Arrival (9 page)

“Mac,” Laura said disapprovingly, shooting her best angry-mother look at him.

“What?”

“This is so embarrassing,” Sara moaned as she picked pieces of vomit from her hair.

“Nonsense,” Laura assured her. “Could’ve happened to any of us.”

Sara glanced over her shoulder in Mac’s direction. “I’ll bet
he
just loved it,” she complained, rolling her eyes.

“Not at all. In fact, he seemed quite worried,” Laura assured her.

“Yeah, worried that I might get some of your barf on me,” Mac teased from the back of the compartment.

“Mac,” Laura scolded again, “you’re such an asshole!”

“Yeah, ain’t it great?” Mac laughed.

“You see what I have to deal with?” Sara complained.

A few minutes and a few hundred kilometers later, they were once again buffeted by severe turbulence.

“How’s our approach look?”

“So far so good,” Frank scanned his instruments. “But remember, we’re going to be coming in from the wrong direction. It’s a box canyon, with high ridges on three sides, opening into the ocean. Unfortunately, we won’t have enough fuel to fly past and approach from the ocean end as planned. So you’re gonna have to come in low over the inland ridgeline, and then shave off a whole lot of altitude in a hurry before we run out of room.”

“Piece of cake,” she replied sarcastically. A flash of light in the distance caught her eye. “Did you see that?”

Frank checked the sensor display. “We’re picking up a little electrical activity in the storm just ahead of us.”

“Should we go around it?”

“Of course we
should
, but…”

“Not enough fuel,” Lynn finished for him.

More flashes from outside lit up the interior of the flight deck with brilliant blue-white light. Every time the lightning flashed, Frank’s displays flickered. He knew that they would stay up, but the flickering made him nervous nonetheless.

Suddenly there was a loud crack along with a simultaneous thud on the hull above and behind them. The ship dipped sharply, forcing Lynn to compensate abruptly for the shift, bringing the LRV back on its approach path.

“What the hell was that?”

“I think we took a lightning strike!” Frank shouted.

“Did we lose anything?”

Frank desperately scanned his primary systems.
Propulsion, flight controls, electrical
…everything looked intact. “I don’t think so,” Frank said. Then he noticed the dark screen at the top center of the console in between him and Lynn. “Oh shit, TFS is out!”

Lynn felt her skin become cold as ice. Without the terrain-following sensors, they were blind. She couldn’t see a thing through the darkness, let alone in a storm raging outside the ship.

“Frank, I don’t think I can set her down safely under these conditions.” She looked at him. “I really don’t.”

“You’re gonna have to. We’re all out of options.”

“The crew could bail out over the LZ,” Lynn suggested, trying to convince herself that it was a better option. “I could probably hold position for a few seconds to give everyone…”

“…And with that wind outside, where do you think they’ll end up?” Frank didn’t even look at her as he began punching commands into his keyboard. “Besides, this ship is our habitat, remember? Without it, our chances of survival drop dramatically.”

Lynn said nothing. She knew that he was right.

“Besides, I think I can slave the Doppler signal to the TFS. It’ll have to run through a conversion algorithm which will slow display refresh down considerably, but it’ll be better than nothing.

“How slow?” Lynn asked.

“Once every two or three seconds probably, if we’re lucky.”

“Great,” Lynn groaned. “So at our current speed, by the time it shows what’s ahead of us, we’ll be about to hit it.”

“Something like that.” Frank glanced over at Lynn, noting the concern on her face. She had never been under this much pressure.

“Just keep your eyes glued to that screen for me,” she sighed.

The storm continued to rage outside as the rain pounded against the ship. Lightning flashed every few seconds, startling Lynn nearly every time it flashed in the forward window. After a few minutes, she became accustomed to the flashes, only flinching at the ones that seemed unusually close.

Frank kept his eyes glued to the TFS display, calling out changes to Lynn, allowing her to keep her eyes focused on the flight dynamics display. Frank had enlarged the TFS display to fill most of his center display screen, moving the critical engineering displays to the sides of the screen in much smaller windows. As much as he wanted to scan his engineering systems more intently, he had to keep his attention on the terrain display.

