The Reply

CHAPTER 41

Then there was the darkness of space again, Turcotte desperately firing boosters, trying to regain control. After a minute he had the bouncer stopped. Turcotte turned in his seat. The mother-ship was still visible, a tribute to the engineering capabilities of the Airlia, but there was a tremendous gash over half a mile long in the side where the cargo bay had been. There was no sign of the five talons that had been in the entrance to the bay.

Turcotte froze. The sixth talon, the one that had fired at him, was between him and the mother-ship, several kilometers away. Turcotte relaxed when he saw that the ship was slowly tumbling end over end, out of control.

“Now comes the fun part,” he muttered to himself as he looked down at the Earth under his feet. He hit the transmit button on the SATCOM radio.

Deep inside Easter Island Kelly Reynolds had cried out in pain as the guardian picked up the destruction of the talon fleet. But the guardian still functioned; it still kept the shield guarding the island up, and it still kept her in its field, a prisoner in the war Earth thought it had just won.

“I’ve got hold of someone from JPL who should be able to figure out how to get you a trajectory into the atmosphere without burning up,” Quinn said. He hit the patch linking Larry Kincaid to Turcotte.

Turcotte fired the various boosters as directed by Kincaid, who was tracking him from the JPL control room. Slowly the bouncer got closer and closer to Earth’s atmosphere, until finally it was caught in the gravitational well and pulled down.

Turcotte put his hands on the control bar for the bouncer as the craft hit the edge of the atmosphere, skipped, and then began to descend. Now came the tricky part, hoping the magnetic engine kicked in before he hit the Earth’s surface at terminal velocity.

The skin of the bouncer reflected heat as the ship screamed through the sky, the air getting thicker around it. Turcotte pulled back on the controls: nothing.

“Goddamn,” he whispered.

“Do you have any control?” Kincaid called out over the radio.

“Negative.”

“One hundred and sixty thousand feet and descending,” Kincaid informed him. “You’ve got plenty of altitude to gain control.”

Turcotte looked about. He was over North America. As near as he could tell somewhere over the southeast, heading west.

A minute later Kincaid wasn’t so reassuring. “Fifty thousand feet and terminal velocity. Have you got anything?”

Turcotte moved the control stick. “Nothing. I think the ship took some damage from a hit.”

A new voice came over the radio. “Get out of there!” Lisa Duncan yelled. “Use the emergency gear.”

Turcotte reached over and grabbed the parachute that was strapped to the floor next to his seat. He threw it over his shoulder, fighting the buffets the uncontrolled craft was sustaining as it fell.

He quickly buckled the chute on, then grabbed the snap link and hooked it into the cable that was just behind his seat, running up the top hatch.

He grabbed the controls, once more trying to save the craft. Nothing. “I’m getting out of here,” he yelled into the radio.

Turcotte pulled a red lever up. Explosive bolts fired, blowing the hatch off. Air swirled in. Turcotte pushed himself out of the pilot’s seat. He slid along the cable and banged into the top near the hatch. He pulled himself through into the hatch.

Then he let go and fell out of the bouncer. The static line for the parachute quickly paid out and the chute blossomed above him as the bouncer disappeared below.

Turcotte gained control of his toggles and looked down. He was above desert, somewhere in the southwest U.S. He descended, feeling the air on his skin and listening to the gentle sound of the wind. He played with the toggles, controlling his descent until he landed on a dune. The chute dragged him across the sand. He popped the shoulder releases and the chute floated away. Turcotte simply lay there, his back feeling the soft ground underneath.

Slowly Turcotte stood. Looking to the east he could see the sun rising, the edge just coming up over the horizon, sending rays of sunlight high over his head.

Reaching down, Turcotte picked up a handful of sand. “It’s good to be home,” he whispered.