"I prefer to save the men. We know they can live on that planet, even if we find no fissionable material. The issue is settled."
"There's one other consideration, Captain Theusaman. With our dorsal tubes gone, we can't maneuver. Even you can understand, sir, that a crash-landing—"
"I've given the orders, Baiel. Will you execute them, or must I have you cabinized for insubordination?"
"Very well, sir."
He departed without saluting.
Baiel was right, on both counts. I knew there was a chance he might be. Yet I had made emergency landings before. Nothing had ever gone wrong.
This time it did. As soon as we nosed into the stratosphere we were in trouble. The Olympus angled down too sharply. The gyrometers failed, since they were engineered to make use of the compensating drive from the dorsal tubes. I tried to bring the ship up into the freedom of space again, but the best I could manage was a slow, corkscrew dive toward the unknown planet.
As we spun through the cloud wreath, I studied the globe carefully. Within limits, I could still select the place where I wanted to land. The planet was capped at both poles by gleaming ice fields which spread down over the sphere like giant hands. Only a narrow equatorial band was free of ice. The landing site I chose was a wooded area at the edge of the glacier. The nearby ridge of jagged mountains suggested volcanic action, and the possible presence of the fissionable metals we wanted.
We crash-landed at the base of the glacier, skipping over the ragged ice until the bow caught and shattered in a deep ice gorge. The safety stabilizers functioned in all the cabins that were not pierced by ice. Our heaviest casualties were among the tube-room crew and the astrographers. Only one of the scientists survived. I ordered station formation on the frozen meadow outside the ship. Baiel bawled out the roster, while I ticked off the names of the survivors: forty crewmen, none seriously wounded; one scientist, fatally hurt; and fifteen of the female staff of astrographical clerks. Counting Baiel and myself, we numbered fifty-eight.
As the last of the names was read off, we stood for a moment shivering in the icy wind. Slowly Baiel looked up from the ship's roll and let his blue eyes move along the buckled hulk of the Olympus. Then he glanced at me, and the set of his jaw was as coldly emotionless as the ice bank behind him.