Combustion Read Free Page B

suspension play built into them but that won’t do any good if the footpad is destroyed and the spacecraft tips on its side.
     
    ‘Come on.’ This planet is really starting to piss him off. It’s the damn low light: it’s playing tricks on him. Because Mars is so far from the sun it’s cloaked in a dull gloom that Judd’s eyes are taking their sweet time getting accustomed to.
     
    ‘Thirty-eight seconds.’
     
    Judd drops Orion lower as he watches the LED screen beside the portal, which shows him an image of the ground directly below. The engine’s quiet whisper is the only sound, telling him to hurry up and find a spot now. He searches. Where? Where the hell is it? Where is my spot? There must be a spot.
     
    There isn’t one. The lower they drop the worse it looks.
     
    ‘Twenty-six seconds.’ Judd can hear Del’s concern. They’d never been this low on fuel in a simulation.
     
    ‘There!’
     
    He sees it. A clear, flat section of dust to the right. There are a few smaller rocks but it’s not too bad. That’s what it’s come down too: not too bad. It’ll have to do. He eases Orion towards the area, keeps his eyes on the LED screen and the landing spot that’s not too bad. He’s thirty feet from the surface.
     
    A large shape looms from the left. Judd glimpses it. ‘What’s that-?’
     
    The screen goes red and he loses sight of it as thrust from the engine hits the planet’s surface and kicks up a cloud of dust. It obscures the camera’s view of the ground, then the portal, cuts off Judd’s only reference points.
     
    He’s flying blind.
     
    ‘Twelve seconds.’ Del’s voice is thin as a reed.
     
    Judd plays the hand controller, holds Orion in place as his left hand lightly touches the red abort-to-orbit handle. If he turns it to the right the engine will fire at full power for eighteen seconds - and he’ll have seven months to think about his failure on the way home.
     
    He needs a moment to think. What was that shape? Was it a boulder he hadn’t noticed or a shadow? He didn’t see it on the way in, but this damn planet is so dark.
     
    Shadow or boulder?
     
    ‘Five seconds.’ Del sounds like he’s about to be sick.
     
    Boulder or shadow?
     
    Judd makes a decision.
     
    The spacecraft drops onto the planet.
     
    ‘Contact.’ Del’s voice wavers as he confirms the probes under the footpads have touched something.
     
    ‘Shutdown.’ Judd presses the engine stop button. The quiet whisper disappears and Orion settles onto Mars. He can feel the four landing legs compress under thirty tonnes of spacecraft. He awaits the sound of cracking metal, or the sensation of a tilting horizon as a landing leg snags on a boulder he’s not sure is there.
     
    A long moment passes.
     
    No one breathes.
     
    There’s no cracking or tilting - because there’s no boulder. It was a shadow. Orion’s shadow.
     
    Judd turns to Del with a grin. ‘Well, that was seven months of boredom followed by seventy seconds of terror.’
     
    Del nods, too drained to speak.
     
    Judd does it for him. ‘Let’s get outside.’
     
    ~ * ~
     
    Orion’s hatch swings open and Judd steps out - onto the wrought-iron catwalk beside the towering High Fidelity Orion Landing Simulator (OLS) in Building Five at Johnson Space Center (JSC). It was built two years ago for NASA by Lockheed-Martin, at a cost of two hundred and sixty million dollars, and replaced both shuttle simulators.
     
    Until the first flight to Mars lifts off in September 2020, Judd expects to spend thousands of hours training in the OLS. And he’s more than happy to do it, as every time he flies a successful sim it increases his chances of piloting one of the five planned Mars missions. He’s the only one of the training astronauts to have successfully landed the simulator on the Martian surface more than once, including his partner, Rhonda Jacolby, who is tipped to be FOM (First On Mars). He’s sure his success in the sim is annoying the