"Nothing fancy, you two," Brian reminded them. "Just stay steady and let the computer handle the show."
Rio was now far off to one side, the massive bulk of the Skyhook tower soaring up from the edge of the city. It was surrounded by airstrips, maglev stations and warehouses in every direction for half a dozen kilometers.
"How you doing, Bell?"
"Fine."
"To your right."
Justin looked over and saw Brian falling, head first, thirty meters away. Brian arched his back and broke his dive, coming up to float by Justin.
"Get ready for drogue," Brian announced and then drifted back and away.
Justin focused on his heads-up display and saw that he was passing through sixteen thousand meters. He was surprised to see that the curvature of the Earth was barely visible to both sides of him. Just minutes before he could see almost completely across the continent; now the universe was reduced to this limited view of the planet.
A thin layer of high cirrus clouds came rushing up, looking almost solid. He saw Matt plunge through like a drop of water falling into the sea, a rippling wake spreading out from the hole he punched. Justin snapped through the clouds; rocked by mild turbulence, he lost control for a second so that he was almost on his back. Before he could begin to compensate a thruster jet rolled him back into place.
He saw a bright orange plume eject from Matt's back, the drogue chute popping open. Seconds later a blow hit him in the back. Justin was jerked upright as his own drogue deployed, killing off his nearly five-hundred-kilometer-per-hour fall. Momentarily stunned, he dangled in the harness. He looked around and saw Seay floating a hundred meters away.
They fell together for nearly a minute, dropping through seven thousand meters, then five, and finally to four.
"Bell, Everett. See the X in the field to the south? That's our target. No fancy steering this time, but see if you can at least bring yourself in without embarrassment. Remember not to flare too soon. Your suit servos can handle a hard landing but you look like crap when you drop that badly. Remember, you're cadets, not amateurs."
"Aye, aye, sir," Matt chimed back.
"If your main chute fails to deploy or tangles, you're on manual, no computers for this part. Hit your release button and make sure you're clear, then pull the backup on your chest."
"Wowww!"
Matt's shout startled Justin. Looking down he saw that the drogue chute had snapped loose, crumpling up and twisting like a piece of gauze in the wind. Seconds later Matt's main chute blossomed.
With a stomach-lurching snap Justin's drogue chute broke free and he started to fall. He counted to three, waiting. Then his left hand reached around to his backup.
A reassuring thump slapped him in the shoulders. Looking up he saw the bright orange canopy deploy, the arc of the airfoil opening over his head. He grabbed hold of the toggle handles and tentatively pulled his left hand down. The left side of the chute dropped and he went into a slow, spi-raling circle. He eased up on the left and tried fte right, reversing his spiral.
He started to laugh again. He felt like an eagle soaring through the heavens. A bubble of warm air swirled up around him; the first thermals of the day were rising off the open field below, and he surged up on the column so that Seay dropped below him.
"Hey, nothing fancy, Bell, just follow me in," Seay said.
He ignored the senior cadet for a moment, trying to stay within the thermal, but it was already gone, climbing skyward to where, at twenty-five hundred meters, it would cool, condense, and form a bright, puffy cumulus. It would be joined by others, until by midday it would be a towering nimbus, ten thousand meters high, marching across the sky and lashing the ground below with lightning and rain.
"Light breeze stirring out of the northwest," Brian told them, "five knots. Come in downwind and turn on to your target."
A warm rich scent flooded Justin's suit and he realized that the computer had opened a vent to the outside atmosphere. The air was rich with a riot of tropical smells that were a delight after the weeks of filtered antiseptic ship oxygen.
Breaking out of his spiral, he watched as Brian swooped down to dart past Matt, who uttered a sharp protest at not being first.
"Just follow my lead, you guys, circle when I do. In competition we all touch down at the same time. Today, just try and get down on your feet."
