line-up, pulling the trigger lever over tohalf-cock where the micro switch should complete circuit with the drypower pack. There should be approximately one minute before the majorcolor 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 atthe 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 therock face with the rope snapped suddenly taut, feels it at last slackenand sees the hands gripping safely come into sight?
Perhaps the greenhorn, rifle a-waver, watching the glimpse of tawnycolor in the veldt-grass and waiting the thunder and the charge, couldsay.
They'd all be wrong. It's much longer.
Long enough for Johnny to think of a dozen precautions he could havetaken, a dozen better ways to rig this or that. Long enough to worryabout whether the gyros were really running up as they should. Athousand queries and doubts piled mountainously upward to an almostunbearable peak of tension till suddenly the browns and greens belowflashed a shade lighter and it was time, and the savage snap on thelanyard a blessed relief and total committal.
* * * * *
In the few seconds after the firing of the prime and before the busylittle timer snapped the valves wide open Johnny managed to slip histoes under the jet pedals to avoid accidental firing. At the same timehe braced himself as rigidly as possible with aching arms against thewalls of the cylinder.
He saw briefly the flare of the jet reflected off the remnants of hiscloud of station stores before deceleration with all its unpleasantnessbegan.
The lip of the cylinder's mouth swept up past his helmet as he wasrammed deep into the absorbent mass of ribbon chute. This wasn't apadded contour chair under a mild 3G lift. The chutes took the firstshock, but Johnny took the rest the hard way, standing bolt upright.
He found with some surprise his head was right down through the neckring and inside the suit proper, his arms half withdrawn from thesleeves, knees buckled to an almost unbelievable angle considering thedimensions of the lower case.
He had time to hope fervently the cheap expendable motor wouldn't burnout its throat and send him cart-wheeling through space, or blow thesurrounding tanks before the blackout came down.
He came out of it sluggishly, to find the relief from the dreadfulpressure almost as stupefying as the deceleration itself. While hisconscious mind screamed the urgency of immediate action, his bruised andtwisted body answered but feebly. The condition of completeweightlessness and the springy reaction of the ribbon mass was all thatallowed him finally to claw himself out of the cylinder to where hecould use the suit jet without fear of burning the precious chutes.
He was so tired. His muscles of their own accord seemed to relaxintermittently, interfering with the control of his movements. Only thesudden sight of the Earth, transformed by a weird illusion of positionfrom a bright goal to an enormous, distorted thing, looming, apparently,over him with glowing menace, spurred his flagging resolution to franticactivity.
He jetted straight back trailing his string of chutes behind him, then,before the last was free of the cylinder, kicked himself around toassume the original course once more.
At this stage it was no longer possible, even granted the time, to judgevisually how near he was to the atmosphere. The uneasy feeling that hemust already be brushing the Troposphere jarred his nerve so that hemerely gave himself a short flat-out boost in the right direction beforespinning bodily one hundred eighty degrees so that he was traveling feetfirst.
Reflected in the curved helmet face, the string of chutes obedientlyfollowed-my-leader around a ragged U-shape, the last--the smallpilot-chute trailed limply around as he watched.
There could surely be but a few seconds left before the grand finale.Johnny found he was unconsciously holding his breath, and, as hedeliberately inhaled long slow draughts of his already staling air,realized abstractly that he seemed to be attempting to meet his possibleend with some degree of dignity if not with resignation, and wonderedif he were the exception or the rule.
Possibly, he thought sardonically, because there is so little room fordignity in our living years, and was mildly surprised at anuncharacteristic excursion into the realm of philosophy.
There was a faintly perceptible tug on the harness. It was sustained andnow there came a definite strain. Reflected for a moment in the helmetface was a glimpse of the lead chute slowly opening out like a giganticflower.
Then swiftly, in half a breath the harness coils were tightening abouthim like steel fingers, the heavy ring at the end of the master shroudclashed against the back of his helmet and began a sickening, thrummingvibration there.
The harness encompassed his torso like a vise but his legs wereunsupported and weighed what seemed a thousand tons. He could feel themstretching. Somewhere a coil slipped a fraction. His arms were jerkedsuddenly upwards and Johnny knew a sensation he'd never believedpossible. At the same time his leaden feet crashed down on the jetpedals. For a few, brief, blessed moments the intolerable extensioneased a fraction with the firing of the suit jets.
He cringed mentally from the thought of what was to come and thoughthazily: "This is what the rack was like. This is going to be bad, bad,bad!"
It was impossible and Johnny went out with the last drop of fuel.
* * * * *
Somewhere there was a queer coughing sound like wind through a crevice.He strained to identify it but an awful agony swamped him and he fledbefore it back into the darkness.
And later still a thumping and a rushing, gurgling sound.
* * * * *
Dim, grotesque figures moved about him or swooped and hovered over him.He felt an unreasoning fear of them and tried to shut them out. Theywere holding him down, hurting him. One was pulling and twisting at hisarm. He shouted and swore at it telling it to leave him alone, but itignored him or didn't seem to hear. There was a sudden dull snappingsound and a little of the pain abated.
The figures flowed together and swirled around like some great oilyvortex but never quite left him.
Then there was a time when they separated jerkily and became the hazybut definable figures of men in rough seaman's clothes. Johnny had neverheard Breton French before; in his dazed condition the apparently insanegabble might well have been the tongue of another world and gave himlittle assurance. He hurt so badly and so generally that he could nothave determined that he was lying down save for a view of white cloudsscudding overhead.
Some of the men were holding up what looked like a crumpled parody of aman. He recognized it without surprise as the soaking remains of hisspacesuit, battered and with tattered shreds of outer cover andinsulation hanging in festoons.
A sharp, bearded face shot into focus abruptly, waving a hypodermicneedle. It spoke English and observed passionately either to Johnny oritself that: "Name of a Spanish cow! What is it in men that they mustabuse themselves so? Now here is one who was both squeezed and stretchedalternately as well as hammered, dehydrated and almost asphyxiated, isit not? This will bear watching. It is alive but there will have to beX-rays in profusion."
It danced long sensitive fingers over the welts and bruises andcommented bluntly that it was well the fishermen had returned his armsand legs into their sockets before he fully regained consciousness. Itmuttered and clucked to itself as it used the hypo which Johnny couldnot feel. "Formidable!"
The pleasant drowsiness came down just as he was identifying the queersmell as ozone, brine and good fresh air.
After a while they moved him to a small hospital in an upcoast town,where he slept much, suffered not a little and, even waking, viewed theworld incuriously through drug-laden eyes. Finally they allowed him towaken fully and the sharp-faced doctor, together with half a dozenothers from various parts of the world decided th
at, after all, heseemed to be surviving.
Johnny lay and itched intolerably in the cast that covered him from napeto thigh and listened to the bustling of the elderly nursing sister who,good soul, having never been more than ten miles from her town in herlife, reminded him that it wanted but two days to Christmas and opinedthat: "Such a tragedy for M'sieu. To be so far from home!"
Johnny smiled at the ceiling, not daring to laugh yet, and sniffed atthe salt sea air with its undertone of rank seaweed and gloried in it;even a chance whiff of that particular cigarette tobacco that only aFrenchman can appreciate. He thought that here, as across the water,night and day followed each other in their proper order and the groundwas a solid thing beneath the feet.
Why--he could never be closer.
FIN.
+--------------------------------------------------------------+ | Transcriber's Note | | | | This etext was produced from Astounding Science Fiction,