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hills rolled towards them.
    ‘ Two hundred metres. Sink rate.’
    ‘You’re moving towards the surface too fast,’ Clare said, pointing to the primary flight display. ‘You could abort the landing and try again.’
    ‘No, I’ve got the hang of it, and there’s another good landing site ahead.’
    The pilot fired the thrusters briefly, braking their apparent forward speed, and pointed out a fresh site, close to a cliff-like ridge.
    ‘I’m going for that flat area by the far crater rim.’ He swung the ship round to line up with the new site.
    ‘Okay, you want to watch that ridge behind the site, though. Make your preparations for landing,’ Clare said.
    ‘Pressurise landing gear. Set landing mode,’ he ordered. Clare moved the landing gear selector and reached across to the mode control panel.
    ‘Set for landing. Four greens.’
    ‘ One hundred.’
    The thrusters fired in a long, continuous burst, braking their movement towards the land below. At first, it looked like the landing was going well. The craft drifted closer to the landing site, losing altitude at a steady rate. Then the landscape started to slide past faster. The slide continued, and it was clear that something was going wrong; the ridge behind the landing site was moving towards them, faster and faster, looming higher and higher against the sky.
    ‘ Terrain, terrain. Pull up,’ the computer warned.
    The pilot realised that they weren’t going to make it. He hit the abort button, and the main engines coughed into life, but it was too late. The craft started to rise away from the surface, but the cliff was rushing towards them. It expanded until it filled the sky; it became a mountainside, bearing down upon them to crush them. The terrifying sound of the collision alarm filled the cockpit.
    ‘Brace for impact!’ Clare shouted.
    The pilot raised his arms in an involuntary attempt to protect himself from the crash, and the cockpit rocked with a massive blow as the ship flew into the cliff wall. Clare and the pilot were thrown forward into their seat straps.
    Everything went black, and a sudden silence fell.
    The view from the cockpit windows changed to the deep blue of the projection screens. Clare sat back in her seat as the cockpit lighting came on, and the simulator descended on its hydraulic rams.
    A klaxon sounded outside as the simulator came to a halt, settling on its stand as the access gantry moved up.
    They were back in the real world once more, at the US Astronautics Corps training facility on the island of Guam in the western Pacific Ocean, and it was the second week in February, 2151.
    Clare turned in her seat to face the other two students sitting behind them, who had been watching the scenario unfold.
    She had their complete attention.
    ‘So, important lesson. You cannot land on an asteroid as if you were in a normal gravity field. If you try, as Lieutenant DeSoto here has shown, the craft does not behave as you would expect. The view of the landscape tricks your senses into trying to fly a conventional landing, but we are still two separate bodies, moving independently, and your flying instincts can betray you. Once you’re set up for landing, with zero relative speed, you have to fly as if you’re docking – only the gentlest of touches on the controls, and don’t hesitate to pull away if your relative speed gets too high.’
    She turned back to face the lieutenant, who was still staring at the flight controls, an expression of mixed surprise and disappointment on his face.
    ‘Okay, so we’re dead, but that was a good approach most of the way down, and the main thing you did wrong was not to recognise when the time had come to abort. Don’t take it too hard, we’ve all been there. You should be able to land without difficulty after a couple more attempts.’
    She glanced at her watch. ‘Okay, let’s call that an early lunch; be back here by thirteen hundred hours. I’ll reset the simulator, and then you two can have a