Brian went into a circling turn, hovering slightly downwind from the target. Justin tried to swing in above and behind him, but circled out too wide. He came back around to see Brian pulling down hard on both toggles, spilling his air, dropping and picking up speed. Matt floated up beside Justin, then dropped back down as well. Justin followed suit, surprised at how fast his speed picked up when he spilled air. The ground was racing up fast. Seay let his toggles up, rising back up slightly. Matt pulled a tight circle, staying just behind Seay. Justin tried to follow, then lost sight of the two as he pulled down hard on his right toggle and eased up on his left. As he swung out into a sharp rum the ground spiraled beneath him.
Coming back out of the circle he saw that he had drifted to the northeast of the target. A pennant set up near the "X" marker fluttered and shifted to the north, then to the northeast. Now upwind of the target, Justin tried to turn. Seay shot underneath Justin's feet fifteen meters below. Seay flared up at the last second and touched down, slapping a foot directly on the center of the X.
Damn all, Justin thought. I can do it! Racing past the target he tried to judge the moment. He pulled down hard on his left toggle and went into a turn as the ground spun by beneath him. He saw the target from the corner of his eye but was momentarily distracted by Matt, swooping down and screaming like a banshee as he soared over the target by a dozen feet, flared and then came down hard fifty feet away.
Justin tightened his turn and tried to line up. He swung out like a doll on the end of a toy parachute, and then saw the target rising up in his field of vision.
"Bell! Flare!"
He realized what was happening too late. He released his deathlike grip on his left toggle and felt his chute billowing back out. An instant later he slammed into the ground on his left side. He rolled over fast, a blizzard of shroud lines wrapping over his faceplate. He tumbled like a broken toy across the field, lines ensnaring his arms and legs.
He bounced to a stop, feeling as if he had rolled down a hill inside a barrel. The thought came to him that if it had not been for his suit and the power servo units he would most likely have broken a leg with his botched landing. For that matter, he wasn't sure he hadn't broken a leg; his entire body felt numb.
He lay still for several seconds, collecting his thoughts.
"Bell? Hey, Bell, you alive in there?"
"Huh?"
He tried to roll over onto his back, feeling like a turtle. Hands grabbed him by the shoulder; looking up through his dirt-smeared helmet he saw Seay eyeing him and shaking his head.
"You idiot, here let me help you up."
Seay grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled him upright.
"Darn, looks like he got sprayed by a spider," Matt commented.
Hands drifted past his faceplate, struggling with the lines, unwrapping him from his cocoon. He heard laughter, strange voices Brazilians speaking Portuguese. He caught a glimpse of a girl with a gorgeous darkly tanned face; a wisp of her perfume drifted into his suit.
"Poor boy, he's all right?" she asked.
The lilt of her voice made his heart melt, especially when he caught a better glimpse of her as the bundle of chute lines was finally pulled free from his helmet.
Someone unclasped his helmet and pulled it off. Seconds later he felt the backpack containing his retrorocket, reentry shield and chute slide off.
"All right, Bell, let's see if you can still walk."
Gingerly he stood up, flexing his legs. Seay was standing in front of him, shaking his head. The ground crew was standing behind him, shaking their heads as well and laughing.
"You all right, Bell?
"
"Yeah, I think so."
"Nothing broken?"
Justin moved his arms and legs.
"No, the suit took it."
"Idiot, don't do that next time. OK?"
"Sure. Hey, did I make the target?"
Brian grinned and pointed down. Justin looked down and saw the center of the X directly under his feet.
"Two-point landings, Bell, are the only ones that count. Butts and heads don't."
Seay slapped him on the shoulder, grinning.
Matt came up to Justin and gave him a good-natured punch on the shoulder.
"Hey, buddy, outrageous ain't it?"
Matt pointed at the tower which soared heavenward on the far side of Rio, sixteen kilometers away.
"We got time to do it again?' Matt asked Brian.
Seay shook his head.
"We'll do a couple atmosphere jumps the old-fashioned way from a plane, then it's back up to school. You guys got a flight to catch tomorrow."
