The Sparrow - Mary Doria Russell [161]
George’s initial concern was that D.W. and Sofia not take the blame for the fact that the lander fuel had been drawn down past the point of return. Sofia’s use of fuel had been sensible. George’s had been pure stupid self-indulgence: fooling around, showing off to D.W., trying out maneuvers he’d practiced on the simulator and wanted to do in real life, using up a slim margin for error that he hadn’t thought about. So George made sure everyone understood that it was he, George, who’d put them in this position, not Sofia. As for D.W. not anticipating what happened and not warning Sofia against it, George pointed out that nobody had thought of it. "We’ve got a collective IQ here that goes into quadruple digits," he’d told Yarbrough as they walked back down to the apartment, "and none of us, singly or together, anticipated this. Quit beating yourself up."
Engineers don’t go to confession when they screw up; they find a fix. So Anne watched George deal with his own fear and guilt by starting an engineer’s rosary: a series of calculations involving the lander’s weight, drag, lift, thrust, the prevailing winds, their altitude above sea level, the rotational boost they’d get from their latitude on Rakhat, the distance to the Stella Maris at its closest approach to their present position. She knew this was his way of apologizing to the others, of begging pardon for his sin.
Jimmy stayed with Sofia until he was certain she was asleep but joined Anne and George a few minutes later. Emilio brought them all coffee and sat quietly at a small remove, opaque and withdrawn, while Jimmy and George considered the variables. How much weight could they save if they stripped every nonessential piece of equipment out of the lander? Used a single pilot? Which one? D.W. was far more experienced but weighed almost twice as much as Sofia. What if they moved the Stella Maris into a more favorable orbit? How hard would that be using remote ground control? Could the lander engine be reprogrammed to squeeze more power out of the remaining fuel?
Several hours later, the outcome was as plain as it was predictable: Murphy’s Law held on Rakhat. Their best estimates fell into a zone of ambiguity. If the winds were right, if one of the lower estimates of the lander’s stripped weight was correct, if Sofia piloted the plane, they’d still have to maneuver the Stella Maris into a lower orbit.
"We can talk to D.W. about that when he wakes up, but I don’t think it’s a good idea." Jimmy sat back, leaning his head against the wall and stretching his long legs in front of him. "The asteroid was a pig to drive. It wouldn’t take much error to sink it into the gravity well."
"And then Rakhat gets to play the dinosaur game?" Anne crossed her arms over her drawn-up knees, where she rested her chin. "No good. Not worth the risk."
"Dinosaur game?" Emilio asked, breaking his silence for the first time.
"One of the best guesses about the reason for the extinction of the dinosaurs was that a good-sized asteroid smashed into Earth," Anne told him. "Changed the climate, wiped out big hunks of the food chain."
Emilio held up a hand. "Of course. I knew that. I’m sorry, I wasn’t listening closely enough. So if the Stella Maris were to hit Rakhat, it would wreck the planet."
"No. It’s not as bad as that," George said. "We scrubbed off a lot of speed getting into orbit. If the ship came down in the ocean, it wouldn’t do that much damage. Tidal wave maybe, but it wouldn’t destroy the whole ecosystem."
"I don’t think it would be ethical to risk even a tidal wave," Emilio said softly. "Seven of us. Whole populations on the coast."
"I’m not sure we can find a new orbit that would do us much good anyhow, if we need an ocean splashdown," said Jimmy. "Might be possible, but it would restrict us to a really narrow orbital band."
"Well, boys and girls, I am really sorry but it’s about eight to one odds we’re stuck." George wiped his hands over his face and shrugged as he filed his calculations to show D.W. later. "We can radio home, but it will take better