Free Close to Critical by Hal Clement Page A

minutes; I want you to strap yourself in the seat before the control panel, and do what you can about your companion."
    "None of the seats fit him," the girl answered.
    "His normal weight is four G's," Rich cut in from the Vindemiatrix.
    "He'll be taking more than that; but he'll probably be able to stand it, in that case. Just tell him to lie down. Now, Miss Rich - "

    "Call me Easy; it'll save time."
    "Tell me what you recognize on the board in front of you."
    "Not much. Light switches are labeled over on the left. The communicators are top center; air-lock controls under a guard near the light switches; about two square feet of off-on relay buttons, labeled with letters, that don't mean anything to me - " She let her voice trail off, and Saki nodded. "All right. Now, near the top of the board, to the right of the communicators, you'll see an area about six inches square marked 'Hunt.' Have you found it?"
    "Yes; I see it."
    "Make sure the master toggle at its lower left corner says 'Off.' Then put the three in the group labeled 'Aero' in the 'On' position. Then make sure that the big one marked 'D.I.' is off. Do you have that?" "Yes, sir."
    "Now be sure you're strapped in. What you've been doing is to tie in a homing radio which is tuned to the transmission of the robot on the ground to the aerodynamic controls of the 'scaphe. I don't dare have you use any power, but with luck the autopilot will glide you down somewhere in the general vicinity of that robot. You don't have to worry about burning up in the atmosphere; the ship is designed for a power-off entry. It's a big planet, and if we can narrow down your landing area to even a five-hundred-mile radius it will be a big help in picking you up. Do you understand?"
    "Yes. I'm strapped in the seat, and 'Mina is lying down."
    "All right. Now reach up to the 'Hunt' region you've just been setting, and snap on the master switch. I hope you're not prone to motion sickness; it will be rough at first, I expect."
    Sakiiro from the rescue boat and the group in the message room of the Vindemiatrix watched tensely as the girl's hand went up and out of the pickup field. They could not see her actually close the switch, and to the surprise of the engineers they could not detect very easily the results of the act. They had expected the girl to be jammed into her seat by an abrupt acceleration change; but things proved not nearly so bad. "I can feel it," Easy reported. "The ship is rolling - now the planet is on our left side - and I'm a little heavier in my seat - now we're leveling out again, and 'Down' is forward, if this panel is at the front of the room."
    "It is," replied the engineer. "You should now be headed toward the robot, and will be slowing down until you're doing about five hundred miles an hour with respect to the air around you. The braking will be jerky; the ship had throw-away speed brakes to take it down through the heat barrier. Stay strapped in."
    "All right. How long will it take?"
    "A couple of hours. You can stand it all right."
    Rich cut in at this point.
    "Suppose the machine passes over your robot's location before getting rid of its speed, Mr. Sakiiro? What will the autopilot do? Try to dive in at that point?"
    "Certainly not. This is a vehicle, not a missile. It will circle the point at a distance which doesn't demand more than an extra half-G to hold it in the turn. If necessary, it will try to land the ship; but we should be able to avoid that."
    "How? You don't expect Easy to fly it, do you?"
    "Not in the usual sense. However, when she's down to what we can call 'flying' speed, the main buoyancy tanks of the 'scaphe should be full of the local atmosphere. Then I'll tell her how to start the electrolyzers; that will fill them with hydrogen, and the ship should float, when they're full, at an altitude where boosters can be used. Then she and her young friend can trim the ship so that she's hanging nose up, and fire the rest of the boosters. We can be waiting