Adele had tapped into the automated stream of Sexburgan meteorological data as soon as the Princess Cecile emerged from the Matrix. The first and last twenty thousand feet of a voyage were statistically the most dangerous, because starships weren’t streamlined for operations in an atmosphere.
The corvette’s hull was a cylinder with rounded ends, a stable enough shape initially. The antennas and rigging on the exterior, however, created turbulence as well as twisting the vessel off-line when they caught gusts of wind. Even though ships in an atmosphere moved with the deliberation of belles making their entrances, they were fitted with sensor suites to make their own observations from space to be compared with whatever the planetary controller supplied.
Daniel let out his breath in a long sigh and flopped back in his seat. Almost at once he straightened and resumed keying commands, now with a look of eager attention. He caught Adele’s glance and grinned at her through the haze of his new task. Moments before, as he’d been setting up the approach, he’d had the rapt focus of a cat watching potential prey.
Adele echoed the navigation display in a corner of her own screen, just to see what Daniel was working on now. It was a plan of the Princess Cecile’s antennas and sails, which were being collapsed for storage. Daniel would be able to understand the process by a glance at the schematic, but to Adele it was merely bumps and lines.
She would have cut away, but a red arrow suddenly careted a point on the white outline. Daniel’s voice said through her communications helmet, “See here? Port Three hasn’t fully retracted. These three hollow triangles—”
It was hard to see details of the sail plan when it was shrunk down to a sidebar; Adele raised the schematic to three quarters of the display. She looked up to meet Daniel’s eyes; he was grinning as he moved a light pen to mark the image she was importing to her console.
“—are the riggers working on it. They’ve shut off the hydraulics so they can crank the mast down manually. Now here—”
The caret jumped. Adele gave Daniel’s explanation half her attention while she sorted the shipping log for vessels which had lifted from Cinnabar within thirty days of their arrival on Sexburga. No ship but the Princess Cecile herself would have made the voyage direct.
“—you see the dorsal mainsail we’ve been using for a rudder during our last leg of the Matrix,” Daniel continued. “It kinked on its track, so these riggers and the topside officer—”
Who appeared to be a solid pink triangle close to the six hollow ones.
“—that’s Woetjans on this watch, they just finished furling it by hand.”
On the right of Adele’s display, itself now a sidebar, a single name appeared: the Achilles, a private yacht of three hundred tons. It had landed on Sexburga six hours ahead of the Princess Cecile.
“The other problem’s here on Ventral Five,” Daniel continued, moving his pointer. “There’s a jammed yard—see how she sticks out like a broken finger instead of lying along the mast. Woetjans has a rigger on that, using a wrench if he can and a cutting torch if the wrench doesn’t work. We can’t have that if we’re going to land on our belly.”
“Ah,” said Adele, but she was frowning at the data on the right of her screen. The Achilles was fleet-footed indeed to have reached Sexburga only twenty-three days out from Cinnabar.
An attention signal whistled as the track lights pulsed green. “Hull reports the antennas are stowed and locked,” a voice from the BDC reported. Dorst was speaking rather than Mon; the lieutenant was giving the midshipmen actual experience as officers, albeit in small ways.
“Acknowledged,” said Daniel, captain of the Princess Cecile again instead of a friend explaining details of his expertise. He touched the command bar on the separate semaphore panel to his left, then keyed the intercom.
“Captain to ship!” Daniel announced, his voice in Adele’s helmet preceding by a hair’s breadth its analogue through the ceiling speakers. His fingers continued to type commands as he spoke. “The riggers are coming aboard. All hands prepare for entry into the atmosphere. Captain out.”