Twenty kilometers up. Festina turned from the controls. "It’s time. Get ready to jump."

I got to my feet reluctantly. It seemed a pity to bail out of the shuttle while it was still working… but if we didn’t jump when we were over Camp Esteem, the shuttle’s momentum would take us far past our target. Then if we got EMP’d, we’d have a long walk back to where we wanted to go. Better to follow the original plan.

So I went back into the passenger cabin and strapped four iced-up mirror-spheres to my tightsuit, using specially padded carrying cases. Tut and Festina did the same. The cases hung from our necks like oversized pendants; I adjusted the straps until all four spheres rested evenly on my chest, then I secured them with a holding harness. The completed rig wasn’t heavy… but with four soccer-ball-sized containers on my front and a full parachute on my back (over top of the tightsuit’s backpack), I felt like a pagoda with legs. My only consolation was that Festina and Tut looked just as ridiculous.

"Skydiving like this should be fun," Tut said. "Is there anything else I can carry? Hey, I bet these seats detach! Ever seen someone parachute while holding a chair?"

The passenger seats could be detached by flipping release levers on each leg. Fortunately, Tut was too burdened with mirror-spheres to reach the levers. He was still trying to bend over as I went to the side hatch and grabbed the red door handle. "Everyone ready?" I asked.

Tut straightened up. "Sure," he said. "Immortality awaits."

Festina slapped him lightly on the arm. "Bastard. Don’t you know the admiral gets to say that?"

"Grab something solid," I told them. Beep. Beep. Beep. I pulled the lever, and the door slid open.

Wind whipped through the cabin. If I hadn’t been holding the lever, I might have been swept off my feet… but after a moment, the gale lessened as the pressure inside the shuttle equalized to the pressure outside. Neither pressure was high; fortunately, my tightsuit protected me against burst eardrums and subzero cold. Far below, the ground seemed to drift past slowly, though we were actually going faster than the speed of sound.

"Not long now," Festina said over her comm unit. We were using the Fuentes city as a landmark. When Drill-Press appeared beneath us, we’d hit the silk. Our momentum would carry us on toward Camp Esteem, and we could easily steer the chutes toward our destination. We’d already agreed on a rendezvous point just east of the huts.

Beep. Beep. Land slipped beneath us. The lower the shuttle dropped, the more our speed became apparent — racing through scattered clouds, rushing above small river valleys and copses where ferns rose as tall as trees. Beep. Beep. The broad river Grindstone appeared, a few low buildings, then suddenly the central skyscrapers of Drill-Press, towering like giants. The city streets were dirty but intact, and so were a score of bridges spanning the river, glimmering white in the sun. We waited till the last bridge was directly beneath us… but nobody had to say a word when the time came. Tut, Festina, and I threw ourselves forward, out the hatch, and into open air.

Skydiving in a tightsuit is different from being exposed to the elements. I’d practiced both ways at the Academy, and much preferred fully closed jumps. When you’re not completely sealed in a suit, the wind burns unprotected skin. My cheek was too tender for that kind of buffeting: the gusts felt like daggers of ice stabbing through my face over and over. By the time I reached ground on an open dive, the entire left half of my head — my skin, my hair, my ear — would be streaked with wind-dried blood.

But inside a tightsuit was safe. No wind, no cold, no roaring in the ears. It was peaceful. Like floating in zero gee. That afternoon on Muta, the sun was shining, the view was superb, and for just a few seconds, I was empty. Free of the clamor of myself.

Falling in silence. Except for the beep… beep… beep…

Momentum and the angle of my dive carried me quickly past Drill-Press city. The heads-up display in my helmet said I was traveling due north. Not far in the distance, I could see Camp Esteem, built on a rise above the river valley. What looked like a cloud of smoke still drifted outside the cookhouse… until, as I watched, the cloud whirled away from the building and sped in our direction.

At first, I thought the cloud had been caught in a puff of wind; but no wind blew so direct and fast on such a mild day. The cloud shot straight for us, like steam propelled from a high-pressure hose. I didn’t know what it was, but reflex kicked in immediately. "Pistachio," I said, "steamlike anomaly. A cloud of it coming in our direction. Its action seems purposeful…"

Tut and Festina were saying similar things, all of us speaking at the same time. With the three of us talking simultaneously, people on Pistachio’s bridge probably couldn’t make out our words… but the main ship computer would be able to disentangle our voices. Eventually. But not before…

The cloud washed over me while I was still telling Pistachio what it looked like. A moment of mist and dizziness — the dizziness from a fierce eruption of my sixth sense, like a deafening blare of noise. The cloud was ablaze with ferocious emotion. Rage? Hate? Bewilderment? Passion so intense I couldn’t identify its nature; just a howling unfocused adrenaline, vicious enough that my own emotions flared in sympathy, and for a moment I screamed without knowing why.

Then the feeling was gone. The cloud had moved past me, out of sight and out of my sixth sense’s range, almost as if nothing had happened. I said, "Pistachio, the cloud has passed by and I am still…"

The sound of my voice was muffled — just me talking inside my suit, no echo from my radio receivers. I closed my mouth and listened… to true silence. Nothing but my own heartbeat. In particular, no beep beep beep from Pistachio.

So that was what it felt like to be EMP’d.

I thought back to what we’d seen as our probe jammed its nose into the cookhouse. The "smoke" had been drifting placidly through the mess hall… but as soon as the missile intruded, the cloud had shot forward, and the probe went dead.

Stupid, stupid, stupid — I wanted to smack my head with my hand. We’d all thought the smoke had been disturbed by breeze through the broken window… but the smoke was what carried the EMP. It might even be the ultimate danger that lurked on Muta: some airborne entity, perhaps a swarm of nanites left over from Las Fuentes… or a hive mind like the Balrog, but with spores as light as dust. The smoke might float its way around Muta, EMPing machines and… and…

But at least I was still alive.

My suit was defunct. The heads-up displays had vanished, and no other systems responded. My personal comm implant was also scrap — through my sixth sense I saw the fused subcutaneous circuits in my ears and soft palate, fine wires flash-melted by the energy surge. Good thing the navy’s equipment designers had provided enough insulation to keep me safe when the implant got slagged; otherwise, it might have been unpleasant to have my sinuses full of molten electronics.

As it was, I felt no ill effects. I looked back at my fellow Explorers, and both seemed healthy too. They were out of range of my sixth sense, but they held their arms tight to their sides in a good airfoil position rather than just dangling limp. That meant they were still conscious, controlling their dives.

Looking up, I saw something else: the shuttle. Which should have been a long distance past us now. Its uncontrolled terminal velocity was much faster than three humans in tightsuits — we were lighter and dragged more on the air. The shuttle should have continued to spear forward at high speed, while we skydivers slowed down. But the shuttle had slowed down too. And although I was too far away to be sure, I thought the side hatch was now closed.