Coyote - A Novel of Interstellar Exploration Part 12

A couple of moments pa.s.s, then a terse response: "We copy, Helms. Over." In a few more seconds they'll lose radio contact as the shuttle enters the ionization layer of Coyote's atmosphere. This was antic.i.p.ated, me Rllen M. Steels of course, yet Shapiro still feels something clutch at his stomach. The safety net is about to disappear; they're on their own.

By now Bear has risen almost completely above Coyote. It seems almost impossible that anything in the universe could be so huge; Shapiro deliberately looks away, focusing his attention on the planet below.

The horizon has almost completely flattened out; through breaks in the cloud cover he can see a vast expanse of brown landscape crisscrossed by intricate blue veins, with a broad blue band winding down its center. No oceans, only a couple of silver-blue patches that could be seas or large lakes, each interconnected by a maze of channels. A river world.

"Ground track."

"Ten north, one-sixty northwest. Just above the equator." Newell studies the digital map of Coyote's surface; composed only a couple of days ago through radar imaging, it isn't very detailed, yet it's the best they have. "Alt.i.tude 380,000 feet, velocity..."

She's interrupted by a sudden thump against the bottom of the fuselage. From behind them Shapiro hears Cayle yelp in alarm. "You're strapped in tight back there, aren't you?" he calls over his shoulder, not taking his eyes from his instruments. "This may be rocky."

"We're okay." This from Jim Levin. "Don't worry about us."

"Just checking." Shapiro can already see an orange-white corona beginning to form around the shuttle's nose; the Helms is entering the atmosphere. Another thump, then a sickening plunge; the eight ball confirms that their approach is a little too steep. He compensates by pulling back on the stick. The ADI moves up by more than two degrees, and there's a gentle sensation of rising as the shuttle's wings bite into the thin air, yet he doesn't dare relax. Looks like a nice place down there; it would be shame to mess it up with a new impact crater...

And so they go, ever downward, the c.o.c.kpit windows becoming opaque as a sheath of superheated air coc.o.o.ns itself around the s.p.a.cecraft. The hull softly creaks and groans; Newell calls out numbers every few seconds. Shapiro's wrists begin to ache from clutching the yoke.

Long minutes pa.s.s, then the orange haze gradually dissipates, and suddenly they're in clear air: a wall of dark blue sky above him, a long smooth expanse of terrain directly below. Only a few clouds between him and the ground: some stratoc.u.mulus formations, but that's all. Bear has reappeared, still looming large within the sky, but now it seems a little farther away, its blue-white hue faded by the atmosphere.

"Alt.i.tude 180,000," Newell says before Shapiro can ask. "Velocity 8,300."

"Switchover to ramjets." Shapiro reaches to the panel between them and clicks a double row of toggles.There's a hard lurch as the airbreathers come on-line.

He looks to the left, peers out through his side window. Wispy white contrails stream away from the wingtip and port stabilizer; the shuttle has become an aircraft once more. He shuts off the main engines, glances over at Newell; the color has left her face, but she gives him a wan smile.

"Alabama, this is Helms," he says aloud. "Do you copy, over?"

"Roger that, Helms, we copy." Now the voice is clear, with little static. "Good to hear you again.

Confirm present position, over."

Newell checks her panel. "Bearing... ah, twelve north, one-three- eight northwest.

"All systems nominal, Alabama." His gaze shifts across his instruments. "Fuel level at 51 percent."

"We copy. Howl's the terrain? Over."

Shapiro reaches over to the corn panel, switches on the bow camera. Alabama's flight team should be able to receive an image by now, but they're depending upon his firsthand judgment, so he gazes through the c.o.c.kpit windows. To his right, the vast blue expanse of Coyote's equatorial river, so wide at some points that its southern banks nearly vanish beyond the horizon. Directly below and to his left, though, there's solid ground; they're above what looks like a small continent, with a jagged ridgeline running northwest from the northern riverbank to, in the far distance, what appears to be high mountain country.

To the east are what appear to be alluvial plains, stretching away from the base of the range. He doesn't put down anywhere near the highlands, though; thermal updrafts could cause problems for the cargo modules once they're dropped from orbit.

"Nothing promising yet. It's pretty steep right around here, and I don't..."

"Sir?" Newell points ahead of them. "Look there... eleven o'clock low."

Shapiro gazes in that direction. Past the edge of the continent, a broad channel empties into the equatorial river. Just past the delta, though, he sees what appears to be a large, tooth-shaped landma.s.s. No mountains, or at least none that he can see from their present alt.i.tude, yet as they come closer he can just make out another channel on its far side. An island, albeit an enormous one; as a guess, he estimates that it's several hundred miles long, perhaps half as much at its widest point.

