Page 32 of Threshold


  Chapter 47

  It was no longer a moon. Europa was down, now; a planet of ice, of jumbled ridges, occasional craters, scattered blocks the size of Odin stuck in the center of smooth, featureless frozen white, all rolling by underneath them at a tremendous speed. "Without atmosphere, we're having to kill our speed directly. According to Larry and A.J., we will be landing near the area called the Conamara Chaos. There's no good way to predict smooth landing spots, if any, so we just have to wing it. Everyone make sure they are securely strapped in." She did not allow her voice to betray any uncertainty. Her review of the Conamara region didn't encourage her; "chaos" was a good description of the area, but outside of it wasn't much better. On a planetary scale, Europa was smooth; on a human scale, it was some of the most rugged-looking terrain she'd ever had to look at. Plenty of areas of Mars were smoother to land on. But . . . there were a few possibilities. If she could just get lined up right.

  "Combined landing burn coming up."

  The rocket came on again at minimal power, slowly building to maximum. Scraping noises and vibrations echoed through both ships as, despite the cables, the two shifted slightly with respect to each other. Horst and A.J.'s balancing application was strained to its limit, and Maddie could feel the combined ship moving toward some catastrophic adjustment that would send them spinning out of control. Instinctively she eased off on the thrust, watching the projections of time and velocity. She had to get their relative velocity with respect to Europa's surface down to less than a hundred meters per second. Five hundred meters per second, and descending. Altitude ten thousand meters. Four hundred meters per second. Something moved slightly, and the entire mass of strung-together high technology seemed to wobble in the sky before a combination of programmed adjustments and Maddie's gut-level instinct managed to damp it down. Three hundred meters per second, and they were below five thousand meters altitude. Ridges and many-meter-high scarps loomed below them, ice frozen metal-hard in vacuum at a temperature of one hundred sixty degrees below zero—more than two hundred and fifty below, in Fahrenheit. Two hundred meters per second and they were lower than she liked, but she had to take her time; A.J. and Horst both indicated silently, in messages on her VRD, that the cable links would shift if she went to full power again—shift and perhaps let go. One hundred fifty. Forty . . . thirty . . . twenty . . . One hundred ten . . .

  "One hundred meters per second relative. Munin, we are detaching from you. Horst, are you ready?"

  "Ready to take controls. Good luck."

  "Separation in five, four, three . . ."

  Multiple demolition charges—specifically designed for vacuum use here in the outer system—detonated on cue, severing the cables at precisely selected locations. Munin peeled away from Nebula Storm with a very small burn from its lateral thrusters.

  "Munin away. Retracting hab sections." The overloaded sections would slightly unbalance Nebula Storm, but she could use that to keep them oriented in what amounted to a "right side up" attitude when she did the braking burn. The automated balance application was adjusted to deal with the current situation; she could see A.J. watching it like a hawk.

  "Altitude is about a thousand meters. Hold on, everyone. One way or another, we're almost done."

  She cut off outside imagery for everyone but herself. No one else needed to see this, and right now it was not even vaguely comforting. A shattered chaos of icebergs hundreds of meters high, small but sharp-edged ridges running for kilometers, not a single smooth area larger than a football field in . . .

  Wait. What was that? She concentrated the imaging systems in that direction. Alongside that long, wider ridged valley . . . parallel to it, a wide, smooth area. And it might . . . barely . . . be in range.

  She let a lateral jet bias them in that direction, saving the main engine's accumulators for the very end. The ground rose up . . . closer . . . closer . . .

  She couldn't restrain an intake of breath as the peak of a great block of ice passed above her. Above her and to the side, no more than sixty meters away. The terrain below her now was jagged, fangs of ice reaching for the ship. She had to clear them, but they were coming up to meet Nebula Storm.

  The vague dark patch of smoothness was barely visible at this angle, but approaching. But she wouldn't make it. Unless . . .

  Another lateral burst, tilting them up. She fired a short, sharp pulse from the main engines, then fired the laterals to bring them back into the proper alignment. There was a faint jolt, but she maintained control, seeing that the very tail of Nebula Storm had clipped the top off one of the blocks of ice. But the ice was still rough below them, still clawing up—and then suddenly she saw darker ice, still no skating rink but not a mass of frozen teeth. She cut in the main engines. The accumulators dumped their hoarded power into the reaction mass, sent it roaring out the NERVA nozzle at many, many kilometers per second, making every gram of mass work to slow Nebula Storm.

  Fifty . . . forty meters per second . . . Altitude eighteen meters . . .

  The rocket died off, power exhausted, with speed at five meters per second, altitude seven meters. A second or so later, Nebula Storm landed on Europa.

  Munin was trailing Nebula Storm, a considered choice based on wanting both vessels close together on Europa and knowing that Nebula Storm had neither the maneuverability nor design to control its landing. Horst and the others watched, almost holding their breaths.

  "Almost down . . ." Horst breathed. Only a tiny bit more, and the ship would be down and still, as perfect a landing as could be imagined with such a vessel.

  And then the Nebula Storm's rocket died.

