He picked a little gully, just beyond the landing point, to use as a reference for the craft’s height and motion, and he stared at the gully as he worked toward killing his horizontal velocity. The MEM had to land straight down, with no sideways motion. Otherwise, the touchdown might break off a landing leg.

There was a haze of dust all around the craft, billowing up, obscuring his view, adhering to the window in great ocher streaks.

“Thirty seconds.”

“Any forward drift?”

“You’re okay. Hundred up. Down at three and a half.”

The haze was all around him. And now he could see dust flying away from him in all directions, scouring over the surface. The streaks confused his perception of his motion, the way fog blowing across a runway could sometimes. But he could see a big rock, sticking up through the haze, and he focused on that.

“Sixty feet. Down two. Two forward. Two forward. Good.”

He clicked the descent toggle, killing the speed, until Challenger was floating toward Mars as slow as a feather.

“Fifty feet. Thirty. Down two and a half. We’re kicking up a lot of dust.”

I can see that, damn it. The MEM was drifting backwards, and Gershon couldn’t tell why. And going backwards was bad, because he couldn’t see where he was going. He pulsed the hand controls.

“Twenty.”

Well, he’d killed the backward motion, but a sideways drift had crept in. Fuck. He was pissed with himself. He wasn’t flying his bird smoothly at all.

“Four degrees forward. Three forward. Drifting left a little. Faint shadow.”

The shadow closed up, and dust billowed, so he couldn’t see the ground anymore. He struggled to get the MEM vertical.

He kept falling, blind.

“Four forward. Three forward. Down a half. Drifting left.”

Gershon felt a soft bump.

“Contact light,” Stone said. “Contact light, by God!”

For one second, Gershon stared at Stone.

Then he killed the descent engine, fast.

The vibration that had accompanied the engine firing, all the way down through the powered descent, faded at last. He should have cut it as soon as the contact light came up; if the engine kept firing too close to the surface the back pressure from its own exhaust could blow it up…

Challenger fell the last five feet, and impacted on Mars with a firm thud. Gershon felt the landing in his knees, and every piece of gear in the cabin rattled.

“Shit,” he said.

Stone started to rattle through the post-touchdown checklist. “Engine stop. ACA out of detent.”

“Out of detent.”

“Mode control both auto. Descent engine command override off. Engine arm off…”

They got through the T plus one checkpoint, their first stay/no-stay decision.

And then they had the ship buttoned up tight, and it looked like they could stay for a while.