The Cat Who Walks Through Walls

IX

"Murphy was an optimist." (O'Toole's commentary on Murphy's Law, as cited by A. Bloch)

To reach the office of Budget Jets we had to go around the end of the spaceport waiting room and into it at the axis, then directly to Budget's door. The waiting room was crowded- the usual lot, plus Shriners and their wives, most of them belted to wall rests, some floating free. And proctors-too many of them.

Perhaps I should explain that the waiting room-and the booking office and the lock to the passenger tunnel and the offices and facilities of Rental Row-are all in free fall, weightless; they do not take part in the stately spin that gives the habitat its pseudo-gravity. The waiting room and related activities are in a cylinder inside a much larger cylinder, the habitat itself. The two cylinders share a common axis. The big one spins; the smaller one does not-like a wheel turning on an axle.

This requires a vacuum seal at the outer skin of the habitat where the two cylinders touch-a mercury type, I believe, but I've never seen it. The point is that, even though the surrounding habitat spins, the habitat's spaceport must not spin, because a shuttle (or a liner, or a freighter, or even a Volvo) requires a steady place in free fall to dock. The docking nests for Rental Row are a rosette around the main docking facility.

In going through the waiting room I avoided eye contact and went straight to my destination, a door in a forward corner of the waiting room. Gwen and Bill were tailed up behind me. Gwen had her purse hooked over her neck and was guarding the bonsai maple with one arm and clinging to my ankle with her other hand; Bill was holding on to one of her ankles and towing a package wrapped in Macy's wrapping, with Macy's logo prominent on it. I don't know what that wrapping paper originally covered but it now concealed Gwen's smaller case, her not-clothes.

Our other baggage? Following the first principle of saving one's neck, we'd chucked it. It would have marked us as phony-for a one-day side trip Shriners on holiday do not carry great loads of baggage. Gwen's smaller case we could salvage because, disguised with Macy's wrapping, it looked like the sort of shopping many of the Shriners had obviously done. And so did the little tree-just the sort of awkward, silly purchase tourists indulge in. But the rest of our baggage had to be abandoned.

Oh, perhaps it could be shipped to us someday, if safe means could be worked out. But I had written it off our books. Doc Schultz, by scolding me for crabbing over the cost of the deal Gwen had arranged, had reoriented me. I had let myself become soft and sedentary and domesticated-he had forced me to shift gears to the real world, where there are only two sorts:

the quick and the dead.

A truth of which I again became acutely aware in crossing that waiting room: Chief Franco came in behind us. He appeared to be unaware of us and I strove to appear unaware of him. He seemed intent only on reaching a group of his henchmen guarding the lock to the passenger tunnel; he dived straight toward them while I was pulling my little family along a lifeline stretching from the entrance to the corner I wanted to reach.

And did reach it and got through Budget Jets' door, and it contracted behind us and I breathed again and reswallowed my stomach.

In the office of Budget Jets we found me manager, a Mr. Dockweiler, belted at his desk, smoking a cigar, and reading the Luna edition of the Daily Racing Form. He looked around as we came in and said, "Sorry, friends, I don't have a thing to rent or sell. Not even a witch's broom.*'

I thought about who I was-Senator Richard Johnson, representing the enormously wealthy systemwide syndicate of sassafras snifters, one of the most powerful wheeler-dealers at The Hague-and let the Senator's voice speak for me. "Son, I'm Senator Johnson. I do believe that one of my staff made a reservation in my name earlier today-for a Hanshaw Superb."

"Oh! Glad to meet you. Senator," he said as he clipped his paper to his desk and unfastened his seat belt. "Yes, I do have your reservation. But it's not a Superb. It's a Volvo."

"What! Why, I distinctly told that girl - Never mind. Change it, please."

"I wish I could, sir. I don't have anything else."

"Regrettable. Would you be so kind as to consult your competitors and find me a-"

"Senator, there is not a unit left for rent anywhere in Golden Rule. Morris Garage, Lockheed-Volkswagen, Hertz, Interplan-et-we've all been querying each other the past hour. No soap. No go. No units."

