Between the Strokes of Night

But that was true for a fall toward any planet in the system, and people did not attempt landings on objects of planetary size without a ship; and the composition of Whirlygig was of no particular interest. The planet had been ignored for a long time, until finally some astronomer took the trouble to examine its rotation rate.

Then interest grew rapidly. Whirlygig was unique. What made it so had happened recently, as geological time is measured. A mere hundred thousand years ago a close planetary encounter had transferred to the body an anomalously high angular momentum. After that event Whirlygig was left spinning madly on its axis, completing a full rotation in only seventy-three minutes. And at that speed, centripetal acceleration on the equator just matched gravitational force. A ship flying in a trajectory that grazed Whirlygig’s surface, moving at 1,400 meters per second at closest approach, could soft-land on the planetoid with no impact at all; and a human in a suit, with only the slightest assistance of suit steering jets, could do the same.

But theory and practice, thought Peron, were a long way apart. It was one thing to sit and discuss the problem on the Inter-System ship with the other contestants, and quite another to be racing in toward Whirlygig on a tangential trajectory.

They had drawn lots to see who would be first contestant down. Peron had “won” — Gilby’s term, delivered with a sadistic smile. The others, following in pairs, would face a far easier task because of Peron’s actions of the next few minutes. If he arrived in one piece.

He wondered what they would do if he didn’t land safely — would they nominate someone else to try again? Or would they abandon the whole idea, and move on to another planet? A contestant in theory had just one shot at the trials (Kallen was a rare exception). But death was an earnest contender in every Planetfest games. The deaths of contestants were never mentioned by the Government, and never given one word of publicity in the controlled news media; but everyone who entered the trials knew the truth. Not everyone went home a winner, or even a loser. Some contestants went forever into the shimmering heat of Talimantor Desert, or to a blood-lapped nightdeath in the woods of Villasylvia, or to a frozen tomb in the eternal snows of Capandor Mountains; or (Peron’s own secret fear) to a slow asphyxiation in the underwater caverns of Charant River. He shivered, and peered ahead. Those dangers were past, but death had not been left behind on Pentecost. He would visit Peron just as readily on Whirlygig. The equipment that Peron was hauling along behind him had seemed small when he left the ship, but now four hundred kilos of lines, springs, and pitons felt like a mountain, trailing half a kilometer directly behind him. Uncontrolled, they would envelop him on landing.

The surface felt so close that it seemed he could reach out a suited arm and touch it. He made small attitude adjustments with the suit jets. His velocity was just right for a stable orbit about Whirlygig at surface level. He turned his suit to land feetfirst, and touched, gently as a kiss.

He had landed softly, but at once there was a complication. He found he was at the center of a blinding cloud of dust, pebbles, and rock fragments. Effective gravity here on Whirlygig’s equator was near to zero, and the shower of rock and sand was in no hurry to settle or disperse. Working purely by touch, Peron took one of the two pitons he was carrying, placed it vertically on the surface, and primed the charge. His hands were shaking in the gloves. Must be quick. Only thirty seconds left to secure a firm hold. Then he would have to be ready for the equipment.

The explosive charge in the top end of the piton exploded, driving the sharp point deep into the planet’s surface. Peron tugged it briefly, made sure it was secure, then for double safety primed and set off the second piton. He braced two loops on his suit around the pitons, and looked back toward the moving bundles of equipment.

It seemed impossible. The equipment was still a couple of hundred meters away. The whole landing operation — minutes according to his mental clock — must have been completed in just a few seconds. He had time to examine the bundle of equipment closely, and decide just where he would secure it.

It swung in toward him, drifting down to the surface. The velocity match had been exact. It was less than five minutes work to place another array of pitons in a parabolic curve along the surface, and set up catapult cables to run around the array. The final web of cables and springs looked fragile, but it would hold and secure anything with less than three hundred meters a second of relative velocity.

Peron made one last examination of his work, then activated the suit phone. “All set.” He hoped his voice was as casual as he would have liked it to be. “Come on in anytime. The catapult is in position.”