solved, but it would take a long time, much longer than they could afford.
What about balloons? There seemed a faint possibility here, if they could devise an envelope and a sufficiently compact source of heat. This was the only approach that Norton had not dismissed when the problem suddenly ceased to be one of theory and became a matter of life and death, dominating the news in all the inhabited worlds.
While Jimmy was making his trek along the edge of the sea, half the crackpots in the solar system were trying to save him. At Fleet Headquarters all the suggestions were considered, and about one in a thousand was forwarded to Endeavour. Dr. Carlisle Perera’s arrived twice—once via the Survey’s own network, and once by PLANETCOM, RAMA PRIORITY. It had taken the scientist approximately five minutes of thought and one millisecond of computer time.
At first Norton thought it was a joke in very poor taste. Then he saw the sender’s name and the attached calculations, and did a quick double take.
He handed the message to Karl Mercer. “What do you think of this?” he asked, in as noncommittal a tone of voice as he could manage.
Karl read it swiftly, then said, “Well, I’m damned! He’s right, of course.”
“Are you sure?”
“He was right about the storm, wasn’t he? We should have thought of this; it makes me feel a fool.”
“You have company. The next problem is—how do we break it to Jimmy?”
“I don’t think we should… until the last possible minute. That’s how I’d prefer it if I was in his place. Just tell him we’re on the way.”
Though he could look across the full width of the Cylindrical Sea, and knew the general direction from which Resolution was coming, Jimmy did not spot the tiny craft until it had already passed New York. It seemed incredible that it could carry six men, and whatever equipment they had brought to rescue him.
When it was only a kilometer away, he recognized Commander Norton, and started waving. A little later the Skipper spotted him and waved back.
“Glad to see you’re in good shape, Jimmy,” he radioed. “I promised we wouldn’t leave you behind. Now do you believe me?”
Not quite, Jimmy thought; until this moment he had still wondered if this was all a kindly plot to keep up his morale. But the Commander would not have crossed the sea just to say good-by. He must have worked out something.
“I’ll believe you, Skipper,” he said, “when I’m down there on the deck. Now will you tell me how I’m going to make it?”
Resolution was slowing down a hundred meters from the base of the cliff. As far as Jimmy could tell, she carried no unusual equipment—though he was not sure what he had expected to see.
“Sorry about that, Jimmy, but we didn’t want you to have too many things to worry about.”
Now that sounded ominous; what the devil did he mean?
Resolution came to a halt fifty meters out and five hundred below. Jimmy had almost a bird’s-eye view of the Commander as he spoke into his microphone.
“This is it, Jimmy. You’ll be perfectly safe, but it will require nerve. We know you’ve got plenty of that. You’re going to jump.”
“Five hundred meters!”
“Yes, but at only half a gee.”
“So! Have you ever fallen two hundred and fifty on Earth?”
“Shut up, or I’ll cancel your next leave. You should have worked this out for yourself. It’s just a question of terminal velocity. In this atmosphere you can’t reach more than ninety kilometers an hour—whether you fall two hundred or two thousand meters. Ninety’s a little high for comfort, but we can trim it some more. This is what you’ll have to do, so listen carefully.”
“I will,” said Jimmy. “It had better be good.”
He did not interrupt the Commander again, and made no comment when Norton had finished. Yes, it made sense, and was so absurdly simple that it would take a genius to think of it. And, perhaps, someone who did not expect to do it himself.
Jimmy had never tried high-diving or made a delayed parachute drop, which would have given him some psychological preparation for this feat. One could tell a man that it was perfectly safe to walk a plank across an abyss, yet even if the structural calculations were impeccable he might still be unable to do it. Now Jimmy understood why the Commander had been so evasive about the details of the rescue. He had been given no time to brood, or