The buffeting grew worse as the shuttle descended. To Eddie, it felt as though he was racing down a mountainslope in a trolley with square wheels. His teeth were shaken in their sockets, but he thought it possible that his back was getting a really good massage. “Is this normal?” he asked. “Is this what a re-entry normally feels like?” He looked out the porthole beside him, but all he could see was yellow fire.

“When we return to Earth, you'll be able to make a comparison,” said Benny. “And technically, this is a descent, not a re-entry, since this isn't the world we came from.”

“I stand corrected,” Eddie replied. He could feel the vibrations warbling his voice. It seemed impossible that any man made structure could survive this kind of punishment! He stared at the bulkhead beside him, half expecting to see cracks spreading through it. They were all wearing spacesuits, just in case there was a hull breach. Their helmets were sitting in their laps, there was enough gravity from their deceleration to hold them in place. If the shuttle sprang an air leak, they could put them on and screw them down in just a moment.

“Actually, the deceleration feels a little less than it should,” the Swede replied. “That may mean that the atmosphere’s less dense than we expected, which would mean that it's not slowing us down as much as it should, although I prefer to believe that it's because we currently have a supersonic tailwind.”

“What happens if the atmosphere doesn't slow us enough?”

“Then we will hit the ground travelling at several thousand kilometres an hour and create a new crater that will last for maybe a day or two before what's left of the moon's solid crust sinks into the moon’s deep interior.”

Eddie nodded thoughtfully. “So. A supersonic tailwind, eh? And that's better?”

“Yes, because even though a tailwind means we are slowing less than we need, it will soon turn into a supersonic headwind that will slow us more than we need. The two will balance each other out and we will arrive at the surface with a low enough speed to make a safe landing.”

“Of course, between the tailwind and the headwind, we have to pass through the transition layer,” said Paul.

“What transition layer?” asked Eddie nervously.

“When you have two currents of air travelling in opposite directions, there will be a layer of turbulence between them,” said Benny. “And when the two currents are both supersonic, the turbulence will be fierce. Thankfully, our own speed will still be great enough that we will pass through it very quickly, but it is still likely to be bumpy.”

“More bumpy than this?”

“Quite considerably more bumpy.”

“Bumpy enough to damage the shuttle?”

“Will you please shut up!” cried Susan desperately. “I'm trying very hard not to think about what might be about to happen to us!”

“Sorry,” said Benny, “but the transition layer is very close now. We might be entering it at any time. Please put your helmets on now, we can’t have them hurling around the cabin like missiles.”

They did so, lifting them over their heads and down so that their bases met the neck seals. They adjusted them until the screw threads matched and then secured them in place with a firm twist. Eddie saw the diagnostic display light up on the inside of his visor and saw a number of messages popping up to tell him that each of the spacesuit’s systems was operating correctly. He heard the others breathing over the helmet’s intercom connection. “Helmet on and secure,” he said. The others repeated the words one by one.

They were just in time. The shuttle gave a sudden, violent lurch that threw the shuttle's nose down. Susan gave a shriek as their heads were thrown back hard against the padded headrests, and for a moment Eddie could see nothing but whiteness, as if someone were shining a cobalt lamp directly into his eyes. He was aware of the shuttle tumbling over and over and the contents of his stomach rose in his throat. He forced himself not to throw up with an effort. His arms were stretched out in front of him by the centrifugal forces of the shuttle’s wild spinning. The windows flickered with brightness and darkness as they were alternately pointing downwards, feeling the full force of atmospheric friction, and then pointing upwards, shielded from the hellish blast of corrosive air passing them at about a mile a second. As Eddie's eyes recovered from the shock, he contemplated the fact that there were no heat resistant tiles protecting the windows or the shuttle's upper surface and wondered how long they could survive this wild tumbling.