It was time to be philosophical. "In that case I had better drive a Volvo, hadn't I, son?"

The Senator again got just a touch cranky when required to pony up full list price on what was clearly a much-used car- I complained about dirty ashtrays and demanded that they be vacuumed out... then I said not to bother (when the terminal behind Dockweiler's head stopped talking about Ames and Novak) and said, "Let's check me mass and available delta vee; I want to lift."

For a mass reading Budget Jets does not use a centrifuge but the newer, faster, cheaper, much more convenient, elastic inertiometer-I just wonder if it is as accurate. Dockweiler had us all get into the net at once (all but the bonsai, which he shook and wrote down as two kilos-near enough, maybe), asked us to hug each other with the Macy's package held firmly amongst us three, then pulled the trigger on the elastic support-shook our teeth out, almost; then he announced that our total mass for lift was 213.6 kilos.

A few minutes later we were strapping to the cushions and Dockweiler was sealing the nose and then the inner door of the nest. He had not asked for IDs, tourist cards, passports, or motor vehicle pilot's licenses. But he had counted that nineteen thousand twice. Plus insurance. Plus cumshaw.

I punched "213.6 kg" into my computer pilot, then checked my instrument board. Fuel read "full" and all the idiot lights showed green. I pushed the "ready" button and waited. Dockweiler's voice reached us via the speaker: "Happy landing!"

"Thank you."

The air charge went Whwnpf! and we were out of the nest and in bright sunlight. Ahead and close was the exterior of the spaceport. I squeezed the process control for a one-eighty reverse. As we swung, the habitat moved away and into my left viewport; ahead the incoming shuttle came into view-I did nothing about her; she had to keep clear of me, since I was undocking-and, into my right viewport came one of the most impressive sights in the system: Luna from close up, a mere three hundred kilometers-I could reach out and touch her.

I felt grand.

Those lying murdering scoundrels were left behind and we were forever out of reach of Sethos's whimsical tyranny. At first, living in Golden Rule had seemed happily loose and carefree. But I had learned. A monarch's neck should always have a noose around it-it keeps him upright.

I was in the pilot's couch; Gwen had the copilot's position on my right. I looked toward her and then realized that I was still wearing that silly eyepatch. No, delete "silly"-it had, quite possibly, saved my life. I took it off, stuffed it into a pocket. Then I took that fez off, looked around for somewhere to put it-tucked it under my chest belt. "Let's see if we are secure for space," I said.

"Isn't it a little late for that, Richard?"

"I always do my check-off lists after I lift," I told her. "I'm the optimistic type. You have a purse and a large package from Macy's; how arc they secured?"

"They arc not, as yet. If you will refrain from goosing mis craft while I do it, I'll unstrap and net them." She started to unstrap.

"Woops! Before unstrapping you must get permission from the pilot."

"I thought I had it."

"You do now. But don't make that mistake again. Mr. Christian, His Majesty's Ship Bounty is a taut ship and will remain that way. Bill! How are you doing back there?"

" 'M okay."

"Are you secure in all ways? When I twist her tail, I don't want any loose change flying around the cabin."

"He's belted in properly," Gwen assured me. "I checked him. He is holding Tree-San's pot flat against his tummy and he has my promise that, if he lets go of it, we will bury him without rites."

"I'm not sure it will stand up under acceleration."

"Neither am I but there was no way to pack it. At least it will be in the correct attitude for acceleration-and I'm reciting some spells. Dear man, what can I do with this wig? It's the one Naomi uses for public performances; it's valuable. It was sweet indeed of her to insist that I wear it-it was the final, convincing touch, I think-but I don't see how to protect it. It's at least as sensitive to acceleration as Tree-San."

"Durned if I know-and that's my official opinion. But I doubt that I will need to push this go-buggy higher than two gee." I thought about it. "How about the glove compartment? Take all of the Kleenex out of the dispenser and crumple it up around the wig. And some inside it. Will that work?"

"I think so. Time enough?"

