"They're still there," Chastain said, looking upwards. MacArthur said nothing, staring futilely into the clouds. The noise signified the presence of other humans and paradoxically made the Marine feel even lonelier. MacArthur moved out with renewed vigor.

Shannon stood on the high plateau and stared into the overcast. Lee, with her medical equipment, stood at his side. The double sonic boom had echoed overhead ten minutes earlier—the lander should be on final. There it was—a black pinpoint against gray clouds, growing larger. He passed the alert over helmet radio. He had to get the cargo off fast; the weather was deteriorating.

The lander had definition; he made out the cruciform shape of wings and tail hanging in the air, rock-steady on glide slope; magically it grew larger. Closer, it appeared to settle and drift to the right, his offset from the landing point generating enough parallax to provide perspective. The EPL commenced landing transition, slowly raising nose attitude and bleeding off airspeed. Huge flaps deployed. The craft approached in a silent, graceful swoop. But then the nose of the craft jerked sideways. The lander oscillated back and forth, a cobra with its hood fully deployed. Something was wrong!

Buccari was ready. She felt the renegade inputs. They had come earlier this time, before main engine firing. She had two options: abort the landing—hit full igniters and blast back into orbit—or ride it in, hoping the retro programs would work correctly while she overrode the controls. Training and logic said to wave off and return to the corvette. Intuition told her the lander was only going to behave worse the next time. In a fraction of a second she chose to fly the landing and get those on board safely down.

The controls kicked in her hands; the autopilot had not disengaged. She fought for control, using both hands on the stick.

"Boats!" she roared. "Kill the control master! Disengage now!"

Overcoming ingrained conditioning, Jones moved in blur, hitting the control master. The retros would have to be manually fired! Buccari felt the flight controls relax. She moved her left hand to the power quadrant and engaged retro-igniters. Monitoring the main fuel feeds, she hit the ignition with quick pulses. The main engines rumbled. She checked the engine gimbal angle indicator; it had set correctly during transition. Buccari fired hard on the hover blaster and felt the nose surge backward. She eased up on the blasters and applied more power to the mains. The craft oscillated into landing attitude, but it was burning fuel at a horrendous rate! She moved to deploy the landing skids and noticed that Jones had already done so. With nothing left to do but pray, she tweaked power down. The lander settled with an ugly, scraping bounce. She urgently secured the fuel flow to mains and blasters, afraid to see how much fuel was left. Forcing herself, she stared at the gauges.

Tears welled in her eyes. The fuel levels were so low! But she knew what she had to do. The decision was easy.

"Boats, get this thing unloaded and made ready," she shouted. "But Lieutenant—" Jones started to speak.

"Get moving, Boats!"

"But Lieutenant, no way this bucket's going to make orb—" "Jones," she hissed. "That's an order."

"Aye.. aye, Lieutenant," Jones replied softly.

"Lieutenant, Shannon here," Shannon's voice came up on radio. Buccari looked outside and saw the sergeant. Lee and another helmet-masked Marine stood nearby. Tatum, judging from his height.

"Yes, Sergeant, and don't say anything about the landing," she replied, trying to calm her rampaging emotions.

"Aye, sir. It looks like you still have a problem."

"A big one, Sergeant." Buccari leaned back, sensing the nagging pressure of gravity against her back. "I've got to rendezvous with the 'vette as soon as possible. I can't shut down, and I'm below critical fuel." It was a confession.

"I'm no pilot, Lieutenant," Shannon transmitted, "but I know when things are out of control. Are you sure you—"

"You're right, Sergeant," Buccari cut in. "I'm the pilot. Listen up. Notify Commander Quinn as soon as the 'vette comes over the hill. Tell him to start looking for me on acquisition radar. I'll be needing help. I'll make contact as soon as I clear the atmosphere, but he may have to start maneuvering before I can talk to him."

"Aye, aye, Lieutenant," Shannon said. "Understand. He gets you on radar and meets you halfway. He can boost to orbit after he gets you."

"Yessir, Superwom—I mean Lieutenant!" Jones shouted. "We can—"

"Not we, Boats," Buccari replied. "You're grounded. I'm going solo. Leaving your big body behind will help the fuel curve." "No, Lieutenant! I—" Jones wailed.

"Stow it, Boats!" Buccari cut him off. "Watch the skin temps. Offload that generator and get this piece of junk ready to go!"

"Aye, aye, Lieutenant," Jones mumbled, continuing to curse softly as he released his mike switch.

Takeoff was easy. The lightly loaded lander punched through the lowering overcast and reached escape velocity with minimum acceleration. Bursting through the thick cloud deck, Buccari confronted the glaring explosion of a setting sun. Ignoring the Olympian scenery, Buccari set the fuel consumption parameters to bare minimums and accelerated out of the atmosphere. The rendezvous coordinates, given available fuel, indicated a critically narrow flight profile, but it was still theoretically possible to coast up to the corvette's orbit—with absolutely no fuel remaining. The crew of the corvette would have some work to do to bring her aboard.

Within minutes of attaining orbital velocity her engines starved. The EPL was now an unpowered satellite in extremely low orbit—too low! She verified that her identification beacon was emitting. Fifteen minutes later her transponder was interrogated. The corvette had located her.

She came up: "Harrier One, lander's up. Come in, Harrier One."

Commander Quinn responded, his relief apparent. "Okay, Sharl, we got you. You're low and ahead of the 'vette. Real low! Can you elevate?"

Buccari was elated to hear his voice. "Sorry, Commander. I'm dry as dirt. You'll have to come get me. Sorry for the inconvenience."

"Sit tight, Sharl. We'll catch you in about an hour."

As the orbiting ships slipped into the planet's shadow, Buccari realized she had less than two hours of air remaining.

On board Harrier One Quinn choked back the lump in his throat. No one had ever executed a manual landing to a one-gee planet and still retained a fuel balance sufficient for returning to orbit. Buccari had performed a miracle—well, almost. The corvette still had to retrieve the EPL. Buccari would go down in pilot history…if they were ever rescued.

"Main engines ready to answer," Rhodes said. "But I sure wish we could get to her with the maneuvering jets."

"Me, too, Virgil, with all my heart, but it would take about two weeks. She might get a little impatient withus." Quinn started the main engine ignition checklist, proceeding carefully. He had absolutely no confidence in the wounded power plant.

The pre-ignition checklist complete, Quinn keyed the microphone. "Sharl, Quinn here. We have to fire the mains. You know what that means. We don't need much, but it's hard to tell what will happen. I thought you should know, in case you see us screaming by."

"Rog', Commander. I'll throw out a net," came Buccari's stolid reply.

The two men proceeded deliberately through the remainder of the checklist, rechecking and verifying. Quinn monitored the engine instruments, trying to interpret the myriad danger signals the engine instruments were throwing back at him. His professional tools were a mess, but his objective was clear. They were doomed to die in their respective orbiting coffins unless they could unite and combine assets. The corvette could not enter the atmosphere; it was a large space vehicle with no aerodynamic controls. It had fuel, but its engines were crippled. The EPL, their planetary lander, was adrift in orbit, capable of penetrating the atmosphere and landing on the planet but trapped in orbit without the fuel required to initiate a deorbit burn, much less enough fuel to land safely.