"Hold on, Alabama. We may have something. Going in for a closer look." He turns the yoke a few degrees to the left and pitches the nose forward, dropping alt.i.tude while making a shallow northeast turn.

The horizon tilts to one side; after a few moments he levels off but continues the descent, reaching down to his center panel to raise the wing ailerons.

Now they're at fifty-five thousand feet, airspeed five hundred miles per hour. Shapiro looks out the window again, studies the island directly in front of them. As he suspected, the two channels he spotted earlier converge at a narrow confluence at its northern tip, making it independent from both the continent they had spotted earlier and two more lying to the east and northeast, with the equatorial river forming its southern boundary.

"Do you see this, Alabama!" he asks.

"We got it, Helms." He recognizes Lee's voice; the captain has taken over the mike from his com officer.

"Tell us what you're looking at."

"It's an island, skipper... a subcontinent, really. I'd say it's about seven hundred miles long, three or fourhundred miles wide at its center. Terrain looks nice and looks flat... no mountains, no volcanos... with four or five major rivers crossing it from northwest to southeast and draining into the major channels to the west and east."

"Sounds good. What does your team say?"

Shapiro turns to call back to Levin and Cayle, and is surprised to find that both men have already unbuckled their harnesses and come forward to the c.o.c.kpit, where they crouch together between the pilot's and copilot's seats. Levin touches his own mike. "I concur with Commander Shapiro, Captain.

It's isolated from everything else, but more than large enough for our purposes. With any luck those rivers are fresh water."

"I don't know." Cayle appears skeptical. "We could travel farther east, follow the main river, and see what else we find."

"Our present bearing is ninety-two west, twelve north." Newell studies her map. "That puts us slightly above the equator, about halfway around the western hemisphere. There may be more islands at zero-zero and zero-ten, but I can't tell for sure."

Shapiro checks the fuel gauge. Down to 42 percent. Still enough left in the tanks to make the flyby Cayle suggests, and Helms should be able to refuel itself from the hydrogen in the planet's atmosphere. Yet the shuttle has to land to be able to do so, and if the indigenous propellant conversion system were to fail for some reason, they would barely have enough fuel available for an emergency return to Alabama.

As if reading his mind, Newell points to the map, holds up two fingers, then makes a fist three times. "I don't agree, Captain," he says. "We're two thousand miles from zero-zero, and I'd prefer not to burn more fuel than we have to. I vote to land here."

It's his call, of course, but Newell nods, and Levin gives him a thumbs- up. Cayle hesitates, then reluctantly nods as well. "We concur, Helms," Lee responds.

"Take her down. We'll continue our survey from orbit. Over."

"We copy, Alabama. Beginning final descent. Over." He clicks off the headset, looks back at the two scientists. "Strap in. We're landing." Shapiro waits until and Levin and Cayle have retreated to the pa.s.senger compartment, then he turns to Newell. "Okay, Kim," he murmurs, "just pretend we're in the simulator... only no second chances this time."

She grins at him. "You mean you'll buy the beer if I get us down without crashing?"

"What's that about crashing?" Cayle says from behind them.

Newell squeezes her eyes shut and mutters something under her breath. "Never mind, Bernie," Shapiro replies. "Bad joke."

One last systems check, then Shapiro banks hard to starboard, pushing the yoke forward as he takes the shuttle down in a shallow gyre. The wings bite into the thicker air; he hears wind whistling past the fuselage, feels the stick tremble within his grasp. He's landed shuttles nearly a dozen times, but before now he's always known exactly where he was going: paved strips on Merritt Island, southern California, or west Texas, where there would always be a double row of landing beacons and the soothing voice of a ground controller to help guide him in.

Which is what makes this landing feel so surreal. Shapiro has been a pilot nearly all his life-his first flight was at age fourteen, when he climbed behind the stick of his uncle's home-built ultralight-but neverbefore has he ever seen a landscape so empty. Vast tracts of what look like gra.s.sy savannah, with a labyrinthine network of streams running between dense wooded areas-but no roads, no plowed fields, no buildings of any sort. Flying over the most remote desert on Earth, there's always some sign of human habitation, even if it's only a dirt road. Here, flllen M. Steele there's nothing of the kind, only wilderness.

Intellectually, it's what he expected, yet knowing that Coyote is uninhabited is not the same as seeing it for himself.

Leveling off at three thousand feet, he follows a low ridgeline running along the eastern channel until he makes a northwest turn and flies inland, tracking a narrow river as it meanders through marshland.