"Plenty of time. I made a quick estimate at Mr. Dockweiler's office. In order to land at Hong Kong Luna port and in sunlight I should start moving into a lower orbit about twenty-one hundred. Loads of time. So go ahead, do whatever you need to do... while I tell the computer pilot what I want to do. Gwen, can you read all the instruments from your side?"

"Yes, sir."

"Okay, that's your job, that and the starboard viewport. I'll stick to power, attitude, and this baby computer. By the way, you're licensed, aren't you?"

"No point in asking me now, is there? But let not your heart be troubled, dear; I was herding sky junk before I was out of high school."

"Good." I did not ask to see her license-as she had pointed out, it was too late to matter.

And I had noticed that she had not answered my question.

(If ballistics bores you, here is another place to skip.)

A daisy-clipping orbit of Luna (assuming that Luna has daisies, which seems unlikely) takes an hour and forty-eight minutes and some seconds. Golden Rule, being three hundred kilometers higher than a tall daisy, has to go farther than the circumference of Luna (10,919 kilometers), namely 12,805 kilometers. Almost two thousand kilometers farther-so it has to go faster. Right?

Wrong. (I cheated.)

The most cock-eyed, contrary to all common sense, difficult aspect of ballistics around a planet is this: To speed up, you slow down; to slow down, you speed up.

I'm sorry. That's the way it is.

We were in the same orbit as Golden Rule, three hundred klicks above Luna, and floating along with the habitat at one and a half kilometers per second (1.5477 k/s is what I punched into the pilot computer... because that was what it said on the crib sheet I got in Dockweiler's office). In order to get down to the surface I had to get into a lower (and faster) orbit... and the way to do that was to slow down.

But it was more complex than that. An airless landing requires that you get down to the lowest (and fastest) orbit... but you have to kill that speed so that you arrive at contact with the ground at zero relative speed-you must keep bending it down so that contact is straight down and without a bump (or not much) and without a skid (or not much)-what they call a "synergistic" orbit (hard to spell and even harder to calculate).

But it can be done. Armstrong and Aldrin did it right the first time. (No second chances!) But despite all their careful mathematics it turned out there was one hell of a big rock in their way. Sheer virtuosity and a hatful of fuel bought them a landing they could walk away from. (If they had not had that hatful of fuel left, would space travel have been delayed half a century or so? We don't honor our pioneers enough.)

There is another way to land. Stop dead right over the spot where you want to touch down. Fall like a rock. Brake with your jet so precisely that you kiss the ground like a juggler catching an egg on a plate.

One minor difficulty- Right-angled turns are about the most no-good piloting one can do. You waste delta vee something scandalous-your boat probably doesn't carry that much fuel. ("Delta vee"-pilot's jargon for "change in velocity" because, in equations, Greek letter delta means a fractional change and "v" stands for velocity-and please remember that "velocity" is a direction as well as a speed, which is why rocket ships don't make U-tums.)

I set about programming into the Volvo's little pilot computer the sort of synergistic landing Armstrong and Aldrin made but one not nearly as sophisticated. Mostly I had to ask the piloting computer to call up from its read-only memory its generalized program for landing from an orbit circum Luna... and it docilely admitted that it knew how... and then I had to inject data for this particular landing, using the crib sheet supplied by Budget Jets.

Finished with that, I told the computer pilot to check what I had entered; it reluctantly conceded that it had all it needed to land at Hong Kong Luna at twenty-two hundred hours seventeen minutes forty-eight point three seconds.

Its clock read 1957. Just twenty hours ago a stranger calling himself "Enrico Schultz" had sat down uninvited at my table in Rainbow's End-and five minutes later he was shot. Since then, Gwen and I had wed, been evicted, "adopted" a useless dependent, been charged with murder, and run for our lives. A busy day!-and not yet over.

I had been living in humdrum safety much too long. Nothing gives life more zest than running for your life. "Copilot."

"Copilot aye aye!"

"This is fun! Thank you for marrying me."

"Roger, Captain darling! Me, too!"

