He locked the top button at full depression and struggled to keep his legs straight beneath him, braced as they were now against a bulkhead which but a few minutes before had been, not a floor, but a wall. The ship's gyro system was no longer functioning as a pseudograv unit, but rather as a vertical stabilizer, and the second dial said four gravities.
The acceleration needle dropped with agonizing slowness. Four gravities, three point seven. The altimeter said one hundred thousand feet, then ninety thousand, eighty, seventy-five.
Three point five gravities. Three point three. Even three at last.
Fifty thousand feet, forty-five, forty-two, forty thousand.
Two point six gravities.
Thirty-five thousand.
Two. One point nine. Point eight, seven, six, five.
Twenty-three thousand.
One gravity.
And the ship was hovering balanced by her gyros, at twenty-one thousand feet above boundless reaches of Venusian sea.