below the control window, and a little model of the Icarus which ran along the
wires, and grinned ruefully to himself.
It was the nature of the man that he could grin at all, with any other feeling
than that of cynicism, for that landing misfortune and its consequences would
have killed any other man’s sense of humor completely. How neatly everything had
been figured out! The pressed-cast wood ship, held together with metal rings
every few feet like barrelhoops, with its single protective layer of
heat-resistant plastic coated with a resin-base reflectant paint, had been so
much lighter than a metal ship would have been, and the new fuel was so
powerful–nothing but a miscalculation of orbit could have prevented his making
the trip safely, and the return as well. And he had been picked from all the
rest of the Society because of his cool head and his mathematical skill.
He had not miscalculated. He had made Mars. And then, then the twanging collapse
of parachute shrouds, the wild plunge, the violent shock as the Icarus dropped
twenty feet and buried its nose in soft sand–and he came to consciousness in
the midst of the crumpled control cage. . . .
The metal had been very hard steel, and the fine wires had shivered and broken,
cutting him badly. He didn’t care about the cuts–they healed quickly in the
sterile air of Mars–but that shivered metal, with its high molybdenum content,
could never be reworked by any means at his disposal. He had plenty of fuel,
yes. But the little space-flyer was useless without that control cage.