This was my lucky day, no doubt about it! A lucky break in the timing had kept us alive. At this instant Chief Franco must be checking every passenger entering the twenty o'clock shuttle, waiting for Dr. Ames and Mistress Novak to claim their reservations-while we were already out the side door. But, while that critical tuning saved our lives. Lady Luck was still handing out door prizes.

How? From Golden Rule's orbit our easiest landing on Luna would involve putting down at some point on the terminator- least fuel consumed, smallest delta vee. Why? Because we were already on that terminator line, going pole to pole, south to north, north to south, so our simplest landing was to bend it down where we were, never change our heading.

To land in the east-west direction would involve throwing away our present motion, then expending still more delta vee making that foolish right-angle turn-then programming for landing. Maybe your bank account can afford this waste; your skycar cannot-you're going to find yourself sitting up there with no fuel and nothing under you but vacuum and rocks. Unappetizing.

To save our necks I was happy to accept any landing field on Luna... but that door prize from Lady Luck included landing at my preferred field (Hong Kong Luna) just about daybreak there, with only an hour spent parked in orbit waiting for the time to tell the computer pilot to take us down. What more could I ask for?

At that moment we were floating over the backside of the Moon-as corrugated as the backside of an alligator. Amateur pilots do not land on the far side of Luna for two reasons: 1) mountains-the side of the Moon turned away from Earth makes the Alps look like Kansas; 2) settlements-there aren't any to speak of. And let's not speak of settlements that aren't to speak of, because it might make some unspeakable settlers quite angry.

In another forty minutes we would be over Hong Kong Luna just as sunrise was reaching it. Before that time I would ask for clearance to land and for ground control on the last and touchiest part of landing-then spend the next two hours in going around behind again and gently lowering the Volvo down for landing. Then it would be time to turn control over to Hong Kong Luna ground control but, I promised myself, I would stay on overrides and work the landing myself, just for drill. How long had it been since I had shot an airless landing myself? Calhsto, was it? What year was that? Too long!

At 2012 we passed over Luna's north pole and were treated to earthrise... a breathtaking sight no matter how many times one has seen it. Mother Earth was in half phase (since we were ourselves on Luna's terminator) with the lighted half to our left. It being only days past summer solstice, the north polar cap was tilted into full sunlight, dazzling bright. But North America was almost as bright, being heavily cloud-covered except part of the Mexican west coast.

I found that I was holding my breath, and Gwen was squeezing my hand. I almost forgot to call HKL ground control.

"Volvo Bee Jay Seventeen calling HKL Control. Do you read me?"

"Bee Jay Seventeen affirm. Go ahead."

"Request clearance to land approx twenty-two hundred seventeen forty-eight. Request ground-controlled landing with manual override. I am out of Golden Rule and still in Golden Rule orbit approx six klicks west of her. Over."

"Volvo Bee Jay Seventeen. Cleared to land Hong Kong Luna approx twenty-two seventeen forty-eight. Shift to satellite channel thirteen not later than twenty-one forty-nine and be ready to accept ground control. Warning: You must start standard descent program that orbit at twenty-one oh-six nineteen and follow it exactly. If at insertion for ground-controlled landing you are off in vector three percent or in altitude four klicks, expect wave off. Control HKL."

"Roger wilco." I added, "I'll bet you don't realize that you are talking to Captain Midnight, the Solar System's hottest pilot"-but I shut off the mike before I said it.

Or so I thought. I heard a reply, "And this is Captain Hem-orrhoid Hives, Luna's nastiest ground-control pilot. You're going to buy me a liter of Glenlivet after I bring you down. If I bring you down."

I checked that microphone switch-didn't seem to be anything wrong with it. I decided not to acknowledge. Everybody knows that telepathy works best in a vacuum... but there ought to be some way for an ordinary Joe to protect himself against supermen.

(Such as knowing when to keep his mouth shut.) I set the alarm for twenty-one hours, then processed to attitude straight down and, for the next hour, enjoyed the ride while holding hands with my bride. The incredible mountains of the Moon, taller and sharper than the Himalayas and tragically desolate, flowed by ahead of (under) us. The only sound was the soft murmur of the computer and the sighing of the air scavenger-and a regular, annoying sniff from Bill. I shut out all sound and invited my soul. Neither Gwen nor I felt like talking. It was a happy interlude, as peaceful as the Old Mill Stream.