The autopilot, calculating and responding hundreds of times faster than any human, was already working to bring the shuttle back under control, though, and gradually the vessel responded, the tumbling slowing and then coming to a halt with the heat shield once again under them, taking the brunt of the atmosphere’s fury. “We are now through the transition layer,” said Benny, rather unnecessarily, Eddie thought.

The flames visible through the porthole were starting to fade as the shuttle continued to slow. Eddie could feel that their deceleration was fiercer than it had been, no doubt because they were now in a headwind rather than a tailwind. “Can you tell if we’re slowing enough yet?” he asked.

Benny was staring at the cockpit instruments. “Wait a minute,” he said. “The autopilot’s working on it, doing the calculations. It doesn't help that we have only a very approximate idea where we are.”

“You mean we’re off course?”

“Eddie,” said Paul, “no doubt the pilot would be able to do his job much more easily if he didn't have to keep answering your questions."

“Yes, sorry. I talk when I'm nervous. You've probably noticed.”

“It doesn’t bother me,” said Benny. “However, I'm afraid I have some bad news. As far as the autopilot is able to determine, we are going to fall short of our intended landing site by about thirty kilometres.”

“That's bad,” said Paul.

“Yes.”

“How certain are you of our position? What's the margin for error?”

“I can't be certain. The trouble with landing in a large, flat plain is that, at this altitude, there are no landmarks for the radar to get a fix on. We are relying on inertial guidance, and there is a possibility that they may have been thrown off by the turbulence we just passed through, causing them to give a false position. I am assuming that they are still giving us an accurate position.”

“Yes, of course. What else can you do? So, how do we reach the landing site?”

“We can extend our range by firing the engines for a few moments, just enough to gain a few hundred metres of altitude.”

“Do we have enough spare fuel for that?”

“I can't say without knowing how much the mass dampener will reduce the mass of the moon. However, all the fuel in the world won't help us if we land in the wrong place.”

“You're the pilot,” said Paul. “It has to be your decision.”

Benny nodded. “I will fire the engines,” he said. “Please prepare yourselves.” He touched some controls on the touchscreen and a moment later they felt a gentle acceleration once again pressing them back into their seats.

The yellow fire had gone from the windows, Eddie saw, and he leaned over to look through his small porthole. It was completely black out there. Not only were they on the moon's night side but they were also on the side facing away from the Earth, so that there was no reflected earthlight to see by, and even if there had been, it probably wouldn't have been able to make it through the clouds that completely covered the sky. In the distance, though, he could see flashes of light on the horizon, as if a titanic battle were being fought. A lightning storm that silhouetted a jagged line of mountains. Eddie silently gave thanks that it was far away from them. He really wouldn’t have wanted to have to fly through that...

A much closer flash of lightning suddenly lit up the shuttle as if someone had set off an old style flashbulb right in the cabin with them. Susan shrieked again and Eddie found himself suddenly blinded, unable to see anything but a livid purple after image. His visor was supposed to darken, to protect his eyes from bright lights, but it hadn't been able to react fast enough.

The crash of thunder followed almost immediately, an explosion that deafened them and that they could feel pushing the shuttle sideways as if a giant had reached up a hand to swat them out of the sky. Alarms sounded and Benny reached out blindly to the mechanical controls beside him, actual switches and dials for use if the pilot should somehow lose the use of his eyes. The shuttle steadied itself and began flying straight and true once more.

Eddie heard sniffing and sobbing beside him. He reached out blindly until he found Susan’s arm then followed it down to find her gloved hand. She seized hold of his hand like a drowning woman clutching a thrown rope. She was trembling, he found. Completely terrified! “It's okay,” he said. “Aircraft fly through lightning storms all the time. We're going to be fine.” Now I've just got to make myself believe it, he thought.

“You okay, Suse?” asked Paul, and Eddie found himself wanting to slap him. Did she sound okay? “We're going to be fine,” Paul continued. “Just a little storm. Something to tell the grandkids about, right?”

