"Maybe it's good-by, Gregg. We'll fall—fighting."
"Yes. Fighting. Coniston, you keep the pressure up."
With the broken set-tubes it took nearly all the pressure to maintain the few plates I had shifted. One slipped back to neutral. Then the pumps gained on it, and it shifted again.
I dashed up to the deck. Ah, the Moon was so close now! So horribly close! The deck shadows were still. Through the forward bow windows the Moon surface glared up at us.
I reached the turret. The Planetara was steady. Pitched bow-down, half falling, half sliding like a rocket downward. The scarred surface of the Moon spread wide under us.
These last horrible minutes were a blur. And there was always Anita's face. She left Miko. Faced with death, he sat clinging. Ignoring her, Moa, too, sat apart. Staring—
And Anita crept to me. "Gregg, dear one. The end...."
I tried the electronic engines from the stern, setting them in the reverse. The streams of their light glowed from the stern, forward along our hull, and flared down from our bow toward the Lunar surface. But no atmosphere was here to give resistance. Perhaps the electronic streams checked our fall a little. The pumps gave us pressure, just in the last minutes, to slide a few of the hull-plates. But our bow stayed down. We slid, like a spent rocket falling.
I recall the horror of that expanding Lunar surface. The maw of Archimedes yawning. A blob. Widening to a great pit. Then I saw it was to one side. Rushing upward.