Macurdy’s eyes strained at the blackness. He forgot to breathe, made out the shoreside woods and jumped, tossin the pack ahead of him, and counting aloud-“one thousan two thousand”-pulled the ripcord, felt the silk and lines pull from the chute pack, felt the shock as the canopy popped open, felt the tug as his plummeting pack jerked on his web belt.
He’d estimated time to the ground at about 40 seconds, and picked up the count again at six thousand. He’d begun at once to oscillate in the wind, and looking downward, discovered he had little sense of how far he was from the ground. Meanwhile the wind was carrying him backward, and he couldn’t spill air from his chute to turn himself, because he had to get the drift chute from his thigh pocket, which occupied his hands. At about 25 seconds he smelled grass and cow manure, and taking that to mean he was very near touchdown, tossed the drift chute with its small cargo of fuse and blasting caps, then reached back and gripped his risers, anticipating impact.
It took much longer than he’d expected. Another dozen seconds elapsed before he hit, heavily, swinging backward. And his risers were twisted; the wind in his chute dragged him along the ground until he pulled it to him. Scrambling to his feet, h e wadded the canopy and briefly knelt on it. While dragging, he’d run into and over the pack frame and drop bag; now, taking the tether in his hands, he pulled it to him. When he couldn’t see it even at his feet, he felt a foreboding about the drift chute with its small but important cargo.
The wind in his face told him the direction from which he’d been dragged, and he had some sense of the distance, so after stuffing his chute into the drop bag, he slung the packframe over one shoulder and backtracked. The drift chute had had 10 or 15 seconds to drift on its own. Its course shouldn’t have differed from his, but it might have descended more slowly, thus drifting longer. And worse, if it had blown along the ground after landing, where might it be now?
He wished it were white instead of orange.
At his guessed point of impact, he stopped and peered around. It could be right in front of you, afoot away, he told himself. Best stay where you are till the moon rises, and then hunt for it. Even a sickle moon will help.
Meanwhile he realized, to his disgust, that the smell of manure was too strong to come from his surroundings. The wind must have dragged him through a fairly fresh cow plop, presumably smeared down the back of his jumpsuit. He was also aware that the wind was chilly, so he tapped into the Web of the World for warmth, then laid back on the ground to wait the necessary hour and a half for moonrise.
“Macurdy,” he muttered, “this better not be an omen, that’s all to hell I’ve got to say,” then sat berating himself for not putting the fuse and caps in the bag with his other gear. You should have known better, he thought glumly. If you don’t find the sonofabitch, you’ve got a serious problem.
After a few minutes of futile cycling through failure, imagined consequences, and blame, he took himself by the figurative scruff, and sitting up, began the meditation Varia had taught him: breathing with his diaphragm, inhaling through his nose and exhaling through pursed lips. Given the circumstances, it took awhile, but after a bit his mind smoothed out, and he let the occasional vagrant thought drift past and disappear.
One of those thoughts was the realization that as he’d blown along the ground, there’d been a thudding of hooves nearby.
Cows, he knew, saw better in the dark than humans; apparently he’d spooked some.
Even before it rose, the moon paled the night a bit, and when it cleared the ridge east of the lake, it made more difference than he’d expected. But still he could see no drift chute. Vaguely he discerned cows grazing in a loose band some distance away.
It was light enough now to orient himself. He was about halfway between the road on the east, with its bordering trees, the lakeside woods on the west, and a bit farther from the forest at the pasture’s south end. He’d come down perfectly on target, despite the wind and visibility. If you’re going to believe in omens, he told himself, that’s the one to believe in.