Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle - Fallen Angels.pdf

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FALLEN ANGELS
Riverdale, NY 10471
www.baen.com
ISBN: 0-671-72052-X
Cover art by Bob Eggleton
First printing, December 1992
Distributed by Simon & Schuster
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
Production by Windhaven Press, Auburn, NH
Printed in the United States of America
firm enough to walk on. An illusion; a geography of vapors as insubstantial
as the dreams of youth. If he were to set foot upon them . . . The clouds did
not float in free fall, as was proper, but in an acceleration frame that could
hurl the scoopship headlong into an enormous ball of rock and iron and
smash it like any dream.
Falling, they called it.
Alex felt the melancholy stealing over him again. Nostalgia? For that
germ-infested ball of mud? Not possible. He could barely remember Earth.
Snapshots from childhood; a chaotic montage of memories. He had fallen
down the cellar steps once in a childhood home he scarcely recalled.
Tumbling, arms flailing, head thumping hard against the concrete floor. He
hadn't been hurt; not really. He'd been too small to mass up enough kinetic
energy. But he recalled the terror vividly. Now he was a lot bigger, and he
would fall a lot farther.
His parents had once taken him atop the Sears Tower and another time
to the edge of the Mesa Verde cliffs; and each time he had thought what an
awful long way down it was. Then, they had taken him so far up that down
ceased to mean anything at all.
Alex stared out of Piranha’s windscreen at the cloud deck, trying to
conjure that feeling of height; trying to feel that the clouds were down and
he was up . But it had all been too many years ago, in another world. All he
could see was distance. Living in the habitats did that to you. It stole height
from your senses and left you only with distance.
He glanced covertly at Gordon Tanner in the copilot's seat. If you were
born in the habitats, you never knew height at all. There were no memories
to steal. Was Gordon luckier than he, or not?
The ship sang. He was beginning to hear it now.
And Alex MacLeod was back behind a stick, where God had meant him
to be, flying a spaceship again. Melancholy was plain ingratitude! He had
plotted and schemed his way into this assignment. He had pestered Mary
But bitter because ... That part he did not want to think about. Just enjoy
the moment; become one with it. If this was to be his last trip, he would
enjoy it while he could. If everything went A-OK, he'd be back upstairs in a
few hours, playing the hero for the minute or so that people would care. A
real hero, not a retired hero. Then back in the day-care center wiping snotty
noses. It would be years before another dip trip was needed. He'd never be
on the list again.
Which meant that Alex MacLeod, pilot and engineer, wasn't needed any
longer. So what do you do with a pilot when pilots aren't needed? What do
the habitats do with a man who can't work outside, because one more
episode of explosive decompression will bring on a fatal stroke?
Day care. Snotty noses. Work at learning to be a teacher, a job he didn't
much like.
Look on the bright side, Alex, my boy. Maybe you won't make it back at
all.
Sure, he could always go out the way Mish Lykonov had in Moon Rat,
auguring in to Mare Tranquilitatis. They'd have a ceremony - —and they'd
miss the ship more than him. Even Mary. Maybe especially Mary, since
she'd got him the mission.
He straightened in his seat and touched the controls again. Maybe just a
touch of resistance ...
"Chto delayet? Alex!"
Something had prodded Gordon awake. Alex glanced to the right.
"What is it?"
"I'm getting a reading on the air temperature gauge!"
"Right. There's enough air outside now to have a temperature."
Gordon nodded, still unbelieving.
Gordon had read the book. Come to that, Gordon read a lot of books,
but books don't mean much. No one ever learned anything out of a book,
anyway. This was why they always teamed a newbie with an old pro.
Hands-on learning. The problem with on-the-job training for this job was
Old war horse heard the trumpet again. Now it s your turn. Take the
stick." Fun was fun, but it was time for the kid to wrap his hands around
the real thing. There was only so much you could do in a simulator. "There.
Feel it?"
"Uh . . ." Gordon pulled back slightly on the copilot's stick. He looked
uncertain.
He hadn't felt anything. "Take over," Alex growled. "You're flying the
ship now. Can't you tell?"
"Well . . ." Another tentative move at the controls.
Piranha wobbled. "Hey! Yeah!"
"Good. Look, it's hard to describe, but the ship will tell you how she's
doing if you really listen. I don't mean you should forget the gauges. Keep
scanning them; they're your eyes and ears. But you've got to listen with
your hands and feet and ass, too. Make the ship an extension of your entire
body. Do you feel it? That rush? That's air moving past us at five miles per
second. Newton's not flying us anymore. You are."
Gordon flashed a nervous grin, like he'd just discovered sex.
"What's our flight path?" Alex asked.
"Uh . . ." A quick glance at the map rollout. "Greenland upcoming."
"Good. Hate to be over Norway."
"Why?"
Why. Didn't the kid listen to the downside news broadcasts? Gordon,
this is your planet! Don't you care? No, he probably didn't. It was his
grandparents planet.
"There's war in Norway. If we flew over, somebody would cruise a
missile at us sure as moonquakes, and we'd never even know which side
did it."
The new tiling was wonderful. In the old days, the ship's skin would be
glowing; but now . . . Four thousand degrees and no visible sign at all. Still,
they'd be glowing like a madman's dream on an IR screen, new tiles or no,
and that was all the Downers would need to vector in on.

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