'We'll have to try it on our next orbit,' Rip said. He pointed. 'See the small dot of red light? That's us, I think, and we're in the wrong orbit. We need a trajectory change to get us to the reentry point.'
Charley kept scrolling through the displays. 'Here it is, I hope.' She studied the three-dimensional graphic, then pointed. 'The minimum burn will be right here.'
'How much fuel will it take?'
She played with the displays for almost a minute before she said, 'I don't know. If we burn up all our fuel maneuvering, we won't have enough to get out of orbit. If we lose orbital velocity but don't burn long enough to hit the cone, we'll skip off the atmosphere like a rock, over and over, until finally we go in steeply.'
'Steeply? I don't like the sound of that.'
'We'll probably burn up in the atmosphere like a meteor.'
'How much fuel do we have remaining?'
'See this display?' Charley pointed at another computer presentation. 'This might be fuel remaining. We're under five percent, I think.'
Rip looked slowly around. 'These saucer people must have taken on another load of water from the mother ship while they were in orbit.'
'No more than a few gallons. Water in space is precious. One suspects they used the mother ship to make cross-track trajectory changes.'
'So what do we do? Missouri or where?'
'Let me work with the computers,' she said and bent to study the screens.
Finally she took a deep breath. 'I think we can make North America. Missouri. We'll make the orbit change, then fire the rockets to drop us into that cone on the computer.'
Rip nodded vigorously. 'We'll coast down over the Pacific and plop into the good ol' U. S. of A. If we overshoot, we'll hit the Atlantic.' Rip smiled confidently. 'But not to worry, Charley baby. North America is a big target. We'll be okay.'
'Uh-huh.'
'Trust me.'
'Don't call me baby.'
'Nothing personal, Captain Pine, you being an older woman and all.'
The ship had rotated on its axis about ninety degrees, or so it seemed. The dark planet was off to their left, filling half the sky. They fell silent then, stared at the massive orb.
'We're coming up on the U.S. now,' Charley whispered.
Sure enough, the lights of Los Angeles soon came into view, twinkling merrily, covering the hills and valleys. The huge city was a vast smear of light. The orbiting saucer soon left it behind. The Mojave Desert was black and empty, the interstates tiny twinkling ribbons, the little towns mere splotches in the darkness.
When Rip finally looked into space he saw only unwinking stars against an obsidian sky. A shiver ran through him.
The peril of their position washed over him like a cold shower. They were several hundred miles above the surface of the earth in an ancient spaceship that he had jackhammered from a rock ledge. If anything went wrong, both he and Charley were going to die. In this saucer. Very soon.
He felt slightly nauseated. It's the weightlessness, he told himself, wanting to believe that. The reality of his recklessness he tried to ignore. Pine wanted to come, he thought; she was here of her own free will.
He wondered about the water, how much remained in the tank.
Would the rocket motors start? An anxious dread came over him, brought a layer of sweat to his brow.
The motors have to start. They must! It can't end like this, the two of them marooned in orbit, condemned to die when the air went bad.
Here came the sun!
With a dazzling rush the sun rose over the earth's rim and filled the inside of the saucer with its light.
Charley Pine watched the sun climb toward the zenith, then went back to playing with the computers. She went back and forth between the three displays before her. She looked calm, as placid as if she were receiving e- mail on the Internet.
'If the engines don't start, we're toast,' Rip told her. 'You know that?'
She glanced at him, her expression unchanged. 'I tried to focus your attention on the risk before we started.'
'I'm focused as hell now.'
'The risk hasn't changed. We are no more or less in jeopardy than we were when we were fifteen feet above the ground.'
'It sure feels more dangerous,' he replied, his eyes inadvertently drawn to the planet looming over the ship. Towering cumulus clouds low in the atmosphere cast distinct shadows with military precision. There were thousands of clouds.
She went back to the computers.
'I got a bad feeling about this,' he told her, but she was concentrating on the machines and didn't hear him.
He pushed gently away from the pilot's seat and floated effortlessly across the small compartment. When he came within reach of a bulkhead, he pushed off, continued slowly back and forth across the compartment while the earth sped by beneath the saucer and Charley Pine played with the computers.
Okay, she's a tough broad. Tough.
He was floating along thinking about things when the rocket motors fired. He went crashing into the rear bulkhead. After about three seconds, the motors stopped.
'Hey!'
'Sorry. Forgot to warn you.'
'Well, at least the engines work,' he acknowledged grudgingly. 'What was that all about, anyway?'
'That was the cross-trajectory burn. Now we are in the proper orbit, lined up with the descent cone.'
He floated over to look at the display.
As he hung on, Charley turned the saucer and pointed it backward, lining it up with a set of crosshairs that showed in the holographic display on the computer. 'About five more minutes, more or less.'
'Okay.'
He wasn't frightened anymore. Maybe he should have been, but he wasn't. A great peace came over him. Whoever made this saucer was long dead, yet he felt a kinship to those creatures… people… whoever they were. He was flying their ship as they must have done, and somehow that seemed all right. They had the courage to face the unknown, and now, with no boasting or bravado, Rip Cantrell knew that he had it too.
'We're going to be okay,' he said to Charley, who was busy fooling with the computer again.
'Yeah,' she replied, intent on examining another display.
Then she brought the reentry holograph back onscreen and rearranged herself in the chair.
'Perhaps you should strap into a seat,' she said.
'Just for the burn.'
'Okay.'
He settled himself into the nearest seat and put on the belt.
He got a glimpse of the display blossoming as they entered the cone and the flame on the display that commanded engine power. Charley came on with the juice and didn't stint. She went smoothly up to full power while keeping the ship properly oriented.
Just as she reached full power, the motors cut out for a second or so. When they came back on, they weren't at full power. Maybe half, a little less. Despite his resolve, Rip's heart threatened to leap up his throat.
The engines burped again, two, three, four times…
'Come on!' That was Charley, talking to her steed. 'Don't do that to me.'
Rip was out of the seat, clawing his way up toward the pilot's seat so he could see the displays. 'What's wrong?'
More burping from the rocket motors. Then they quit. On the main display, the holograph was commanding full power.
'Uh-oh.'
