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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Far from Home, by J.A. Taylor
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Far from Home
+
+Author: J.A. Taylor
+
+Release Date: November 8, 2007 [EBook #23408]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FAR FROM HOME ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Greg Weeks, LN Yaddanapudi and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+FAR FROM HOME
+
+[Illustration]
+
+BY J. A. TAYLOR
+
+Illustrated by Emsh
+
+     _"Far" is strictly a relative term. Half a world away from home is,
+     sometimes, no distance at all!_
+
+
+Someone must have talked over the fence because the newshounds were
+clamoring on the trail within an hour after it happened.
+
+The harassed Controller had lived in an aura of "Restricteds,"
+"Classifieds" and "Top Secrets" for so long it had become a mental
+conditioning and automatically hedged over information that had been
+public property for years via the popular technical mags; but in time
+they pried from him an admittance that the Station Service Lift rocket
+A. J. "Able Jake" Four had indeed failed to rendezvous with Space
+Station One, due at 9:16 Greenwich that morning.
+
+The initial take-off and ascent had gone to flight plan and the pilot,
+in the routine check-back after entering free flight had reported no
+motor or control faults. At this point, unfortunately, a fault in the
+tracking radar transmitter had resulted in it losing contact with the
+target. The Controller did not, however, mention the defection of the
+hungover operator in fouling up the signal to the standby unit, or the
+consequent general confusion in the tracking network with no contact at
+all thereafter, and fervently hoped that gentlemen of the press were not
+too familiar with the organization of the tracking system.
+
+At least one of the more shrewd looking reporters appeared as though he
+were mentally baiting a large trap so the Controller, throwing caution
+to the winds, plunged headlong into a violent refutal of various
+erroneous reports already common in the streets.
+
+Able Jake did not carry explosives or highly corrosive chemicals, only
+some Waste Disposal cylinders, dry foodstuffs and sundry Station
+Household supplies.
+
+Furthermore there was no truth in the oft-revived rumors of weaknesses
+in the so-called "spine-and-rib" construction of the Baur and Hammond
+Type Three vessel under acceleration strain. The type had been
+discontinued solely because the rather complicated structure raised
+certain stowage difficulties in service with overlong turnabout times
+resulting.
+
+There may have been a collision with a meteor he conceded, but, it was
+thought, highly unlikely. And now, the urgent business of the search
+called, the Controller escaped, perspiring gently.
+
+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. A large part of the control room was demolished and there was a
+lengthy split in the hull. There was no sign of the pilot and some of
+the cargo was missing also. The investigating crew assumed the obvious
+and gave it as their opinion that the pilot had been literally
+disintegrated by the intense heat of the collision.
+
+The larger part of the world's population made it a point to listen in
+on the first space burial service in history over the absent remains of
+Johnny Melland.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Such a small thing to cause such a fury. A mere twenty Earth pounds of
+an indifferent grade of rock and a little iron, an irregular, ungraceful
+lump, spawned somewhere a billion years before as a star died. But it
+still had most of the awesome velocity and inertia of its birth.
+
+Able Jake, with the controlling influence of the jets cut, had yawed
+slightly and was now traveling crabwise. The meteor on its own course, a
+trifle oblique to that of the ship, struck almost directly the slender
+spring steel spine, the frightful energy of the impact transmuted on the
+instant into a heat that vaporized several feet of the nose and spine
+before the dying shock caused an anguished flexing of the ship's
+backbone; thrust violently outward along the radial members and so
+against the ribs and hull sheathing on that side. Able Jake's hull split
+open like a pea pod for fully half its length and several items of its
+cargo burst from their lashings, erupted from the wound.
+
+Johnny was not inboard at the time, but floating, spacesuited alongside,
+freeing a fouled lead to the radar bowl, swearing occasionally but
+without any real passion at the stupidity of the unknown maintenance man
+who failed to secure it properly. For some odd reason he had never quite
+lost the thrill of his first trip "outside," and, donning pressure suit
+with the speed of long practice, sneaked as many "inspections" as
+possible, with or without due cause.
+
+The second's fury that reduced the third stage of a $5,000,000 rocket to
+junk was evident to him only as a brilliant blue-white flash, a
+hammer-like shock through the antennae support that left his wrist and
+forearm numb. Then a violent wrench as a long cylinder, expelled from
+the split hull, caught the loop of his life line and dragged him in till
+he clashed hard against it, the suddenly increased tension or a sharp
+edge parting the line close to the anchored end. He clawed blindly for a
+hold, found something he could not at that moment identify and hung on.
