Since the balloon was not moving at the speed of the wind now, Kickaha felt it. When the descent became rapid enough, he would hear the wind whistling through the suspension ropes. He didn’t want to hear that.
The floor of the car began to tilt slowly. He glanced at Anana’s balloon. Yes, her car was swinging slowly upwards, and the gasbag was also beginning to revolve.
They had reached the zone of turnover. He’d have to act swiftly, no hesitations, no fumbles.
Some birds, looking confused but determined, flapped by.
He scrambled up the ropes and onto the net, and as he did so the air became even hotter. It seemed to him that it had risen from a estimated 100° Fahrenheit to 130° within sixty seconds. Sweat ran into his eyes as he reached the parawing and began cutting the cords that bound it to the net. The envelope was hot but not enough to singe his hands and feet. He brushed the sweat away and severed the cords binding the harness and began working his way into it. It wasn’t easy to do this, since he had to keep one foot and hand at all times on the net ropes. Several times his foot slipped, but he managed to get it back between the rope and skin of the envelope.
He looked around. While he’d been working, the turnover had been completed. The great curve of the planet was directly below him; the smaller curve of the moon, above.
McKay’s balloon was lost in the red sky. Anana wasn’t in sight, which meant that she too was on the side of the balloon and trying to get into the harness.
Suddenly, the air was cooler. And he was even more aware of the wind. The balloon, its bag shrinking with heart-stopping speed, was headed for the ground.
The harness tied, the straps between his legs, he cut the cord which held the nose of the wing to the net. There was one more to sever. This held the back end, that pointing downward, to the net. Anana had cautioned him many times to be sure to cut the connection at the top before he cut that at the bottom. Otherwise, the uprushing air would catch the wing on its undersurface. And the wing would rise, though still attached at its nose to the balloon. He’d be swung out at the end of the shrouds and be left dangling. The wing would flatten its upper surface against the bag, pushed by the increasingly powerful wind.
He might find it impossible to get back to the ropes and climb up to the wing and make the final cut.
“Of course,” Anana had said, “you do have a long time. It’ll be eighty miles to the ground, and you might work wonders during that lengthy trip. But I wouldn’t bet on it.”
Kickaha climbed down the ropes to the rear end of the wing, grabbed the knot which connected the end to the net, and cut with the knife in his other hand. Immediately, with a quickness which took his breath away, he was yanked upwards. The envelope shot by him, and he was swinging at the end of the shrouds. The straps cut into his thighs.
He pulled on the control cords to depress the nose of the wing. And he was descending in a fast glide. Or, to put it another way, he was falling relatively slowly.
Where was Anana? For a minute or so, she seemed to be lost in the reddish sky. Then he located a minute object, but he couldn’t be sure whether it was she or a lone bird. It was below him to his left. He banked, and he glided towards her or it. An immeasurable time passed. Then the dot became larger and after a while it shaped itself into the top of a parawing.
Using the control shrouds to slip air out of the wing, he fell faster and presently was at the same level as Anana. When she saw him she banked. After some jockeying around, they were within twenty feet of each other.
He yelled, “You O.K.?”
She shouted, “Yes!”