2061: Odyssey Three by Arthur C. Clarke

Author:Arthur C. Clarke
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781439507162
Publisher: Paw Prints
Published: 2008-10-15T04:00:00+00:00

29

Descent

Second Officer Chang had been wrestling with the problem ever since Galaxy had been successfully -to his surprise as much as his relief - injected into transfer orbit. For the next couple of hours she was in the hands of God, or at least Sir Isaac Newton; there was nothing to do but wait until the final braking and descent manoeuvre.

He had briefly considered trying to fool Rosie by giving the ship a reverse vector at closest approach, and so taking it out into space again. It would then be back in a stable orbit, and a rescue could eventually be mounted from Ganymede. But there was a fundamental objection to this scheme: he would certainly not be alive to be rescued. Though Chang was no coward, he would prefer not to become a posthumous hero of the spaceways.

In any event, his chances of surviving the next hour seemed remote. He had been ordered to take down, single-handed, a three-thousand tonner on totally unknown territory. This was not a feat he would care to attempt even on the familiar Moon.

'How many minutes before you start braking?' asked Rosie. Perhaps it was more of an order than a question; she clearly understood the fundamentals of astronautics, and Chang abandoned his last wild fantasies of outwitting her.

'Five,' he said reluctantly. 'Can I warn the rest of the ship to stand by?'

'I'll do it. Give me the mike... THIS IS THE BRIDGE. WE START BRAKING IN FIVE MINUTES. REPEAT, FIVE MINUTES. OUT.'

To the scientists and officers assembled in the wardroom, the message was fully expected. They had had one piece of luck; the external video monitors had not been switched off. Perhaps Rose had forgotten about them; it was more likely that she had not bothered. So now, as helpless spectators - quite literally, a captive audience - they could watch their unfolding doom.

The cloudy crescent of Europa now filled the field of the rear-view camera. There was no break anywhere in the solid overcast of water vapour recondensing on its way back to nightside. That was not important, since the landing would be radar-controlled until the last moment. It would, however, prolong the agony of observers who had to rely on visible light,

No-one stared more intently at the approaching world than the man who had studied it with such frustration for almost a decade. Rolf van der Berg, seated in one of the flimsy low-gravity chairs with the restraining belt lightly fastened, barely noticed the first onset of weight as braking commenced.

In five seconds, they were up to full thrust. All the officers were doing rapid calculations on their comsets; without access to Navigation, there would be a lot of guesswork, and Captain Laplace waited for a consensus to emerge.

'Eleven minutes,' he announced presently, 'assuming he doesn't reduce thrust level - he's at max now. And assuming he's going to hover at ten kilometres - just above the overcast - and then go straight down. That could take another five minutes.'

It was unnecessary for him to add that the last second of those five minutes would be the most critical.

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