Far from Home, Page 3

transition of his callsto an insane howling of intermixed pleas, threats, condemnation--a sewerflood of foul vilification against those who had betrayed him.

  Bright and beautiful, Earth rolled blandly beneath him, the sun was aremote impersonal thing and the stars mocked silently. After a while theradio carried only the agonized sounds of a man who had forgotten how tocry and must learn again. There were times after this when he observedincuriously a parade of mind pictures, part memory, part purehallucination and containing nothing of reason; other times when hethought not at all. The sun appeared to dwindle, retreating and fadingfar away into a remote place where there were no stars at all. It becamea feeble candle, guttered unsteadily a moment and suddenly winked out.Abruptly Johnny was asleep.

  * * * * *

  He opened his eyes and surveyed the scene with an oddly calm anddispassionate curiosity, not that he expected to find his status changedin any way but because he had awakened with a queer sense of unrealityabout the whole business. He knew vaguely that he'd had a bad time inthe last few hours but could remember little of the details save that itwas like one of those fragmentary nightmares in the instant betweensleeping and waking when it is difficult to divide the fact from thedream. Now he must reassure himself that this facet of it was real andwhen he had done so, realized with a faint shock that he was no longerafraid.

  Fear, it seemed, had by its incessant pressure dulled its own edge. Theacceptance of inevitable death was still there, but now it seemed tohave little more significance than the closing of a book at the lastpage.

  It is possible that Johnny was not wholly sane at this point, but thereis no one to witness this and Johnny, not given to introspection at anytime, felt no spur to self-analysis, beyond a brief mental registrationof the fact.

  So he made his visual survey, saw that it was real, nothing had changed;noted with mild surprise that he'd somehow remained in the shadow of hisscreen this time. He had lost track of time entirely but the suit's airsupply telltale was in the yellow indicating about two hours more orless to go on breathing. In quick succession he reviewed the events,accepted the probability of the abandoned search without a qualm andmade his decision. There was no need to wait about any longer.

  A quick flip of the helmet lock, a moment's unpleasantness perhaps, andout. As for the rest--a spaceman needs no sanctified ground, theincorruptible vault of space is as good a place as any and perhaps themore fitting for one of the first to travel its ways.

  Well then--quickly. Johnny raised his hands.

  But still--

  Man has his pride and his vanity. Johnny, though not necessarily proneto inflated valuation of himself still has just enough vanity left toresent the thought of this anonymous snuffing out in the dark. Thereshould be, he thought, at least some outward evidence of his passing,something like--a flare of light perhaps, that would in effect say, ifonly to one solitary star gazer: "Here at this position, at thisinstant, Johnny Melland, Spaceman, had his time."

  The whimsy persisted. Johnny, casting about mentally for some means tothe end recalled the thermite bomb for the WD cylinder and was haulinghimself in to it when he remembered the charges for this lot had gone upwith Sally Uncle One two days before. But now he'd actually touched themetal cylinder and, as though the brief contact had completed someobscure mental circuit, the mad idea was conceived, flared up into anirrepressible brilliance and exploded in a harsh bark of laughter.

  One last push to his luck then, hardly worse than a gambler's last chipexcept that the consequences of failure were somewhat more certain.Either way he'd have what he wanted--survival or, in the briefincandescence of friction's heat, a declaration of his passing.

  A waste disposal cylinder will carry the equivalent of about three tonsof refuse. Its motor is designed to decelerate that mass by 1,075 mph inorder to allow it to assume a descending orbit.

  Less the greater part of the customary mass, it should be considerablymore effective, and since he was already in what constituted a descentpath, but for a few miles and a little extra velocity, there would notbe the long fall afterwards to pick up what he'd lost.

  * * * * *From there on his plan entered the realm of pure hypothesis; except forthe broad detail the rest depended on luck and whatever freakishconditions might arise in his favor during the operation. These, too,would be beyond his control and any move to take advantage of them wouldhave to be instinctive, providing he was in any shape to do so.

