Now he pulled his right steering line down far and fast. He would need to make a fast turn, before another gust sent him beyond the point of recovery. The effect of the pull was almost instantaneous: he found himself swinging out from under the canopy, arcing wildly. And the large, round altimeter told him what he could feel: that his speed of descent had just increased considerably.

Not good. He was closer to the ground than he should be. Still, he had to assume that he had returned to the proper angle of flight, and he raised the steering lines again, allowing the canopy to yawn out to its full 250 square feet and maximize its vertical drag. He was adept at maneuvering around wind cones, but the very unpredictability of the air currents made ordinary calculations irrelevant. All he knew was that he was off the wind line; crabbing across it was the only way to return to it. As he had done hundreds of times before, he fidgeted with the toggles to establish the direction of the prevalent winds; finally, he found that he was able to make gentle S-turns astride the wind line, holding and running every time he drifted off it. The process required complete concentration, especially because the sea was sending up thermals at random, or so it seemed. The Anuran sky was like a horse that did not want to be broken.

His pulse quickened. Like the mast of a ghost ship, battlements and embrasures were becoming visible through the fog, the ancient white limestone reflecting the faintest light seeping through the cloud cover. The vista came as something of a shock; it was the first thing he had seen since the jump. Quickly, he cast off his gloves and flight cap. Now he mentally rehearsed the landing maneuver. Crosswind leg. Downwind leg. Base leg. Final approach.

To minimize landing velocity, it was crucial to approach the destination from upwind. The crosswind jaunt took him a thousand feet to the right. Then he drifted downwind for another five hundred feet, deliberately overshooting the target. He would be traveling 250 feet into the wind for the final approach. It was an elaborate but necessary maneuver. He could slow his forward movement by pulling in the corners of the canopy with both toggles, but the effect would be to increase his rate of descent to an unacceptable speed. He would therefore have to rely upon the wind itself to reduce his horizontal velocity.

He prayed that no sudden turn would be necessary to position himself over the central region of the courtyard, for a fast turn, too, would dangerously hasten his descent. The last fifteen seconds had to be perfect. There was no margin for error; the compound’s high walls made a low, shallow approach impossible.