Three of those ships were equipped with the streamlined nose-shells and wings necessary to make actual landings on Mars. Number One, my ship, was supposed to make the first landing, on skis, near the edge of the north polar cap. We carried a pair of double-unit sand-tractors, each of which had quarters for four in the front section and carried a featherweight bulldozer on the trailer.
We were supposed to report a safe landing by radio, proceed overland to the equator, and carve out a landing strip, in seventy days. If the radio didn't work, we were to touch off the remaining fuel in our tanks, after we had everything clear of the blast area.
Right now, a mile or so behind us, the drives and fuel tanks of Number One were sending merging columns of smoke high into the thin Martian air. A magnificent signal.
Only we hadn't touched them off.
And they couldn't have ignited on contact and still be going like that. They couldn't have gone much before Helene and I came to, about seven hours after we hit.
About half a mile in front of us one of the bulldozers lay on its side, a short distance from the wreck of the nose section, slashed open where the tractor had come through it diagonally, missing Helene and myself by inches. The 'dozer, the wingtips, and the tractor unit, which we had climbed into, were the only things left remotely intact.
It was a real, genuine, gold-plated miracle.
I didn't know how it had happened, or why. It occurred at the first shock of landing, and that was the last either of us remembered. Maybe one of the skis collapsed. Maybe one of the drives surged when I cut it back. Maybe there was a rock hidden under the ice. Maybe the ice wasn't thick enough. Maybe a lot of things. We'd never know.
It was small comfort to be sure that according to both the instruments and the seat of my pants there was nothing wrong with my piloting.
That didn't matter. Sixty more people would very probably die if we didn't do the probably impossible. The other ships wouldn't have enough fuel to pull up and get back in orbit if they came down and discovered that the landing strip wasn't there.