‘I hope you’re right - I’d just like to be able to see more of the picture, that’s all.’
‘We shall. I’m willing to bet that the overall strategy is being taken good care of, from the little I know of it. But the local tactics are our affair, of course, and it seems to me the best thing we can do is to work out several plans to suit different circumstances. When we know more about how they are going to tackle it, and what their equipment is, we can fill in the details of the most suitable plans. At present our information on their plans is still pretty slim, but we shall get more. In the meantime, my idea of preparing a reception for them is this....‘
The Brazilians, being under no obligation to make their Venus-bound lift direct from Earth, had no intention of trying it. The Satellite, Primeira, offered them a means of starting and building up speed without the drag of gravity and, naturally, they made use of that. Gone, therefore, even a few weeks after the first intelligence of the Troon expedition’s presence on Venus, were Primeira’s leisurely days when the only interruptions of her comfortable lethargy were the supply-shuttles and the monthly relief rockets. Orders started to pour in. Sections of the Satellite that had been closed-off and put out of commission years ago were opened up, examined, tested, repaired where necessary, and made habitable again. Quantities of supplies came up in shuttles and, presently, technicians followed them. Soon long cylinders of a new ballistic type, containers of air, water, stores, fuel, and the rest were arriving, to be captured and tethered electronically about the station. Later on came sections of larger shuttles. Engineers in space-suits emerged from Primeira and jetted themselves across the void to start assembling them. In a few months, the whole neighbourhood of the Satellite was littered with floating masses of metal and containers of all shapes and sizes, gradually being drawn together and bolted, welded, and sealed into comprehensible shapes. The work went on continuously in shifts, with artificial lights blazing during the brief ‘nights’ in the Earth’s shadow, until gradually the chaos was tidied into the form of five large new shuttles. Activity then became less spectacular while the engineers worked inside them, fitting the new hulks with their electronic circuits, linking the remote-controls to the main drive, and stabilizing and correcting jets; testing, adjusting, and readjusting the gear’s responses to radio signals which would be their only pilots.
While that was still going on, the ballistic cylinders were opened, and again the area was littered with space-suited men gently propelling cases of all shapes and sizes towards one or another of the shuttles, for stowage. The ballistic cylinders themselves were expendable - it would have cost more to get one safely back to Earth and recondition it than to make a new one, so that when they were emptied a charge was clamped on to them, and they were dispatched to crash harmlessly among the lunar crags, where they could no longer be a hazard to navigation.
The work went well, and in spite of setbacks, it was completed a full month ahead of schedule. The area was then clear. The five fully-loaded shuttles, linked by cables, hung in a bunch, revolving about the Satellite at a range of twenty miles and linked to it by radio beam. The Satellite itself, the intricate machine that had grown up from the first of all the space-stations, kept smoothly on its orbit, with two small rocket-ships in attendance, waiting.
‘They are using shuttles, as I told you,’ Jayme Gonveia informed Troon. ‘They have, however, improved on our method - presumably because, had they to await the arrival of their shuttles as you did of yours, they would be in a weak position and unable to take any action against you until the shuttles should arrive. The idea they have adopted, therefore, is one of unified control whereby they and their shuttles will travel together and arrive simultaneously. The whole group is intended to handle as one ship. This means that you must be prepared to take very swift action before they have a chance to deploy...’
The key-ship, the
Santa Maria
, came up two weeks before the calculated starting date, and hove to, hanging in space a mere mile or so from Primeira. She had left Earth with only five men aboard; the rest of her full complement of twenty were awaiting her on the Satellite. With her arrival, activity broke out again. Figures emerged from Primeira’s locks, some of them jetting across the gap immediately, others manoeuvring containers out of the dock-doors and guiding them into a drift towards the ship. Once more there began a process of testing and checking, which, with the provisioning and final fitting-out, continued in shifts for a week.
Inspected and passed at last, the
Santa Maria
moved off a few miles. The cluster of the five waiting shuttles was brought closer and broken up. Each of them was urged and juggled into approximately its proper relation to the rest.
