“We’re slowing down,” Romo said.
Paul checked the numbers at the bottom of the tri-screen. Yeah. They were leveling off as they approached their float height, now rising at approximately 750 feet per minute.
They were in near space, still part of Earth’s atmosphere. Here, though, there was very little air. Still, it was enough resistance that it generated too much drag for satellites to remain in orbit. Those flew much higher.
It was dark outside, with the great blue of Earth spreading in every direction below. This was space, near space, and it made the planet more precious than ever. What had the Chinese been thinking, using nearly four hundred nuclear devices in Oklahoma? The world was huge, sure, but to poison it like that…
Paul shook his head. They weren’t in outer space, in vacuum yet. Just the same, none of them could survive outside here.
He recalled some data about their capsule and the stratosphere. The outer shell of this little pod was fiberglass and paint, with heavy foam insulation. That protected them from the current temperature: minus 70 degrees Fahrenheit. Nor could they breathe outside on their own here. The pressure would be so low that the liquids in their body tissues would turn to gas and expand dangerously. The symptom was called embolism.
Nausea hit again, although Paul masked it from the others. Keeping his face like stone, he pretended nothing was wrong.
Crazy orbital dropping Marines—what was I thinking joining up?
He peered at the monitor, at the blue curvature of the Earth. It was so beautiful. Cheri is down there. I’m coming home, babe. I promise you that, by God, I do.
Yeah. He knew what he’d been thinking. For one thing, that he’d had enough of nuclear war. He didn’t want to be running outside on the ground again when the Chinese popped off another round of atomic strikes. Forget that garbage!
In Oklahoma near Stillwater, watching the mushroom clouds climb into the horizon, five different columns spread across the horizon—whew! It had done something to him. He’d been fighting the Chinese for some time. He didn’t like the damn invaders, but in his mind, the Chinese and Brazilians were no worse than the Germans of last year. Until that moment lying on the ground, watching the radiation clouds rise, it hadn’t been personal in a gut-check way. With his NBC equipment working, listening to the filters cycle his air, watching the end of the world— Yeah. That’s what it had felt like. The Chinese wanted to end the world. Lighting off those babies made it a different ballgame. He couldn’t defend his wife anymore by fighting on the front lines, or behind enemy lines. He fought to keep the enemy far away from his home. But if the Chinese deployed thermonuclear weapons… there was no protecting people from that while running around on the battlefield as a Recon Marine.
As Paul stared at the Earthly blue of his planet, he realized something else, too. He’d refused to think about it before this.
A grin tightened his lips.
This was better than talking to a shrink—contemplation time as he floated into position while riding a stratospheric balloon. Seeing the curve of the Earth, the sheer beauty, the uniqueness of the planet—it gave him perspective. It let him admit some things to himself that otherwise he’d kept buried deep inside.
Back near Stillwater, Oklahoma, as he’d been stretched on the ground watching those mushroom clouds grow, terror had coursed through his body. He’d been scared before, but never like that. It had been worse than the time against the AI Kaiser in Toronto, Ontario against the GD. How did one fight nukes? At least a guy could find a way to take out a smart tank.
Yeah, the terror had changed his thinking. Paul hated hopelessness. Feeling his gut tighten like that…
As he sat in the capsule, the grin turned into a silent snarl. To be hopeless made him angry. There had to be a way to hit back against the Chinese. Until that moment in Oklahoma, he would have been content to drive the invaders out of the country. Lying there, with his guts sick with terror, Paul had wanted to strike back at them. The Chinese wanted to come to America and play their filthy games, well baby, they were going to learn what a pissed-off, angry American could do.
Paul had volunteered when a general asked him if he wanted to join an elite team to take the war overseas. Hell yeah, he jumped on that bandwagon. If the enemy wanted to drop nukes— Now you’re fighting me, Mr. Chinaman. Now you’re pissing in my face and calling it Cool Aid, and laughing about it.
That’s why he was sitting in this capsule, with nausea threatening to make him puke. That’s why he wanted to be a powered armored Marine, one of the first. He didn’t know the exact plan, but he knew it meant an orbital drop into enemy territory. He knew it meant exotic science fiction weapons and some kind of funky new battle armor.
This was the worst kind of war, more brutal than a knife fight. He’d made his promise to Cheri. With all his might, he would try to come home. First, he had to finish the war and make it safe for his wife and boy. Otherwise, what was the point anyway, right?
Paul exhaled, and tried not to squirm. The capsule continued to rise at 750 feet per minute. How much longer was this going to take?
Ten minutes later, the ground controller radioed, “You’re approaching deployment height.”
Romo picked up his helmet. Paul grabbed his.
“Seeing this,” Romo said, as he indicted Earth. “It makes you think.”
“Yeah,” Paul said. “It does at that.”
“Where is Mexico and where is America?”
“Down there.”
“Si. Down there, together, one.”
The other three trainees glanced at Romo.
“You’re turning into a romantic,” Paul said.
“Maybe I am,” Romo said, with a thoughtful look on his hard features. “I’ve never seen the Earth like this. I have been thinking.”
“I suppose we all have,” Paul said.
The others nodded in agreement.
“It is too bad we must war on each other,” Romo said.
“It is what it is,” Paul said.
“Will men always fight and kill each other?” Romo asked, with uncharacteristic lines appearing in the man’s forehead.
“Seems like it to me. We’re not angels, although sometimes I wonder if we’re devils.”
“Si. I suppose you are right: men will always fight. It is too bad.” The former assassin sighed.
Paul wanted to needle Romo about his reflective moment, but he didn’t have it in him, not up here floating above Earth.
Quietly, with the clunk of metal, the five trainees donned their helmets.
Paul twisted his until he heard it latch. Then he began to check his suit’s seals. After he finished the rundown, he turned on the pressure unit, listening to it hiss. Once he opened the capsule’s hatch, the full-pressure suit would be his only protection until he reached the lower, safer levels of the atmosphere. The suit could protect him from extreme variations: from plus 100 degrees Fahrenheit to minus 90.
Checking a gauge, he saw that it had pressurized to 3.5 pounds per square inch, the rough equivalent of the atmospheric pressure at 35,000 feet. The suit would protect him from embolism, and it would prevent decompression sickness, or the “bends,” as he plummeted back to Earth.
He continued to check his equipment, making sure the chutes were in place and ready to deploy. The five of them were thick bundles now, in this small compartment, five mortals in a place men had no right to be.
I’m not even an astronaut, a spaceman. I’m just an orbital dropping wannabe. He’d never expected something like this. Even though he was in his forties, it brought back some of that feeling of his twenties when he’d first joined the Marines. It was good to feel that, made him seem alive.