+
+For a short time his vision seemed dulled and that part of his mind,
+trained to the quick analysis of sudden situations groped but feebly
+through a haze of shock to understand what had happened. Orienting
+himself he found he was gripping a brace of the open-mounted motor on
+one of the Waste Disposal Cylinders. About him he could see other odd
+items of the cargo, some clustering fairly closely, others just
+perceptibly drifting farther away. To one side, or "downwards" the Earth
+rolling vastly, pole over pole, and with her own natural rotation
+giving an odd illusion of slipping sideways from under him.
+
+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.
+
+Now Johnny had to face the fact that he was in such a position--entirely
+and utterly alone, except for the useless flotsam that came with him. He
+might have flung himself into a mad chase after the ship on his suit
+jets except that the thought of leaving his little island, cold comfort
+though it was, to plunge into those totally empty depths was suddenly
+horrible.
+
+The tide of panic rose within him. He knew the sickening bodily revolt
+of blind unreasoning terror--the terror of the lost, the terror of
+certain untimely death, but mostly of death so dreadfully alone.
+
+He might have gone insane. In the face of the insoluble problem his mind
+might have retreated into a shadow world of its own, perhaps to prattle
+happily the last few hours away. But there was something else there. The
+pre-flight school psychiatrist had recognized it, Johnny himself
+probably wouldn't have and it wasn't their policy to tell him. It saved
+him. The labored heart pounding and the long shuddering gasps slowed in
+time and with the easing of his physical distress he found enough heart
+to muster a wry little smile at the thought that of the castaways of
+history he at least stood fair to be named the most unique.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And after a while, shaking himself mentally, a little ashamed of his
+temporary fall from grace, he followed the example of the more
+intelligent of his predecessors and settled down to itemize his assets,
+analyze his position and conjecture the chances of survival.
+
+Item: He was encased in a Denby Bros. spacesuit, Mark III, open space
+usage, meant for no gravity use. Therefore it had no legs as such, the
+lower half being a rigid cylinder allowing considerable movement within
+and having a swivel mounted rocket motor at its base controlled by toe
+pedals inside.
+
+The upper half, semiflexible with jointed arms ending in gloves from
+which by contorting the shoulders the hands could be withdrawn into the
+sleeves when not in use.
+
+A metal and tinted plastic helmet with earphones, mike and chin switch.
+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.
+
+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. Seldom used, since most station
+waste was ferried down in the otherwise empty service ships, they
+occasionally handled certain laboratory refuse it was considered best to
+destroy in space. The cylinders were decelerated and allowed to fall
+into atmosphere where the friction of the unchecked plunge burned up
+what the magnesium charge inside had not already. 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. A nice elliptical orbit, apogee a thousand odd
+miles, perigee, sixty-seventy--perhaps. How much speed had he left? How
+long would it be before he brushed the fringe of atmosphere once too
+often and too deep? Just another meteor.
+
+And survival. A comparatively simple problem since the mechanics of it
+were restricted by a simple formula in which his role would seem to be a
+passive one. 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. He pried back the lugs
+holding the cover in place with the screwdriver from his belt kit. He
+started pulling out packages, bags, boxes, thrusting them behind him,
+above him, downwards; cereals, ready mixed pastries, bundles of
+disposable paper overalls--toilet paper! He worked furiously, now stuck
+halfway down the cylinder, kicking the bundles behind him. He emerged
+finally in a flurry of articles clutching a large plastic bag that had
+filled the entire lower end of the tank.
+
+About him drifted a sizable cloud of station supplies, stirring
+sluggishly after his emergence. He pushed them a bit more, distributing
+them as much as possible without losing them altogether.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+Surely they would find him soon. Surely they would press the search
+farther even when they found Able Jake as they couldn't fail to in time.
+
+A tightness started in his throat. Johnny quickly drowned the thought in
+a flood of inconsequential nonsense, a trick he had learned as a green
+pilot. He might sleep though, if sleep were a possible thing in this
+cold emptiness. No one, to his recollection, had ever done so outside a
+ship or station--the space psychology types would be interested
+doubtless.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Johnny tied his life line to the WD cylinder and then jetted clear of
+his artificial cloud, positioning himself so that it formed a partial
+screen between himself and the sun. He turned his oxygen down to the
+bare minimum and the thermostat as low as he dared. He commenced a
+relaxation exercise and was pleased when it worked after a fashion--a
+mental note for Beaufort at the station. A drowsiness crept over him,
+dulling a little the thin edge of fear that probed his consciousness.
