Luck helped him again. He had planned to ground the great planet, knowing no better. Had he been able do so they would have lived just long enough to open the air-lock.
But he was short of mass, after the titanic task of pulling them out of the headlong hyperbolic plunge around an arc past the star and warping them into a closed orbit about the star, then into a subordinate orbit around the giant planet. He pored over the ancient books, substituted endlessly in the equations the ancients had set down as the laws for moving bodies, figured and refigured, and tested even the calm patience of Chloe. The other wife, the unnamed one, kept out of his way after losing a tooth, quite suddenly.
But he got no answer that did not require him to sacrifice some, at least, of the precious, irreplaceable ancient books for fuel. Yes, even though they stripped themselves naked and chucked in their knives, the mass of the books would still be needed.
He would have preferred to dispense with one of his wives. He decided to ground on one of the moons.
Luck again. Coincidence of such a colossal proportion that one need not be expected to believe it, for the moon of that planet was suitable for human terrestrial life. Never mind, skip over it, rapidly; the combination of circumstances is of the same order needed to produce such a planet in the first place. Our own planet, under our own sun is of the "There ain't no such animal" variety. It is a ridiculous improbability.
Hugh's luck was a ridiculous improbability.
Good design handled the next phase. Although he learned to maneuver the little Ship out in space where there is elbow room, landing is another and a ticklish matter. He would have crashed any spacecraft designed before the designing of the Vanguard. But the designers of the Vanguard had known that the Ship's auxiliary craft would be piloted and grounded by at least the second generation of explorers; green pilots must make those landings unassisted. They planned for it.
Hugh got the vessel down into the stratosphere and straightened it triumphantly into a course that would with certainty kill them all.
The autopilots took over.
Hugh stormed and swore, producing some words which diverted Alan's attention and admiration from the view out of the port. But nothing he could do would cause the craft to respond. It settled in its own way and leveled off at a thousand feet, an altitude which it maintained regardless of changing contour.
"Hugh, the stars are gone!"
"I know it."
"But Jordan! Hugh, what happened to them?"
Hugh glared at Alan. "I don't know and I don't care! You get aft with the women and stop asking silly questions."
Alan departed reluctantly with a backward look at the surface of the planet and the bright sky; It interested him, but he did not marvel much at it; his ability to marvel had been overstrained.
It was some hours before Hugh discovered that a hitherto ignored group of control lights set in motion a chain of events whereby the autopilot would ground the Ship. Since he found this out experimentally he did not exactly choose the place of landing. But the unwinking stereo-eyes of the autopilot fed its data to the 'brain'; the submolar mechanism selected and rejected; the Ship grounded gently on a rolling high prairie near a clump of vegetation.
Ertz came forward. "What's happened, Hugh?"
Hugh waved at the view port. "We're there." He was too tired to make much of it, too tired and too emotionally exhausted. His weeks of fighting a fight he understood but poorly, hunger, and lately thirst, years of feeding on a consuming ambition, these left him with little ability to enjoy his goal when it arrived.
But they had landed, they had finished Jordan's Trip. He was not unhappy, at peace rather, and very tired. Ertz stared out. "Jordan!" he muttered. Then, "Let's go out."
"All right."
Alan came forward, as they were opening the air-lock, and the women pressed after him. "Are we there, Captain?"
"Shut up," said Hugh.
The women crowded up to the deserted view port; Alan explained to them, importantly and incorrectly, the scene outside. Ertz got the last door open.
They sniffed at the air. "It's cold," said Ertz. In fact the temperature was perhaps five degrees less than the steady monotony of the Ship's temperature, but Ertz was experiencing weather for the first time.
"Nonsense," said Hugh, faintly annoyed that any fault should be found with _his_ planet. "It's just your imagination."
"Maybe," Ertz conceded. He paused uneasily. "Going out?" he added.
"Of course." Mastering his own reluctance, Hugh pushed him aside and dropped five feet to the ground "Come on; it's fine."
Ertz joined him, and stood close to him. Both of them remained close to the Ship. "It's big, isn't it?" Ertz said in a hushed voice.
"Well, we knew it would be," Hugh snapped, annoyed with himself for having the same lost feeling.
"Hi!" Alan peered cautiously out of the door. "Can I comedown? Is it alright?"
"Come ahead."
Alan eased himself gingerly over the edge and joined them. He looked around and whistled. "Gosh!"
Their first sortie took them all of fifty feet from the Ship. They huddled close together for silent comfort, and watched their feet to keep from stumbling on this strange uneven deck. They made it without incident until Alan looked up from the ground and found himself for the first time in his life with nothing close to him. He was hit by vertigo and acute agoraphobia; he moaned, closed his eyes and fell.
"What in the Ship?" demanded Ertz, looking around. Then it hit him.
Hugh fought against it. It pulled him to his knees, but be fought it, steadying himself with one hand on the ground. However, he had the advantage of having stared out through the view port for endless time; neither Alan nor Ertz were cowards.
"Alan!" his wife shrilled from the open door. "Alan! Come back here!" Alan opened one eye, managed to get it focused on the Ship, and started inching back on his belly.
"Man!" commanded Hugh. "Stop that! Situp."
Alan did so, with the air of a man pushed too far. "Open your eyes!" Alan obeyed cautiously, reclosed them hastily.
"Just sit still and you'll be all right," Hugh added. "I'm all right already." To prove it he stood up. He was still dizzy, but he made it. Ertz sat up.
The sun had crossed a sizable piece of the sky, enough time had passed for a well-fed man to become hungry, and they were not well fed. Even the women were outside; that had been accomplished by the simple expedient of going back in and pushing them out. They had not ventured away from the side of the Ship, but sat huddled against it. But their menfolk had even learned to walk singly, even in open spaces. Alan thought nothing of strutting a full fifty yards away from the shadow of the Ship, and did so more than once, in full sight of the women.
It was on one such journey that a small animal native to the planet let his curiosity exceed his caution. Alan's knife knocked him over and left him kicking. Alan scurried to the spot, grabbed his fat prize by one leg, and bore it proudly back to Hugh. "Look, Hugh, look! Good eating!"
Hugh looked with approval. His first strange fright of the place had passed and had been replaced with a deep warm feeling, a feeling that he had come at last to his long home. This seemed a good omen.
"Yes," he agreed. "Good eating. From now on, Alan, always Good Eating."