“I’m fine,” said Susan, pulling her hand out of Eddie's grasp. She removed her helmet so she could blow her nose. “I’m fine.” Her voice was shaky, though, and as Eddie's vision cleared he saw her wiping the tears from her cheeks.

“We have some Celexac in the medical cabinet...” began Benny.

“I don't need Celexac!” said Susan angrily. “I told you, I'll be fine! I was just startled, that’s all. I'm fine now.” There were more lightning flashes in the distance, though. None as close or as violent, but Susan gave a little twitch every time and then glared at Eddie as if daring him to comment. “Better out your helmet back on,” he said. “Just in case.” She nodded and gave her eyes one last wipe before doing so.

The sound of the engines stopped. “Engine cut off has occurred,” said Benny, blinking his eyes as if trying to force them to work again. He squinted at the control panel. “If the inertial guidance system is to be believed, we are once again on course for the landing site.”

“How long until we get radar confirmation?” asked Paul.

“Not long now. If there was a decent sized mountain range in the area we'd know already. How you doing, Susan?”

“Fine! Will people please stop asking me if I'm okay?” She was sounding stronger, Eddie was relieved to hear, and when he looked across at her she managed a weak smile at him. Eddie smiled back, and then looked back out through the porthole to try to show her he wasn't concerned about her.

“Well, we’re through the worst,” said Benny. “We've survived the worst part of the descent. The shuttle is handling well in this strange atmosphere, responding to flight controls just as normal. We are at an altitude of twenty thousand metres and are eighty five kilometres from the landing site.” He looked at another of the display screens. “We are now low enough for the radar to confirm our location. We are exactly where we are supposed to be.”

“Good job, Benny!” said Paul. “Well done!”

“We're not down yet,” said the Swede, though.

He gave them a running commentary as they continued to descend. How high they were, how far they were from their landing site. Eddie found himself growing tense as the numbers got steadily smaller, imagining an uneven, boulder strewn surface getting steadily closer to the shuttle’s fragile underside. Benny had given up any pretence of flying the shuttle by this stage. The autopilot was doing it all. When they were five hundred metres up the computer pulled the nose up to slow their descent. “Brace positions, everyone!” said Benny. They all leaned forwards and Eddie and Susan pressed their helmeted heads against the backs of the seats in front of them. They all put their hands over their heads. “Altitude is fifty metres, forty, thirty... Unable to accurately determine altitude. Any moment now guys...”

Times passed, though, and nothing happened. Eddie resisted the urge to look up, the need to look around was almost irresistible. The impact, when it came, took him by surprise. He felt the individual bones of his spine crushed together as his seat slammed into him from below. His face hit the inside of his visor and he imagined he could feel his brain being thrown forward to hit the inside of his skull. Then he was weightless for a moment, to be followed by another impact, thankfully less this time. He felt himself being pulled forward against the seat belts, hopefully that meant that the parachute had successfully deployed. He heard Susan making a kind of nnnggg sound, as if she was desperately trying to stop herself from shrieking again.

The shuttle shuddered as it slid along the uneven ground, and then they were briefly weightless again as they leapt across a depression. When they hit the ground again, one wing hit an obstacle and the shuttle was spun around like a top, lifting up on one side until Eddie feared they were going to tip over. There was a thud as the underside of the shuttle hit the ground again and they continued to slide, the shuttle still bumping and jumping as it passed across the rock strewn surface. One wing lifted again, rose until Eddie felt himself hanging sideways towards Susan. It hung like that for what seemed to be a timeless eternity, as if it had somehow, miraculously, become balanced there, and then it slowly began to fall. This time Eddie had time to tense himself up for the impact, but he still felt every bone in his body rattling as the shuttle hit the ground hard for the last time, and this time it lay still.

Everyone was breathing hard, gasping with relief. Eddie's ears were ringing, and he just sat there in silence as he waited to make sure that it was really over. “Is that it?” asked Paul after a moment. “Are we down?”

