Porter Tigress, you are cleared for departure and descent to landing zone alpha.
Control, understand cleared for departure and descent. Eased farther away from the still-open bay door. Screens showed the Alwyn in a geostationary orbit halfway around Danann.
Planet hadn’t had an atmosphere in eons. Not what anyone would call one. Still, there was a greater concentration of gas around the planet than in deep space, not enough for anything close to atmospheric lift. Not enough to stop meteorites from impacting the surface. Enough to fry shields and hull if I dropped the shuttle in too fast and at too great an angle of descent.
Took it easy. Concentrated mass of the tractor and equipment aft meant I didn’t want any abrupt changes in velocity or direction. Laws of motion can tear large holes in fast-moving craft from inside.
Navigator Control, Porter Tigress, beginning entry this time.
Stet, Tigress… good luck. Thought that felt like Morgan.
Thanks, Control.
Upper part of the entry was smooth. Dark, and that meant instruments and light-enhancers. No bumps… nothing. Had a straight-in to the beacon. Braun had guided it in with shuttle two earlier. Hadn’t actually touched down.
Shuttle was at fifteen kays AGL. Dropped a good half kay below the optimum, drove me upward into the harness. How could we drop that much with no atmosphere? Did a quick systems scan. No power losses, and no drains on the system. No atmosphere, either. But… the shuttle had acted like it had lost power, even if the systems were functioning normally. Think about that later. I added more power and decreased the rate of descent.
Porter Tigress, interrogative status.
Control… status is green… some apparent turbulence, cause unknown. Have modified power curve.
Interrogative feasibility of safe landing.
Idiot question, even from Morgan. Nothing had changed the probabilities. Not yet. We all knew there were things we didn’t know about Danann. Faint heart never conquered the unknown. Navigator Control, Porter Tigress, feasibility remains unchanged. Proceeding with approach to landing zone alpha.
Tigress, proceed with caution. Request abort and immediate return if additional turbulence encountered.
Have to see about that. Wild turbulence and I’d agree. A bump or two, no. Control, will consider return if significant turbulence encountered.
Stet. Good luck, Tigress.
That was as much of a concession as I’d get from Morgan. Concentrated on the last part of the approach. Dark as shit. No sun, no stars. Used low-intensity wide-angle light beams and enhancement to get visuals and match the instruments as I brought the shuttle across the flat expanse of ice toward the landing zone and the towers beyond. Beacon was set in circular open space with a three-kay diameter. Flat enough that it might have once been a lake.
Checked the course line and descent toward the beacon. Slowed and added more power.
Navigator Control, Porter Tigress, approaching landing zone alpha this time.
Tigress, understand approaching zone.
Slowed the shuttle. Through the screens, could detect towers, blue-silver-metallic. They rose out of the dark gray ice. Never seen ice that color. Some of that might have been enhancement coloration. Wasn’t water ice, but frozen atmosphere and a few billion years of accreted material. Roughly twenty-five to thirty meters deep. Had no idea what the atmosphere had been, not exactly. Some sort of nitrogen-oxygen mix, according to the samples and the analysis, with oxygen almost twenty-five percent.
Checked the towers’ height. I had the shuttle level with their tops when the altimeter hit a hundred meters AGL.
Set-down was gentle and full-power. That was to pressure the ice and make sure that it wouldn’t collapse under the shuttle’s mass. Ground scan showed solid before I eased off power.
Steam rose around us. Not really steam, but unfrozen gases. After a minute or so, concealed gases pattered back down on the hull, where some turned back into gas. Hull probably wouldn’t cool to ambient while we were down. Made a note to mention the “steam” gas to Braun and Lerrys.
Shuttle sat on the gray icy stuff, just short of the beacon the Braun and the remote had landed on threeday. Checked the shuttle systems again.
Navigator Control, Porter Tigress landed at zone alpha. Situation green this time.
Stet, Tigress. Cleared to unload and proceed at your discretion.
Nice of Morgan to allow me discretion. How could he tell from where he was?
Hit the local shuttle links. “Tech leader, science chief. We’re down. You’re cleared to disembark and unload according to plan.”
The plan was that each group would leave one member aboard the shuttle to coordinate unloading for the techs and data transmission for the scientists. Lead scientist was the number two chemist—Willis Synor. Tech crew chief was Suryvan Patel.
Patel came back first. “Lieutenant, we’re letting the science crew take their initial scan and measurements before we brace the ramp and unload the tractor and support equipment.”
“Stet. Keep me posted.” I felt heavy sitting at the board. I was. Instruments confirmed that Danann had surface grav of one-point-one-nine Tellurian. Outside temps weren’t that much above absolute zero, somewhere just above 35 K, enough to have most atmospheric gases, the commoner ones anyway, frozen solid.
In between running systems checks, I used the farscreens to study the towers. Just blue-silver towers, shimmering with light reflected from the low-intensity lights beaming from the shuttle. Lights were necessary. With no heat to speak of and no suns or stars nearby, even enhancers didn’t work—not without some radiation from somewhere.
One of the first items of cargo on shuttle two was a fusactor tractor. Braun would be bringing that down after I got back to the Magellan and debriefed her. Morgan and the captain were cautious that way. Suited me fine. Captain had laid down the law—only one shuttle below orbit at a time. The Alwyn had a standard shuttle for a battle cruiser, the kind that could take twenty passengers comfortably and fifty packed to the gills in an emergency. Both the Magellan and the Alwyn also each had one auxiliary flitter that could land planetside and lift off with four passengers, but they’d take a long time to move things with all the scientists and equipment.
We had the first small section of the portable quarters for the planetside teams. My second drop would have more. They could have them. I’d rather be aboard the Magellan.
Ran another set of checks, then focused one of the screen imagers on the towers forward and to the right of the shuttle, trying to get a magnified image. That was one of my tasks, gathering images of all sorts, so long as it didn’t interfere. There was an artist on board Magellan, name of Barna. I’d seen him. Looked at us pilots strangely, more than once. Never had said anything, and I hadn’t been about to ask. He’d be planetside once the science teams got set, but he and the nonimmediate priority team members needed what images I could get.
Towers didn’t seem all that tall, less than a hundred meters above the ice, and wider than those I’d seen in places like Hamilton or Fiorenza. No battlements, merlons, crenellations—-just smooth spires ending in a rounded dome. Took me several minutes to realize two other things. Nothing had stuck to the towers, and there was no external damage. None.