“Retros to max. Commencing final. Vector coming around onto . . . ah, three-three-zero.”
“You’re on the beam, looking good. Wind at the pad is gusting twenty-five to thirty from the east. We’re putting you down in slot G-3.”
“G-3. Got it. Roger. Any coffee going down there?”
Keene spotted Sariena sitting with Adreya Laelye, the senior SOE representative, on a bench seat by one of the windows on the landing area side and went over. With the work involved in seeing Agni landed and brought online, he’d had hardly a moment to talk to Sariena since she came down from the Surya. She smiled tiredly at him as he joined them. “Lan, so they’ve let you have some time off at last. I’d forgotten what it was like on Earth. We’re glued to the seat. I don’t want to get up.”
“Coming up those stairs was enough,” Adreya said. “Zeigler took them two at a time. He’s kept in good shape while on Kronia. It’s obscene.”
“You’ll be doing it too in a couple of months,” Keene told her, although he didn’t believe it. He looked at Sariena. “Managed to rest up after the voyage?”
“Yes, finally. It was a very different feeling from last time. But I wanted to come down here, even if we’re not in a position to get much work done yet. Damien and the others are staying up in the Surya until they’ve got proper working space set up down here.” Sariena had brought a team of planetary scientists from Kronia. Damien was her assistant, left in charge of things up in orbit for the time being, by the sound of things.
“Gallian isn’t down yet?” Keene queried.
“Not yet. I think he’s still finishing some business with Kronia up in the Varuna.” Communications delay to Saturn was a little under seventy-five minutes each way.
“We saw you coming out of the labs with Pieter,” Adreya said. “Was that another load of specimens that he just brought in? His lab isn’t even finished yet.”
Keene shrugged. “I know. He can’t wait to get started. Can’t blame him, I guess.” He paused, running an eye around to take in the other things that were going on. “He says he’s already seeing signs of what could be catastrophic evolution.”
“New genetic programs expressing themselves?” Sariena said.
“Exactly.”
“Well, either they wrote themselves or something wrote them. Which exhausts all of Aristotle’s logical possibilities.” Sariena’s tone conveyed that she didn’t give much credence to the first.
“Touchdown in thirty-six seconds. She should be just breaking through,” the operator in contact with the shuttle announced to the room. A screen beside the one still showing the flight deck brought the view outside the shuttle, of solid grayness dissolving into wisps and streamers suddenly, and then the blurred image of an already expanding landscape with a superposed circular grid centered on the plateau region where Serengeti base was situated. Several figures got up and moved to the windows on the front side of the dome. After several seconds somebody pointed.
“There.”
Keene followed the direction and picked out a speck of bright light against the overcast. As it enlarged and grew brighter, the sound came of engines braking at full thrust.
The light elongated into the shuttle’s exhaust plume with the ship taking shape and growing above as it slowed in its descent. It touched down a short distance from the other craft on the ground, and after a final flare of flame and smoke the engines cut.
“Switch to local tower frequency five-five-six. Serengeti control out,” the operator said. Outside the window, the reception vehicles that had been waiting below on the edge of the landing area began moving out.
Adreya sighed. “You’d think I’d have seen enough of things like that, wouldn’t you. But I never get tired of watching ships come in. It’s so strange to be able to hear it! I’m still getting used to just walking out into air through a door, without a suit or anything. It doesn’t feel natural.”
“You might not appreciate it so much if the vaccinations don’t work,” Sariena cautioned. In the previous visit by Gallian’s delegation, all of the first-time Kronians had suffered badly from infections and allergic reactions.