  Five meters per second sounded so slow—barely a brisk jog, nothing compared to the meteoric speeds the ship had possessed but a few days before. A man on Earth could easily have outrun it now. But the Nebula Storm massed nearly a thousand tons. This was no aircraft, but a solid mass the size of a patrol ship, a small runaway train. A plume of white dust and tumbling shards blasted from beneath the careening spaceship as the Bemmius-made hull carved a remorseless path through the ice of Europa. Ponderously, majestically, the great ship bounced, rear end coming up, front down to score another massive dashed line in the face of the Jovian moon, then rear end down again, both down, sliding, ripping through ice like the blade of a titanic ice-skate. The Nebula Storm skidded, turning slowly from end-on to broadside. One of the habitat extensions caught suddenly on a projecting ridge, crumpled, and tore free. The ship rolled slightly, trapping the connecting tube underneath its mass, shredding the composite and steel, steam erupting as the water inside boiled outward in vacuum, shrouding the careening vessel in white fog. To his horror, Horst saw, casting knife-edged shadows across the ice, a forty-meter ridge cutting across the relatively smooth ice like a wall, dead ahead of the out-of-control Ares-IRI vessel. He pointed, wordlessly.

  "I see it. But the Nebula Storm, she is slowing . . ."

  It takes immense force to stop a thousand mobile tons, and with only Europa's feeble gravity to provide the pressure, the Nebula Storm would not stop quickly. But stop it would, in the end, and already the five meters per second had become three and a half, three, cutting an interrupted gouge nearly a hundred meters wide across Europa in a stupendous fountain of crystalline white. Even as Horst began bringing Munin in for a landing, he could barely tear his eyes from the ponderous, deceptive grace of the Nebula Storm's slow-motion crash. He could hear someone praying in the background. "Stop, stop, God, please stop . . ."

  Two and a half meters per second now, dropping, just a brisk walk—but there was no more room. Broadside on, the Nebula Storm smashed irresistibly into the immovable bulwark of steel-hard ice, sending a blast of steam, ice dust, and boulders of crystalline water spurting into the black sky of Europa. The cloud settled, unnaturally fast with no atmosphere to keep the dust suspended, and all was still. For a few seconds, no one said anything as Horst gave his full attention to bringing Munin to ground as close as possible to the crashed Nebula Storm. O
nly when he felt the huge lander settle with crushing solidity onto the ice did he speak. "Nebula Storm! Jackie, Helen, A.J.—are you all right?"

  For a moment there was no answer, and he thought his heart might just stop. But then the voice of Madeline Fathom answered, as calm and collected as though she were sitting back on Earth. "Munin, this is Nebula Storm. That probably looked worse than it was. We got a bit shaken up, but we are all fine. Joe's got a slight bruise on his forehead and Jackie got whacked across the shin by something that got loose in that last jolt, but her suit kept that from being anything serious. No leaks, all major systems still operating, and the hab unit we lost had the stuff in it we could most afford to lose. You can see that one of the others extended a little on impact, just over the top of this ridge, and it's twisted some, but Jackie doesn't think it's beyond repair." Her image appeared on the screen, and they could all see the entire crew of Nebula Storm behind her. "It's a good landing, because we're all going to walk away from it. And one day, we'll all be walking back into this ship and going home."

  "Speaking of walking away . . . ," A.J. said.

  "Yes. No better time, I think; we'll all have plenty of work to do, and until we get this over with, we can't really get to it. Horst?"

  He took a deep breath. "Give me a minute."

  "Hold on!" Maddie's voice cut across all frequencies. "A.J., Horst, I appreciate the quick spirit of cooperation, and that you want to do something after all this tension. But is getting killed your main priority?"

  "Getting . . . ? Oops."

  "Oops, indeed."

  Horst almost smacked the side of his head. "Sorry, sorry. Radiation again."

  "Radiation. Yes, we're at less than a thousand rem per day here at the surface of Europa, and so stepping out for a few minutes won't really hurt anyone. Except that we may be here a long time. We cannot afford any avoidable exposure. Jackie?"

  "Give me a minute . . . All systems show good. I think we can do it."

  A faint shimmer appeared near Nebula Storm. Horst looked at Munin's instruments and could detect the expansion of the magnetic field which guided gas and nanodust up and over them. Gravity and the immense magnetic pressure of Jupiter would keep the size of the dusty-plasma field severely constrained, but it would still spread kilometers across and protect both ships and the space around them from the invisible, deadly radiation. They'd have to run a cable from Munin to keep it running, with the Nebula Storm's reactor down. But Jackie said that they should be able to keep it running for long enough. Whatever radiation still got through the field should be survivable.

  A few moments later, he stepped out onto the boarding ramp of Munin, which rested on the white-dusted ice a short distance from Nebula Storm. Across from him he could see two figures, side by side on the ladder extending from Nebula Storm's airlock. His VRD showed Jackie's smiling face and Larry Conley's easy grin next to the appropriate suit. "Ready?"

  "Ready!"

  Horst began, and the others joined in.

  "By the authority vested in us as representatives of the European Union—"

  "—of the Ares Project—"

  "—of the Interplanetary Research Institute—"

  Three boots extended and touched, as one, on the surface of Europa, twin dim shadows cast by mighty Jupiter and distant Sol coming together on the contact.

  "—as the first human beings to set foot upon Europa, we claim all rights, privileges, and responsibilities pertaining therunto for us, our heirs, and assigns, and for the human race as set forth in the laws to which all of us are bound."

  For a few moments they stood quietly, gazing up at the brown-streaked immensity of Jupiter in the star-filled sky and the distant, blazing near-point of light that was the Sun. Horst felt a chill run down his spine that had nothing to do with the cryogenic temperatures around him. Only now did he truly grasp it: he was standing on the surface of a new world, the first (along with the two others) to ever do so.

  Then Madeline Fathom's voice broke into their reverie. "Good work, and thank you, everyone. Whether anything worth discovering comes from Europa or not, this is the spirit of cooperation we want them to hear about back home." Her face appeared in everyone's view. "And now, let's all get to work—because we're going home, every one of us!"

  THE END

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  Eric Flint, Threshold

 


 

 
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