Pantheon - Michael Jan Friedman [227]
The navigator moved closer to the window and looked down. He could see land through breaks in the cloud cover. He could make out a large, blue bowl of a bay, embraced by a hilly, green coastline.
It would be a good place for a settlement, he thought, a good place to make a future for themselves. That is, if they survived long enough to think about such things.
Push, he insisted.
They poured every last ounce of their energy into the effort, nudging the pod away from the land and out to sea. Gardenhire followed their progress on his instruments, cheering inwardly with each minute alteration in their angle of descent.
We’re going to do it, he told the others.
It encouraged them to keep it up, to shove the pod as far out over the bay as they could. With a couple of kilometers to go, the navigator was certain of it—they had earned a water landing.
Brace yourselves, he thought.
They looked at each other as they slid into their shock bunks, needing no words—silent or otherwise—to communicate their feelings. Whether they survived or not, whether their temperamental dampers held or failed, they had fought the good fight. They had discovered a strength in themselves that few members of their species ever came to know.
Neither Gardenhire nor any of the others had a single regret.
Then they punched through the surface of the bay. The impact sent rattlings of pain through the navigator’s skeleton, despite the gelatinous padding that lined his bunk. For a moment, he wondered if they might have hit something more than water—some submerged spine of land, perhaps.
Then he craned his neck to look out the observation portal and saw silver bubbles clustering around them like living seacreatures, enveloping them in an intricately woven cocoon of oxygen-rich atmosphere.
Slowly, feeling for injuries all the while, Gardenhire emerged from his bunk. One by one, the others did the same.
“Everyone all right?” asked Williamson, who looked a little dazed.
Santana felt his jaw. “Could have been worse.”
Daniels kneaded his neck muscles. “You can say that again.”
“How far down are we?” asked Coquillette.
The navigator checked his control panel, but his screen was blank. “I wish I could say. We must have lost external sensors when we hit.”
O’Shaugnessy looked out the portal. “Who needs external sensors? I’d say we have five meters of water above us, tops.”
“And we’re rising,” Williamson added, his eyes closed in concentration as he made the judgment.
Gardenhire concentrated as well and came to the same conclusion. Their mantle of bubbles was dissolving, abandoning them, and the waves above were getting closer. Finally, with an effervescent bounce, the pod broke the surface of the bay.
“Look!” said Santana, pointing to the portal.
The navigator looked through the transparent plate, which was dappled with prismatic droplets. In the distance, past a stretch of undulating blue water, he could see the rocky coastline they had managed to avoid. From here, it looked friendly, even inviting.
“I want to get out,” Coquillette said suddenly.
Daniels grinned. “Me too.”
Gardenhire considered it. There might be jagged rocks just under the surface, or a school of carnivorous sea monsters. But he knew how much the others wanted to leave the pod, because he wanted to leave it also.
“Let’s get a little closer to shore first,” he advised, running contrary to the current of enthusiasm.
Despite their urge to leave their artificial womb behind, the others agreed to do as the navigator asked. By then, working in concert had become almost second nature. They got the pod skidding through the waves rather easily and came within twenty meters of shore.
At that point, even Gardenhire couldn’t stop them. They pried open the hatch cover and spilled out into the water—first Coquillette, then Daniels, then Williamson and Santana. Gardenhire was about to come out too when O’Shaugnessy