Lynn traded her concentration on the flight dynamics display for occasional glances out the forward window, hoping that the exterior view would give her a sense of orientation to the planet below. But there was nothing to be seen outside except gray-black clouds, heavy rain, and frequent flashes of lightning. She knew her peeks outside were of no value, but her instincts seemed to draw her gaze in that direction, despite her best efforts to keep her attention focused on critical flight instrumentation.

“Ground level twelve hundred, twelve-forty to port, eleven-sixty to starboard.” Frank was calling out the elevation of the ground directly below them, and on either side. Since Lynn was watching their altitude, she could quickly discern their distance above the constantly shifting terrain. After a few maneuvers, Frank had managed to estimate the reaction time available for flight corrections, but with it being only a few seconds at best, many of Lynn’s maneuvers were abrupt, causing the LRV to lurch like a small ship being tossed about on an angry ocean.

“Ground level twelve-twenty, port same, starboard coming up, eleven-eighty.”

The mountains below were getting taller. Lynn reluctantly added to the four turbines to gain some extra altitude. Still, she didn’t want to burn any more fuel than necessary.

“Ground level twelve-twenty-five, twelve-forty port, twelve hundred starboard.”

Lynn strained to see through the mist. “Damn these clouds! I can’t see a thing out there!”

“Ground level twelve-sixty-eight!” Frank announced more urgently. “Twelve-fifty port, twelve-twenty starboard.” Frank glanced over at the navigation display on the center console. “One thousand meters to the ridgeline.” Frank noticed Lynn glancing out the forward windows. “Don’t worry about what’s out there,” he advised. “Just fly the line.”

Frank’s attention shifted back to the TFS display, his eyes widening in alarm. “Ground level thirteen hundred meters! Twelve-eighty port, twelve-forty starboard! I think it’s the ridgeline!”

Lynn eased the throttles forward a bit, adding more lift to their flight profile. They still had at least fifty meters between the LRV and the mountains below. So even with the slow performance of the TFS, short of a sudden, vertical face directly in front of them, they should be able to avoid any accidental impact with the mountainside.

Frank thought he heard a subtle, scraping sound beneath him. “Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

“There it is again,” he commented as the noise repeated.

“I didn’t hear it.”

Frank looked back at the TFS display. “Ground level holding at thirteen hundred meters, twelve-eighty port, twelve-fifty starboard.” Frank scanned his engineering displays briefly, concerned about the strange noises he was hearing.

“What was it?” Lynn asked.

“I don’t know,” he answered. “It was like something scraping.” The noise came again, but louder and several times in rapid succession before it stopped. “There it is again,” Frank said, still puzzled.

This time, Lynn heard it as well. “I heard it that time!” she announced, her eyes still fixed on the flight instrumentation in front of her.

“It sounded like it came from outside.” The noise sounded once more, and Frank straightened up in his seat to get a better look outside as a frightening suspicion suddenly came over him. Another flash of lightening lit up the ridgeline below and confirmed his fears. “Trees!” he shouted, pointing out the front windows.

Lynn looked up from her displays to check the front window. The gray-black mist outside had lightened up just enough to reveal a sea of pointed treetops, poking their tips through the dense mist. Lynn slammed the throttles forward to climb, as the tallest of the treetops appeared from behind the curtain of mist directly in their flight path. But it was too late; they wouldn’t be able to climb quickly enough. Lynn pulled the LRV up to avoid taking a treetop directly in the nose. The LRV’s nose lurched upward, though her flight path continued with minimal incline.

The first tall tree struck them in the belly, just aft of midship and slightly to port of centerline. The monstrous tree, probably undisturbed for hundreds of years, bent at first, then cracked and toppled to give way to the massive kinetic energy contained within the mass of the sixty-meter long spacecraft. But as with all things of mass, the tree had energy of its own, and the tail of the LRV leapt upwards, a jarring sensation unfamiliar to everyone on board.

Lynn found herself and her ship in an extreme nose-down attitude, at an angle of over forty-five degrees. This meant that only half of the thrust being provided by the turbines was going to lift, while the rest was adding to their forward momentum. The computers that controlled the thrust vectoring compensated a second later, but the momentary loss of lift was already causing them to descend.