“We are down,” confirmed Benny. “The turkey has landed. Is everyone okay?”

“I think so,” replied Paul. “How are you two back there?”

“I’m fine, I think,” said Eddie. “Me too,” added Susan.

There was a pause as Benny checked the instrument panel. “We still have full air pressure in the cabin,” he said, taking off his helmet. “You can, oh God! Look at that!” He was staring at the main forward windows and Eddie gasped when he saw that one of them had a large starred crack in the upper corner, with one crack running all the way to the opposite corner. Benny took off his glove and reached up to touch it with his bare fingertips. “Feels smooth,” he said. “I think it’s only the outer layers that are broken. Everyone keep your helmets close by, just in case.”

“Something hit us,” said Paul, also reaching out to touch it. “A rock thrown up as we were skidding across the ground, must have been. Shit, this glass is supposed to be the toughest there is! It's supposed to be actually bulletproof!”

“We were coming in pretty fast,” said Benny, putting his glove back on. “I wonder what other damage we’ve suffered.” He pulled up a diagnostic screen on one of the monitor displays. “Red lights all over the board,” he said. “According to this, the poor old Pluvier is a write off. Can't be salvaged. We’ve got stress violations all across the main chassis. The shuttle’s frame, what gives it most of its structural strength, has buckled. Fuel reserves are holding steady, though. We don't seem to have sprung a leak, but we won't know what kind of state the engines are in until we do a visual inspection.”

“You mean when we try to turn them on,” said Paul.

“Right. I suggest we give everything a good looking over, right now. Sorry that we don't have time for everyone to gather their wits back together, but the clock says we only have eight hours before that river of magma gets here. We've got to hustle.”

Eddie had taken off his helmet and looked across to see that Susan was doing the same. She looked a little green around the gills but seemed to be holding up. “Still alive?” he asked. She glanced across at him, and he saw that a lock of hair had escaped from under her skin tight hood. She tucked it back without comment and then began unbuckling her seatbelts. “I'll take that as a yes,” muttered Eddie to himself.

“Where are we?” asked Paul as he rose from his seat. He looked out the windows, but there was nothing but almost flat, level terrain as far as the eyes could see. Everything was gloomy and dark. The sun was low down on the horizon and very little of its light was able to penetrate the thick clouds that completely covered the sky. There was a stiff breeze that blew dust along the bare, rocky ground, and lightning flickered on the horizon ahead of them. The air was filled with the steady rumbling of thunder, as if a giant was dragging a large boulder across rough ground somewhere just out of sight.

“Package holidays to the moon are available from your local travel agent,” said Eddie in a cheerful voice.

“Unfortunately, this is a working holiday,” said Benny. “Paul, now that we’re on the ground, I assume you'll want to assume command again.”

“Yes,” said Paul. “I'm in command. Okay everybody, let's get to work. Eddie, Susan, unload the tether and collect all the equipment we'll need to use it. Benny, open the nose covers. If they won't open, use the explosive bolts. Then check out the engines. I'm going outside to have a look around. Maybe check out the crater while I’m out there. Which way is it, Benny?”

“Haven't got a clue,” replied the Swede, “but they said this area had small craters all over the place. There should, hopefully, be one not too far away.”

“Yeah. Good job, by the way. That was one hell of a landing, Benny. Well done.”

“The computer did most of it. And besides, they say any landing you can walk away from is a good one.”

“In this case, any landing within cable reach of a suitable crater would have been a good one.” He climbed out of his seat, moving awkwardly in the low gravity. They’d all become accustomed to moving around in free fall, but moving around in one sixth gravity brought a whole new set of problems. “Helmets on, everyone,” he said. “We may spring a leak at any moment.”

