Ryerson appeared from the lockers. “Here they are,” he said. “Tin suits all around.”
Maclaren donned his armor and went aft. I wonder how much Seiichi knows. Does he know that I’ve stopped making a fuss about things, that I didn’t exult when we found this planet, not from stoicism but merely because I have been afraid to hope?
I wouldn’t even know what to hope for. All this struggle, just to get back to Earth and resume having fun? No, that’s too grotesque.
“We should have issued the day’s chow before going down,” said Ryerson. “Might not be in any shape to eat it at the other end.”
“Who’s got an appetite under present circumstances?” said Maclaren. “So postponing dinner is one way of stretching out the rations a few more hours.”
“Seventeen days’ worth, now.”
“We can keep going, foodless, for a while longer.”
“We’ll have to,” said Ryerson. He wet his lips. “We won’t mine our metal, and gasify it, and separate out the fractional per cent of germanium, and make those transistors, and tune the circuits, in any seventeen days.”
Maclaren grimaced. “Starvation, or the canned willy we’ve been afflicted with. Frankly, I don’t think there’s much difference.”
Hastily, he grinned at Ryerson, so the boy would know it for a jest. Grumbling was not allowed any more; they didn’t dare. And the positive side of conversation, the dreaming aloud of “when we get home,” had long since worn thin. Dinner-table conversation had been a ritual they needed for a while, but in a sense they had outgrown it. Now a man was driven into his own soul. And that’s what Seiichi meant, thought Maclaren. Only, I haven’t found anything in myself Or, no. I have. But I don’t know what. It’s too dark to see.
He strapped himself in and began checking instruments.
“Pilot to engine room. Read off!”
“Engine room to pilot. Plus voltage clear. Minus voltage clear. Mercury flow standard—”
The ship came to life.
And she moved down. Her blast slowed her in orbit, she spiraled, a featureless planet of black steel called her to itself. The path was cautious. There must be allowance for rotation; there must not be too quick a change of velocity, lest the ponderous sphere go wobbling out of control. Again and again the auxiliary motors blasted, spinning her, guiding her. The ion-drive was not loud, but the rockets roared on the hull like hammers.
And down. And down.
Only afterward, reconstructing confused memories, did Maclaren know what had happened; and he was never altogether sure. The Cross backed onto an iron plain. Her tripod touched, on one foot, on two. The surface was not quite level. She began to topple. Nakamura lifted her with a skill that blended main drive and auxiliaries into one smooth surge— such skill as only an utterly relaxed man could achieve, responding to the immense shifting forces as a part thereof. He rose a few hundred meters, changed position relative to the ground, and tried again. The tripod struck on two points once more. The ship toppled again. The third leg went off a small bluff, no more than a congealed ripple in the iron. It hit ground hard enough to buckle.
Nakamura raised ship barely in time. For an instant he
poised in the sky on a single leg of flame, keeping his balance with snorts of rocket thrust. The bottom of the Cross’ stern assembly was not many meters above ground.
Suddenly he killed the ion drive. Even as the ship fell, he spun her clear around on the rotator jets. The Cross struck nose first. The pilot’s turret smashed, the bow caved in, automatic bulkheads slammed shut to save the air that whistled out. That was a great mass, and it struck hard. The sphere was crushed flat for meters aft of the bow. With her drive and her unharmed transceiver web aimed at the sky, the ship rested like Columbus’ egg.
And the stars glittered down upon her.
Afterward Maclaren wondered: Nakamura might well have decided days beforehand that he would probably never be able to land any other way. Or he might have considered that his rations would last two men an extra week. Or perhaps, simply, he found his dark bride.