Звезда Пандоры

She initiated the landing sequence. The wings rotated through almost ninety degrees, braking the last of the hyperglider’s speed. It began to sink as if it were made from lead. Twenty meters from the ground, and with almost no forward motion at all, she altered the wings again. They shot out into huge, thin concave triangles, generating as much lift as possible from her stall speed. The landing strut wheels touched and rebounded. Then she was bouncing over the rough terrain for forty meters before the wheels finally halted. The wings and stabilizer shrank back into their buds.

Justine let out a huge breath of relief. The cockpit canopy hissed as the seal disengaged, and it hinged upward. Plyplastic flowed away from her hands, and she let go of the grip bars. She released her helmet catches, and took it off. A somewhat nervous laugh escaped her lips as she shook her sweaty hair out. All the hyperglider’s electronic systems were back on-line.

The craft had come to rest on a slight incline in grass and some purple leaf plants that were long enough to brush the bottom of the fuselage. A stream burbled away, twenty meters to her left. Hot humid air was already making her perspire. Birds were crying overhead. The surrounding wall of the rainforest was draped in thick ropes of vine that were sprouting a million tiny lavender flowers.

Justine clambered over the side of the cockpit and dropped to the ground in an easy low-gravity curve. Only then did the enormity of what she’d done hit her. Both legs gave way, and she fell to her knees. Tears blinded her eyes, and she was laughing and crying at the same time, while her shoulders shook uncontrollably.

“Oh, Jesus Christ, I did it,” she said, sobbing. “I did it I did it, I goddamn did it.” The laughter was turning hysterical. She gripped some of the grass strands and made an attempt to calm herself. It had been a long time since she had given in to raw emotion like this, a sure sign of youthfulness.

Her breathing steadied, and she wiped the back of her hand across her eyes, smudging away the tears. She climbed to her feet, careful not to make sudden moves. In this gravity her inertia played havoc with all normal motions. A few birds were flapping about overhead, but that was about the only motion. The sun shone down, making her squint. Its heat made the skin on her face tingle. And the humidity!

She puffed out a breath, and began to struggle her way out of the leathery flightsuit. Her e-butler triggered the hyperglider’s locator. A small section of the fuselage behind the open cockpit irised open, and shiny folds of balloon fabric slithered out. It inflated quickly, and rose up into the bright sapphire sky, trailing a thin carbon wire aerial behind it.

Justine checked that the transmitter was working as she slathered on suncream. She kept her boots on, but hurriedly discarded the flightsuit in favor of simple white shorts with matching T-shirt. Everyone on the convoy swore there were no dangerous animals around, certainly not on the Grand Triad. And the Barsoomians, with their weird creatures, were thousands of kilometers away on the other side of the Oak Sea. So she should be all right dressed like this.

She slipped her multifunction wrist array on, a bronze malmetal bracelet with emeralds set along the rim, a gift from her last husband. He’d laughed about her using its extensive capabilities to survive the department store sales. That deteriorating sense of humor of his had hurried their divorce forward by several years.

The bracelet contracted softly, connecting its i-spot to her OCtattoo. Her e-butler expanded out from her inserts into the larger array, increasing its capacity by an order of magnitude. She ordered it to open the hyperglider’s cargo compartment underneath the cockpit, and checked through her equipment and supplies. It would probably take the recovery vehicles three days or so to reach her; she had decent food for a week, and dehydrated rations for another thirty days, though she really hoped she wouldn’t have to eat any of it.

Right at the front of the compartment was a box from the tour company, with a chilled bottle of champagne in a thermal jacket, and a box of chocolates. She was tempted, but the first thing she fished out of her personal case were her sunglasses, an expensive steel designer band that fitted snugly around her face, adjusting themselves to her skin. A floppy old bushman hat followed. She’d picked it up in Australia decades ago; the stupid cheap thing had been to more planets than most people, and was now bleached almost white by all those different suns.

“Okay, so what happened to the electronics?” she asked the e-butler as she took the wrapping off the chocolates. They’d started to melt in the heat.

“The cause of the systems failure is unknown. The onboard array lacks the diagnostic facilities to make a detailed analysis.”

“There must be some indication.”