Jerry Oltion - Anywhere but Here

They closed up again and Trent turned on the radio. “Give us a few minutes to make sure we’re airtight.”

“Certainly,” said Potikik. “Take your time.”

Trent pressurized the cab and they watched the air gauge for a few minutes while Donna connected up the computer and loaded the new program that Allen had put on it. When the pressure had remained steady after ten minutes, Trent let the excess air out and said into the microphone, “Okay, we’re ready to roll.”

Potikik didn’t say anything, but they saw several holes open up in the walls and the air rushed out of the docking bay. The holes were in the inner wall, so Trent supposed the air was being held somewhere, maybe in a big set of lungs, to be exhaled into the bay again when the next ship docked.

The outer door opened and the tug disengaged its clamps from the inner wall, letting the last puff of air send them out into space. The pilot pushed them out past the protruding booms—one of which no doubt held Judy and Allen’s apartment—and when they were well into clear space, he released the tug’s hold on the roll bar and backed away.

“You’re clear for launch,” he said. “And you’re welcome back any time.”

“Thanks for the hospitality,” Trent replied. “We’ll be seeing you around.” He put the microphone back in its clip and said to Donna, “Anytime you’re ready.”

“Okay,” she said, pulling down the destination menu and selecting “Earth” from the list. Not just “Sol” like the other program, but “Earth.” She double-checked the numbers that popped into the “details” window, then said, “Looks good. Here goes.”

She hit the “enter” key, and the space station vanished, to be replaced in almost exactly the same spot by the sunlit Earth.

“Holy cow,” Donna said. “He’s got the targeting down cold.”

The planet was about the size of a basketball held at arm’s length; far enough to put them outside the range of the United States’s laser satellites, but close enough to see the continents so they could pick a preliminary landing site.

Provided they could recognize the continents. Trent squinted against the glare of sunlight on clouds, and finally managed to see a patch of brown beneath the white. There was a curved edge over to the left with a big bite taken out of it, and a big triangular island kind of below and to the left of that. There was a big white area to the left of that, too smooth to be clouds, but what clouds there were did seem to be kind of sticking out of it in big curls. Trent turned his head sideways to put them at the top of the picture, then the other way to put them at the bottom, and everything clicked into place. That was the south pole over there to the left, and the brown continent with the island to the south was Australia.

Which meant North America was on the night side of the planet.

“Dammit,” Trent said. “I don’t want to make a night landing.”

“You want to go back to Federation headquarters and try again in twelve hours?” Donna asked.

“Not particularly.”

“I don’t think we have enough air to wait it out here.”

“Probably not.” Trent didn’t have the patience, either. He looked at the brown continent, ringed with cloud and bare in the middle. Somebody was having a nice, sunny day down there. After all the rain and cold he and Donna had been through in the past few days, a little desert sun would be more than welcome. “Hell with it,” he said. “We’ve always wanted to go to Australia. Looks like now’s a pretty good time for it. We’ve even got twenty bucks left. What do you say we spend the rest of the day there and then go home?”

Donna smiled. “That actually sounds kind of fun. Anyplace in particular you want to go?”

“I don’t know Australia from a hole in the ground. Just pick a spot and let’s see what we get.”

“Okay, here goes.”

She put the target circle dead square in the middle of the continent and pushed “enter.” Earth vanished, to appear much larger and only half-lit off to the right, then after a couple minutes it shifted again so they were directly over a huge expanse of red desert. There was still some sideways motion; apparently the program had only killed part of their velocity so they could fly over their target area and pick a specific landing site more carefully.

Donna looked over at Trent, but he just shrugged and said, “Anywhere,” so she left the targeting circle right where it was and pressed “enter.”

The program took them halfway around the planet again to kill the rest of their velocity, then put them back where they were, only much closer to the ground. One more jump downward, and Donna said, “That’s it. We’re at the top of the atmosphere already.” Trent used the air jets to orient the pickup wheels-down while Donna said, “Get ready with the parachute in five… four… three… two… one… now.”

He flipped the switch for their new chute. No time like the present for testing new equipment. It streamed upward and tugged gently on the pickup, but not nearly as hard as their other chutes did. Was it fouled? Trent leaned forward and looked up just in time to see a series of cords break away from where they held the canopy closed, and the chute blossomed open a little at a time until it was fully deployed. There had been hardly a lurch through the whole sequence.

“Now that was a neat trick,” Trent said. “I’ll have to learn how they did that.”

There were big black letters on the chute. They were backwards from underneath, and in various languages including several that weren’t human, but Trent could read one set of block letters easily enough: Galactic Federation. He wasn’t sure whether that was a good thing or a bad thing, but it was too late to worry about it now.

They drifted down through clear skies, watching the desert rise up to meet them. The ground was red, just like it was around Rock Springs, and they could see big swirls and arcs of rock outcrops from where it had folded and then been eroded flat over millions of years. Off toward the horizon were a couple of white patches that looked like salt pans.

“Looks like we’re in the outback,” Trent said. So much for spending that last twenty.

As they drew closer to the ground, they realized it wasn’t nearly as barren as it looked from higher up. Around each of the rock outcrops there was a light brown ring the color of dry grass, and between the rings were specks of green that turned out to be trees. There were actually lots of trees, just spaced a ways apart, and big tufts of grass or bushes or something growing between them.

Trent looked in the downward-facing mirror as they approached the ground, and he saw a group of twenty or thirty animals moving out in a circle around where they were going to come down. They were up on two legs—kangaroos? But their arms flailed as they ran, and brightly colored cloth billowed out behind several of them.

“People!” he said. “There’s people down there.”

“Oh, shit!” said Donna. “Should we jump?”

“They’re gettin’ out of the way.” Trent kept his eyes on the mirror just to make sure, but the runners on the ground were well clear now.

“Jeez,” Donna said. “What are the odds we’d land right on top of the only group of people for miles around?”

“Pretty slim, but we managed it. Hang on.”

They leaned back in their seats, and a moment later there was a hard jounce as the tires hit the red dirt. The pickup skidded to the left a little, but it didn’t feel like it was in danger of going over. A cloud of red dust rose up around them and drifted slowly to the left, rising to meet the parachute as it draped itself over a couple of bushes and several of the people who had watched them land.