The ship seemed to hang motionless above the great, green planet. The harsh, unfiltered light of the planet’s mother star glinted on the silvery hull, highlighting the ragged edge of a huge hole in the stern of the vessel.
The occupants of the spaceship stood anxiously by their posts. Even the youngest novice among them knew that the ship had seen its last flight; it was finished. The engines were gone, vanished in the crackling horror of an atomic fire. The holocaust had begun accidentally in the fuel center. In a few milliseconds the screaming flames had torn through the main bulkheads, following the fuel lines to the stern exhaust ports, destroying everything in their path. In a flash of hellish fire it was all over. Only the isolated control deck, where the few survivors now stood, remained intact.
It was only a matter of hours till the magnetic claws of the planet would pull the ship down, faster and faster, until the friction against the atmosphere would turn it into a molten, pitted mass—unrecognizable save as its component elements.
Each individual stood alone with his thoughts, separated from his neighbors by the cold inches of the space armor he wore. The atmosphere had long since hissed away through the gaping wounds in the ship. The vessel was tomb silent without it. Only the suit intercoms kept them in communications.
The chief engineer, stationed by his useless panel, studied the young second navigator for a moment. The youngster was tense, nervous; his features through the glass of his armor revealed the fear that chewed at his control.
“Take it easy boy,” the engineer beamed at him through the intercom. “We’re lucky, you know.”
“Lucky?” the navigator shouted. “You call this lucky? Dying on some lump parsecs from home! If that’s luck, you can stick it in your stern tubes!”
“Lucky,” the engineer repeated. “This planet might not have been so convenient. We might have drifted in an orbit around that sun until our suit tanks gave out; and then—”
“Oh shut up!” The navigator turned quickly and walked to his table. He began checking his instruments in a vain attempt to be doing something. Suddenly he raised his head, and with his voice barely under control, cried:
“Why doesn’t the skipper say something? What’s he doing in that cabin?”