"Richard! Wake up!"

"Huh? I wasn't asleep."

"Yes, dear. It's past twenty-one.**

Uh... so it was. Twenty-one oh-one and ticking. What happened to the alarm? Never mind that now-I had five minutes and zip seconds to make sure we entered descent program on time. I hit the control to process, from headstand to bel-lywhopper backwards-easiest for descent, although supine backwards will work just as well. Or even sideways backwards. Whichever, the jet nozzle must point against the direction of motion in order to reduce speed for insertion into landing program-i.e., "backwards" for the pilot, like me Fillyloo Bird. (But I'm happiest when the horizon looks "right" for the way I'm belted in; that's why I prefer to put the skycar into bel-lywhopper backwards.)

As soon as I felt the Volvo start to process I asked the computer if it was ready to start landing program, using standard code from the list etched on its shell.

No answer. Blank screen. No sound.

I spoke disparagingly of its ancestry. Gwen said, "Did you punch the execute button?"

"Certainly I did!" I answered and punched it again.

Its screen lit up and the sound came on at teeth-jarring level:

"How do you spell comfort? For the wise Luna citizen today, overworked, overstimulated, overstressed, it is spelled C, 0, M, F, I, E, S-that's Comfies, the comfort therapists recommend most for acid stomach, heartburn, gastric ulcers, bowel spasm, and simple tummy ache. Comfies! They Do More! Manufactured by Tiger Balm Pharmaceuticals, Hong Kong Luna, makers of medicines you can rely on. C, 0, M, F, I, E, S, Comfies! They Do More! Ask your therapist." Some screech owls started singing about the delights of Comfies.

"This damn thing won't turn off!"

"Hit it!"

"Huh?"

"Hit it, Richard."

I could not see any logic in that but it did meet my emotional needs; I slapped it, fairly hard. It continued to spout inanities about over-priced baking soda.

"Dear, you have to hit it harder than that. Electrons are timid little things but notional; you have to let them know who's boss. Here, let me." Gwen walloped it a good one-I thought she would crack the shell.

It promptly displayed:

Ready for descent-Zero Time = 21-06-17.0.

Its clock showed 21-05-42.7

-which gave me just time to glance at the altimeter radar (which showed 298 klicks above ground, steady) and at the doppler readout, which showed us oriented along our motion-over-ground line, close enough for government work... although what I could have done about it in ca. ten seconds I do not know. Instead of using fractional jets paired in couples to control attitude, a Volvo uses gyros and processes against them- cheaper than twelve small jets and a mess of plumbing. But slower.

Then, all at once, the clock matched the zero time, the jet cut in, shoving us into the cushions, and the screen displayed the program of bums-the topmost being: 21-06-17.0- -19 seconds 21-06-36.0

Sweet as could be, the jet cut off after nineteen seconds without even clearing its throat. "See?" said Gwen. "You just have to be firm with it."

"I don't believe in animism."

"You don't? How do you cope with- Sorry, dear. Never mind; Gwen will take care of such things."

Captain Midnight made no answer. You couldn't truthfully say that I sulked. But, damn it all, animism is sheer superstition. (Except about weapons.)

I had shifted to channel thirteen and we were just coming up on the fifth bum. I was getting ready to turn control over to HKL GCL (Captain Hives) when that dear little electronic idiot crashed its RAM-its Random Access Memory on which was written our descent program. The table of bums on the screen dimmed, quivered, shrank to a dot and disappeared. Frantically I punched the reset key-nothing happened.

Captain Midnight, undaunted as usual, knew just what to do. "Gwen! It lost the program!"

She reached over and clouted it. The bum schedule was not restored-a RAM, once crashed, is gone forever, like a burst soap bubble-but it did boot up again. A cursor appeared in the upper left comer of the screen and blinked inquiringly. Gwen said, "What time is your next bum, dear? And how long?"

