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Faith's computer rotated them around to the right angle, and when the proper
time came the engine lit for a thirty-second burn that lowered their orbit to
within eight miles of the surface. They coasted down the long elliptical
track, watching the cratered surface grow closer and closer, until their radar
began picking up return signals and Gregor finally said, "You are go for
powered descent."
Rick pushed "proceed" on the keyboard, and the computer fired the engine
again, slowing them to less than orbital velocity. They were committed now.
Tessa reached out and punched Rick in the shoulder. "Break a leg, buddy," she
said. "It's showtime."
It was indeed. Rick gave her a quick hug, clumsy in the suits but nonetheless
heartfelt, then gave his attention completely to the controls. Their course
was bending rapidly now, curving down toward the surface, which this close to
the pole was a stark pattern of white crater rims holding pools of absolute
blackness. Rick's gloved finger hovered near the sodium inject switch, but he
didn't flip it yet. He didn't know how much he had, and he wanted to save it
for the actual landing.
Tessa called out their altitude, dropping rapidly at first, then slower and
slower, until at six hundred feet they were only falling at twenty feet per
second. Five seconds later she whispered, "Low gate," and Rick rocked the
controller in his hand, switching out the computer.
He held his breath. This was when the previous two lunar modules had
disappeared, at the point where the pilot had to take over. He waited for that
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happen again, but the lander dropped another fifty feet, then seventy-five,
and it was still there.
"Whew," he said. "We made it."
"What do you mean?" demanded Tessa. "We're still four hundred feet up!"
"Piece of cake," Rick said, looking out the window at the landscape slowly
moving past. It was impossible to tell which little arc of crater rim was
their target, and the tiny triangular windows were too small to give them an
overview of the larger picture, so Rick just picked one that looked reasonably
wide and brought the lander down toward it. It was strewn with boulders, but
there were plenty of clear spaces between them, if he could just hit one.
"Quantity light," Tessa called out. He had only a minute of fuel left, less
than he was supposed to have at this altitude, but it was still plenty at
their rate of fall.
He slowed their descent to ten feet per second and rotated them once around.
One big boulder right on the rim had a wide flat spot beside it, so he angled
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over toward it. Flying the lander felt just like the simulator, save for the
shifting of weight, and that actually helped him get a feel for the controls.
"Two hundred feet, eleven down," Tessa said.
Too fast. Rick throttled up the engine a bit.
"One eighty, six down. One seventy, three down. One sixty-five, zero
down--we're going back up!"
"Sorry," Rick said, dropping the thrust again. While he was at it, he flipped
on the sodium injector, and sure enough, the landscape exploded in bright
yellow light. Even the bottoms of the craters were visible now, though they
seemed fuzzy, out of focus.
No time to sightsee now, though. Tessa kept reading off the numbers, her voice
rising a little in pitch. "Forty-five seconds. One sixty feet, four down. One
fifty, five down; one forty, six down...you're picking up too much speed!"
"Got it," Rick said, nudging their thrust up a bit.
"One hundred, five down. Thirty seconds."
Rick did the math in his head. At this rate of descent he had ten seconds of
fuel to spare. Far less than regulation, but still enough if he didn't waste
any more. "Piece of cake," he said again, holding it steady for the spot he
had chosen.
The descent went smoothly through the next fifty feet, but with only fifty
feet to go, the ground began to grow indistinct. "What's that, are we kicking
up dust?" Rick asked.
"I don't know," Tessa said. "It looks more like fog."
"Fog? Damn, Gregor was right." Rick held the controls steady, but they were
descending into a white mist. The big boulder he'd been using for a marker
disappeared in the cloud swirling up from the crater floor. Rick couldn't tell
if they were still going to miss it or not; they could be drifting right over
it for all he could tell.
Tessa's hand hovered near the Abort Stage button. That would fire the ascent
stage's engine, smashing the lower half of the lander into the surface as it
blasted the top half free and back into orbit.
"We're too low for that," Rick said. "We'd crash with the descent stage if we
tried it. Just hang on and call out the numbers."
"Roger. Twenty, five down."
That was pretty fast, but Rick didn't budge the controller. If he shifted them
sideways in the process, they could hit the boulder.
"Fifteen...ten...contact light!"
The feelers at the ends of the landing legs had touched the surface. Rick let
the engine run for another half second, then shut it down. The lander rocked
sideways just a bit, then lurched as they hit the surface hard. "Engine off,"
Rick said, his eyes glued to the ascent engine fuel level. It held steady. No
leaks, then, from the shaking, and no warning lights on any other systems.
Looking over at the descent engine's fuel gauge, he saw that they had six
seconds left.
Tessa glared at him. "Piece of cake?" she asked. "Piece of cake?"
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Rick, at a loss for words, could only shrug.
Yoshiko's voice came over the radio. "Faith, Are you down?"
Tessa laughed. "Yes, we're down. Through fog as thick as soup, with six
seconds of fuel left."
Fog. There was water on the moon. Rick looked out the window, pointed. "Look,
it's blowing away."
Without the rocket exhaust and the harsh sodium light to heat the ice in the
crater floor, what had already vaporized was rapidly expanding into the
vacuum, revealing the rubble-strewn crater rim on which the lander had touched
down.
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Rick looked for his landmark boulder, saw it out of the corner of his window,
only a few feet away from the side of the lander. They had barely missed it.
In fact two of the legs had straddled it. If one of them had hit it the lander
would have tipped over. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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