"Luckily—and I mean luckily, we were on a course that took us smack onto the surface of Mars. And our speed was great enough to resist the gravity pull of the planet, keeping us horizontal with the surface of the desert. We skidded in like a kid does on a sled, instead of coming in on our nose!"
"Well, blast my jets!" said Astro softly.
"In that case," said Roger, "we must have left a pretty long skid mark in back of us!"
"That should be easy to see when the jet scouts come looking for us," commented Astro.
"I wonder if we could rig up some sort of emergency signal so we could send out a relative position?"
"How are you going to get the position?" asked Astro.
"I can give you some sort of position as soon as I get outside and take a sight on the sun," replied Roger.
"Can you do it without your astrogation prism?" asked Astro.
"Navigation, not astrogation, Astro," said Roger. "Like the ancient sailors used on the oceans back on Earth hundreds of years ago. Only thing is, I'll have to work up the logarithms by hand, instead of using the computer. Might be a little rough, but it'll be close enough for what we want."
The three cadets finished the remaining sandwiches and then picked their way back through the ship to the control deck. There, they rummaged through the pile of broken and shattered instruments.