PITCH INCORRECT.
YAW INCORRECT.
ROLL INCORRECT.
THRUSTER ORIENTATION INCORRECT FOR AEROCAPTURE.
Townsend grimaced: This was going to be a real mess. Gwen's voice crackled on the intercom. "Give it up, Colonel. You don't have time for this. Bring the ship around and save the mission."
No doubt about it, Gwen was a gutsy kid, but this self-sacrifice stuff was getting irritating. One hundred seventy seconds. Plenty of time—maybe. But now she was less than fifty meters to starboard, still chattering. "Colonel, you only have two minutes left. You've got to—"
He'd had enough. "Don't tell me what I've got to do, Major. I'll save you and the mission, so we'll do it my way, if you please."
Easy does it. Twenty meters away. Better rotate the airlock toward her; there won't be time for climbing around. "Come on, Major, use your gas jets. We're close enough now."
The computer screen flashed, AERO ENTRY IMMINENT. FLIGHT VECTOR ELEMENTS ALL OUTSIDE SPECIFIED LIMITS. CONDITION RED. CONDITION RED.
Alarm klaxons began shrieking, shockingly loud in the Hab cabin.
"Colonel!" Luke barked from his temporary position as co-pilot in Gwen's absence. "We're going in too steep! The aeroshield's off-center. We're going to burn!"
The man was obviously hysterical, but he had a point. The Martian atmosphere was only six-tenths of one percent as thick as Earth's, but at the Beagle's tremendous velocity, a too-steep angle of entry would burn them to ashes once their heat-resistant aeroshield gave way. "Calm down, Luke. We still have forty-five seconds."
"Colonel, Gwen's moving in toward the starboard lock," Dr. Sherman said, keeping her voice level. "If you can hold this orientation just a few more seconds, I think she can make it."
"Thank you, Doctor." Townsend made a mental note. Dr. Sherman. She has a cool head on her shoulders, that one.
The ship creaked and shuddered with vibrations as they encountered the first wisps of Mars' upper ionosphere. Where was Gwen?
"Only fifteen seconds left! Colonel, you've got to—"
"Shut up, Luke," Sherman interrupted. "She's almost—Oh no, now she's being pushed back by the wind."
No time left. Townsend stabbed the port retro, shoving the ship one last time in Gwen's direction. There was a substantial thump. Gwen, I sure hope you didn't bounce.
"She's in the lock."
Townsend smiled, but only for a second. The klaxons were deafening, and every light on the control panel glared red. The vessel shuddered with the impact of substantial atmospheric entry. He grabbed the aero-control stick, and pulled back hard.
"All right crew, fasten your seat belts, we're coming about. Time to do some real flying."
A sudden lurch told Townsend that he'd been a second too late. All hell broke loose in the cabin as the Beagle convulsed into a wild spin. Townsend caught a momentary glance of several crew members tossed about like rag dolls; then they were gone from his peripheral vision. All that existed for Townsend now were some retros, a stick, and data readouts.
He fought madly with the controls, but the aeroshield's angle of attack was all wrong, and the Beagle tumbled in the thickening air.
Gasping inside the starboard lock, Gwen managed to close the outer door before the riotous spin started. The rotation slammed her back and forth within the lock until she wedged herself between the narrow walls. Christ, we're out of control!
If they were going to get out of this alive, the Beagle needed two sets of hands at the controls. Somehow, she had to make it back to the command console. She hit the emergency pressure equalization button and heard the whoosh as cabin air flooded the lock compartment. As her suit flattened with subpressurization, she undogged the inner lock door and pushed her way into the cabin.
What a mess! Debris was scattered everywhere; one computer monitor had been smashed by a flying object. Dr. Sherman clutched the back of her chair, swinging about as it spun in place, struggling in vain to pull herself into the seat. Luke Johnson sprawled on the floor, holding tight to one of the legs of the galley table. As Gwen watched, a badly bruised Professor McGee staggered into the cabin and bounced off the wall, caromed off a set of science consoles, then crashed fortuitously into his own chair, buckling himself in not ten feet from her, as if that had been his plan all along.
If that lubber can make it to his station, then so can I.
Gwen muttered a brief prayer, then scrambled across the deck, only to be hurled back to her starting point by a sudden 3-g force. For a moment the force varied in direction, then settled down to a near-constant vector, directly contrary to her intended path.
Well, at least Townsend seems to be limiting the tumble—that constant g-force means he's finally gotten the shield around.
But that left her with the problem of climbing across the deck inclined against 3 g's worth of pull. She set her boot magnetos on maximum and tried trudging forward again—no use, not enough traction. She stared across the deck at her control station, impossibly close, impossibly far.
Now something strange was going on. That idiot egghead McGee began climbing out of his chair, locking eyes with her. Is he crazy? Gwen thought. He's gone down on the deck, holding the base of his chair. I don't get it. Jesus, he's stretching himself across the deck towards me! He's making himself into a rope ladder. Well, I'll be! "Okay, Professor!" Gwen shouted through the chaos. "Here I come."
She shoved off the airlock outer door, feeling as if she were rolling heavy boulders uphill, and grabbed McGee's feet and hauled herself forward. She reached an arm up and grabbed his knee, then his belt. As she climbed, Gwen felt a surge of admiration. The man was holding two human bodies steeply sloped against 3 g's. It had to hurt like hell. "Now don't let go," she gasped in a whisper. "If you do, you'll crush us both when we hit the wall." Just a few more seconds. Hold on.
Gwen's arm reached the shaft of McGee's chair, and she pulled herself up. "Well done, Professor!" She shot him a smile, then pushed away from his chair to reach her own. She flung herself into her seat and buckled in. Tossing off her helmet, she could smell burnt insulation in the cabin air. "Status, Colonel?"
"Glad to see you back at your post, Major. We're under control, but seem to be a bit deeper into the atmosphere than called for in the nominal flight profile."
Gwen glanced at the altimeter and recoiled in horror. Twelve kilometers! Way too deep within the atmosphere for aerocapture into a stable orbit. One way or another the ship was going down, and soon.
"ABORT TO SURFACE, ABORT TO SURFACE," the navigation computer bleated metallically.
Gwen checked the local navigation readouts: two thousand kilometers from the primary landing site. She was ready when Townsend hit her with the expected question: "Do we have enough airspeed to make it to the return vehicle?"
Their ride home, the Earth Return Vehicle, had been launched from Earth a full year and a half before the Beagle lifted off. The ERV had landed in a carefully chosen spot, sitting on its site automatically processing oxygen, water, and rocket fuel from Martian resources. Everything had been carefully planned for the habitation module to touch down nearby, for the crew to go find the nice welcome mat.
But plans made in comfortable conference rooms didn't always turn out as expected.
"Way too much," Gwen answered quickly. "The only way to slow down in time is to fly low through the canyon and thread the needle. Risky with all this irregular ground, and flying that low won't give us enough altitude for the chute to land us. Might be safer to abort to the south and hope that the backup ERV can be retargeted for a rescue mission."