Newell continues to read him numbers, then her breath catches as, just for an instant, they catch a glimpse of something that looks like a bird, yet not like any bird seen on Earth-something like a cross between a hawk and a small pterodactyl-soaring beneath them. In a moment it's gone, but it's all Shapiro can do to keep himself from craning his neck to see where it went.

"Did you see that?" Newell's eyes are huge.

"Uh-huh." Shapiro grins back at his copilot, then nods toward the console. "C'mon, pay attention to your board, or you're buying the drinks."

Now they're nearly thirty miles inland. The terrain is utterly flat, not a hill in sight; nothing but high meadow cut through by the river. "Looks like as good a place as any," Shapiro says, and Newell nods in agreement as he touches his headset mike. "Alabama, this is Helms. Going for touchdown."

"We copy, Helms. Good luck. Over."

Shapiro throttles down the jets, then powers up the VTOLs. The hull shudders as the shuttle comes to a near standstill in midair; the nose comes up for a moment, then settles back to a horizontal position. He nudges the yoke forward a little, glances at the eight ball, sees that they're in perfect trim.

"Wheels down," he says, and Newell reaches up to click a row of toggles. A grinding sound as the landing gear fold down from their wells. "All right, let's take it nice and easy..."

The shuttle slowly descends upon the gra.s.slands. Newell recites the altimeter readings-one thousand, nine hundred, eight hundred, seven hundred-while Shapiro keeps his right hand loose on the yoke, ready to grab the throttle and climb back to higher alt.i.tude should anything go wrong. But nothing like that happens; at four hundred feet, he increases vertical thrust, and at two hundred he inches it up a little more. Through the c.o.c.kpit windows he can see the high gra.s.s spreading away from them, flattened out by the jet blast.

"One hundred feet... seventy... sixty..."

His mouth is dry. Shapiro licks his lips, prays that he's not setting down in a swamp. Yet between clearings in the gra.s.s he can see what looks like dry ground; this gives him confidence, so he continues the descent.

"Thirty... twenty-five... twenty..."

Tufts of gra.s.s and dark brown dirt fly up around the c.o.c.kpit, littering the windows with debris.

Something that looks like a tiny gra.s.shopper skitters down the pane in front of him, falls off the side. Even at this moment, Shapiro can't help but note that a half dozen generations of exobiologists would have sold their souls for such an experience.

"Fifteen... ten... nine... eight...""That's okay, Kim," he murmurs. "I can take it from here."

Instinctively, relying on nothing more than his feel for the craft, he pulls the throttle back to nearly vertical position. A dense roar that shakes him within his seat, and then a solid whump against the undercarriage as the wheels meet the surface.

"Contact." He shoves the throttle firmly into lock position. "Engines down." The craft rocks a little on its gear, then settles down. "All systems nominal," he says, checking his board. "Safe engines." Newell follows his lead by switching off the VTOLs; she glances at him, briefly nods. Shapiro lets out his breath, touches his mike. "Alabama, we're on the ground."

No response for several seconds, longer than would be necessary to receive verbal communication from Alabama. For a moment Shaprio wonders whether they've lost telemetry, then from behind him he hears Cayle and Levin yelling at the top of their lungs. There must be the same reaction aboard the ship; he can only imagine the scene within the command center, if not throughout the entire vessel.

"Helms, this is Alabama." Now he hears Captain Lee's voice, if only faintly; there's a lot of noise in the background. "We copy you safe and on the ground.

Thanks, Tom. We've got a lot of smiling faces up here."

Shapiro looks first at Newell, then back at Levin and Cayle. "And four more here, skipper. I think..."

He hesitates, just long enough for Newell to notice his reticence. "I think the pilgrims would have approved," he finishes. "We'll be in touch. Plymouth over and out."

Newell gives him a sharp look. "Plymouth?"

He doesn't reply as he switches off the radio. Let her wonder...

IBM FSR mission protocols for first landing called for them to put on their helmets, pressurize their suits, and exit the shuttle through the small airlock located in the rear of the pa.s.senger compartment. Yet even as they prepare to disembark, one look at everyone's faces tells Shapiro that no one relishes that idea.

For one thing, the airlock can accommodate only two people at a time; Levin and Cayle would have to remain aboard for ten more minutes, waiting for the airlock to recycle before they can join him and Newell on the surface.

And second, how necessary is it for them to wear EVA equipment on a planet with an oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere? Although Jim Levin points out that the air could be rife with microorganisms against which they have no natural immunity, the normally cautious Bernie Cayle surprises the others by countering that this is a risk that the colonists will have to confront eventually, so they might as well get it over and done with.