Justin didn't know whether to feel relieved or not at Seay's announcement. Staring at the tower, he found it all but impossible to believe that less than a half-hour ago he had been five hundred kilometers up, in the vacuum of space. His memory of the jump was now a jumbled blur of impressions highlighted by the cone of fire that had engulfed him as he bit atmosphere.
"Well, fire rider, welcome to the club," the young Brazilian girl proclaimed, and she extended her hand. He went to take it and then saw that she was holding a piece of burnt toast.
"Tradition," Seay declared. "First-time fire riders have to eat a piece of burnt toast if they make it down."
Justin grinned as he took the toast and bit into it. It was more charcoal than bread; there was chilling recognition that only a few millimeters of plastishielding were all that prevented him from finishing his ride as a shower of ash, drifting on the winds of the upper atmosphere.
But at the moment he didn't care, and when he and Matt finished the toast they were delighted by the reward of a kiss on the cheek from the girl.
She laughed at their foolish grins as she turned and sauntered away.
"Hey, being a fire-riding cadet has its rewards, don't it," Matt said. "I'm in love, buddy and we got the whole day down here for me to convince her that the feeling is mutual."
"Come on, you two, let's get out of these suits," Seay suggested, motioning towards the pickup truck that was coming out to ferry them and their equipment back to the hangar.
Brian started to walk away and then turned, looking back at Justin.
"By the way, Bell, I didn't know folks from Indiana had such a command of old-fashioned Anglo-Saxon."
Justin blushed, suddenly remembering what he had called Seay after the senior cadet pushed him off the gangplank.
"Remarkable," Matt chimed in, "have to remember that last one. What was it now? You son of a drunken no-good"
Justin tried to swing at Matt but did it a little tod hard so that the suit servos kicked in. He spun around and landed on his backside; Brian and Matt, laughing even harder, had to pull him back to his feet and lead him off the field.
Chapter V
"A beauty of a ship," Justin announced admiringly as he examined the sleek lines of the USMC's Somers. Since the Somers was one of the older Timoshinko-class cruisers, it displayed the classic swept-back lines of a ship designed for a multitude of tasksplanet-to-planet transfer and reentry, patrol, and high-speed pursuit. Given the ever-increasing specialization of ships in the inventory of the USMC, the Somers was a bit of a throwback to an earlier and more exciting period of space flight.
Gently hoisting his duffel so as not to disconnect his sticky-bottom boots from the airlock's deck, Justin walked down the length of the ship. He could see on closer examination that it had been through many long years of service. Its underside was scorched and blackened from hundreds of reentries, micro-meteor and debris nicks marred the forward edge of its swept-back wings, and the paint was peeling in places from the thousands of long hours of exposure to the searing heat and freezing cold of the vacuum of space.
Justin scanned the line of cadets queued up behind him. Some of the faces were familiar: Leonov was behind Matt, and farther back in the line was Madison Smith, who had been in his squad during scrub summer. Chatting with Madison was her roommate Marissa Livollen. He saw his roommate, Wendell Colson, bringing up the end of the line.
As he reached the entry door he turned as sharply as he could in zero gravity and snapped off a salute, first to the colors of the USMC emblazoned on the side of the entry hatch and then to the First Officer.
"Plebe Cadet Bell, Justin, 144-99-1848, reporting as ordered, sir. Permission to come aboard."
Justin recognized the acting first officer as Senior Cadet Frank Petronovich, a friend of Brian Seay's. The senior cadet returned the salute.
"Aft, cabin three. Stow your gear and report forward in fifteen minutes."
Justin saluted both the flag and Petronovich once more, shuffled aboard and headed aft. It was his first time aboard an actual light cruiser. Somehow the vids made it seem far more expansive and romantic than the reality that now confronted him. The corridor was barely wide enough for one person, let alone someone carrying a duffel. The floor, walls and ceiling were marred with scuffmarks and dents, and had a tired, worn out look to them. The bonding material that kept the universe together, duct tape, held several light panels in place.