When the last was placed, the small tug-shells and thrusters drew off and made back to Primeira, leaving on each shuttle a party of only four space-suited men, linked together by lines and equipped with portable jet-tubes to steady their charges and correct drift. In the centre, roughly equidistant from all five shuttles, the
Santa Maria
waited. Aboard her, Capitão João Camarello and his first officer, Commander Jorge Trunho, watched the tugs draw clear of the area.
‘Ready, shuttles?’ the Capitão asked.
A man on each shuttle acknowledged.
‘Good,’ approved the Capitão. ‘Keep ready. We shall make contact with you in exactly ten minutes from ...
now
.’
The space-suited men clinging to the shuttles continued to check twist and drift in their charges as well as they could.
‘Two minutes to alignment,’ said the Capitão. ‘Get clear of all tubes now, and check your short safety lines. No trouble? Fine. One minute to go now. ... Thirty seconds. ... Ten seconds....
Now!
’
The Chief Electronics Officer pressed his first key.
Little jets of flame broke from the steering tubes of the shuttles. Each turned over, rolled, and twisted, swinging round to align itself with the parent ship, firing more small jets to correct and steady the over-swing. Presently, all were lying in exactly the same orientation, with their main driving tubes pointed towards the gleaming crescent of the Earth.
‘Phase One completed. All well?’ inquired the Capitão.
One after another the men tethered to the shuttles reported. He went on:
‘Positioning will take place in two minutes from ...
now!
’
The Electronics Officer regarded the hand of the clock, pressed his second key, and turned his attention to a small screen in front of him. Outside, more little twinkling bursts came from the shuttles; on the screen, small illuminated figures started to drift very slowly. Presently, the white figure 4 turned green, and ceased to drift.
‘Number Four fixed, sir,’ he reported.
The Capitão glanced at the screen.
‘Good. Use that as the axis.’
Gradually the other figures changed the direction of their drift. One after another they too turned green. As the last one altered, the Officer reported.
‘Formation complete and locked, sir.’
The Capitão lifted the microphone.
‘Good work, boys, and thank you. Commander, you can take your men home now. We shall test control.’
The men in space-suits unhooked, kicked off into the void, then levelled their hand-tubes, and set themselves scudding through emptiness towards the Satellite. When they reached it, they were able to look back and see the pattern of their operation complete.
The
Santa Maria
lay relatively motionless. About her, each at a distance of more than two miles, hung the shuttles, at the angles of a huge pentagon. Invisible proximity beams linked them all, each to the
Santa Maria
in the middle and to both of its neighbours. Occasionally one or another would show a brief twinkle of flame as the automatic gear cut in to correct the least loss of position.
Six Earth-days later, the personnel on Primeira collected round the stationary screen in their spinning home to watch the start. The farewells and good wishes were over, and they watched in silence. A voice aboard the
Santa Maria
came through the loudspeaker, counting the seconds, then Capitão Camarello’s order: ‘Fire!’
From the main tubes of the
Santa Maria
, and from those of all the five shuttles, belched jets of flame, quickly growing fiercer. The whole formation began to move as one. The blast of the driving tubes grew whiter, and fiercer still. In a few minutes the expedition was gone and, to mark it, a new constellation hung in a bright pentagon against the jet- black sky....
‘Of
course
we keep up radio communication,’ Troon explained patiently, ‘and of course they’ll locate us by it. This is a showdown. It’s no damn good their landing in some other part of this pestiferous planet where neither of us can get at the other, is it? The nearer to us they land, the better, because the sooner we can reach them. But God knows what sort of a mess their landing’s going to be. We had quite enough trouble in getting just one ship down safely.’
