Pantheon - Michael Jan Friedman [226]
Gardenhire concentrated on linking his thoughts to the engineer’s, picturing what O’Shaugnessy was picturing. It turned out to be easier than he had imagined. He could see the lever in question, even feel the place where the thing was stuck.
If the navigator could have reached into the mechanism with his hand, he might have been able to free the offending lever. As it was, he focused on moving it with the power of his mind.
He sensed the others, vague presences all around him. They were pushing with their minds as well.
Come on, came a thought—O’Shaugnessy’s. We can do it.
And the lever moved.
In fact, Gardenhire was surprised at how little resistance it offered them. It was like moving a feather.
But were they in time? The navigator looked out the observation portal and saw that the aura had become an actual flame. Their shields were rapidly losing their battle with the planet’s atmosphere.
Turning to his instrument panel, he checked the pod’s rate of descent. It was less than it had been, certainly, but still a good deal more than what safety demanded.
“What’s the verdict?” asked Daniels.
“Not good,” Gardenhire told him.
“We’re still falling too fast,” said Coquillette, “aren’t we?”
The navigator nodded.
“Wait a minute,” said Santana. “O’Shaugnessy couldn’t move that lever at all—but when we worked together, it moved easily. Maybe we could slow the pod down the same way.”
At first blush, it seemed like a crazy idea. But the more Gardenhire thought about it, the less crazy it sounded.
“Let’s try it,” said Williamson.
Outside, the flames of their descent had completely obscured their view of the alien sky. Soon, they would feel the temperature begin to rise inside the pod. And after that…
“O’Shaugnessy will be our point again,” said the navigator, “since he did such a good job last time.”
Without a moment’s hesitation, the engineer closed his eyes. “All right…I’m picturing the underside of the pod. We need to push against it, to slow it down…”
Linking his mind to O’Shaugnessy’s, Gardenhire could see the flat titanium surface. Surrounded by the four thruster apertures, he pushed up against it. He wasn’t alone, either. He felt the others with him, around him and inside him, adding their strength to his own.
At first, he didn’t perceive any difference. Then their efforts began to pay off. The pod began to slow down.
Breaking contact with O’Shaugnessy for a moment, the navigator darted a glance at his instruments. They confirmed it—the escape vehicle was falling at a slower rate than before.
Keep it up, Gardenhire told the others.
They did as he asked, continuing to toil against the pull of gravity with all the telekinetic power at their disposal. And little by little, the pod continued to decelerate.
He glanced at the observation portal. The shields were all but gone, but so were the flames that had blocked his view. He could see clouds again. And through them, patches of blue.
If he and the others had had enough time, they might have teamed up with the thrusters to stop their descent altogether. Unfortunately, they didn’t have that much time. Gardenhire could see that all too clearly on his monitor, the harsh truth expressed in cold mathematical certainties.
The planet’s surface was rushing up eagerly to meet them. And when it did, it would crack them open like an egg.
The injustice of it pierced the navigator’s heart like a dagger. To have come this far, to have tried this hard, only to be crushed on a hard and unfeeling alien landscape…
Then he saw a way out.
“We need to do more than slow down,” Gardenhire said. “We need to push ourselves that way.” And he pointed to the bulkhead behind Daniels.
“What for?” asked Williamson.
“So we can splash down,” the navigator explained. “Or would you prefer to crack up?”
“Let’s push,” said Daniels.
What Gardenhire was asking of them was a lot more complicated than what they had done before. They couldn’t push in two directions at once; they had to find just the right vector.
Somehow, they managed it.
Then the six of