Flogging the last erg from a failing power pack, York reckoned he might still do it. His scanner, probing into the blue and white whorls of Earth planet, had homed on a beacon and the printout told him he had pulled European Space Terminal out of the cosmic hat.
He spared a second to look at Carter. It was not good. The co-pilot of the two-man interceptor was flat out, clewed to his acceleration couch by his straps, and the needle on his body heat gauge had settled definitively in the red quadrant.
Three heat shields slid out smooth as butter, the fourth ground its way through buckled housing and jammed with a jar that shook the ship. The screen blanked and they hit the thickening atmosphere with a wobble.
Carter's head was lolling from side to side in a bid to work itself off its stalk. A canister broke free from a holding clip and went for the facing bulkhead like a shell.
York spent a small fraction of his remaining power on a corrective burn and began to count, his eyes fixed on the direct vision port. At seven the console cracked into life again and a plumy female voice strength nine said urgently in his ear, "Interceptor Five Two. You are approaching too fast. There is a spacer ahead of you." At the same instant of time the port cleared and it was all there. She had the right of it. A long freight and exploration ship was wheeling slowly base over tip for a retro burst that would bring her down to her pad.
Her commander's voice followed the girl's on the net, gritty and impatient.
"Get the hell out of it, Five Two. Procedure, man. Procedure."
York had his ship on manual. Left to itself the autogear would have responded to the hazard and fired the main tubes to kick them clear.
The freighter was coming up like a silver wall in a zoom lens. It was a local registration with the blue and white insignia of European Space and the name Asterion on a panel below the cone.
They were past with a metre of sea room between the hurrying shells and York had a split-second view through a large square port into the command cabin. Cocooned figures lying out from the command island like spokes to the hub of a wheel. Three dark pits in a cluster beside an aerial stub which was unusual for meteoritic damage. Then he was swinging on his gymbol-mounted couch with Carter keeping pace and Five Two shuddered along her length as the motors delivered in a savage thrust.
He was shooting Carter's clips before the ship had stopped flexing on hydraulic jacks. A hundred metres off, Asterion was wreathed in grey coolant. A small convoy had arrowed out from the control tower, fire-tender, ambulance, police, and a caterpillar-tracked breakdown buggy.
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