'Twenty-one, forty-seven, seventeen, I think, for, uh, eleven seconds. I'm fairly sure it was eleven seconds."

"I check you on both figures. So do that one by hand, then ask it to recompute what it lost."

"Righto." I typed in the bum. "After this one I'm ready to accept control from Hong Kong."

"So we're out of the woods, dear-one bum by hand and then ground control takes over. But we'll recompute just for insurance."

She sounded more optimistic than I felt. I could not remember what vector and altitude I was supposed to achieve for take-over by ground control. But I had no time to worry about it; I had to set up this bum.

I typed it in: 21-47-17.0- -11.0 seconds 21-47-28.0

I watched the clock and counted with it. At exactly seventeen seconds past 2147 I jabbed the firing button, held it down. The jet fired. I don't know whether I fired it or the computer did. I held my finger down as the seconds ticked off and lifted it exactly on eleven seconds.

The jet kept on firing.

("-run in circles, scream and shout!") I wiggled the firing button. No, it was not stuck. I slapped the shell. The jet kept on roaring and shoving us into the cushions.

Gwen reached over and cut power to the computer. The jet stopped abruptly.

I tried to stop trembling. "Thank you, Copilot."

"Yessir."

I looked out, decided that the ground seemed closer than I liked, so I checked the altimeter radar. Ninety something-the third figure was changing. "Gwen, I don't think we're going to Hong Kong Luna."

"I don't think so, either."

"So now the problem is to get this junk out of the sky without cracking it."

"I agree, sir."

"So where are we? An educated guess, I mean. I don't expect miracles." The stuff ahead-behind, rather; we were still oriented for braking-looked as rough as the back side. Not a place for an emergency landing.

Gwen said, "Could we face around the other way? If we could see Golden Rule, that would tell us something."

"Okay. Let's see if it responds." I clutched the processing control, told the skycar to swing one-eighty degrees, passing through headstand again. The ground was noticeably closer. Our skycar settled down with the horizon running right and left-but with the sky on the "down" side. Annoying... but all we wanted was to look for our late home. Golden Rule habitat. "Do you see it?"

"No, I don't, Richard."

"It must be over the horizon, somewhere. Not surprising, it was pretty far away the last time we looked-and that last bum was a foul blast. A long one. So where are we?"

"When we swung past that big crater- Aristoteles?"

"Not Plato?"

"No, sir. Plato would be west of our track and still in shadow.

It could be some ringwall I don't know... but that smooth stuff-that fairly smooth stuff-south of us makes me think that it must be Aristoteles."

"Gwen, it doesn't matter what it is; I've got to try to put this wagon down on that smooth stuff. That fairly smooth stuff. Unless you have a better idea?"

"No, sir, I do not. We're falling. If we speeded up enough to maintain a circular orbit at this altitude, we probably would not have enough fuel to bring her down later. That's a guess."

I looked at the fuel gauge-that last long, foul blast had wasted a lot of my available delta vee. No elbow room. "I think your guess is a certainty-so we'll land. We'll see if our little friend can calculate a parabolic descent for this altitude- for I intend to kill our forward speed and simply let her drop, once we are over ground that looks smooth. What do you think?"

"Uh, I hope we have fuel enough."

"So do I. Gwen?"

"Yes, sir?"

"Honey girl, it's been fun."

"Oh, Richard! Yes."

Bill said in a choked voice, "Uh, I don't think I can-"

I was processing to put us back into a braking attitude. "Pipe down. Bill; we're busy!" Altimeter showed eighty something- how long did it take to fall eighty klicks in a one-sixth gee field? Switch on the pilot computer again and ask it? Or do it in my head? Could I trust the pilot computer not to switch on the jet again if I fed it juice?

Better not risk it. Would a straight-line approximation tell me anything? Let's see- Distance equals one half acceleration multiplied by the square of the time, all in centimeters and seconds. So eighty klicks is, uh, eighty thousand, no, eight hund- No, eight million centimeters. Was that right?

One-sixth gee- No, half of one sixty-two. So bring it across and take the square root-

One hundred seconds? "Gwen, how long till impact?"

