A gust of wind hammered the lander, and Mac crashed to the floor. Nightingale helped him up.
Kellie opened the outer hatch. Wind and rain spilled into the airlock. And Mac saw why Hutchins was still alive. She'd converted her rope into a sling, looped under thighs and armpits, and lowered herself off the girder. Away from the metal.
"Hang on, Priscilla," he told her, though he knew she could not hear him over the roar of the storm.
"Are we close enough?" asked Kellie. The lander rose and fell.
"No," he cried. "We're going to have to do better than this."
"I don't know if we can."
The cable was general-purpose lightweight stuff. Something to be used for securing cargo or possibly marking off a dig site. In this wind he wanted something more like Hutchins's heavy vine.
He missed a couple times, and then shut off his e-suit long enough to remove a shoe. He tied the cable to it and waited for the right circumstances: a drop in the wind and the lander in close. When it happened he threw the shoe and the cable. The shoe sailed over the crossbar. Hutch swung back, swung forward, grabbed the line. She hauled it down and looped it around her middle and secured it under her arms.
Mac took up the cable and got ready.
"Hurry," Kellie pleaded, while she fought the storm and the down-drafts.
The laser appeared in Hutch's right hand. She showed the laser to them, signifying what she was about to do.
Mac glanced at the seat anchor, and tightened his grip. Nightingale, standing in the hatch, was not tethered. Mac pushed him back, out of harm's way.
Priscilla cut the vine and dropped down out of sight. The cable jerked tight. Mac held on, felt Nightingale move in behind him, and they hauled her in.
When she was safely on board, a wave of laughter engulfed them. Priscilla hugged Mac and kissed Nightingale. Kellie accelerated and shut down the spike to preserve its power supply. Then Hutch embraced her, too. They were happy, exhausted, tearful. She thanked them, wriggled out of the rope and cable, expressed her unbounded joy at being back in the lander, and hugged everybody again. She untied Mac's shoe and returned it ceremonially.
"Welcome home," said Kellie.
Mac eased himself into his seat. "Nice to have you back, Priscilla," he said.
She collapsed beside him, rubbed her thighs where the vine had supported her, and closed her eyes. "You wouldn't believe how good it is," she said, "to be here."
Kellie had been climbing steadily. Suddenly they emerged above the clouds. The air was less turbulent, but Nightingale caught his breath. He was looking up.
Mac followed his gaze. They could see the vast arc of the onrushing planet. The entire southwestern sky quailed beneath that purple monster. They could see into it, into its depths. Mac felt chilled. "What now?" he asked. "Do we make our rendezvous?" "Not yet," said Hutch. "It's too early. We've got more than four hours left."
He grimaced and looked down at the boiling clouds. "Do we really have to go back down there?"
Bill and Lori surprised the staff by showing up in tandem onscreen on the Star bridge. "I'm pleased to announce that maneuvering is complete," said Lori. "No further power applications need be made. Alpha will arrive at the designated point over the Misty Sea in the proper alignment at the specified time."
"Well done," said Bill. He seemed quite pleased.
Kellie found high ground near the base of the mountain, and set down.
Hutch went back into the washroom. When she came out a half hour later she looked scrubbed down, and she was wrapped in a blanket, waiting for her clothes to dry. "I hope nobody minds the informality," she said.
"Not a bit of it," said MacAllister, with a leer.
They passed around one of the bottles she'd salvaged from the Star. The wind blew, the rain fell, but for the moment at least, all was right with the world.
XXXIII
As there are some professions that demand believers in the amity of Providence, like those who work among the downtrodden, or who teach adolescents, there are others for which atheism is desirable. I am thinking particularly of pilots. When you are adrift among the clouds or the stars, you want someone in the cockpit who has as much to lose as you do if the party goes down.
— Gregory MacAllister, My Life and Loves
Hours to breakup (est): 20
Miles Chastain returned with Phil Zossimov to the net. This time he had his gear, a couple of assistants, and a load of material on two shuttles. Drummond waited with an Outsider team.
Miles been piloting superluminals for almost four years, the last three for Universal News. It paid well, and equally important at this stage of his life, the job took him to places where something was usually happening. He had, for example, hauled a news team out to Nok, the only world known to have a living native civilization, just in time to see the first shots fired in the latest round of an early-twentieth-century-style war. He'd accompanied the investigators to Kruger 60 when the Aquilar returned from the first probe across the Orion rift without its crew. He'd been the pilot when Universal did its award-winning special on the antique alien station orbiting Beta Pac III.
Now he was helping orchestrate the rescue off Deepsix. Not bad for a kid from a Baltimore row house.
He arrived within minutes after receiving the news that Alpha was on course, and no additional course changes would be needed. That meant Phil's team could begin its phase of the mission.
To release the asteroid, Drummond had cut the net almost three-quarters of the way around its circumference. The net now drifted glittering in the sunlight, two halves, partially entwined, a kind of bright tattered banner trailing from a very long post.
Their first objective was to finish what Drummond had begun: complete the cut. Get rid of one of the two halves.
Drummond's shuttle inserted itself within the drifting folds. One of his Outsiders exited the airlock and tied a cable to the half designated for disposal. He then returned inside the shuttle, which began to move away, straightening that portion of the net to prepare it for a laser cut.
Miles approached in the second vehicle and sliced through it until it was cleanly separated. Now Drummond's pilot dragged the severed portion away and released it to find its own orbit.
He returned and secured the remaining half to the shuttle. Then he gradually braked, drawing it out. When he was satisfied, he released it.
Miles moved in again.
The idea was to convert the remaining section into a sack. The part of the net attached to the plate would, when it was lowered into the atmosphere, constitute the top of the sack; the opposite end, the former south pole, would become the bottom. The task facing Miles's team was to join the severed sides near the bottom and bind them together, forming an area which would hang down toward the planetary surface, and into which, in just over six hours, the lander could de- scend. Or crash-land, if need be.
The shuttles took up positions on either side of the net, approximately one hundred meters up from the "bottom." Miles and three of the Outsiders climbed onto it and used the shuttles to help draw the lower sections together.
The rest of the Outsider team, which totaled eight in all, joined the effort. They'd been drilled specifically for this operation, but Miles never stopped worrying. They'd practiced on the Star's tennis nets, but that hadn't been the most realistic simulation.
He watched his people move out across the narrow space between the net and the airlock onto the metal links floating nearby. They connected their tethers as they'd been instructed, removed from their packs the clips which Marcia Keel had manufactured from chairs and coffee machines and cargo shelving, and began the process of binding the lower section of the net back together.