+
+Face down towards the earth he hung. The slow noise of his breathing
+only intensified the complete silence outside. The well padded suit
+encompassed him so gently there was no sense of pressure on his body to
+make up for the weightlessness. Johnny felt as though he were bodiless,
+a naked brain with eyes only hanging in nothingness.
+
+Beneath, Earth rolled over with slow majesty, once every two hours. His
+altered course was evident now, passing almost directly over the
+geographic poles proper instead of paralleling the twilight zone where
+night and day met. Sometimes he caught the faint glow of a big city on
+the night side but the sight only stirred the worm of anxiety and he
+closed his eyes.
+
+Johnny was beginning to feel very comfortable. He supposed sleepily
+that this was the way you were assumed to feel while freezing to death
+in a snowbank, or so he'd heard. Air and heat too low perhaps. He should
+really turn it up a notch.
+
+On the other hand it was perhaps a solution to the problem of dying--a
+gentle sleep while the stomach was still full enough from the last meal
+to be reasonably comfortable and the throat yet unparched. Would it be
+the act of an unbalanced mind or one of the most supreme sanity?
+
+He dozed and dreamed a bit in fragments and snatches but it was not a
+good sleep--there was no peace in it. At one time he seemed to be
+standing outside the old fretworked boarding house he lived in--looking
+in at the window of the "sitting room" where the ancient, wispy landlady
+sat among her antimacassared chairs and the ridiculous tiny seashell
+ashtrays that overflowed after two butts. He wanted desperately to get
+in and sprawl in the huge bat-winged chair by the fire and stroke the
+enormous old gray cat that would leap up and trample and paw his stomach
+before settling down to grumble to itself asthmatically for hours.
+
+It was cold and dark out here and he wanted to get in to the
+friendliness and the warmth and the peaceful, familiar security, but he
+didn't dare go around to the door because he knew if he did the vision
+would vanish and he'd never find it again.
+
+He scratched and beat at the window but his fingers made no sound, he
+tried to shout but his cries were only strangled whispers and the old
+lady sat and rocked and talked to the big gray cat and never turned her
+head.
+
+The fire seemed to be flaring up suddenly, it was filling the whole
+room--a monstrous furnace; it shouldn't do that he knew, but the old
+lady didn't seem to mind sitting there rocking amid the flames--and it
+was so nice and warm. The fire kept growing and swelling though--soon it
+burst through the window and engulfed him. Too hot. Too hot.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Johnny swam hazily back to consciousness with an aching head and thick
+mouth. He saw that he had drifted clear of his protective screen somehow
+and the sun beat full on him. With clumsy, fumbling hands that seemed to
+belong to somebody else he managed the air valve; the increased oxygen
+reviving him enough to find the pedals and jet erratically about till he
+gained the shadow once more.
+
+Now he was entering upon the worst phase of the living nightmare. Awake,
+the doubts and fears of his position tormented him; wearied, he feared
+to sleep, yet continually he found himself nodding only to jerk awake
+with that suddenness that is like a physical blow. Each one of these
+awakenings took away a little more of his self-control till he was
+reduced to near hysteria, muttering abstractly, sometimes whimpering
+like a lost child; now seized with a feverish concern for his air
+supply. He would at one instant cut it down to a dangerous minimum,
+then, remembering the near disaster of his first attempt at economy,
+frantically turn it up till he was in danger of an oxygen jag. In a
+moment he would forget and start all over again.
+
+In addition, he was now realizing bitterly what he had subconsciously
+denied to himself for so long, that they had found Able Jake and drawn
+the obvious conclusion. That he had been obliterated or blown out
+through the hull by the collision without warning or preparation. That
+he was undoubtedly dead if not vaporized altogether and, as they must,
+considering the expense of a probably fruitless search, abandon him.
+
+There came the moment when Johnny accepted this in full. This was
+directly after the time when, sliding down the long hill to the perigee
+of his orbit, he turned on his radio and cried for help. It was a bare
+hundred miles or less to that wonderful world below, but there was the
+Heaviside layer, and the weak signals beat but feebly against it. All
+that seeped through by some instant's freak of transmission was a
+fragment of incoherent babble to reach the uncomprehending ear of an
+Arkansas ham and give that gentleman uneasy sleep for some time to come.
