J. A. Taylor

“ 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. ”

“ Johnny tore open the big bag and was instantly enveloped in clinging folds of ribbon released from the pressure of its packing. He knew what it was now, the big string of ribbon chutes for the Venus Expedition, intended for dropping a remote controlled mobile observer to the as yet unseen and unknown surface. Johnny had ferried parts of the crab-like mechanical monster on the last run, and illogically found himself worrying momentarily over the set-back to the Probe his mischance would cause. ”

“ Only a sudden sun glint on the stubby swept-back wings showed him where Able Jake was. Far away—too far, spinning slowly end over end. His sideways expulsion from the ship then had been enough to give him and his companion debris a divergent course.
Spacemen accept without question the fact of a ship or a station always at hand with a safety man on watch at all times over those outside and a “bug” within signaling distance constantly. They do not conceive of any other state of affairs. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But in the next minute he was making fast the lower end of the string to the WD cylinder, then, finding the top chute he toed his pedals and jetted himself out, trailing the string out to its full extent.
Now the period of action was over and he had done all he could, Johnny found himself dreading the time of waiting to follow. He would have time for thinking, and thinking wasn’t profitable under the circumstances unless it were something definitely constructive and applicable to his present and future well-being. Waiting was always bad. ”

“ A quick flip of the helmet lock, a moment’s unpleasantness perhaps, and out. As for the rest—a spaceman needs no sanctified ground, the incorruptible vault of space is as good a place as any and perhaps the more 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 prone to inflated valuation of himself still has just enough vanity left to resent the thought of this anonymous snuffing out in the dark. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The rest of the shipwrecked material had by now drifted beyond easy reach and Johnny did not feel like wasting fuel rounding it up.
Position? A matter of memory and some guesswork by now. Some ten minutes out of powered flight at the time of collision, coasting up to station orbit where a quick boost from the jets would have made up his lost velocity to orbit standard. But there would be no boost now. So he’d just fall off around the other side, falling around and into Mother Earth, to skim atmosphere and climb on past and up to touch orbit altitude—and down again. ”

“ To survive he must be rescued by his own kind in twelve hours or less. To be rescued he must be seen or heard. Since his radio was a simple short-range intercom it followed that he must be seen first and heard later. Being seen meant making a sufficiently distinguishable blip on somebody’s radar screen to arouse comment over a blip where, according to schedule no orbiting blip should be.
Johnny was painfully aware that the human body is very small in space. The cylinder would be a help but he doubted it would be enough. Then he thought of the material inside the cylinder. ”

“ Able Jake was sighted a few minutes later but it was another three hours before a service ship could be readied and got away without load to allow it as much operating margin as possible. Getting a man aboard was yet another matter. At this stage of space travel no maneuver of this nature had ever been accomplished outside of theory. Fuel-thrust-mass ratios were still a thing of pretty close reckoning, and the service lift ships were simply not built for it.
The ship was in an elliptical orbit and a full degree off its normal course. ”

“ Able Jake made a full half swing of the globe to brake 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. ”

“ 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 [73] 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. ”

“ An oxy air-conditioning and reprocessing unit with its spare pure oxygen tank; on this he could possibly depend for twelve hours given no undue exertion and with the most rigid economy all the time.
[68] The power pack for suit operation and radio had a safety margin of one hour over the maximum air supply, if the radio wasn’t used. At this time Johnny couldn’t see much use for it.
Item: One Waste Disposal Cylinder, expendable, complete with motor and full fuel tanks, packed, according to his loading manifest with sundry supplies to avoid dead stowage space. ”

“ A sharp, bearded face shot into focus abruptly, waving a hypodermic needle. It spoke English and observed passionately either to Johnny or itself that: “Name of a Spanish cow! What is it in men that they must abuse themselves so? ”

“ Illustrated by Emsh “Far” is strictly a relative term. Half a world away from home is, sometimes, no distance at all!
[65]
Someone must have talked over the fence because the newshounds were clamoring on the trail within an hour after it happened. ”