He floated down through the interdeck access hatch to the lower deck. All the equipment they'd packed had been securely strapped down, but a couple of items had managed to break free and caused mayhem. A pair of wings was a twisted ruin in the corner of the chamber, and at one point it had hit an equipment rack, smashing the door open and leaving power tools scattered all across the floor. There were dents and scrapes on every surface, including the airlock door. Paul gasped with apprehension when he saw it, and hopped over to it to make sure the mechanism still worked. If the airlock door was jammed they would have to find another way of getting out of the shuttle, probably by means of the cracked cockpit window.

The inner airlock door opened, though, and he entered and closed it behind him. For a moment, he wondered what he would do if the outer door failed to open, perhaps because the outer skin of the shuttle had buckled, and the inner door failed to open again. Perhaps the wings had damaged the mechanism after all, and it had been a sheer fluke that it had opened the first time. Did the others have the equipment they'd need to force the inner door open and free him from his prison? The outer door opened, though, and he was pushed back by a fierce gust of wind that blew in through the opening.

Ordinarily, when the shuttle was on the ground after landing, a stair truck would drive up to allow the crew to disembark. If a stair truck was, for some reason, unavailable, there was a ladder that could deploy to allow the astronauts to climb down. They'd landed with the landing gear raised, though, and the shuttle was sitting flat on its belly. There was no room for the ladder to deploy. There was, therefore, a three metre drop from the airlock down to the lunar surface. Paul stared down, wondering how he was going to make the climb, but then he cursed himself for a fool and jumped. He floated down slowly in the low gravity and allowed his knees to bend when he landed to absorb the energy of the impact. “Another small step for man,” he muttered to himself.

“What was that?” asked Benny in his helmet speaker.

“Nothing.” He looked back up at the airlock. The two halves of the nose had opened, he saw, although the extra armour they'd added had clearly suffered several impacts. It had done its job though, and the outer door of the airlock gleaned pristinely as if it had only just come from the factory. He would probably be able to simply jump up to it, he thought. It might take a few attempts before he managed to grab hold of something and pull himself in, but it shouldn't be a problem. “Benny, when you get a moment, can you rig up some kind of small ladder, about three metres long? Or just something we can step up onto, one or two metres high?”

“I'll get on it as soon as I'm done.”

Paul nodded inside his helmet, a habit of a lifetime too strong to ignore. Then he took a few steps away from the shuttle to give it a looking over. One thing caught his attention immediately. There was massive damage to the left wing. The forward edge was smashed inwards and the skin had been ripped all the way to the tip revealing the crumpled remains of the weight bearing superstructure. What was left was a mess of sharp, twisted metal that would rip through a spacesuit as if it were made of tissue paper. “Everyone, keep away from the left wing,” he said. “You'll see why when you get out here.”

He circled the shuttle, looking it over from every direction. The underside of the cabin area was dented and scraped, but the attitude control nozzles seemed okay. The other wing also had damage, he saw, although nothing as bad as the left wing had suffered. The worst thing, though, was that the main body of the shuttle was visibly bent, giving it an almost banana shape so that the otherwise immaculate tailplane assembly was angled slightly upwards. “Shit!” he muttered. “The fuel lines! Benny, are we still showing no fuel leaks?”

There was a pause before the Swede answered. “Fuel reserves are steady,” he said. “Of course, there could be any number of leaks on the other side of the shut off valves.”

Paul relaxed. The shut off valves were high up in the manoeuvring pods themselves, and they looked undamaged. Even so, though... “We need to be sure. If we’ve got a broken pipe, we need to know while we’ve still got eight hours to fix it. The attitude control jets too.”

“You would need someone, yourself or Susan, to remove the engine's outer casing and look for any leaks when I open the valves. That would take time, though. Several hours.”

“Is there a faster way?”

“Well, yes, sort of, if you want to risk it. I can just turn on the engines for a couple of seconds at ten percent power and measure the thrust they produce. That'll tell us whether the fuel is going where it’s supposed to or leaking out somewhere else. The danger is that if there is a leak, it could cause a rather large explosion. It could blow the entire back half of the shuttle off.”

