Then, while Boone held his breath, the first struck.
A flash of fire; a vast exploding cataclysm. Ice spraying out like splattering water....
Before the cloud of icy splinters could even settle, the second carrier crashed home. New jets of spray leaped skyward. Great cracks appeared, from here a tracery of fine, shimmering lines against the satellite's frigid surface.
Boone slowed the third carrier till it hung almost motionless. Taut-nerved, he waited.
Slowly, the drifting blast-cloud cleared. A pit yawned in the ice.
With wary patience, Boone dropped the carrier closer to the surface ... hovered momentarily above the pit-edge.
Color flashed in the depths—the color of flower-fields, of verdure.
Of a sudden the jagged ice-claws didn't matter. Boone zoomed the carrier in a great loop, then dived it back again straight for the pit, the color.
Death's own tension rode with them. Once Boone thought he could hear the echo of a choked-off prayer.
Then the pit's ice-walls were closing around them. The target below seemed so very tiny....