Deepsix

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 a

"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-wi

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 ba

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 te

He watched his people move out across the narrow space between the net and the airlock onto the metal links floating nearby. They co

One advantage, at least: no lasers were in use. He'd hated putting lasers in the hands of the people along the assembly, and would have flat out refused to do it on the net, had he been asked. Fortunately, it wasn't necessary.

He was the only person out there with a go-pack. It was his responsibility to navigate along the edges, and to draw them close enough together that the Outsiders could co

He was uncomfortable about this aspect of the strategy. "This sack is three-quarters of a kilometer in diameter, Marcel," he said over a private cha

"What's your suggestion?"

"I'd prefer to cut the thing down to a manageable size. Say 150 meters. Certainly no more than that."

"How long would it take you to do it?"

He looked across the hundreds of square meters of drifting net. They'd have to go back inside, do some complicated maneuvering, do the cutting, come back out, splice it together. "Twelve hours," he said.

"So that shoots it, no?" He could hear Marcel's impatience. "Do it as pla

The Outsiders finished, and the bottom one hundred meters were stitched together into a sack. When they'd finished, Miles's shuttle picked them up.

Now it became the Phil Zossimov Show. Phil had brought along some tubing, cut and shaped like a ring. Miles admired the young Russian. He'd made it clear an hour earlier that the thought of going outside onto the net terrified him. But he showed no sign of reluctance as he stood in front of the volunteers and activated his e-suit.