“Time is the one commodity we can't afford to waste. When I give the order, do it, fire the engines for two seconds. Did you get that, Susan? Eddie?”

“We got it,” said Eddie. “We're bracing ourselves. Okay, we're ready.”

“Benny,” said Paul, “fire when ready.” He backed away from the shuttle to give himself the best view of the OMS pods, the secondary engines mounted just beside and under the rudder.

“Okay. Programming the system. The system shows no, significant, faults. Okay, ready to fire. Firing in three, two one...”

Small jets of blue flame shot from the secondary rocket nozzles. Paul half expected the shuttle to be shifted forward, but the friction with the ground was far too strong. The shuttle didn't move an inch. The jets of exhaust shone straight and steady for two seconds, then shut off again. “Engine shutdown successful,” said Benny. “Thrust point three two kilonewtons. The engines appear to be operating correctly.”

Paul let out a great sigh of relief. They might actually do this! “Okay, Benny,” he said. “Get out here and help me check out the shuttle.”

“Copy that.”

Paul moved on to the rear of the shuttle, where he saw the trail they'd left in the lunar surface behind them. Pieces of broken ceramic tiles were scattered in their wake, along with pieces of twisted metal from the shuttle's hull beneath, some terrifyingly large. Paul tried to remember what was beneath the shuttle’s cargo bay, on the other side of the lower hull. Electrical control cables perhaps, hydraulic lines. It must all be pretty much intact at the moment or it would show up on Benny's diagnostic panel, but for all they knew there might be something vital pressed right up against a rock now, ready to be torn loose when they turned the moon's gravity off and the upward rushing air carried them back up. How much control would they have over the shuttle when they were back in space?

He completed his circle of the shuttle to see Benny jumping down from the airlock. “I think we voided the warranty,” he said, going over to join him.

“A pity,” replied the Swede. “Two more payments and it would have been mine. Still, I think she's got one more flight left in her.” Paul saw him stiffening with shock when he saw the ruined left wing. “Kara Gud!”

“Let's go find a crater,” said Paul. He looked around. “Does that look like a crater over there? That shallow depression?”

“Let's go see.” The two men began moving away from the shuttle in slow, careful hops while the wind tugged at them, constantly trying to blow them to the east. A flurry of dust momentarily obscured their vision and when it cleared Paul looked back at the shuttle, assuring himself that it was still within sight. We should have tethered ourselves to it, he told himself. We still could. We could go back, find the nylon tethers... Then he remembered the river of magma flowing towards them, though, and he felt a renewed sense of urgency. No time to waste, he thought. We go on.

He was expecting the crater to have a raised rim, but it was just a depression in the ground about a hundred metres across with a slope so gentle that they could easily hop down it. The bottom was covered with boulders and a layer of dust. “This is supposed to be bare bedrock,” he said, staring down at it. “It's why we chose this place.”

“It probably was, before Lunar Rescue One,” replied Benny. “Every time they turned it on, everything loose was carried up into the sky by the expanding atmosphere, to land again when they turned it off. The entire surface of the moon, what's left of it, has been thoroughly redistributed. Boulders and dust landing hundreds of kilometres from where it was before. We should have anticipated this.”

“Maybe it’s not too deep.” Paul reached down and picked up a boulder, throwing it away. Dust swirled around in the wind to fill the hole. He reached down with his hand, pushing it through the dust. “I can feel the bottom,” he said. “About fifteen, twenty centimetres down.” He stood again. The dust immediately flowed in to fill the hole his hand had made. “This complicates things,” he said. “We need a clean, solid surface to glue the tether to.”

“We've got to get the dust out,” agreed Benny, “and we’ve got to prevent the wind from blowing any more in. How are we going to do that?”

Paul had no answer, though, and could only stare around at the dust filled crater in agonized frustration.