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downward into the atmosphere. Ionised gas began glowing around the view ports.
A message, hopelessly garbled by the plasma that was forming around the
shuttle's radio antennae, tried to break through at that moment.
". . .llenger. . . Shuttle. . ." said the surgical android's voice. ". .
.control lost. . . Commander Telson. . . lost. . . Sharna. . ." the words
tailed away into an unintelligible blast of white noise.
Darv turned his head to Astra. "Could you make out any of that?"
Astra kept her eyes closed and shook her head.
The distorted message was immediately forgotten when the buffeting
started. Everything around Darv became a blur; the displays dissolved into
vague streaks of coloured light, and the flames roaring past the view ports
mercifully merged into a less frightening kaleidoscope of dancing orange and
crimson patterns. He tried forcing his head back harder into the headrest to
prevent it being thrown about and discovered that the terrifying decelerating
was doing the job for him.
Astra opened her eyes briefly and closed them again. She guessed that the
shuttle's heatshield was being burned away so that the incandescent particles
burning off took their heat with them. The knowledge was no comfort when she
saw the inferno raging beyond the view ports. The deceleration rammed her
deeper into her seat. She felt the blood draining from her face. She had no
way of telling if she had passed out for one second or one minute, but the
noise and buffeting had miraculously stopped. The sudden silence was uncanny.
"Are you all right, Astra?" asked Darv anxiously. He gave a warm,
delighted smile when he saw her eyes open.
"What happened?"
"We're through," he said simply. "Stable flight. Altitude -- one hundred
thousand feet."
"I don't believe it," said Astra weakly.
"Nor do I."
Astra leaned forward against her seat harness and looked down. Through
breaks in the cloud she could see a huge expanse of blue. "Now what happens?"
she inquired.
"We're gliding down at one thousand feet per minute so presumably the
shuttle won't take any further action for at least another hour and a half."
The shuttle dipped through the cloud just over an hour later. The cloud
thinned out so that after another fifteen minutes the shuttle was flying over
water that was so blue that it almost hurt the eyes to look at it.
"It would be beautiful if there wasn't so much of it," commented Astra
when the shuttle's altitude was down to 12,000 feet.
"My feelings exactly," agreed Darv.
The ribbon of coastline appeared on the horizon at the same time as it
appeared on the radar screen. The shuttle's vertical descent velocity
increased as it lost forward speed.
Another minute passed. It was now possible to distinguish the regular
swell on the surface of the water. Darv glanced down at the navigation
displays. The shuttle was heading due west in a straight line towards the
landing site that was centred on the screen.
"Just enough fuel for a five second burn," Astra observed. "Will we make
it?"
Darv eyed the approaching land and glanced down at the water 3000 feet
below. "Just," he said, hoping that his voice sounded confident. The truth was
that the water was getting nearer much quicker than the land was.
The main engine fired without warning. The shuttle's nose lifted, the
spacecraft picked up speed. The ground proximity display managed to sustain a
steady figure instead of one that was continuously dropping. Darv's eyes
flickered to the fuel-reading display. He resisted the temptation to swear out
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loud. At that moment the low fuel warning gong sounded and the engine cut out
a second later.
Darv cancelled the automatic pilot and assumed manual control. There was
little he could do except put the shuttle's nose down in the hope that the
increased speed would give it enough lift to reach the broad band of yellow
and green that rose out of the water some eight miles straight ahead.
Astra remained silent and white-faced, staring down at the water that
seemed to be racing up to meet them.
At 1000 feet Darv thought that perhaps the shuttle would reach land but
the inboard computer did not share his optimism.
DITCHING PROCEDURE INITIATED flashed up on the screen.
There was a loud thump from underneath the floor and a new message
appeared: LANDING SKIDS JETTISONED.
The cryptic legend puzzled Darv until he realised that the shuttle's best
chance of remaining in one piece was to present a clean under belly to the
water upon impact. At 250 feet the inner and outer air-lock doors opened of
their own accord. At 200 miles per hour slipstream screamed into the shuttle's
interior and made it difficult for Darv to think properly. He stared in almost
hypnotised fascination at the ribbon of yellow that was hurtling towards him.
Suddenly Astra was yelling at him above the howling racket of the air rushing
past the open air-lock.
"Pull the nose up!" she screamed. "Pull the nose up! For God's sake do as
it says!"
Darv looked down at the display just as Astra's hands closed over his
hands and hauled back on the controls. A shuddering crash suddenly ripped
through the spacecraft, slamming Darv down into his seat and driving the air
from his lungs. Everything went dark for an instant as the massive
deceleration crushed his eyeballs into the bottom of their sockets. Barely had
he managed to draw another breath when a second mind-pulverising shockwave
smashed against his senses. A tiny part of his brain that manage to remain
clear during the appalling assault on his reason noted that the shuttle seemed
to be bouncing across the water.
The third and final crash was the least severe but it was enough to rip
the skin away from the bottom of the spacecraft's drastically weakened hull.
There was the sudden cold touch of water swirling around Darv's feet. Even
before his hand reached the seat restraint release, the water was up to his
knees. The shuttle stopped bucking and seemed to settle lower. Water began
roaring through the open air-lock doors. Astra had released her harness and
was standing beside her seat, leaning backwards as the shuttle's nose tilted
down. Darv grabbed her hand and hauled her towards the air-lock.
"I can't swim," she gasped as the water in the cabin rose around her
waist.
"Doesn't matter -- let's get out of this thing before it sinks."
The force of the water surging through the air-lock meant that Darv had
to hang on to the door surround and thrust Astra out of the shuttle with his
foot. The water was a living wall piling up against his chest as he hung on to
the door surround and yanked himself out of the spacecraft. Water stung his
eyes and got into his mouth. He experienced a moment of panic when he
remembered the angels' warning that the water on Paradise was poisonous. It
didn't taste poisonous -- merely salty. The shuttle gave a lurch and drove its
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