Brad hurried eagerly across the muddy grass toward the shuttlecraft.
It’s there, he said to himself, feeling exultant. It’s all in one piece. The storms haven’t smashed it up.
Then he saw that the craft was canted to one side, as if pushed over by a giant hand. The delta-shaped wing on that side was crumpled against the ground.
I won’t be flying out of here, Brad realized. Strangely, he didn’t feel disappointed. The decision’s been made, he thought. I’m staying here on Gamma.
He walked up to the crippled spacecraft and saw that its entry hatch was on the undamaged side, just in front of the delta wing that angled up into the air.
Too high for me to reach. Pecking at his wrist keyboard, he saw the hatch slide noiselessly open and its metal ladder unfold. It poked uselessly into the empty air.
As he stared at the rungs of the ladder, Brad almost broke into laughter. This is biblical, like some ancient mythological tale about punishment and irony. The craft is here, everything I need to survive is in it, and I can’t reach the final few meters to get inside.
Instead of laughing, though, Brad stared at the open hatch, wondering what to do. The sun was nearing the sawtooth ridge of the distant mountains. Soon it would begin to get dark.
* * *
Kosoff had never seen Ursula Steiner look distressed before. She still sat straight and elegant in her chair, but her hands were fluttering like a trapped bird.
“Not natural?” she said. “Of course it’s natural. Just because we haven’t found the cause for this scenario doesn’t mean that some evil extraterrestrial villains deliberately tampered with this planetary system.”
“Occam’s razor,” Kosoff replied. “The simplest explanation is usually the correct one.”
Abbott chuckled slightly as he said, “I tend to agree with you, Professor—although I wouldn’t call a malevolent extraterrestrial invader the simplest explanation.”
“Can you provide a natural explanation for the condition of this solar system?” Kosoff demanded.
Pursing his lips, Abbott replied, “Not at this moment, no. But Dr. Chang suggested one possibility: a rogue star swept by close enough to scramble the planets’ orbits. Or perhaps it was a mini black hole.”
“A hundred thousand years ago?” Kosoff challenged. “Then we should be able to see that star and backtrack its trajectory. Even a mini black hole should produce gravitational distortions that would be detectable.”
Abbott nodded. “I’ll have my people get on it right away.” Then he rubbed his chin and added, “You know, our own solar system was visited by a passing red dwarf some seventy thousand years ago. It’s about twenty light-years from Earth at present.”
“Did it perturb the planetary orbits?” Steiner asked, suddenly hopeful.
“Apparently not. At least, not enough for us to trace today. Probably kicked up a fuss in the Oort Cloud, ejecting cometary bodies and that sort of thing, I should presume.”
“So what do we do about MacDaniels and his messiah complex?” Steiner demanded.
It was Kosoff’s turn to go silent. Drumming his fingers on the tabletop, at last he repeated, “What’s done is done. I don’t see that we have any alternative but to help the Gammans survive their winter.”
Abbott agreed. “In for a penny, in for a pound.”
Steiner looked aghast. “But our mission protocol forbids—”
“Those regulations were written on Earth by people who are still on Earth,” Kosoff said sternly. “We’re out here, on the scene, facing life-or-death decisions.”
Elizabeth Chang smiled slightly. “When in doubt, choose life.”
Littlejohn summed up, “Brad’s made a shambles of the mission protocols. That may have been a mistake, but now we have no choice except to push ahead in the direction he’s taken.”
Kosoff nodded his agreement, but he was thinking, MacDaniels has become the de facto leader here. He pulls the strings and we dance to his tune.
* * *
When handed a lemon, Brad was thinking, make lemonade.
The shuttlecraft’s entry hatch was too high above him for him to reach it. Its frail-looking metal ladder poked out uselessly into the empty air, as if it were daring Brad to figure out how to reach it.
Okay, he said to himself. That’s what I’ll have to do.
The shadows of late afternoon were lengthening across the field where the shuttle rested.
You’ve got to act quickly, Brad realized. Before it gets dark.
The ground was littered with twigs and branches and other debris torn from the forest by the storm winds. All I need, Brad thought, is a tree branch long enough to reach the hatch, and strong enough to hold my weight.
He started searching through the litter and soon spotted a long, fairly straight branch. Lifting one end of it, he was surprised at how heavy it was.
Okay, that’s good, he thought. It’s solid. It won’t break under my weight. He started to drag it back to the shuttle. He had to strain hard to tug it along.
Now comes the hard part, he realized. Judging the angle by eye, Brad laid the branch on the ground so that, when raised on one end, its other end would nestle in the open hatch, nearly ten meters above his head.
It wasn’t easy. He tugged the end of the branch off the ground and started walking down its length, each step lifting it higher, each step making it heavier against the shoulder of his suit. Twice the branch slipped from his gloved hands and crashed to the ground, forcing him to start all over again.
It was getting dark. Brad stood at the end of the branch, bent over, hands on his knees, sweaty and puffing with exertion. How can the Gammans work their farms without real tools? he wondered. They’ve got nothing but a few cutting blades and their own muscle power. Not even levers or pulleys.
Finally he muttered, “Okay. Third time’s the charm.”
He lifted and trudged slowly, doggedly until at last the branch’s far end clonked dully against the corner of the open hatch. Then he slumped to the ground to catch his breath. Every muscle in his body ached.
But he’d done it.
Almost.
With a blood-curdling screech, the branch began to skitter against the shuttle’s metal skin, teetering uncertainly. Brad saw that it would crash down to the ground again unless he could stop its slide.
Jumping to his feet, Brad put his shoulder to the branch, pushing with all his might until its upper end lodged itself firmly inside a corner of the open hatch.
Stepping back, Brad waited, puffing and sweating, for more than a full minute. The branch did not move. It was firmly wedged in place.
He hoped.
Peering up the length of the branch, Brad realized that it would be far easier for him to climb its rough bark if he were out of his suit. The field was mostly in shadow now, the sky overhead a deep reddish violet.
“I’ll never make it in this suit,” he muttered to himself. Briefly he thought about the chance he was taking, but quickly decided the odds were worth risking. It’s either get out of the suit or fall on your face trying to climb up the hatch.
He unlocked the helmet and lifted it off his head. The evening air smelled strange, alien. But not unpleasant, he thought. Just different.
He sucked in a double lungful of the alien air, thinking, If I die, I die. Then he quickly stripped off his gloves and boots and got to his feet.
In the deepening shadows, the branch looked like a stairway to heaven. Brad scrambled up its rough surface, glad that he was descended from apes and monkeys.
He reached the hatch and stood exultantly in the outer air lock compartment.
I’ve made it! he thought. Then he raised his fists over his head and shouted into the gathering darkness, “I made it!”