Having paid close attention to the various probe reports, Paul had already decided which of the three recommended landing sites he would choose. Naturally he would accord his staff and the other two captains the courtesy of a hearing, but the obvious choice was the vast plateau below a group of strato volcanoes. The current weather there was clement, and the nearly level expanse was adequate to accommodate all six shuttles. The updates had only confirmed a tentative preference made seventeen years ago when he had first studied the EEC reports. He had never anticipated much difficulty with landing; it was a smooth and accident-free debarkation that caused him anxiety. There was no rescue backup hovering solicitously in the skies of Pern, nor disaster teams on its surface.

In organizing the debarkation, Paul had chosen as flight officer Fulmar Stone, a man who had served with him throughout the Cygnus campaign. For the past two weeks, Fulmar’s crews had been all over the Yoko’s three shuttle vehicles and the admiral’s gig, ensuring that there would be no malfunction after fifteen years in the cold storage of the flight deck. The Yoko’s twelve pilots, under Kenjo Fusaiyuki, had gone through rigorous simulator drills well spiced with the most bizarre landing emergencies. Most of the pilots had been combat fighters, and were fit and fully experienced at extricating themselves from tricky situations, but none had quite the record of Kenjo Fusaiyuki. Some of the less experienced shuttle pilots had complained about Kenjo’s methods; Paul Benden had courteously listened to the complaints—and ignored them.

Paul had been surprised and flattered when Kenjo had signed up with the expedition. Somehow, he had thought the man would have signed on to an exploratory unit where he could continue to fly as long as his reflexes lasted. Then Paul remembered that Kenjo was a cyborg, with a prosthetic left leg. After the war, the Exploration and Evaluation Corps had had their choice of experienced, whole personnel, and cyborgs had been shunted into administrative positions. Automatically, Paul made his left hand into a fist, his thumb rubbing against the knuckles of the three replacement fingers which had always worked as well as his natural ones. But there was still no feeling in the pseudoflesh. Consciously, he relaxed the hand, certain once again that he could hear a subtle plastic squeak in the joints and the wrist.

He turned his mind to real problems, like the debarkation ahead, knowing that unforeseeable delays or foul-ups could stall the entire operation as cargo and passengers began to flow from the orbiting ships. He had appointed good men as supercargoes: Joel Lilienkamp as surface coordinator, and Desi Arthied on the Yoko. Ezra and Jim, of Bahrain and Buenos Aires, were equally confident in their own debarkation personnel, but one minor hitch could cause endless rescheduling. The trick would be to keep everything moving.