Lynn could see the treetops more clearly now as they raced under her, growing ominously closer as the LRV slipped downward toward them.

Although it meant burning extra fuel, Lynn pushed the rising tail of the LRV back down using full RCS thrusters to fight the upward energy transferred to their tail by the tree. The tail slid back down as violently as it had risen, and just as quickly, the ship leveled out. Lynn glanced at the sluggish TFS image on her display, and saw that the ground level was falling rapidly. They had passed the ridgeline.

Lynn let the LRV continue to fall, trimming the throttles until she was comfortable with their rate of descent as they closed on the landing area. She turned to look at Frank. He looked a little pale, but with good reason. “I never thought about the trees,” she admitted.

“Me neither,” he confessed. “Nice flying, Lynn.”

“Thanks.”

Frank turned to look at her as he realized the implications. “Holy shit, there are trees here!”

Back in the passenger compartment, pulses were racing, breathing was quickened, and complexions were pale.

“Okay,
that
was scary!” Mac admitted as he tightened his shoulder straps.

“Range, fifty kilometers,” Frank announced. “Altitude eleven hundred meters and falling at four meters per second. Speed at two hundred seventy-seven meters per second. We’ve got to lose speed or increase our rate of descent.”

“Turbines to forty percent,” Lynn announced as she backed the throttles on the turbines down a bit. “Standby on the mains, we’ll cut them at ten seconds out and let our inertia take us the rest of the way.” Lynn peered out the window again. There was still nothing but the swirling gray mist outside. She wished she could see even the slightest hint of ground color.

“Range, forty-seven kilometers, altitude one thousand thirty. Looking better, but still a tad high.”

Lynn ignored him. It was better to be too high than too low. If they ran out of fuel a few meters above the deck, it wouldn’t kill them. It wouldn’t be fun, but they’d survive. Given the current situation, living to see the landing was the only thing on her mind.

The wind continued to buffet them, jerking the ship from side to side, and occasionally shoving them forward a little quicker than expected. Lynn fought the urge to counter the effects of the wind with the RCS thrusters to save fuel. No one was grading the accuracy of her landing this time around. It made no difference to her whether she was right or left of the target. All she wanted to do was get on the ground and shut everything down. The last thirty minutes of adrenaline dumping into her bloodstream had worn her out and left her nerves frazzled.

Two minutes passed, and nothing had improved. Frank continued to call out range and altitude so that Lynn could keep her attention on the ship’s attitude. It was a constant struggle to keep the LRV level in the strong and erratic winds outside. The rain continued to wash across the windows, and the lightning flashed in the distance, causing the mist outside to illuminate briefly with each strike.

“Range, seventeen kilometers. Altitude, three hundred and sixty meters, down at six meters per second.”

Lynn wondered why they had never thought to include a foul-weather landing in her simulation training. She surmised that no one thought they would be stupid enough to try.

“Prepare for landing,” Lynn announced. “Landing lights on?”

“Landing lights on,” Frank answered as he flipped the switch. Outside, the fog became brighter.

“Gear?”

“Coming down.” Frank activated the landing gear. “I hope.”

“Emergency fuel cutoff?”

“Auto.”

“Gear locked?”

“No idea,” Frank admitted in stride. “Fuel is down to eighty kilos,” Frank added, trying to warn her of their fuel status without sounding too alarmed.

They rocked in their seats as the ship was tossed about. Swaying to-and-fro, bouncing up and down, occasionally rolling from side to side. Gusts of wind struck the LRV time and again, feeling as if they had been struck by something solid. It was nothing like the simulator.

Lynn was getting good at just letting gravity and aerodynamics do their work, instead of fighting them and wasting fuel. “Here we go,” she announced in a surprisingly calm voice.

“Range, ten kilometers. Altitude, two hundred meters.” Frank glanced at the time display. “Twenty seconds.” A red light suddenly flashed on to Frank’s right. “Critical fuel warning,” he reported. He reached over to the comm-panel and added the secondary circuit to his comm-set. “Range, five kilometers, altitude one-twenty, fifteen seconds out.”