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tilt of the engines, whose combined axis of thrust—tweaked by the smaller reaction control jets spaced around Venture’ s exterior—determined where the vehicle was going.
    Two booms rattled the cabin. “RCS,” Zack said quickly. He could actually hear the startled gasps of Tea and Yvonne on the communications loops.
    He grinned to himself. He hadn’t been selected as commander for his ability with a joystick. As much as he joked about Tea’s “big sister” mentality, he had an even more acute case of wanting everyone to be happy. This personality trait had guided his professional life—he couldn’t count the number of people with whom he’d nursed violent disagreements who took his low-key assents and gentle arguments as signs of genuine friendship. If he had to work late hours, fine. If an apology was called for, he would make it. If being charming was what a situation required, he could be very charming.
    And, if the greater good could be served by a display of temper, he could boil over with the best of them.
    After his second space station tour, one of the NASA doctors had told Zack he rated highest among every astronaut studied in one key interpersonal factor: not technical skills (though his were superior) or even emotional control (though he obviously stayed on an even keel).
    He simply played well with others . Shared his toys. Helped pick up. Did more than his portion of dirty jobs.
    Making the first landing on Keanu was, in many ways, a dirty job. Training time was short, danger was great, the crew had been shuffled at the last minute. And there was a good chance of conflict with the Brahma crew.
    NASA wanted the people of Earth to be happy. And who better to keep them that way than Zachary Stewart? Not only was he an experienced space flier who had spent two years training on Destiny-Venture , he happened to be the astronaut office specialist in all matters Keanu. Best of all, he actually knew—and liked!—the rival Brahma commander.
    “Coming up on pitchover,” Pogo said, the first words he’d uttered since the start of powered descent.
    Although there was no sense of motion—nothing like the banking of an aircraft—the view out the forward window changed, black sky giving way to Keanu’s gray-and-white horizon.
    It was as if Venture had clambered to its feet—which, in technical terms, it had. Within moments they were heads up, plus Z in NASA terms.
    “What’s that?” Pogo said.
    Since burning into orbit around Keanu, Destiny-Venture had made two low passes, but both on the night side, where visibility was almost non-existent. Now, for the landing, Venture was heading toward the sunlit side, like a transatlantic airliner flying toward the European dawn.
    Only this dawn showed a giant geyser flaring thousands of feet into the black sky. Unaffected by winds—Keanu had no atmosphere—it looked like a perfect tornado funnel out of Zack’s childhood nightmares.
    He had to force himself to say, “Houston, are you seeing what we’re seeing?”
    Houston was receiving the same image, of course, from Venture’ s cameras, but controllers wouldn’t experience the same awe and majesty . . . or barely contained terror.
    “I hope that’s not from Vesuvius,” Zack said, and immediately saw the answer to his own question, as the plume slid off to the left—clearly from another vent, which Weldon calmly confirmed.
    As Buzz Aldrin had, while Neil Armstrong flew the first lunar landing, Zack concentrated on his job as commentator. “Okay, Pogo, there’s three hundred, down at twenty.” Three hundred meters altitude, down at twenty meters per second, both figures diminishing at different rates. “The field below looks smooth.” They could see their landing zone from the forward windows, whose lower halves were angled inward. But glare from Keanu’s snow and ice washed out the view—better data was coming from a radar image in the head-up display, which showed scattered boulders, though so