the added complication of having to compensate for being on a moving platform.
Once we’re locked into the grid at a fixed point, I can update the inertial
system so that it will supply the drift onsets automatically.”
“How long would you need?”
“To get everything right and double-checked, aw . . . say, an hour. But we need
to land now, while we still know we’re roughly in the right place. If we leave
it much longer, we could wind up coming through the blanket anywhere over Titan,
in the dark, without a ground datum. Then the way to Genoa would be anybody’s
guess.”
“You’d better take us down, then,” Zambendorf agreed.
“Okay. Go back, sit down, and buckle up.”
Zambendorf ducked back into the rear cabin and lowered himself into the seat
opposite Price. “We’re going down.”
“Trouble?”
“An unscheduled stop to synch the on-board nav system with the satellite grid.”
The red-brown desert outside began rising to meet them, and as it came nearer it
was transformed slowly from smooth, rounded hummocks into jagged peaks of muddy
cloud, bottomless canyons of darkness falling away between. Cliffs and
precipices of vapor reared up ahead, then were towering above on either side and
flashing past at greater and greater speed . . . and then the stars vanished
from the overhead ports as the flyer plunged into darkness. Zambendorf felt the
seat pressing against him as Clarissa flattened the craft against Titan’s
thickening atmosphere to shed velocity. The structure vibrated and pounded in
protest as the stresses climbed above the limits it had been built to endure.
“Wing sensors reading nine-twelve, to ten-three, with orange-two on six,”
Abaquaan’s voice shouted through the open door up front. “Belly and underwing
skin temperatures rising fast.”
“Forward retros, five degrees out and down sixteen both, ramp to three thousand
and sustain,” Clarissa snapped. Zambendorf was thrown forward against his seat
harness; loud juddering noises came from somewhere under the floor. Across the
aisle, Price was tightlipped and saying nothing.
“In at ten, ramp factor five,” Abaquaan’s voice reported. “Coming up to eleven
over glide.”
“Gimme plus-three on dive—easy.”
“Dive brake increased three degrees.”
“Are we going to make it?” Zambendorf called out.
“What a question!” Clarissa shouted back. “You have to learn not to put up with
any nonsense from these machines. If those guys up there can get a flying
eggbeater all the way to Titan, I can sure-as-hell get this thing the rest of
the way to the surface.”
Then they were losing height rapidly again, and the flyer banked as Clarissa put
it into a long, sustained turn that would slow them down without altering their
general position. They were now well below the aerosol layer, and the view
outside was black in every direction, with a few ghostly streaks of methane
cloud showing faint white below. “See if you can get a ground radar profile,”
Clarissa said to Abaquaan. “I don’t want to go too low in that mess on visual.
Try and find us somewhere high and flat—a plateau or something.” Abaquaan
fiddled with a console to one side of him, muttered a few profanities beneath
his breath, and tried something else. “Set the HG centerline to blue zero,”
Clarissa said, glancing sideways. “Then use the coarse control to lock the
scanbase and select your profile analysis from the menu on S-three.”
“What? … Oh yeah, okay . . . Got it.” Abaquaan took in the information that
appeared on one of his screens. “Looks like we’re at altitude thirty-five
thousand meters, ground speed three-zero-eight-five kilometers per hour,
reducing at twenty-eight meters per second. Mountainous terrain with highest
peaks approximately eight hundred meters above mean surface level.”
“Any flat summits?” Clarissa asked.
“The higher ones all seem pretty grim. There are some below five hundred that
look better.”
“Gimme a slave of your scope on screen two.”
“You’ve got it.”
The flyer’s circling became tighter as it continued to slow and lose altitude.
“Okay, prime a couple of seventy-FV-three flares and set them for
proximity-triggered airbursts at fifty meters. Then activate the underbelly
searchlight and give me a vertical optical scan on screen one,” Clarissa
instructed after studying the display for a few seconds. “I’m going to have a