At last Hex got the spin under control. But the face of the planet was a mottled crimson shield before her. More alarms lit up as the needleship sensed the first touch of this world’s thin atmosphere. ‘Looks like we don’t have much choice.’ She hauled on her controls, turned the needleship so its nose pointed down into the atmosphere - and she lit up the intrasystem drive to hurl the ship into the cover of air. A ball of light engulfed the Spear, atmospheric gases ionised and driven to white heat. In the blisters the inertial control held, more or less; Hex and her crew felt only the mildest of judders as they fell into the air of an unknown world.

All this in utter silence.

‘We’re kind of lighting up the sky here, pilot,’ Borno called.

Hex said, ‘It will get us down quicker. The ground proximity sensors will pull us out before—’

‘Sensors are off-line,’ Jul reminded her hastily.

‘Oops,’ said Hex. She hauled on her joystick.

‘Land below us,’ Hella called. ‘Now over ocean—’

Hex’s blister filled up with crash foam, embedding her like a wrapped-up doll, so tight she couldn’t move a finger. She felt nothing as the Spear of Orion cut a tunnel through an ocean a half-kilometre deep, and then, before the waters had even closed, gouged a crater fifty kilometres across in the soft rocks of the ocean floor.

Her crash foam shattered, broke up and fell away.

She was floating. She was surrounded by misty grey-green air, illuminated by dim slanting light - no, not air, she realised as she tried to move her limbs. This medium was water. Thankfully her skinsuit was holding.

She looked around. Flecks of her crash foam fell away. Of the needleship, her crew, there was no sign in this murky soup. The Spear of Orion had been her first command, and now it was gone in seconds.

And here she was, immersed in an unknown sea. Hex’s world was largely untamed. Her people, like humans everywhere, were drawn to the sea, but you never went swimming, for the ocean was full of monsters. She didn’t even know how deep she was - or which way was up. For a moment panic bubbled, and she thrashed, wasting energy, until she forced herself to be still.

She ordered her skinsuit to use the planet’s gravity field to find the local vertical. Then, when it was oriented, she made the suit climb. She glimpsed the ocean’s scummy meniscus an instant before she broke through into the air, to her huge relief.

She rose into a crimson sky, where a misshapen sun hung low. Beneath her the ocean looked black, oily, and huge, languid low g-waves crossed its surface. But she could see, deep down beneath the waters, a pale pink glow that must be the crater they had made.