Jerry Oltion - Anywhere but Here

“Well,” Donna said, “With two parachutes, we’ll have a soft landing.”

“We can hope.”

Trent leaned against his side window and looked up. He couldn’t see straight overhead, but he could see almost half of each parachute and they both looked fully inflated. A little scrunched on the sides where they touched, but nothing serious. They glowed bright white in the sunlight, brand new and clean with only the exaggerated exclamation point of the company logo breaking the smooth expanse of nylon. Trent couldn’t read the Cyrillic words stenciled on the rim of the chutes even when he was standing right next to them, so he had no idea what the company was called, but as long as the chutes worked, he didn’t really care.

The view out the side window went on forever. They were still a long ways up—probably fifty miles or so. It would be a long ride down. A long time to kick himself for his clumsiness. He couldn’t believe he’d done that. One little slip, and now they could be in deep shit if anything else went wrong.

He couldn’t see straight down, either. He should have angled the side mirrors downward before they left Earth, but of course he’d forgotten to do that. He wondered what else he’d messed up, and how soon they would find out about it.

Donna reached out and put her hand on his leg. “It’s all right.”

“No, it’s not all right. That was a dumb-ass move, and now we could find ourselves in trouble in a real hurry.” “We’ll be fine.”

He didn’t say anything. Experience had taught him that times like this were when he was most likely to stick his foot in his mouth, adding that to the growing list of screw-ups. So he just sat there and watched the ground slowly become more detailed as they dropped.

“At least we’ve got nice weather for a landing,” Donna said.

“There’s that,” he allowed.

It was hard to tell from high up whether or not there was any wind on the ground. They were undoubtedly drifting sideways with whatever high-altitude winds happened to be blowing, and with two chutes holding them up longer they would drift farther than usual, but that wasn’t a problem. It was the ground weather that mattered. It wouldn’t take much of a crosswind to tip them over when they landed, if they came in sideways. That was one of the drawbacks of a jacked-up truck. One more worry to add to the list.

The ground looked rougher and rougher the closer they came. What had seemed like smooth prairie now became filled with shadows of rock outcrops and meandering streams. It was either morning or evening down there, which meant the light was coming in low and highlighting the terrain, but it looked like there was plenty of terrain for it to highlight. It would be fun four-wheeling once they were down, but it could make for a hairy landing.

How had he gotten them into this mess, anyway? They could have just taken an afternoon drive out to Flaming Gorge or something and been home for dinner.

The pickup was spinning slowly clockwise, giving them the full panorama every thirty seconds or so. One of the shroud lines must be a little longer than the others, spilling a little more air from one side of the chute and shoving it around.

“Pretty, isn’t it?” Donna said.

“Huh?”

“It’s a whole different planet out there, stretching off as far as you can see. Look at the way the sun glistens off the river out there. And the mountains. That’s a glacier, isn’t it?”

Trent looked where she was pointing. Tail gray peaks stuck up through a blanket of snow that looked white as cotton except for a long snakey line of dirt that wound down through a wide canyon from the middle of the range.

“Yep, that’s what it looks like,” he said.

“I wonder if anybody has skied down it yet?”

“Glaciers are full of crevices. You ski over what looks like smooth snow, and the next thing you know you’re a hundred feet down in a crack with a broken neck.”

She looked over at him. “What’s gotten into you?”

“Maybe some common sense.”

“Or maybe a little too much self-criticism. We’re going to be okay, Trent. So we’re coming down under both parachutes. People do that on purpose all the time.”

“They’re idiots,” Trent said.

“And you think you’re an idiot, too?”

“Feels like it,” he admitted. The mountains swept away to the left and he found himself looking out at the vast sea of grass. “I mean, just because everybody else is rushin’ off into space, does that mean we have to do it, too? So what if we’re out of work? We can find other jobs. We’ve got our own house and our families right there, too. What made us think we had to go zoomin’ around the galaxy?”

“Because it’s there?”

He snorted. “Yeah, right. So’s Australia, and we never tried that.”

“We couldn’t afford to go to Australia.”

“And now we’re landing on Alpha Centauri.” He shook his head. “I don’t know. It made all sorts of sense when I was sealing up the truck and doing all the wiring and stuff, but now I just don’t get it.”

Donna looked out her side window. “We’re coming in.” She took the computer off the dashboard and held it in her lap, tapping at the keyboard a few times. Trent recognized the emergency bailout screen when it popped up. Hit the “enter” key now and the hyperdrive would take them a hundred thousand kilometers straight up. Useful if they were about to land in the water or on a steep slope or something, but with the jump field set to fifty meters so it would include the parachutes, it would suck power like a short circuit, and then they would either have to go outside in vacuum and repack the chutes or go back to Earth and holler for help. Not something Trent wanted to do twice in a row.

Bigtown wasn’t hard to spot now that they were close to the ground. It was too far away to see houses or streets, but there was a dirty smudge of smoke in the air over one of the valleys up by the foot of the mountains. Trent guessed it was maybe fifteen miles away; an easy drive if they managed to land okay.

He put his head up against his own window, trying to see as close to straight down as he could. It looked like they were going down in some rolling hills, but there were rock outcrops and steep gullies all around, any one of which could be a problem, and he couldn’t tell what was directly beneath them.

The pickup swayed gently. They must have crossed through the boundary between an updraft and a downdraft or something. This close to the ground the air could get turbulent.

Duh! This close to the ground, the air was breathable, too. Trent laughed and popped his top and bottom door latches, then pulled the regular handle and opened the door. There was a little whoof of air as the pressure equalized, and the smell of green growing things came wafting in.

He leaned out and looked straight down. “Shit. Big rocks. Get ready to jump.”

“I can’t do that if your doors open!”

“I can’t see where we’re landin’ with it closed. We’re drifting a little; we might miss ’em.” It would be close, but with two parachutes they weren’t dropping all that fast, and the closer they got to the ground, the more it looked like they were going sideways.

There were a couple of trees beside the rocks. It looked like the pickup would clear the first one, but it was going to come right down on the second one. Trent tried to gauge how big it was, but from this angle it was just a big puff of green. Then he thought to look at its shadow, and nearly told Donna to jump. The shadow was at least fifty feet long!

And the trunk was only six inches thick. The light was coming in low, that was all.

They were definitely going to hit it. He slammed his door and leaned back in the seat, grabbing the steering wheel and getting his feet ready on the juice pedal and the brake. “This is going to be rough, but don’t jump no matter what.”