Jerry Oltion - Anywhere but Here

There was the usual two seconds of free fall after the release as the parachute billowed upward, then the hard lurch as it filled out.

Then they were falling again.

“What the hell?” Trent craned his neck and stuck his head against the window so he could look up. The parachute was a shredded mop of flapping rags, and there was a big cloud of white confetti above that. It looked like the thing had exploded.

Could somebody have shot at them with a laser satellite? They hadn’t tried to call anyone on the radio, because they had been too far away when they were at the gas giant, and they hadn’t had time before they lined up for landing. There hadn’t seemed much point anyway; out here, the odds of finding humans, or even aliens who used the same radio frequencies as humans, were ridiculously small.

Something had happened to their chute, though. Should they jump back into space and try the radio? Maybe they could negotiate a rescue, or at least permission to land. But they only had one or two more refreshes of air; hardly time enough for any of that. And the more he looked at the shredded parachute overhead, the less it looked like laser damage. Nothing was melted; it just looked shredded.

They were picking up speed fast. The remains of the parachute were ripping free like party streamers. “Hang on,” Trent said. He jammed his fingers going for the other chute switch, and he and Donna braced themselves for the jolt. When it came, it shoved them deep into the seat, hard enough that Trent felt the air tank under his butt. He prayed that this chute would hold, please hold, just get us to the ground goddammit hold, and he held his breath for the moment of free fall that would tell him he and Donna were dead, but it never came. He looked up and saw the canopy filled out firm and round above them, and he remembered to breathe.

“What happened to the first one?” Donna asked.

“I have no idea,” Trent said. “It doesn’t look like it was shot. It’s more like our clothes and that shop towel, but the alien slime didn’t even get close to that parachute.”

She frowned. “No, but the tree sap did.”

“The tree sap?” He slapped his forehead. “The tree sap! Of course. This is the chute that got hung up in the tree. And we got sap all over our clothes, too. And I wiped it off the parachute with the shop towel.”

She looked up at the good chute. “I’m glad they didn’t both come down in that tree.”

“Me too.” He looked up again and saw the old chute hanging in the shroud lines of the good one. What was left of it flapped a little in the breeze, but it wasn’t fouling the lines or anything.

He looked down as much as he could. As near as he could tell, they were right over the island. He didn’t have the mirrors aimed downward this time, either, but he could see big puffy clouds floating serenely over the central volcano, casting shadows on its flanks. They didn’t seem to be moving very fast, which was a good thing. It wouldn’t take much wind to blow the pickup out over the ocean.

Donna reached across the seat and took his hand. Her fingers were like ice, even through the Ziptite suit. He rubbed them in his palms, not sure if that would warm them up or not, but he did it anyway.

He had to refresh their air one more time on the way down. That left just a few pounds in the tank, enough for maybe one more cabful, but if things went right, they wouldn’t need it for a while.

And it looked like things were finally going right. There were trees on the island, and several streams running down off the volcano. As they grew closer, they could see wide, flat beaches and grassy meadows. Some kind of herd animals were grazing in the meadows.

“I think we could have done lots worse,” Trent said. “ ’Specially if those are palm trees.”

Donna said, “More people are killed by falling coconuts than airplane crashes.”

“That’s a risk I’m willing to take,” Trent replied. He smiled and added, “I’ll make us coconut helmets. And a coconut bikini for you.”

“How come I have to wear clothes?”

He thought about that for a second. “’Cause otherwise we won’t get anything done?”

“Depends on your definition of ‘anything.’ ” She was giving him that look again.

He just shook his head and looked at the ground. They were only a few hundred feet up now, aimed for a big patch of green grass or something. As long as the same stuff was directly beneath them, too, they couldn’t ask for better. “Hang on,” he said, and he leaned back in the seat.

It was a perfect touchdown. The pickup bounced once and came to rest on level ground, and the parachute slid to the side and collapsed right beside them. It would be a piece of cake to fold it up and stow it again.

Trent looked over at Donna. She was grinning like a goof, and he realized he was, too. They’d made it. The sun was shining bright, and a little breeze was rippling the grass in front of them.

Normally if they were exploring new planets they would have a mouse in a cage who would get the dubious honor of taking the first breath while they waited in their Ziptite suits, but this trip they hadn’t expected to go anywhere that didn’t already have people on it. Trent considered having Donna seal up while he tried it, but there seemed little point. Either they could breathe it or they were dead. So he just unlatched the top and bottom of his door and popped it open, and Donna did the same on her side. They looked at one another, then each took a breath.

It smelled fresh and grassy. And a little spicy. “Smells like cinnamon,” he said. “Not bad. Kind of sweet.”

Donna had a funny look on her face. “What are all those stars doing down here?” she asked.

He was about to ask what she meant when he saw them himself: bright swirls of light looping around a central dark spot, a dark spot that grew wider and wider as he watched. He heard a ringing in his ears, and he felt like he was back in space again, floating weightless.

“Shit!” he yelled. “Seal up! There’s something wrong with the air.” He knocked off his cowboy hat and flipped his hood over his head in one motion, squeezed the seam closed, then reached down to his side and cranked the suit’s tiny air tank’s valve open. He heard the hiss of air filling the suit just before the darkness expanded all the way, and he fell forward into the steering wheel.

Somebody was honking at him. Trent jerked awake, certain he’d fallen asleep at the wheel, and the honking stopped. Sure enough, he was in the pickup, and he’d apparently run off the road, because there was grass all around.

His head hurt. And he was wearing a Ziptite pressure suit. He looked over to Donna’s side of the seat and saw her slumped half out of the truck, hanging by her shoulder strap. She was wearing a Ziptite, too. How the heck had they wound up here? Had they wrecked? Something wasn’t clicking. He felt like he’d been asleep for weeks, and needed another week to bring his mind up to speed.

He pulled Donna upright. She was limp as a sack and her head lolled to the side, but she was breathing. Her suit was sealed tight. Why? He couldn’t remember.

The sun was shining bright and warm through the windshield. Trent shaded his eyes and looked out at the volcano straight ahead. It looked impossibly high and steep-sided, like a cartoon drawing. Snow covered the top third or so.

Volcano. They’d been about to land on a planet full of volcanoes. No, they’d landed, and opened up their suits, but the air was bad. Sulfur dioxide, maybe, like you sometimes got in the mines. Did volcanoes put out sulfur dioxide? He seemed to remember that they did, but he wouldn’t bet on his memory of anything at the moment.