+
+He kept calling mechanically even after perigee was long past, praying
+for an answer from the powerful transmitters below or from a searching
+ship. But when there was no slightest whisper in his phones or answering
+flare among the stars, Johnny came to the end of faith. Even of
+awareness, for his own ears did not register the transition of his calls
+to an insane howling of intermixed pleas, threats, condemnation--a sewer
+flood of foul vilification against those who had betrayed him.
+
+Bright and beautiful, Earth rolled blandly beneath him, the sun was a
+remote impersonal thing and the stars mocked silently. After a while the
+radio carried only the agonized sounds of a man who had forgotten how to
+cry and must learn again. There were times after this when he observed
+incuriously a parade of mind pictures, part memory, part pure
+hallucination and containing nothing of reason; other times when he
+thought not at all. The sun appeared to dwindle, retreating and fading
+far away into a remote place where there were no stars at all. It became
+a 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 and
+dispassionate curiosity, not that he expected to find his status changed
+in any way but because he had awakened with a queer sense of unreality
+about the whole business. He knew vaguely that he'd had a bad time in
+the last few hours but could remember little of the details save that it
+was like one of those fragmentary nightmares in the instant between
+sleeping and waking when it is difficult to divide the fact from the
+dream. Now he must reassure himself that this facet of it was real and
+when he had done so, realized with a faint shock that he was no longer
+afraid.
+
+Fear, it seemed, had by its incessant pressure dulled its own edge. The
+acceptance of inevitable death was still there, but now it seemed to
+have little more significance than the closing of a book at the last
+page.
+
+It is possible that Johnny was not wholly sane at this point, but there
+is no one to witness this and Johnny, not given to introspection at any
+time, felt no spur to self-analysis, beyond a brief mental registration
+of 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 his
+screen this time. He had lost track of time entirely but the suit's air
+supply telltale was in the yellow indicating about two hours more or
+less to go on breathing. In quick succession he reviewed the events,
+accepted the probability of the abandoned search without a qualm and
+made his decision. There was no need to wait about any longer.
+
+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. There
+should be, he thought, at least some outward evidence of his passing,
+something like--a flare of light perhaps, that would in effect say, if
+only to one solitary star gazer: "Here at this position, at this
+instant, Johnny Melland, Spaceman, had his time."
+
+The whimsy persisted. Johnny, casting about mentally for some means to
+the end recalled the thermite bomb for the WD cylinder and was hauling
+himself in to it when he remembered the charges for this lot had gone up
+with Sally Uncle One two days before. But now he'd actually touched the
+metal cylinder and, as though the brief contact had completed some
+obscure mental circuit, the mad idea was conceived, flared up into an
+irrepressible brilliance and exploded in a harsh bark of laughter.
+
+One last push to his luck then, hardly worse than a gambler's last chip
+except that the consequences of failure were somewhat more certain.
+Either way he'd have what he wanted--survival or, in the brief
+incandescence of friction's heat, a declaration of his passing.
+
+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 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.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+From there on his plan entered the realm of pure hypothesis; except for
+the broad detail the rest depended on luck and whatever freakish
+conditions might arise in his favor during the operation. These, too,
+would be beyond his control and any move to take advantage of them would
+have to be instinctive, providing he was in any shape to do so.
+
+The tendency to gnaw worriedly at a thousand disturbing possibilities
+drowned quickly in a rapidly rising sense of reckless abandon that
+possessed him. 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. Even so, it filled it to within a
+couple of inches of the opening.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Now he cut off a length of his life line and attached one end to the
+spring-loaded trigger release on the motor control, leaving enough to
+trail the length of the cylinder and double back inside when he wanted
+it. He blessed the economically minded powers that insisted on manual
+firing control on these one-shot units instead of the complex radio
+triggers beloved of the technical brains.
+
+Making fast to the chutes was a major problem but eventually he managed
+a makeshift harness of the remainder of the safety line. He wound it
+awkwardly around himself with as many turns as possible, each returned
+again 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 he
+must have passed apogee several minutes before and that not more than
+some twenty minutes were left before the low point of this swing would
+be near. He was grimly aware also that it must be this time or not at
+all. The air telltale was well through the yellow band and the next
+possible chance after this one was an hour's time away, when conditions
+inside the suit would be getting pretty sticky.
