She verified that the remaining fuel had been dumped. Precious fuel, it was worthless because of the damaged nozzles. Only enough fuel to ignite the hover blaster remained, and she retrimmed for a no-fuel approach. Her scan narrowed. She debated whether to keep the autopilot engaged. The computer could fly the approach better than she could—if it worked. The autopilot had only shown problems on final. No, she could no longer trust the systems; too many things had gone wrong. She swallowed, half to clear the building pressure in her ears and half to push her doubts back into her being, and then she switched off the auto-controls.

Trailing double thunder, the glinting lander descended for the cloud deck. Buccari banked smoothly, airspeed dropping in the turn. She steadied on a truncated base leg and watched the timer count the seconds. Airspeed and altitude bled off rapidly and thefirst tendrils of cloud obscured her forward vision with ghostly wisps of cotton. The lander skimmed deeper into the silky vapors. Her view of the stars flickered and was gone.

Shannon jerked at the sonic booms. Rain fell across his face. He returned his vision to the ground, wiping the water from his eyes.

"Five minutes! Turn on flashlights—white beams." he shouted into his helmet radio. The Marines had traded their cloth hats for helmets. "Acknowledge!"

The Marines responded. Everyone was ready, but for what? If Buccari missed the lake to the right, she would kill his people. If she got lucky and landed in the water, then what?

Shannon reached down and touched the inflated raft. Shannon could swim well, but he had a deep-seated fear of the water. He did not look forward to pushing out onto the black, rain-spattered lake. He checked his watch; it was time to ignite the flares.

"Light 'em off!" he commanded over UHF. In the distance a bright red flare erupted into life, followed by another, and yet another, until a necklace of red sparklers pierced the drizzle, illuminating and defining the shoreline. He reached into the raft, took out the powerful search torch, and turned it on, pointing it into the skies.

The lander rolled onto final and dropped sub-sonic, the black fuzziness of clouds still obscuring forward vision. Raindrops vaporized against the viewscreen. Buccari concentrated on the head-up, noting her radar altimeter coming on line. She would be dragging it in; there was no excess airspeed. A good thing—she did not want to force the EPL down on the lake; but did she have enough energy to make it?

She checked distance to the beacon, made an alignment adjustment, pushed her nose down for airspeed, and armed airbrakes and spoilers in the unlikely event she stayed fast. The glide slope indicator moved steadily to center. In quick succession she activated wingtip fences and leading-edge slats, dropped the first increment of flaps, and armed hover blasters. She was ready; only flaps and blasters to go. Rhodes's voice droned steadily as he reported altitude and distance to the beacon for Quinn's benefit. Buccari concentrated on holding lineup and glide slope. Airspeed was good. She dropped the next increment of flaps. At thirty-four kilometers from the beacon, the radar altimeter abruptly decreased by a thousand meters—the plateau's edge.

Ten kilometers to go. On glide slope and on course. Attitude trimmed a bit fast, the nose not quite high enough, but that was the side on which to err—plenty of time to correct. She tapped the rudder and eased stick pressure to port; the lander corrected an incipient drift. Five kilometers; she added flaps; the nose ballooned slightly. Buccari compensated, holding the slope. Three kilometers. Where were the bottom of the clouds? She checked altitude, pushed the nose down, and added the last increment of flaps.

Red flares! She saw flares strung in a ragged line to the right of her nose. Airspeed approached stall. The radar altimeter indicated ten meters. She eased back the nose and held wings level using only rudders. Impact was seconds away! She forced herself to hold attitude—no jerky movements. With startling immediacy the tail of the lander met the water, and simultaneously—more luck than timing—Buccari fired the hover blaster, offsetting the impact and keeping the nose from slapping forward. She yelled for Rhodes to eject.

And found herself screaming hysterically into the wet night, a living projectile being rocketed violently out of the crashing craft below. Before she could comprehend the fact, she was swinging into the water, deadweight at the end of a pendulum, her canopy having opened just enough to retard impact. The reality of freezing water snapped disjointed thoughts into focus. She surfaced clear of the chute and fumbled for the disconnects, but they had been pulled high on her shoulders by the yanking deployment. Frantically treading water, she at last located the fittings and disengaged her harness from the enveloping shrouds. Panic struck as she felt snaking nylon wrapping around her ankles. Fighting to stay calm, she submerged and worked to separate herself from the tangle. Excruciatingly slowly, one by one, the clinging lines fell away. She surfaced and weakly frog-kicked onto her back.

The impenetrable blackness defied consciousness; her helmet shut out all sounds except for the beating of her heart and the explosions of her labored breathing. With difficulty she removed her headgear, letting in the splashing of the lake—and the cold water. She spit out a throatful, and then, as if in a dream, she heard yells carrying across the chop. A bright beam passed over her.

The EPL, a crazed dragon descending from the clouded heavens spouting evil flames, mushed into the lake, throwing before it a tremendous crest of water. A crashing emerald-green wave surrealistically illuminated by blazing hover blaster surged upward. The lander disappeared, but the fiery blasters continued to burn submerged, lighting up the roiled lake around the sinking craft like a huge Chinese lantern. After eternally long seconds, the blasters extinguished, their fuel exhausted.

Buccari had hit the mark, not a hundred meters from where the raft was waiting. As Tatum pulled on the oars, Shannon kept his eyes on the ejection seats exploding from the cockpit, their trajectories diverging, one forward and one aft of the impact point. Shannon ordered Tatum to steer for the closest, fifty meters away. He directed the powerful search torch, holding his balance against the waves surging out from the steaming and bubbling crash.

The first wall of water was powerful and steep, nearly capsizing the raft. Shannon was thrown against the giving sides of the raft and saved himself from going overboard by grasping the lifeline along the gunwale. He recovered and moved back into the bow to search the thrashing lake, struggling to stay upright on the bucking and twisting raft. He saw something—the powerful spotlight reflected from a white, gaping face—Buccari! Shannon removed his helmet and peeled off his poncho and boots, yelling directions to Tatum. With powerful strokes Tatum brought the raft within range, and Shannon dove into the frigid water. He surfaced beside the struggling pilot.

"Nice landing, Lieutenant," Shannon sputtered. He grabbed her by the torso harness and pulled her to the raft.

"Kiss my ass," she choked.

"That's…an order I can live with…sir," Shannon replied, spitting water. He grabbed the lifeline for leverage and pushed Buccari up by her rear as Tatum pulled her by the arms into the raft, dumping her unceremoniously into the water-washed bilge. Shannon hauled himself over the stern and pointed in the direction of the other ejection. As Tatum rowed, he reported back to the beach on his helmet radio. A rain-muted cheer drifted across the troubled water.