Chapter 5

Xi Pegasi Aboard the Wells March 28, 2057

Devin looked up as the admittance chime sounded. “Come.”

Manuel Fuentes stood in the doorway. “Got a minute?”

“For you, always. Take a seat.” Manuel smiled briefly and pushed off the doorjamb. Devin’s office desk was a smaller copy of the activity room tables, and Manuel sat across the desk from Devin. “What’s on your mind?”

“We can’t land on the surface or, at least not anywhere near the survey sites. The ground team says the rovers probably won’t make the overland trips, and there are oceans to cross.”

Devin looked at him calmly. “And?”

“The problem is the shuttles were designed for Mars.” Devin opened his mouth, and Manuel shook his head. “I know, they’re regular SSTO birds that launch from Earth all the time, and this planet is smaller. Thing is, how do they launch and land?”

“Airports.” Devin said. “Aren’t they VTOL equipped, though?”

“For Mars, yes. They were retrofitted with VTOL packages for lunar and Martian operations.”

Devin shook his head. “I don’t get it.”

“The vertical takeoff and landing thrusters work fine on low gravity worlds. Mars was about the limit, though. Anyplace with more gravity, like here, and we need runways.”

“Well, you can still take a lot of weight off and come in slower, right?”

“That’s true, but that brings up the problem of directional control. The denser atmosphere here can easily push harder than the control thrusters can. Get too slow and the aerodynamic controls lose authority. We can cut the approach speed back to about a hundred and forty K-P-H, but that’s it with any kind of load.”

“So, figure out a way to drop a dozer, and cut a runway.”

“The shuttle will bog down unless there’s a hard surface, and we’ve found only a few. We can build one, but it takes time and material.”

“How were you planning to VTOL in, then?” Devin snapped. He raised his hand in silent apology.

“Well, we can find small areas of rock. Big areas of rock or really solid ground are another story.”

“Mmm.” Devin rubbed his chin. “You just said we can make runways, right?”

“Yes, but the plan was for the survey teams to hop from one place to the next, not hang out in one place for several months while we build airports.” Manuel tapped his finger on the table. “We’re only planning to pick two or three places to stay, and there are twelve survey sites.”

Devin eyed the dark-skinned pilot. “You have a solution, right?”

Manuel grinned. “I have an idea. You decide if it’s a solution.”

“Hit me.”

“We airdrop the team and their gear, and then we airdrop them one of these.” Manuel handed him a datachip and Devin plugged it in. A hologram appeared above Devin’s desk. “It’s an airplane.”

“It’s an airplane,” Manuel agreed judiciously.

“But, you said that an airplane couldn’t land.”

“I said a shuttle couldn’t land,” Manuel corrected him. “This isn’t a shuttle. It’s a turboprop, using hydrogen-fueled turbine engines. It’s fast, it can carry a load, and it can land just about anywhere. It also has a range of about fifteen hundred kilometers, enough to get across one of the oceans with decent reserves. I want to strip out the unflyable shuttle and use some of the spare parts inventory to make the first two planes. We can airdrop fuel to them with the shuttles.”