In the end, Shapiro makes the final decision: they'll roll the dice and leave the shuttle through the forward hatch. As expected, no one disagrees. So they spend a few minutes struggling out of their c.u.mbersome suits, then Newell twists the lockwheel that unseals the floor hatch.

A loud pop, followed by a prolonged hiss as overpressurized cabin air floods through the open hatch.

Shapiro opens a candy-striped panel above the hatch, flips a pair of toggles, and presses an orange b.u.t.ton; the boarding ramp grumbles as it folds down upon its pneumatic jacks. Everyone gives each other one last, hesitant look, as if waiting to see who's going to die first.

"Come on," Shapiro says quietly. "Let's see what's down there."He leads the way down the ramp, his boots clumping on the metal steps. The outer hull ticks softly as it sheds the last of the entry heat. The blast from the VTOL jets has flattened the gra.s.s in a wide swath around the shuttle; he observes that the forward landing gear has sunk a couple of inches into the ground, with dirt sprayed across the tires and wheel brace.

Shapiro halts at the bottom of the ramp, turns to look at the others. "Any historic words, anyone?"

" 'One small step for man...' " Bernie begins, and Newell and Levin laugh.

"It's been done." Then, not knowing what else to say or do, Shapiro steps off the ramp.

The ground is firm, yet moist and loamy; two more steps, and both feet are on the ground. He slowly walks out from beneath the fuselage and feels warm sunlight upon his face. He takes a deep breath; the air is thin, and for a few moments he feels giddy, as if he's standing on a high mountain plateau, yet he can taste the high, rich scent of summertime: sun-baked meadows, morning dew, fresh mud.

He turns, taking it all in. Thick, tawny gra.s.s the height of his shoulders, stretching as far as the eye can see, with clouds of tiny insects swarming above them like white motes of dust. A few dozen yards away, a small cl.u.s.ter of brown plants that look like onions the size of medicine b.a.l.l.s, violet flower tops resembling irises protruding from their apexes upon long, thin stalks. In the distance, he can make out a grove of trees: black, twisted trunks from which thick dark branches spread upward and outward, flattening out at the top like enormous j.a.panese bonsai.

He looks back toward the shuttle, and his breath catches as he sees Bear looming above the western horizon, a blue hemisphere that fills half the sky, larger than any mountain he's ever seen. 47 Ursae Majoris, smaller than Earth's sun and half as brilliant, rises from the east, casts a silver tint across Bear's rings until their leading edges fade from view in the depths of the dark blue sky.

And it's quiet. Only the soft rustle of an Indian summer breeze as it moves through the gra.s.s, the rhythmic purr of something that sounds a little like cicadas, only lower-pitched. Again, he realizes that this place has never felt the human presence. Even if he had decided to quote Neil Armstrong, those words would have been inappropriate, for those words had been spoken on the Moon, a world that had always overlooked Earth. Although Coyote might bear some superficial resemblance to his home planet, it's not Earth...

A sudden slap, a muttered obscenity. Shapiro looks around to see Bernie Cayle remove his hand from his neck. "d.a.m.n mosquito." Then he examines his palm more closely, raises his eyebrows. "Maybe not.

You should see the wings on this thing..."

First contact. Shapiro grins, but says nothing.

"I think it's time to pull out the med kit." Levin starts walking back to the shuttle. Everyone has been inoculated, but Okada told them not to take any chances. "Where do you keep it, commander?"

"It's back in the cargo net. The case marked with a red cross." Shapiro begins to follow Levin toward the shuttle, then he feels a soft hand close around his wrist. He turns, finds Newell standing next to him.

Perhaps she's been there all the time, but he simply hasn't noticed.

"Don't worry," she says softly. "He'll find it." She lets her head fall back, and the warm sunlight catches the soft stubble of dark hair on her scalp.

Not for the first time, Shapiro observes that Kim Newell is a very beautiful woman. "Oh, G.o.d, can you believe it? It's like Eden or something..."He almost laughs out loud. "You know, no offense, but that's the worst cliche in the book..."

"It is?" She gives him a coy smile. "Which one are you talking about?"

The one in at least a dozen bad stories he read as a kid. He starts to answer, then thinks better of it.

"Never mind. I'll tell you some other time." Trying not to be rude, he gently slips his arm from her grasp.

"I think we better let Alabama know we're safe. And see about setting up camp... Lieutenant."

"Of course." Whatever romantic impulse had seized Newell fades away; now she's an officer once more.

She steps away, her face reddening. "Sorry, sir. Didn't mean to..."

"Don't worry about it." He almost says forget it, but he doesn't want her to do that. "Let's do what we've been sent here to do. All right?"