"About seventeen minutes. That's rough; I just rounded it off in my head."

I took another quick look inside my skull, saw that in failing to allow for forward vector-the "fall-around" factor-my

"approximation" wasn't even a wild guess. "Close enough. Watch the doppler; I'm going to kill some forward motion. Don't let me kill all of it; we'll need some choice in where to put down."

"Aye, aye. Skipper!"

I switched power to the computer; the jet immediately fired. I let it run five seconds, cut power. The jet sobbed and quit. "That," I said bitterly, "is one hell of a way to handle the throttle. Gwen?"

"Just crawling along now. Can we swing and see where we're going?"

"Sure thing."

"Senator-"

"Bill-shut up!" I tilted it around another hundred and eighty degrees. "See a nice smooth pasture ahead?"

"It all looks smooth, Richard, but we're still almost seventy klicks high. Should get down pretty close before you kill all your forward speed, maybe? So you can see any rocks."

"Reasonable. How close?"

"Uh, how does one klick sound?"

"Sounds close enough to hear the wings of the Angel of Death. How many seconds till impact? For one-kilometer height, I mean."

"Uh, square root of twelve hundred plus. Call it thirty-five seconds."

"All right. You keep watching height and terrain. At about two klicks I want to start to kill the forward speed. I've got to have time to twist another ninety degrees after that, to back down tail first. Gwen, we should have stayed in bed."

"I tried to tell you that, sir. But I have faith in you."

"What is faith without works? I wish I was in Paducah. Time?"

"Six minutes, about."

"Senator-"

"Bill, shut up! Shall we trim off half me remaining speed?"

"Three seconds?"

I gave a three-second blast, using the same silly method of starting and stopping the jet.

'Two minutes, sir."

"Watch the doppler. Call it." I started the jet.

"Now!"

I stopped it abruptly and started to process, tail down, "windshield" up. "How does it read?"

"We're as near dead in the water as can be done that way, I think. And I wouldn't fiddle with it; look at that fuel reading."

I looked and didn't like it. "All right, I don't blast at all until we are mighty close." We steadied in the heads-up attitude-nothing but sky in front of us. Over my left shoulder I could see the ground at about a forty-five-degree angle. By looking past Gwen I could see it out the starboard side, too, but at quite a distance-a bad angle, useless. "Gwen, how long is this buggy?"

"I've never seen one out of a nest. Does it matter?"

"It matters a hell of a lot when I'm judging how far to the ground by looking past my shoulder."

"Oh. I thought you meant exactly. Call it thirty meters. One minute, sir."

I was about to give it a short blast when Bill blasted. So the poor devil was space sick but at that instant I wished him dead. His dinner passed between our heads and struck the forward viewport, there spread itself. "Bill!" I screamed. "Stop that!"

(Don't bother to tell me that I made an unreasonable demand.)

Bill did the best he could. He trained his head to the left and deposited his second volley on the left viewport-leaving me flying blind.

I tried. With my eyes on the radar altimeter I gave it a quick blast-and lost that, too. I'm sure that someday they will solve the problem of accurate low-scale readings taken through jet blast and fouled by "grass" from terrain-I was just bom too soon, that's all. "Gwen, I can't see!"

"I have it, sir." She sounded calm, cool, relaxed-a fit mate for Captain Midnight. She was looking over her right shoulder at the Lunar soil; her left hand was on the power switch to the pilot computer, our emergency "throttle."

"Fifteen seconds, sir... ten... five." She closed the switch.

The jet blasted briefly, I felt the slightest bump, and we had weight again.

She turned her head and smiled. "Copilot reports-" And lost her smile, looked startled, as we felt the car swing. Did you ever play tops as a kid? You know how a top behaves as it winds down? Around and around, deeper and deeper, as it slowly goes lower, lays itself down and stops? That's what this pesky Volvo did.

Until it lay full length on the surface and rolled. We wound up still strapped, safe and unbruised-and upside down. Gwen continued, "-reports touchdown, sir." "Thank you, Copilot."