Free Saucer: The Conquest by Stephen Coonts Page B

remember the exact sequence of the final phase of the landing. She used the engine, monitored the displays, kept the ship’s nose rising toward the vertical while she monitored her ground speed. The objective was to zero out speed, drift and sink rate at touchdown—and land at the proper place. And use as little fuel as possible doing it.
    With a final burst of power she slowed the descent to fifteen feet per second. Now she was glued to the television cameras. There was the mobile gantry for unloading cargo, the radio tower and the bank of solar panels for charging the base’s batteries—don’t hit them! Still moving forward at twenty feet per second, no drift, three hundred feet high… two hundred, engines on low, just ten percent power… dust began to rise… one hundred feet, fifty… zero groundspeed.
    At fifteen feet Charley killed the engines and let lunar gravity pull the ship down. It contacted the surface sinking at one foot per second. The shock absorbers in the landing gear had no trouble handling this descent rate.
    As the dust slowly settled on the television monitors, she keyed the intercom and the radio. She had to clear her throat to speak. “Jeanne d’Arc has landed.”
    Beside her Pierre Artois exhaled explosively. “Tres bien,” he muttered, then decided that phrase didn’t describe his emotions. “Magnifique!”
    • • •
    Rip and Egg were glued to the television in Missouri, even though the time was a few minutes after three in the morning.
    They heard Charley Pine’s words two and a half seconds after she said them, which was the period of time it took a radio signal to reach earth.
    Rip’s shoulders sagged. He looked at Egg and saw that he had tears streaming down his cheeks.
    He patted his uncle on the shoulder and wandered out into the night. The clouds had cleared somewhat. The moon was well below the horizon now. He blew Charley a kiss at the sky anyway, then walked down the hill toward the control tower and bed.
    • • •
    The passengers and crew had to walk from the spaceplane to the base air lock. The fact that Jeanne d’Arc was sitting on her tail complicated matters somewhat. Base personnel maneuvered the cargo gantry alongside so that the people could be lowered to the surface on the cargo elevator.
    While Charley Pine and Florentin went through the post-flight checklists, the other members of the crew maneuvered the sedated Lalouette toward the ship’s air lock. Two people from the lunar base came into the ship to assist.
    The pilot was near the ragged edge of exhaustion. It took intense concentration to work through the checklists with Florentin. The checks took over an hour to complete, and by that time Lalouette and the others were gone. Florentin exited through the air lock, leaving Charley alone in the spaceplane.
    The lunar base would have to wait, she decided. She was about to sign off with Mission Control when Bodard passed her a message for Pierre Artois from the French premier. Congratulations, the glory of France, and all that. She copied it down, promised to give it to him and signed off.
    “Another day, another dollar,” she muttered as she maneuvered herself out of her seat.
    The descent of the main passageway was not difficult in the weak gravity of the moon. After shedding her space suit, she made a pit stop to answer nature’s call, then proceeded to the bunkroom she had shared with Courbet. She crawled into her hammock. In seconds she was fast asleep.
    She awoke to the sound of hatches opening, metal scraping against metal. She knew what the noise was—base personnel were unloading the cargo bay. Who had done the checklists, to ensure the bay was properly depressurized and that the rest of the ship was maintaining pressure?
    Galvanized, she struggled from her hammock and made her way to the flight deck. Florentin was in the pilot’s seat, which he had tilted forty-five degrees so that he wasn’t lying on his back.
    “Bonjour, Sharlee,” the