Free Lunar Descent by Allen Steele Page B

yoke steady with her left hand, she yanked the release bar down with her right hand. There was a sudden jar as the pyros ignited to separate the Collins’ lunar lander from its aerobraking orbital maneuvering vehicle, the unmanned first-stage booster which had brought them from Earth to the Moon.
    James gently moved the yoke in a shallow arc; as the lander slowly turned around, the cylindrical booster floated past the windows, receding as it entered its parking orbit. Strapped to trusses behind the huge round disk of the heat shield were four squat, mylar-wrapped cargo canisters. A tug from the base would rendezvous later with the AOMV to unload the Spam-cans and bring them down to Descartes, a two-step system which saved on the LTV’s reaction mass. Alli studied the AOMV for a few seconds as she fired the control jets to distance the lander from the booster. “AOMV and the Spam-cans look good,” she said. “No damage.”
    â€œDistance five hundred six,” Ray reported. “I read you go for LOI.”
    â€œGood ’nuff for me if it is for thee.” The commander flicked back the safety cover from the engine-arm toggle and flipped it, then rested her right hand on the throttle next to her seat. “Okay, let’s take her around. Primary descent engine armed and ready. Counting down for LOI burn, on my mark. Six … five … four … three … two … one … mark.”
    She eased the throttle forward, and there was a long, shuddering jar as the lander’s main engine fired. For a couple of minutes there was the sensation of gravity. Lester felt his butt settle into the seat, and heard some unsecured object drop to the floor in the mid-deck below. Through the front windows he saw the gray, curving face of the Moon as it hove into view—upside down, about fifty miles below them and closing.
    The standard flight plan for lunar descent called for the Collins to make a single, elliptical orbit around the Moon; since the Apollo days, this was done to effect a steady, fuel-conservative deceleration before final approach and landing. The LTV had already overshot the Descartes highlands. To the south, Lester recognized the brown-gray maria of the cloud to the north lay the vast plains Ocean of Storms, pockmarked by the crater Copernicus and, just beyond that, the shining rays of kepler. The tiny shadow of the moonship rapidly coasted across the maria until it merged with the deeper shadows of the Cordillera mountain region when, abruptly, the ship passed the daylight terminator and they were flying over the night-shrouded lunar farside.
    Riddell heard a low moan from the seat beside him. For the first time since he had entered the flight deck, he noticed the young woman strapped into, the passenger seat beside him.
    If Alli James was homely in a fetching sort of way, then Tina McGraw, the new Skycorp lunar worker, was just plain homely: wide face, wide body, short-cropped mouse-brown hair, and a figure which bordered on masculinity. She had said very little to Lester over the last couple of days; in fact, she had almost been rude in her stand-offish attitude. She was saying even less now. McGraw stared fixedly at a point between her knees, her jaw muscles working as she clenched her teeth. Lester smiled a little. McGraw had been battling space sickness when the two of them had transferred aboard the Collins from Skycorp’s LEO station; it had been only yesterday that she had been able to keep anything in her stomach. Now, seeing the Moon upside down, she was fighting Star Whoops again.
    â€œThat’s right,” Lester said softly. “Keep your eyes on something that’s not moving. I’ll let you know when it’s safe to look up again.” McGraw nodded her head slightly, but said nothing.
    The graphic readout on the dashboard computer screen between the pilots showed that the LTV was steadily rolling over on its axis; they were now traveling