The radio crackled to life. “Company is coming,” said Viktor.
“Where?”
“They are being, what you call it?—coy.”
The next hour they were silent, letting Red Rover’s sway massage them. Marc heated up a thick beefy soup and they wolfed it down. In the dark she moved the rover more carefully, following the microwave reflector telltales they had dropped on the way out. The pilot program kept her on track pretty well, so all she had to do as they approached the pingo hills was keep an eye out for really large rocks. The rover’s ranging radar did a fair job at that, too, but they had had enough near scrapes during night drives to made her cautious.
She was peering out the forward port—calling it a “windshield” was too much of a compliment to Red Rover’s speed—and so was the first to see it.
A hard, hot fire moving in the sky.
Marc had seen it too. “Airbus,” he grunted.
A boom slammed into the rover, startling her. “Shock wave?”
“Reentry profile, lessee—that puts them maybe twenty klicks up,” Marc said.
“Through their aerobraking, for sure. Pretty low, wouldn’t you say?”
“Yeah. Bright as hell!”
“Nukes run hotter.”
“We’re seeing the exhaust plume. It’s squashed, see, pushed back by ram pressure.”
“Look, I can see its light reflecting on the ship.”
A shiny silver needle atop a ball of orange fire.
“It’s close!” Marc stood up in excitement.
“Going to land at our base?” She thumbed on her mike, preparing to tell Viktor.
“No, look, it’s—we can see it clearly! It’s coming here.”
“That’s crazy!”
But true. The fireball came steadily down, slowing, prowling across the cold night sky sprinkled with unwinking stars. The plume’s brilliance made the stars fade as it got closer. They craned to look up as the blaring light arced toward them.
“It’s coming down wrong!” she shouted.
“They must be off-target. Shooting for the hab, but fifteen klicks north.”
“We copy,” came Viktor’s voice.
“It’s coming down in the pingos,” she spoke into the mike.
“Wait, it’s stopped.” Marc pressed his face against the port. “Hovering there.”
Sand and pebbles rattled on the rover. A steady roar was getting louder—the sound of the rocket exhaust.
Julia realized that they were still moving, on autodrive. She turned to face directly toward the hard, fierce flame that hung on the horizon, then stopped the rover. The plume came lower, kissed the soil.
“It’s maybe a klick away from us,” Julia called to Viktor. “You figure it somehow locked on our carrier wave, mistook it for the hab?”
“Dumb mistake, if so,” Viktor said.
“It’s hovering,” Marc called. “Maybe they’re confused.”
A big rock tumbled into view of their headlights. Hammering grit rained on them. Abruptly a loud smack rang out and she saw the glass before her face starred with thin white lines.
“Turn around!” Marc said. “It’s blowing a lot of crap around.”
She steered them sideways, enough to still see through the small side window and not expose the forward port. “Viktor, it’s still just hanging there.”
“No,” Marc said, “it’s drifting to the south.”
“Looking for a landing spot?” Viktor called.
Pebbles sang against the roof. “Nobody would take this long to land,” Julia said.
“Look, fog!” Marc pointed.
“Clouds under the plume,” Julia reported to Viktor.
“Sure is not dust?” Viktor asked.
“No, it’s white!” Marc shouted.
