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was nothing like this. The ship was shaking wildly, lurching from side to side, up and down, twisting and rolling. It felt as if it would come apart at any moment.
    Frank knew what Jack was asking. “Everything is holding up so far,” he promised.
    Jack could hear the strain in Frank’s voice. “What’s the problem?”
    “Upper port balloot has shifted a few times, only for a second or two at the most.”
    “Should we be worried about this, Frank?” Jack asked, already worried.
    “I’m not sure yet,” Frank confessed. “It’s not an instrumentation problem; I checked the calibration on the alignment sensors and they’re fine.”
    “Is there anything we need to do differently at this point?” Jack asked the question before Lynn had an opportunity to chime into the conversation.
    “Not yet,” Frank assured him. “Not as long as it keeps shifting back into place within a few seconds.”
    “Keep an eye on it,” Jack ordered.
                    
    Tony tightened his harness. That last thud scared the hell out of him. Probably even scared Mac a little , he thought.
    “Damn! This is one kick-ass ride!” Mac pronounced.
    Guess not , Tony mused. But Mac was the only one of them who seemed to be enjoying himself. The others were white-knuckled and pale-faced.
                    
    The shaking grew steadily worse. Something wasn’t right; Jack could feel it. It shouldn’t be this violent, not according to the aero-braking trial reports from seventy years ago, which he had spent hours studying. “Frank, verify our altitude by radar.”
    “I can try, Jack. But it probably won’t be accurate with the plasma wake out there,” Frank warned.
    I should have known that , Jack thought to himself. “Can you get through it with penetrating-Doppler?” he asked, pretty sure that Frank could.
    “Uh, yeah, should be able to,” Frank replied. “Give me a minute. I’ve got to write an interface loop to allow the nav computers to read the Doppler data.”
    “Make it fast,” Jack ordered. The ship rattled and groaned, the extreme force of the super-heated atmosphere blasting away at the surface of the balloots.
    “On it,” Frank assured him as he began entering code at a frantic pace—a difficult task, since the ship was shaking so violently. A few moments later, Frank was ready. “Penetrating-Doppler coming online,” he reported. Frank called up the Doppler display on his left hand console. Using the auto-sequencer, he called up a series of six pulses. It was more than double what he needed, but he wanted to be sure about the results. “I’m sending down six pulses. Should be enough for the nav-com to get at least two separate readings on our altitude,” he explained as he activated the sequencer. “Pulsing now.”
                    
    At the tail of the Icarus, on her underside, the Doppler dish unlocked itself from its safe position for aero-braking and maneuvered itself to point at the planet below. At its position, well aft of the plasma wake being plowed by the balloots up front, the frequency-compressed, high-energy beams the dish projected had the best chance of getting a clear reading through the highly-charged ions being thrown off by the plasma wake.
    The first invisible energy pulse shot out of the Doppler emitter, bounced off the planet’s surface, and returned to the dish. Even though the cycle was repeated five more times, the series was over in less than two seconds.
                    
    Frank’s mouth dropped open when the computer displayed the results as an expression of altitude. “The altimeter is way off! By at least a few kilometers!” Frank turned to face forward. “We are way too deep!”
    “Shit!” Jack cursed. “How the hell did that happen?” It was a useless question at this point, and Jack knew it before he finished asking. “Lynn! Get us higher!”
    “How much higher?” she asked.
    “Just start climbing!” Jack