chutes was a major problem but eventually he
managed a makeshift harness of the remainder of the safety line. He
wound it awkwardly around himself with as many turns as possible,
each returned again and again through, the ring at the end of the master
shroud.
By now he was casting anxious glances at the Earth below, aware that
he must have passed apogee several minutes before and that not more
than some twenty minutes were left before the low point of this swing
would be near. He was grimly aware also that it must be this time or
not at all. The air telltale was well through the yellow band and the next
possible chance after this one was an hour's time away, when
conditions inside the suit would be getting pretty sticky.
Jockeying the unwieldy cylinder into line of flight and making it stay
there took a lot longer than Johnny counted on. With no other manual
purchase than that afforded by his own lesser mass, the job proved
almost impossible and he had to use his suit motor. This caused some
concern over his meager fuel supply since his plan called for some
flat-out jetting later on. In the frantic flurry of bending, twisting, over
and under--controlling, the veneer of aplomb began to wear. Johnny
was sweating freely by the time he had the cylinder stabilized as best he
could judge and had gingerly worked himself into the open end as far
as he could against the cushioning mass of ribbon chute. He took the
trigger lanyard loosely in hand and craning his neck to see past the bulk
of the cylinder he watched and waited.
* * * * *
To the experienced lift pilot there are certain subtle changes in color
values over the Earth's surface as one approaches more closely the
outer fringe of atmosphere. While braking approaches are
auto-controlled, the pilot taking over only after his ship is in
atmosphere, the conscientious man makes himself familiar with the
"feel" of a visually timed approach--just in case--and Johnny was a
good pilot.

Watching Equatorial Africa sliding obliquely towards him Johnny
suddenly gave thought to a possible landing spot for the first time. Not
that he had