Mars Crossing

Начало книги

Don Quijote approached Mars in perfect silence.

At one end of the spacecraft was the habitat, a squat, rounded cylinder sitting on a heat shield. It was separated from the main rocket engine and now-empty fuel tanks by two kilometers of tightly stretched rope, a super-fiber tether so thin as to be nearly invisible. The spacecraft and the fuel tanks slowly rotated around the center of the tether.

“Arm tether separation.”

“Tether separation armed.”

“Navigation?”

“Nav is go.”

“System status?”

“Systems are go.”

Mars loomed, crescent in the sky, a mottled brick of craters and wispy shreds of cloud.

“Check terminal descent engine preheat.”

“TDE preheat on.”

“Check parachute deploy preheaters.”

“PD preheat on.”

“Fire pyros for tether sep on my mark. Three, two, one, now.”

The spacecraft jerked, and the tether, suddenly cut free, recoiled away from the spacecraft, writhing and twisting like an angry snake. The engines, solar arrays, and fuel tanks sailed slowly off into the distance. They would miss Mars and sail outbound on an endless trajectory into interplanetary space.

Читать дальше →