Mens (english version)

by Quelli di ZEd

  16.

  Mars was rather notable seen from far. A perfect sphere nearly bleached to both the poles. They saw numerous craters and endless tonalities of red, from the red brick to the dark reddish of the zones in faint light. From where trace of human activity was it was not noticed. I resorted to the exabyte to look for the zone of landing. It was soon enough still, to dir the truth, but I quivered for going down on the planet.

  Now that that million of kilometers were behind the shoulders, I saw from now on to me a concrete thing, almost tangible.

  It is very beautiful.

  The deceleration continued for a long time, while I was learning me the data and the procedure of landing. What it didn't exist. Some landing was not anticipated on the planet, only a long fall, a placid glide toward the ground with the aid of three enormous parachutes. My vector would be broken to the ground, by now useless. The trip back would already have been taken with the shuttle of our astronauts on the surface.

  Beh, nothing of badly, even if to that vehicle I was almost gotten used; I understood, however, that was not done for managing a landing against gravity. It was a simple too mean. Just for this we had used him.

  Mars was nearbyer, now.

  With the exabyte I individualized the anticipated zone for the landing, not distant from the site where the ship was found for the return. Tells my way a glance the area. I was well, now, and I used all the frequencies of the ghost. It was a chaos, from that distance the signals that arrived to me were so as that didn't succeed to focus nothing. I confined me to peer at to the frequencies radio, but I didn't perceive alcunché; I changed gang and I tried to observe some particular but nothing.

  I passed to the infrared ones.

  The choice resulted most useful: in the whole surface of interest and over, for about ten kilometers, a strange spot of different tonality stretched him from the rest of the planet.

  «A stain, to the infrared ones» I said to tall voice, turned to myself. «Almost rectangular. I don't understand what both. I know only that is uniform, contrarily to the rest of the ground around how various according to the latitude and of the physical nature. According to the exabyte they miss fifteen minutes to the entry in atmosphere. I should go to insert me in that. hole. I don't like at all it. It would seem.»

  I didn't end the sentence because from the Earth Berliz intervened. The face of the man appeared in a finestrella of my screen. It seemed tense.

  «Excuse me Angel, perhaps bushels speaking, but down here the telescopes have individualized a storm of sand in your region. It is very wide. An accursed adversity. We are trying to calculate direction and intensity of the winds. You understand. it is to problem, considering that you will go down to the ground sustained by the air Martian.»

  Here is thing was: a storm. I had read something, on the storms Martian. You/they could last days and to involve the whole surface of the planet. Perhaps it was guilt of the lack of water in surface and of a dense atmosphere; both on the Earth have an inertial function and of levelling of the superficial temperature, but on Mars the thermal excursions went among the less centoquarantas to the more winds degrees, with variations also a lot of rapidses because of the incapability of the surface to hold back the heat. The absence of massive clouds increased the loss of thermal energy for irraggiamento toward the external space.

  «It is a problem, yes» I reflected, trying to keep the calm. «If stings right to the zone of landing I will be pushed far. And I don't know how much they will hold up the parachutes with my load and the storm. To end, doesn't have idea of whether to land. The exabyte doesn't know what I am looking: too wide, this snowstorm.»

  Now that knew what it was and that I had subsequently drawn near, I succeeded in the gigantic clouds of dust that swept that world.

  Of sudden the point of a rocky peak appeared on the surface, whereas sand was temporarily spaced out. It happened only for some instants, therefore the chaos returned.

  Half minute happened again later.

  I focused me: still some second, then another flash. I brought at the most my senses and I almost photographed mentally the phenomenon: well I now had my point of reference. More than one, for the truth. The exabyte had everything in file, all it took is making the necessary comparisons.

  I individualized three points on the surface Martian, three mounds very well recognizable.

  The exabyte showed me their names in code and the physical characteristics, thing of which I didn't care.

  I went looking for the options to reduce the information brought to screen: with all those writings I would not have seen nient'altro. Individualized the three points, I opened a window with the map of Mars and I went up again to the place of fall; I overlapped him/it to that that I saw at that time, that is nothing: the zone of target was in the beautiful mean of the storm. I positioned a signals on the objective making him/it permanent.

  «If don't have best ideas, there on the Earth, I will do so: the telemetry can give me the distance from the planet. With the points of reference I can calculate the speed and direction of the wind next to the point of landing. For the speed I will have to get by me, I believe. I will mark a pair of flags on the screen, near, on the manager of the wind. I will calculate the distance among the time and they that it employs the cloud of dust to pass from one to the other. Distance fratto time, I get the speed. More or less mine maximum, in physics.»

  I tried. If nothing else I knew how to calculate very well the times.

  In base to my accounts the wind was around seventy kilometers an hour. I slipped me in the exabyte and I tried a simulation of the phase of landing. Luckily it was well sort and configurabile. I planned the speed of the wind and I made different tests.

  In all the simulations, the parachutes held up for the first six minutes, then they went to ramengo. I saw my poor man myself that it fell in acceleration with the load of oxygen and quant'altro, breaking himself/herself/itself on the ground Martian in disastrous way. It had to hurt. The planners had not even had the delicacy to interrupt the simulation before the impact. What an insensitive people.

  It came me an idea. I restarted the simulated descent, but this time I delayed the opening of the parachutes: I spun quite a lot, straight enough, since I was a simple iron block in free fall. When I opened them the parachutes they held up, bringing to slow down me in reasonable way. They spent two minutes, two minutes of nightmare sballottamenti, therefore I touched the ground, in prevalence sandy, with tumbles that would have dismembered a man. According to the program my body would have held up, instead, and also my load: a ciambellona was seen around the transport that inflated almost instantly him and it allowed him to bounce without breaking himself/herself/themselves. But there was a matter. The simulation was made with the wind, instead this was a storm of sand, very denser and dangerous. For safety I would have had to delay even more the opening of the parachutes using them that so much to damp the descent in vertical.

  I made other tests, finally definite: thirty seconds. I would have opened to thirty seconds from the impact; I would have been dragged in horizontal for around six hundred meters. This way, if I/you was thrown myself six hundred meters windward, I would be fallen correct correct where I wanted.

  I had the clear ideas, or at least it seemed me.

  Then I considered us: I was stupid indeed. I learned me the map and I saw that if I/you had done in that way I would never have reached destination: I would have broken against a beautiful costone of rock, a barrier duretta tall three hundred meters set on the line of the wind.

  I would have aimed straight well then at that barrier. It was a good point of reference, also visual. Throwing me there I would never have him incocciata, I would have been moved by the front of the storm landing to around four hundred meters from my target. I could also be there.

  I referred all the calculations and then I informed the Earth.

  I turned again me to the planet. I had employed more time than I
believed thinking to as to save the pellaccia: Mars was straight in front of me, enormous.