He added another brick.
Another.
“A hundred yards!” Sam called.
Another brick.
“Fifty yards!” He grabbed a brick from the duffel, shook it in his cupped hands like dice, and extended it toward Remi. “For luck.”
She blew on it.
He dropped the brick into the brazier.
“Raise your feet!” Sam shouted.
They felt and heard the tip of a pine tree clawing the underside of the platform. They were jerked sideways.
“We’re snagged!” Sam called. “Lean!”
In unison, they tipped their torsos in the opposite direction, hanging over the edge while clutching a guyline. Sam kicked his leg, trying to free them from whatever lay below.
With a sharp crack the offending branch snapped. The platform righted itself. Sam and Remi sat up, looking down and around and up.
“We’re clear!” Remi shouted. “We made it!”
Sam let out the breath he’d been holding. “Never doubted it for a second.”
Remi gave him the look.
“Okay,” he said. “Maybe for a second or two.”
Now clear of the ridge, the wind slackening slightly, they found themselves heading south at what Sam estimated was ten miles per hour. They had traveled less than a few hundred yards before their altitude began bleeding off.
Sam dug another brick out of the duffel. He dropped it through the feed hole and it ignited. They began rising.
Remi asked, “How many do we have left?”
Sam checked. “Ten.”
“Now might be a good time to tell me your landing Plan B.”
“On the off chance we don’t manage a perfect, feather-soft touchdown, our next best chance is pine trees-find a tight cluster and try to fly straight in.”
“What you’ve just described is a crash landing without the land.”
“Essentially.”
“Exactly.”
“Okay, exactly. We hold on tight and hope the boughs act as an arresting net.”
“Like on aircraft carriers.”
“Yes.”
Remi considered this. She pursed her lips and puffed a strand of auburn hair from her forehead. “I like it.”
“I thought you would.”
Sam dropped another brick into the brazier.
With the late afternoon sun at their backs, they glided ever southward, occasionally feeding bricks into the brazier while keeping a sharp eye out for a landing spot. They’d traveled approximately four miles and had so far seen only scree valleys, glaciers, and copses of pine trees.
“We’re losing altitude,” Remi said.
Sam fed the brazier. They continued to descend.
“What’s happening?” she asked.
“Dissipation, I think. We’re losing the sun, along with the temperature. The balloon’s bleeding heat faster than we can put it in.”
Sam dropped another brick through the hole. Their descent slowed slightly, but there was no denying it: they were on an irreversible downward glide path. They began gaining speed.
“Time to make a choice,” Sam said. “We’re not going to make a meadow, but we’ve got a Plan B coming up.”
He pointed over Remi’s shoulder. Ahead and below was a stand of pine trees. Past that lay another boulder- strewn valley.
Sam said, “Or we can stuff the rest of the bricks into the brazier and hope we find a better spot.”
“We’ve pushed our luck too far. I’m ready for terra firma. How do you want to do this?”
Sam checked the approaching tree line, trying to gauge speed, distance, and their angle of approach. They had three minutes, he guessed. They were traveling at perhaps fifteen miles per hour, and that would likely double by the time they reached the trees. While a survivable crash inside a car, on this platform their chances were fifty- fifty.
“If only we had an air bag,” Sam muttered.
“How about a shield?” asked Remi, and tapped their bamboo platform.
Sam immediately grasped what she was suggesting. “Dicey.”
“A lot less dicey than what you were just mulling over in your head. I know you, Sam, I know your expressions. What do you put our odds at?”
“Fifty percent.”
“This may give us a few more points.”
Sam’s eyes darted to the tree line, then back to Remi’s eyes. She smiled at him. He smiled back. “You’re a hell of a woman.”
“This, I know.”
“We don’t need this anymore,” Sam said. He sliced the straps holding the brazier and shoved it off the platform. Amid a plume of sparks, it hit the ground, tumbled down the valley, then crashed into a rock.
Sam scooted across the platform until he was snug against Remi. She was already grasping the guylines in both hands. Sam grabbed another with his left hand, then leaned backward, laid the blade of his Swiss Army knife against one of the risers, and started sawing. With a twang, it parted. The platform dipped slightly.
Sam moved to the second riser.
“How long until we hit?” he asked.
“I don’t know-”
“Guess!”
“A few seconds!”
Sam kept sawing. Pitted and slightly bent from overuse and Sam’s attempts to sharpen it on rocks, the knife’s blade was dull. He clenched his teeth and worked harder.
The second guyline snapped. Sam moved to the third.
“Running out of time,” Remi called.
The opposite end of the platform was dangling by a single riser now, fluttering like a kite in the wind. With both hands clutching guylines, Remi was all but hanging, with only one foot perched on the edge of the platform. Sam’s left hand was grasping the line beside hers like a talon.
“One more!” he shouted, and started sawing. “Come on . . . Come on . . .”
The end of the platform swung free, now hanging vertically below them. Sam was about to drop his knife when he changed his mind. He folded the blade closed against his cheek. He clamped his right hand on a guyline.
Remi was already lowering herself down the risers so her body was behind the platform. Sam climbed down toward her. He peeked around the edge of the platform and saw a wall of green rushing toward him.
Their world began tumbling. Though having taken a good portion of the impact, the clawing branches immediately spun the platform around. They found themselves hurtling through a gauntlet of whipping boughs. They tucked their chins and closed their eyes. Sam unclenched his right hand from the riser and tried to cover Remi’s face with his forearm.
On instinct she shouted, “Let go!”