  The tendency to gnaw worriedly at a thousand disturbing possibilitiesdrowned quickly in a rapidly rising sense of reckless abandon thatpossessed him. The prospect of positive action of any sort served torelease any tension left in him and almost gayly he moved to set hisplan in action.

  He jimmied the timer on the rocket motor so it would fire to the lastdrop. The string of ribbon chutes he reeled in hand over hand stuffingit into the cylinder, discovering in the process why the chute Sectionhands at Base wore that harried look. The mass of slithering,incompressible white-and-yellow ribbon and its shrouds resisted him likea live thing; in the end Johnny managed to bat and maul the obstreperousstuff down the length of the tank. Even so, it filled it to within acouple of inches of the opening.

  Now he cut off a length of his life line and attached one end to thespring-loaded trigger release on the motor control, leaving enough totrail the length of the cylinder and double back inside when he wantedit. He blessed the economically minded powers that insisted on manualfiring control on these one-shot units instead of the complex radiotriggers beloved of the technical brains.

  Making fast to the chutes was a major problem but eventually he manageda makeshift harness of the remainder of the safety line. He wound itawkwardly around himself with as many turns as possible, each returnedagain 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 hemust have passed apogee several minutes before and that not more thansome twenty minutes were left before the low point of this swing wouldbe near. He was grimly aware also that it must be this time or not atall. The air telltale was well through the yellow band and the nextpossible chance after this one was an hour's time away, when conditionsinside the suit would be getting pretty sticky.

  Jockeying the unwieldy cylinder into line of flight and making it staythere took a lot longer than Johnny counted on. With no other manualpurchase than that afforded by his own lesser mass, the job provedalmost impossible and he had to use his suit motor. This caused someconcern over his meager fuel supply since his plan called for someflat-out jetting later on. In the frantic flurry of bending, twisting,over and under--controlling, the veneer of aplomb began to wear. Johnnywas sweating freely by the time he had the cylinder stabilized as besthe could judge and had gingerly worked himself into the open end as faras he could against the cushioning mass of ribbon chute. He took thetrigger lanyard loosely in hand and craning his neck to see past thebulk of the cylinder he watched and waited.

  * * * * *

  To the experienced lift pilot there are certain subtle changes in colorvalues over the Earth's surface as one approaches more closely the outerfringe of atmosphere. While braking approaches are auto-controlled, thepilot taking over only after his ship is in atmosphere, theconscientious man makes himself familiar with the "feel" of a visuallytimed approach--just in case--and Johnny was a good pilot.

  Watching Equatorial Africa sliding obliquely towards him Johnny suddenlygave thought to a possible landing spot for the first time. Not that hehad any choice but a picture of a cold, wet immersion in any of severalpossible bodies of water was not encouraging. The suit would probablyfloat but which end first was a matter for conjecture and out of it hewould be as badly off for Johnny could not swim a stroke.

  Nor had he any clear idea how long it would take to slow down to avertical drop. Able Jake made a full half swing of the globe to brakedown but Able Jake was an ultra-streamlined ob
ject with many times themass and weight of Johnny and his rig; furthermore the ships werecontrollable to a certain degree while Johnny was not. Beyond thecertain knowledge that the effect of the chutes would be quite violentand probably short-lived, the rest was unpredictable.

  He tried to shake off gloomy speculation, uneasily aware that much ofthe carefree confidence of the last hour had deserted him. In a morenormal state of mind again he became prey to tension once more, apounding heart and dry mouth recalling mercilessly the essentialfrailties of his kind. So, with aching neck and burning eyes he strainedfor a clear view past the length of the cylinder and--

  There! The preliminary to the visual changes, a sudden sweep ofdistortion over the landscape as his angle of sight through therefracting particles became more shallow. Now was the time he had judgedthe throat vane gyros should begin their run-up.

  He worked the lanyard back carefully, fearful an awkward movement mightupset the cylinder's