Fiasco
Birnam Wood
"Nice landing."
The man who said this was no longer looking at the pilot in the spacesuit
with the helmet under his arm. In the circular control room - horseshoe console
in the middle - he went to the wall of glass and looked out at the ship, a large
even though distant cylinder, charred around its jets. A blackish fluid still
spilled from the jets onto the concrete. The second controller, big in the
shoulders, a beret tight on his bald skull, put the tapes on rewind and, like an
unblinking bird, regarded the newcomer out of the corner of his eye. He wore
headphones, and in front of him was a bank of flickering monitors.
"We managed," said the pilot. Pretending that he needed support to
remove his heavy, double-buckled gloves, he leaned slightly against the jutting
edge of the console. After that landing he was wobbly in the knees.
"What was it?"
The smaller one, by the glass, in a worn leather jacket, with a mousy,
unshaven face, clapped his pockets until he found his cigarettes.
"Deflection in the thrust," murmured the pilot, a little surprised by
the coolness of the welcome.
The man by the glass, a cigarette already in his mouth, inhaled and asked
through the smoke:
"But why? You don't know?"
"No," the pilot wanted to reply-but he remained silent, because it
seemed to him that he ought to have known. The tape ended. It fluttered on the
reel. The larger man got up, took off the headphones, only now nodded to him,
and said hoarsely:
"I'm London. And that's Goss. Welcome to Titan. What would you like to
drink? We have coffee and whiskey."
The young pilot was flustered. He knew the names of these men but had not met
them before. He had assumed, for no reason, that the larger would be the chief,
Goss, but it was the other way around. Getting this straight in his head, he
chose coffee.
"What's the cargo? Carborundum bits?" asked London when all three
of them were seated at the little table that came out of the wall. The steaming
coffee was in glasses that resembled laboratory beakers.
Goss took a yellow pill with his coffee, sighed, coughed, and blew his nose
until tears came to his eyes.
"And you brought radiators, too, right?" he asked the pilot.
The pilot, again surprised, expecting greater interest in his feat, only
nodded. It was not every day that an engine stalled in the middle of a landing.
He was full of words not about freight but about how, instead of attempting to
blow out the jets or increase the main power, he had immediately cut the auto
and went down on only the boosters, a trick that he had never tried outside the
simulator. And that had been ages ago. So he had to collect his thoughts
again.
"I brought radiators, too," he said finally, and was even pleased
at how it sounded: the laconic type, emerging from danger.
"But not to the right place," smiled the smaller man, Goss. The
pilot didn't know whether or not this was a joke.
"What do you mean? You received me-you called me," he corrected
himself.
"We had to."
"I don't understand."
"You were supposed to land at Grail." "Then why did you pull
me off course?"
Translated by Michael Kandel, Harcourt Brace
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