‘All or nothing,’ she said, and pressed a button marked ‘Grids’. Nothing happened. There was no flare, no surge of power. She leant forward and round, so as to see the ion engines. There was a glow underneath them no more vigorous than that from a faulty toaster. Jarvellis studied the other buttons available. ‘Gas feed’ seemed the most likely, so she pressed it. A pump started up somewhere behind her, and there was a stuttering roar to her right. Her view of Viridian tilted, kept on tilting. The roar started to her left, but the tilt did not correct and now the horizon was dropping away. She eased the column over, corrected the tilt. How the hell did she ease off on the power, though? It took her some minutes of frantic searching before she realized her foot was flat down on a floor pedal.

‘This is Viridian control calling Nix shuttle. Answer, please.’

Jarvellis ignored the radio and concentrated on flying the shuttle. She could not figure out how to get back towards the planet. The settings of the engines seemed to be designed for re-entry only. Think! It occurred to her then that she was thinking like someone who had lived with gravity for too long. She was thinking in terms of up and down. She moved the full column over and flipped the shuttle so that Viridian was now directly above her, and then applied some power.

‘This is Viridian control calling Nix shuttle. Answer, please.’

There was the airspeed indicator, and there was an altimeter giving a very strange reading. Slowly Jarvellis began to understand what each of the meters and small screens signified. She had got the shuttle in a stable orbit when a completely different voice spoke from the radio.

‘This is Viridian. Will the lunatic flying that antique please respond. I have no objection to you killing yourself, but you are now entering occupied airspace.’

Shit, it was the runcible AI. Jarvellis searched for a switch to turn off the radio. She found none. What she did find was a screen that folded out from the old console. The screen flickered on to give her the same view as she had out through the front screen. She pressed a button and that view flicked to one that was identified—in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen—as infrared. She clicked along the buttons and called up all sorts of interesting views, but none of them would help to prevent her spreading herself across the surface of the planet if she didn’t figure out how to land this thing.

* * *