+
+Jockeying the unwieldy cylinder into line of flight and making it stay
+there took a lot longer than Johnny counted on. 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. 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.
+
+Watching Equatorial Africa sliding obliquely towards him Johnny suddenly
+gave thought to a possible landing spot for the first time. Not that he
+had any choice but a picture of a cold, wet immersion in any of several
+possible bodies of water was not encouraging. The suit would probably
+float but which end first was a matter for conjecture and out of it he
+would 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 a
+vertical drop. 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.
+
+He tried to shake off gloomy speculation, uneasily aware that much of
+the carefree confidence of the last hour had deserted him. In a more
+normal state of mind again he became prey to tension once more, a
+pounding heart and dry mouth recalling mercilessly the essential
+frailties of his kind. So, with aching neck and burning eyes he strained
+for a clear view past the length of the cylinder and--
+
+There! The preliminary to the visual changes, a sudden sweep of
+distortion over the landscape as his angle of sight through the
+refracting particles became more shallow. Now was the time he had judged
+the throat vane gyros should begin their run-up.
+
+He worked the lanyard back carefully, fearful an awkward movement might
+upset the cylinder's line-up, pulling the trigger lever over to
+half-cock where the micro switch should complete circuit with the dry
+power pack. There should be approximately one minute before the major
+color 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 at
+the 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 the
+rock face with the rope snapped suddenly taut, feels it at last slacken
+and sees the hands gripping safely come into sight?
+
+Perhaps the greenhorn, rifle a-waver, watching the glimpse of tawny
+color in the veldt-grass and waiting the thunder and the charge, could
+say.
+
+They'd all be wrong. It's much longer.
+
+Long enough for Johnny to think of a dozen precautions he could have
+taken, a dozen better ways to rig this or that. Long enough to worry
+about whether the gyros were really running up as they should. A
+thousand queries and doubts piled mountainously upward to an almost
+unbearable peak of tension till suddenly the browns and greens below
+flashed a shade lighter and it was time, and the savage snap on the
+lanyard a blessed relief and total committal.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the few seconds after the firing of the prime and before the busy
+little timer snapped the valves wide open Johnny managed to slip his
+toes under the jet pedals to avoid accidental firing. At the same time
+he braced himself as rigidly as possible with aching arms against the
+walls of the cylinder.
+
+He saw briefly the flare of the jet reflected off the remnants of his
+cloud of station stores before deceleration with all its unpleasantness
+began.
+
+The lip of the cylinder's mouth swept up past his helmet as he was
+rammed deep into the absorbent mass of ribbon chute. This wasn't a
+padded contour chair under a mild 3G lift. The chutes took the first
+shock, but Johnny took the rest the hard way, standing bolt upright.
+
+He found with some surprise his head was right down through the neck
+ring and inside the suit proper, his arms half withdrawn from the
+sleeves, knees buckled to an almost unbelievable angle considering the
+dimensions of the lower case.
+
+He had time to hope fervently the cheap expendable motor wouldn't burn
+out its throat and send him cart-wheeling through space, or blow the
+surrounding tanks before the blackout came down.
+
+He came out of it sluggishly, to find the relief from the dreadful
+pressure almost as stupefying as the deceleration itself. While his
+conscious mind screamed the urgency of immediate action, his bruised and
+twisted body answered but feebly. The condition of complete
+weightlessness and the springy reaction of the ribbon mass was all that
+allowed him finally to claw himself out of the cylinder to where he
+could use the suit jet without fear of burning the precious chutes.
+
+He was so tired. His muscles of their own accord seemed to relax
+intermittently, interfering with the control of his movements. Only the
+sudden sight of the Earth, transformed by a weird illusion of position
+from a bright goal to an enormous, distorted thing, looming, apparently,
+over him with glowing menace, spurred his flagging resolution to frantic
+activity.
+
+He jetted straight back trailing his string of chutes behind him, then,
+before the last was free of the cylinder, kicked himself around to
+assume the original course once more.
+
+At this stage it was no longer possible, even granted the time, to judge
+visually how near he was to the atmosphere. The uneasy feeling that he
+must already be brushing the Troposphere jarred his nerve so that he
+merely gave himself a short flat-out boost in the right direction before
+spinning bodily one hundred eighty degrees so that he was traveling feet
+first.