He squeezed past an open airlock door and saw the narrow mess hall to his right, a low-ceilinged room with a single row of tables down the middle. An unusual smell he couldn't decide if it was disagreeable or not wafted out, and he caught a glimpse of a cook back in the galley, wearing a stained T-shirt that showed his hairy, beefy arms. The cook was shaking a container and whistling a tune that Justin recognized as a rather obscene ballad favored by Matt. He caught Justin's stare and winked, his grin revealing a row of stained yellow teeth.
Justin waved back before pushing on down the corridor.
He reached cabin three just aft of the galley and pushed the door open. Glad to be the first one in, he stowed his bag in a storage bin. The room had four webbed sleeping nets rather than beds. During the summer he had spent a couple of nights in the zero-gravity section learning how to rig up a sleeping net, but slumber had been almost impossible just as he'd nod off, a dream about falling would hit and he'd wake up with a start. At least he was not alone; several cadets actually woke up yelling and thrashing and one had washed out when he swore he'd never try to sleep in zero-gee again.
"Well, old man, roomies again," Matt announced, easily coming through the door and pushing his bag into the storage bin. "Ah, a net! Darn good to be sleeping the way normal people do. Chow smells good, better than Uncle Dan's hash, that's for certain."
"This three aft?"
Justin saw Tanya floating in the doorway.
"You got it," Matt confirmed. "Now don't tell me you're our roomie?"
Tanya rolled her eyes. "Yeah, co-ed arrangements on this flight." Sighing, she came into the room and stowed her gear. Matt looked over at Justin and smirked.
Tanya turned her head and caught his expression.
"Now listen, you two. Just because we're rooming, no funny business. First of all, it's against the regs and second well, second I'm not interested in either of you."
"Oh, I am crushed," Matt wailed. "You have shattered my heart, Leonov dear. I think I'll go space myself."
Matt doubled over with laughter as Tanya shoved him; he tumbled off his feet and bounced off the wall. Rebounding and still laughing he grabbed hold of a sleeping net, braked his flight and settled back down onto the floor.
"Hey, guess I'm with you guys."
Justin forgot the hurt he didn't want to show, and grinned as Madison Smith came into the room, her bright cheery smile lighting her dark features.
"Good, now it's two to two," Leonov announced, and the girls slapped each other's hands.
"Madison, how are things in Company B?" Matt as
ked. "Kind of missed your not being with the old crew from summer."
"Our senior, Arika Yagamaru what a terror! Just twitch on evening parade and it's down on the deck and give her fifty. In low gravity she'll sit on your back while you do them. Jeez, wish I was back withSeay."
"No, you don't," Matt interjected. "Justin and I here thought we had it made, doing the jump with him. All buddy-buddy on the way down, even on the ride home. Back aboard the Academy though, look out! Justin here called him Brian just once, no one around but the three of us, and look out Aunt Thelma Seay had him pull double watch."
The four fell into an argument about whose senior was worse until the shrill cry of the bosun's pipe sounded in the room's loudspeaker. An old-style flat computer screen winked to life on the far wall, showing Petronovich.
"All hands forward for reading of orders and departure."
Justin followed the crush out into the corridor. Some officers would mete out an onerous task to the last one to report and no one wanted to be last on the first day of a cruise.
Swept along by the jostling crowd, he floated forward past the galley, supplies storage rooms, and finally into the rec room just aft of the forward control center. The room quickly filled up, cadets jockeying for position. Justin looked around and was intrigued by the ship's design. All the floor arrangements were laid out on the long axis of the ship. He suddenly realized that when the main engines fired the artificial gravity would make the aft bulkhead walls the "floor" while the floor, when the ship was in zero gravity, would be a "wall." A moment's thought told him that it was done this way to maximize space inside a long narrow swept-back ship, permitting larger rooms rather than a number of small circular decks stacked one on top of another for the two hundred foot length of the ship.
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