‘As I understand it,’ said Arthur, ‘the whole unit works on a kind of servo system by which, whatever the manned key-ship does, the rest do the same. That must be so, I think; the elaborations and complications of five men in one ship controlling five shuttles independently while that ship is descending are beyond contemplation. Therefore, the intention must be to land in the same formation they travel in - a pentagon; though I suppose they may be able to contract or expand its size a bit. That being so, all their attention will have to be concentrated on the safe landing of the key-ship, and the shuttles must more or less take their chance. Those chaps certainly can’t know what they’re in for. You might bring off a trick like that fairly neatly on a dead flat prairie, but not on a mud pie. My betting is that it will be only luck if one of their shuttles stays upright, and most likely that all of them will sink in the swamps.’
‘We can’t be bothered about that,’ Troon told him. ‘What we have to concentrate on is being as close as we can to the key-ship when she comes down, and without having any of the shuttles coming down on top of us. It would help if we knew what distances they intend to keep. We’d better get on to Jayme again, and see if he has any information on the landing drill.’
Excellent as Jayme’s information service was, it could not help there. Any decision to expand or contract the pentagon formation must obviously, he pointed out, be left to the captain’s discretion. His sources continued, however, to give reliable information on the expedition’s progress, and as its E.T.A. drew near, the radar was set searching for it beyond the Venus cloud cover. The formation was first faintly detected at a great height, still moving fast, and presumably closing on a spiral. Troon promptly dispatched a message announcing its approach. On its second circuit, still at a considerable distance, but travelling more slowly, it had altered direction, from which he judged that the point of origin of his message had been plotted.
‘Make ready,’ he ordered. ‘They ought to be down next time.’
The party checked that its weapons and supplies in waterproof covers were aboard the three jet-platforms, then they climbed into their space-suits, as the best form of protection against the never-ending rain outside, and waited, with their helmets handy.
At last the formation showed up on the screen, seen now from a different angle, travelling slowly in from the north at a mere twenty-five thousand feet. All six ships had tilted almost to the vertical, but the pentagon formation was still perfect, and now in the same plane with the surface of the ground. As they came closer, standing on their main drives they showed simply as a pattern of circular spots which drifted almost to the centre of the screen.
The party in the Dome put on its helmets, and made for platforms, leaving a single man at the radar. He hooked up a microphone, and his voice reached them all.
‘Key-ship east-north-east, estimate five miles. Separation from servo ships, estimate one mile. Appears constant.’
The platforms rose a little and skimmed out of the locks, climbing on a gentle slant.
‘Don’t bother about the shuttles unless the separation alters. Concentrate on the key-ship,’ Troon told the operator.
‘Right, George. Rate of descent slow and cautious. I’d say around twelve hundred a minute. Now a little under eighteen thousand. Steady and vertical.’
The platforms sped on, travelling a few feet above the tops of the trees which rose out of the tangle of pallid, slimy growths that hid the ground. Presently, Troon brought his to a halt, and sent the other two out on the flanks. Hanging there, with the fronds of the feather-top trees swinging across just beneath him, he switched on the outside microphone, and heard for the first time the roar of the rockets overhead. The thunder of six rocket-ships descending at once was almost unnerving. He switched off again, and the three of them stood peering anxiously into the clouds above. A few minutes seemed a long time.
‘Eight thousand,’ said the radar man. And a little later: ‘Five thousand.’
One could hear the noise now through the helmet, and feel the buffeting of the sound waves. A man on one of the other platforms exclaimed suddenly: ‘There’s one of them!’ Almost at the same moment Troon’s neighbour caught his arm, and pointed up. Troon looked and saw a brilliant, diffused, reddish light with a quality of sunset, breaking through above them. He sent the platform swooping forward, out of harm’s way.
The buffeting grew, until the platform was trembling with it. He could see four glows in the clouds now. The one behind, one ahead, two dimmer ones on either side, but all of them growing brighter. The platform began to sway as if the roaring billows of sound were tossing it.
‘Under one thousand,’ said the radar man’s voice.
‘They’re lucky - dead lucky. Quite a bit of firm ground round here,’ came Arthur’s voice.
Troon did his best to look all ways at once. The flare behind was still the closest. He edged a little further away from it, and then kept his eyes on the one ahead; that, he calculated, must be that of the key-ship. All three men clung fast to their holds as the platform rocked.