+
+Reflected in the curved helmet face, the string of chutes obediently
+followed-my-leader around a ragged U-shape, the last--the small
+pilot-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 he
+deliberately inhaled long slow draughts of his already staling air,
+realized abstractly that he seemed to be attempting to meet his possible
+end with some degree of dignity if not with resignation, and wondered
+if he were the exception or the rule.
+
+Possibly, he thought sardonically, because there is so little room for
+dignity in our living years, and was mildly surprised at an
+uncharacteristic excursion into the realm of philosophy.
+
+There was a faintly perceptible tug on the harness. It was sustained and
+now there came a definite strain. Reflected for a moment in the helmet
+face was a glimpse of the lead chute slowly opening out like a gigantic
+flower.
+
+Then swiftly, in half a breath the harness coils were tightening about
+him like steel fingers, the heavy ring at the end of the master shroud
+clashed against the back of his helmet and began a sickening, thrumming
+vibration there.
+
+The harness encompassed his torso like a vise but his legs were
+unsupported and weighed what seemed a thousand tons. He could feel them
+stretching. Somewhere a coil slipped a fraction. His arms were jerked
+suddenly upwards and Johnny knew a sensation he'd never believed
+possible. At the same time his leaden feet crashed down on the jet
+pedals. For a few, brief, blessed moments the intolerable extension
+eased a fraction with the firing of the suit jets.
+
+He cringed mentally from the thought of what was to come and thought
+hazily: "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 fled
+before 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. They
+were holding him down, hurting him. One was pulling and twisting at his
+arm. He shouted and swore at it telling it to leave him alone, but it
+ignored him or didn't seem to hear. There was a sudden dull snapping
+sound and a little of the pain abated.
+
+The figures flowed together and swirled around like some great oily
+vortex but never quite left him.
+
+Then there was a time when they separated jerkily and became the hazy
+but definable figures of men in rough seaman's clothes. Johnny had never
+heard Breton French before; in his dazed condition the apparently insane
+gabble might well have been the tongue of another world and gave him
+little assurance. He hurt so badly and so generally that he could not
+have determined that he was lying down save for a view of white clouds
+scudding overhead.
+
+Some of the men were holding up what looked like a crumpled parody of a
+man. He recognized it without surprise as the soaking remains of his
+spacesuit, battered and with tattered shreds of outer cover and
+insulation hanging in festoons.
+
+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? Now here is one who was both squeezed and stretched
+alternately as well as hammered, dehydrated and almost asphyxiated, is
+it not? This will bear watching. It is alive but there will have to be
+X-rays in profusion."
+
+It danced long sensitive fingers over the welts and bruises and
+commented bluntly that it was well the fishermen had returned his arms
+and legs into their sockets before he fully regained consciousness. It
+muttered and clucked to itself as it used the hypo which Johnny could
+not feel. "Formidable!"
+
+The pleasant drowsiness came down just as he was identifying the queer
+smell 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 the
+world incuriously through drug-laden eyes. Finally they allowed him to
+waken fully and the sharp-faced doctor, together with half a dozen
+others from various parts of the world decided that, after all, he
+seemed to be surviving.
+
+Johnny lay and itched intolerably in the cast that covered him from nape
+to 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 her
+life, reminded him that it wanted but two days to Christmas and opined
+that: "Such a tragedy for M'sieu. To be so far from home!"
+
+Johnny smiled at the ceiling, not daring to laugh yet, and sniffed at
+the salt sea air with its undertone of rank seaweed and gloried in it;
+even a chance whiff of that particular cigarette tobacco that only a
+Frenchman can appreciate. He thought that here, as across the water,
+night and day followed each other in their proper order and the ground
+was a solid thing beneath the feet.
+
+Why--he could never be closer.
+
+
+FIN.
+
+
+  +--------------------------------------------------------------+
+  |                      Transcriber's Note                      |
+  |                                                              |
+  | This etext was produced from Astounding Science Fiction,     |
+  | December 1955. Extensive research did not uncover any        |
+  | evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was     |
+  | renewed.                                                     |
+  |                                                              |
+  | A few obvious typographical errors have been corrected.      |
+  |                                                              |
+  | Punctuation has been left as is.                             |
+  +--------------------------------------------------------------+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Far from Home, by J.A. Taylor
+
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