Cooper gazed down at the gaping black wound in the universe.
“No way to get anything from it?” he asked.
“Nothing escapes the horizon,” Romilly replied. “Not even light. The answer’s there, there’s just no way to see it.”
Cooper fastened his attention on the blue marble skimming along Gargantua’s event horizon, because it was coming up fast. He ran the trajectory one more time.
“This is fast for atmospheric entry,” CASE noticed. “Should we use the thrusters to slow?”
“We’re gonna use the Ranger’s aerodynamics to save fuel,” Cooper told the machine.
“Airbrake?” CASE said. Cooper noted for future reference that CASE apparently had an “are you kidding me?” setting.
“Wanna get in fast, don’t we?” he replied.
“Brand, Doyle, get ready,” CASE said. A robot couldn’t be nervous, Cooper knew, but somehow this one sounded anxious.
He watched the planet below. From a distance it hadn’t looked so different from Earth, but as they drew closer, he could see that it was much—well—bluer. He tried to pick out features—continents, islands—but all he could make out were clouds.
Then they reached the outskirts of the atmosphere and he didn’t have any attention to spare.
It started like a whisper, air so thin it would pass as vacuum compared to sea-level air on Earth. But at the speed they were traveling, those few molecules were compressed enough to make them practically much denser in their interaction with the plummeting vessel. That was good, actually, because this way they could ease into the atmosphere.
Well, maybe not ease, he thought, as the ship began to shudder and the air outside shrieked in protest. The Ranger’s nose began to glow as the friction from the atmosphere mounted, and every weld in the craft seemed to object as he tried to flatten out their course a bit, to engage the atmosphere like a jet, rather than a meteorite.
Cooper glanced at his instruments, and then back at the horizon.
“We could ease—” CASE began.
“Hands where I can see them, CASE!” Cooper shouted. “Only time I ever went down was a machine easing at the wrong moment.”
“A little caution,” CASE pleaded.
“Can get you killed, same as recklessness,” Cooper opined.
“Cooper!” Doyle chimed in. “Too damned fast!”
“I got this,” Cooper said, as the ship threatened to shake apart around them. His knuckles on the controls were white as he tried to keep them from vibrating out of his hands.
“Should I disable feedback?” CASE asked.
“No!” Cooper exploded. “No, I need to feel the air…”
The lander was white-hot now, cutting through a layer of clouds as thin as razors.
“Do we have a fix on the beacon?” he asked.
“Got it!” CASE said. “Can you maneuver?”
Yeah, he thought. We have our choice of crash sites, as long as most of them are more-or-less straight down.
“Gotta shave more speed,” he said instead. “I’ll try and spiral down to it.”
A moment later they burst through the clouds. The surface looked far too close to Cooper, but at least they seemed to be over a level surface…
“Just water,” Doyle said.
Cooper realized he was right. They were over an ocean.
“The stuff of life…” Brand said.
“Twelve hundred meters out,” CASE advised.
Cooper banked as hard as he could, trying to shed more speed. The surface was coming fast.
“It’s shallow,” Brand said. “Feet deep…”
Now they were low enough they were kicking up a splash, like an overgrown speedboat.
“Seven hundred meters,” CASE intoned.
Cooper watched the water sheeting toward him.
“Wait for it…” he said.
“Five hundred meters.”
Cooper yanked the stick back.
“Fire!” he said.
The retro-rockets kicked in just above the surface, punching back against their velocity. He tried to hold it, but the craft slewed sideways as the landing gear came down. They dropped, hit the water, casting up a spray. The impact nearly jarred Cooper’s teeth loose, but he held on stubbornly. Then when the air cleared, they were down, and everything looked good. Brand had been right—the water was really, really shallow—so much so that the landing gear held the Ranger just above the surface.
“Very graceful,” Brand managed. Cooper noticed she and Doyle were staring at him. Both of them looked a little roughed up.
“No,” he said. “But it was very efficient.”
They still just stared, but he pretty much ignored it, wondering how much time had already passed on Earth.
Days?
Months?
Better not to think about it, he decided.
“What’re you waiting for?” he barked. “Go!”
They snapped out of it then, unfastening their harnesses, checking their helmets. CASE detached himself from the floor and went to the hatch. It cracked open, and light and spray blew into the cabin.
It caught Cooper, then, in his gut—they were on another world.
EIGHTEEN
Amelia followed Doyle and CASE into the shallow sea. Cooper remained aboard the Ranger.
She experimented with sloshing through it as CASE took a moment to orient himself. The water felt thicker, heavier than it should. More viscous. It might have been the bulk of her spacesuit, but she didn’t think so. They had practiced with those underwater, back on Earth, in preparation for the mission.
Here, though, it was different.
“This way,” CASE directed. “About two hundred meters.”
Amelia looked in the direction the robot indicated. The water stretched out to the horizon, where it met a mountain range, misty with distance; one long ridge that vanished in each direction. The sight of the alien skyline arrested her for a moment, and she wished they weren’t in such a hurry. She had long dreamt of her first moments on an extra-solar planet, and this wasn’t how it was supposed to go. There should be a little ceremony, a little “That’s one small step.”
Instead they were in this tearing hurry, and it felt completely half-assed. But it was what it was. They weren’t here to set up flags and take pictures.
So she pushed forward.
Spacesuits, she decided after a few feet, were not well designed for wading. They were heavy, clumsy, and didn’t give one much of a feel for the surface on which one was walking. And that wasn’t the only thing making it difficult to make any progress.
“The gravity’s punishing,” Doyle panted.
“Floating around in space too long?” Amelia teased.
“One hundred and thirty percent Earth gravity,” CASE informed them.
Right, Amelia thought. That explained a lot. This much more gravity wasn’t ideal, but it was something people couldn adapt to. Water was a good sign, and with any luck, there would be at least some habitable land at the foot of the mountains…
They pushed on, with CASE still in the lead and Doyle falling behind.
After what seemed like an eternity, CASE stopped.
“Should be here,” he said, and with that he began moving in a search pattern. Amelia moved to join him.
“The signal’s coming from here,” she said, but as soon as she spoke, it didn’t make any sense. The beacon should be with the ship, yet the ship clearly wasn’t here. Even if Miller had crashed, the water here wasn’t deep enough to hide the wreck.