want to singe him. “Cut the engine!” I called to Mudge. The hull suddenly stopped vibrating, and we began dropping like a rock. I was afraid the ship would fall right back down into the hole it had previously occupied, especially since it was probably widened now by the rocket exhaust. When I figured my chances were at least halfway decent for surviving, I leapt out of the airlock, trying for as much horizontal distance as I could manage.
When I landed, my legs went like driven piles into the muck. No sooner had they done so than a shock wave went through the melted permafrost as the massive lander impacted the surface behind me. I twisted my neck to see. The lander had hit half-on and half-off the hole, and now was teetering toward me; it looked like it was going to topple over any second. I tried to pull myself up and out of the mess, but it was going to take some doing—and the chances of the ship falling precisely so that I ended up poking safely through the open airlock doors instead of being crushed seemed slim. It was too bad we hadn’t brought along the lasso that Lakshmi had used on Pickover earlier; he could have employed it to haul me out of the quagmire.
That is, if he himself could get solid footing. Behind me, the tottering ship was making a groaning sound, conveyed through the attenuated atmosphere and picked up by my still-open external helmet microphones.
I was pushing myself up out of the mess as fast as I could, but a surface suit really wasn’t designed for those sorts of gymnastics. For his part, Pickover was staggering away from me like Karloff fleeing the villagers, the mud still sucking at his every step.
Suddenly—it was always suddenly, wasn’t it?—a shot rang out, audible because my external mikes were still cranked way up. The bullet whizzed past me and impacted the mud. I swung my head within the fishbowl, trying to make out the assailant. There: about ten o’clock, and maybe thirty meters away—a figure, probably a man, in an Earth-sky-blue surface suit, holding a rifle aimed at me.
TWENTY-FIVE
Pickover finally reached solid ground, it seemed, but as soon as he did, he threw himself down, presumably to make a harder target for whoever was shooting at us. As proof that he was back on marsa firma, the belly flop sent up not a splash of mud but a cloud of dust.
I pulled myself a little farther out of the muck, removed the Smith & Wesson from my shoulder holster, then took a bead on Mr. Blue Sky. There was no way to call “Freeze!” to him, so I just squeezed the trigger, setting off the oxygenated gunpowder, and watched with satisfaction as he slumped over.
But speaking of freezing, I think the mud was starting to do that again. I didn’t want to end up as one of Pickover’s fossils, and so, with a final Herculean effort—as in the Greek hero, not the Agatha Christie detective—I hauled myself out of the thickening sludge.
And just in time, too! With a dinosaurian groan, the ship came tumbling down. I spun around in time to see it hit, and it splashed me from helmet to boot with filth. I used my gloved hands to wipe the front of my fishbowl clean, although it was still streaked with mud, and looked at the fallen lander. The sealed circular hatchway stared out at me like a cyclopean eye.
There was no way anyone could enter through the airlock again; it was face down and buried. I hadn’t seen it happen, but I suspected that the outward-opening door had been slammed shut when the curving hull had hit the muck. If we were going to get back inside, we’d have to find a way to unseal the top hatch. But that was a problem for later; for now, I made my way over to Pickover. “It’s safe to get up,” I said once I’d reached him. His bum ankle was making it hard for him to do so, so I gave him a hand. While walking over, I’d scanned around for anyone else—but Mr. Blue Sky seemed to be alone. We headed over to see him.
“You okay?” I said to Pickover, as we closed the distance.
“Yeah, but that jump didn’t do my ankle any favors; it’s worse than before.”
The sun was high, and there were a few thin clouds overhead. We got those naturally sometimes,