stars.
Below them, and all around, the utter blackness of the crater seemed to suck them in, a deeper night than the starry sky above. The crater rim marched on the horizon, black against the stars.
Ahead of them now, the central mountains rose into the sky, growing with each minute as the spaceplane slid towards the heart of the crater. The peaks climbed out of the darkness of the crater and into the high sunlight, great spires of rock formed from the rebounding of the ancient impact flow, their tumbled lower slopes hidden in the darkness.
Their course took them through a valley between two of the tallest peaks. As they drew closer, the sunlit heights soared up into the sky on either side until they were lost to view, high above the spaceplane. On the night vision displays, they could see the invisible ramparts and mountain buttresses that slid silently past alongside in the darkness. Great screes and boulder slopes fell down toward the hidden valley floor, the sheer rock faces softened from countless minor impacts.
The sides of the valley rose and drew together, until it seemed that they would never make it through, but at the last moment, a gap opened between two great mountain buttresses, sharp-edged in the sunlight, standing like sentinels at the gates of night.
The ship slipped through the gap, and sailed out again over the darkness of the crater plain, turning towards an outthrust spur of the far crater wall, just visible on the far horizon.
‘Passing waypoint, coming round to one eight zero. Sixty kilometres to landing site, descending through three thousand metres, slightly high on the approach path,’ Wilson said, his eyes flicking over the instruments.
‘Reduce speed to one four zero. Maintain descent to two thousand metres for final approach, call out range and altitude.’ Clare’s hand moved out to touch the sidestick, her eyes watching the landing approach display.
Six slow minutes went by, while the invisible crater floor rolled past beneath them, and the far crater wall loomed closer, its dark ramparts rising to block out the stars.
‘Test landing thrust.’ Clare said.
Wilson pushed the thrust levers forward, and the crew felt the ship push upwards, as the landing thrusters were tested to their roaring maximum, sufficient to make a lift-off for their return journey.
‘Full thrust, engine readings normal,’ Wilson reported. ‘Reducing to descent thrust.’
The roar of the jets faded back to a hiss as the spaceplane continued its slow fall, sliding down into the depths of the crater. Outside the windows, the towering mountains had risen to block out the stars, and the ship floated in utter darkness.
‘Ten kilometres to landing site, altitude two thousand metres, approach checklist complete,’ Wilson announced, pressing a switch on the overhead panel. ‘Turning onto one three zero for final approach.’
The spaceplane dipped a wing and banked to the left, until it was heading straight for the unseen base of the mountain spur.
‘Any nav signals?’ Clare asked.
Wilson shook his head.
‘Negative. Not even a beacon. That’s one dead base down there.’
‘Reduce speed to five zero, increase rate of descent to ten metres per second,’ Clare said quietly. The spaceplane’s nose lifted as Wilson adjusted the autopilot, angling the landing jets to brake their forward speed and take them down on a steep descent towards the crater floor.
‘Eight kilometres range, altitude sixteen hundred metres,’ Wilson called.
Clare thumbed the intercom to the passengers. ‘Everyone ready? Let’s have those faceplates down and locked now.’
Behind her in the cockpit, there were thunking and clicking sounds as the crew closed their helmet faceplates, and the sharp hiss of suit air supplies taking over.
‘Five kilometres range, altitude one thousand metres.’
Only the radar display showed them what was happening outside, its flickering green eye showing them the fuzzy outline of the mine complex, far below and ahead of them in the darkness.
‘Four kilometres range, altitude eight hundred fifty metres.’
Clare reached for the landing gear control handle.
There was a series of thumps below them as the landing gear doors opened and the wheels swung downwards and locked in position.
Wilson kept focused on the descent, watching their forward speed and sink rate towards the landing pad. Clare turned her attention back to the approach display, trying to pick out individual features from the radar returns.
‘One kilometre range, altitude two hundred fifty metres.’
Clare could see the landing pad in the distance, a sharp-edged rectangle on the floor of the crater, and some of the taxiways, but the rest of the image was confused and broken.
‘Reduce speed to ten, level off at one fifty metres.’
The hiss of the landing jets increased briefly to a roar as Wilson arrested their descent and slowed their forward motion. Clare watched the displays intently as the ship moved slowly forward towards the landing pad.
‘Three hundred metres to pad, holding at one hundred fifty metres.’
‘Keep it coming, real slow now.’
The spaceplane slid closer to the image of the landing pad on the approach displays.
‘One hundred metres.’
‘Okay, that’s close enough, bring us to a hover.’
Wilson slowed the ship until it halted, hanging motionless, suspended in the darkness on its landing jets.
‘Hovering.’
‘Let’s have the landing lights.’
Below the spaceplane, six powerful lights pierced the blackness, and on the night vision displays in the cockpit, the crater floor could be made out at last.
It took a moment or two for the scene to sink in.
‘Oh my God,’ Matt let out, hardly able to believe what he saw.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
In the shimmering images on the cockpit displays, the landing pad and surface facilities of Erebus Mine lay spread out below them, like one of the models they had examined back on Earth. Instead of the tall towers of the refinery, and the ordered rows of storage spheres and fuel tankers, a scene of utter ruin was revealed.
From the open portal of the mine, by the mountain wall, a wide swathe of wreckage splashed out more than a kilometre into the crater floor, as if the contents of the mine had exploded over the landscape. Unidentifiable fragments of all shapes and sizes were strewn over the crater floor, and a radiating, fan-shaped scar, hundreds of metres across at its widest point, had been blown into the dust of the crater floor by the force of the escaping atmosphere.
Further out on the crater floor, there was just a wide, blackened crater where the ice processing plant and fuel refinery had been. The entire complex was gone, levelled to the ground by an enormous explosion in the fuel refinery. The shattered stumps of the refinery towers and gas processing plant could still be made out in the ruins, and twisted and blackened wreckage sprawled in a wide circle round the remains of the complex.
Nothing had survived. The tank farm near the landing pad had been destroyed completely; every storage sphere had burst open, their thin metal walls bent outwards like half-peeled oranges, their contents gone forever into the ancient dust of the crater floor.
The waiting line of fuel tankers lay askew on twisted and broken landing gear, their giant cargo tanks crushed like beer cans by the impact of wreckage hurled out by the explosion. Gantries and handling arms lay on the ground where they had been hurled, or at drunken angles in the darkness.
Everywhere, there were the signs of smaller, secondary explosions; at several points on the crater floor
