The goblin nodded and produced their spork. They waved it around, conjuring packets of shrimp crackers. I could almost hear my mom scolding me for eating junk food. A wave of homesickness washed over me. Would I ever see her again? I wanted nothing more than to bring Jun home to her.
Sujin passed the crackers around, and we ate in glum silence, trying not to think about the vastness of space and how tiny the escape pod was. Then we returned to our couches and harnessed ourselves back in to prepare for landing. I stared out the viewport at the planet and prayed to every ancestor I knew to watch over us. Soon enough we’d find out whether we’d land near the Dragon Pearl—if we made it at all.
The planet loomed below, with great tumbling whirls of lightning-lit clouds set in a deep azure sky. I had a difficult time catching sight of the surface with its violet-green haze. The colors were deceptive and the ground might look quite different once we got up close, without all the mist and dust in the way.
I’d learned a long time ago that a planet’s atmosphere didn’t start or stop abruptly like a boundary wall. Rather, it faded gradually, extending into space like an ever-thinner blanket the farther you got from the ground. But when you were making a landing, there was a moment when you knew you’d entered an atmosphere.
The temperature inside the pod rose uncomfortably as the friction of entry took its toll. The tiny ship was supposedly shielded so the excess heat wouldn’t cook us, but it grew hot enough that sweat was pouring off me. My fear didn’t help, either.
Haneul and Sujin didn’t say anything about it, but I could smell their perspiration as well. The entire capsule had a rank stink that only grew worse by the minute. It was almost a welcome distraction from the knowledge that soon we’d be crash-landing on the surface.
I dozed fretfully, then woke to Haneul and Sujin conversing in low tones. “Anything happen?” I asked.
“No, we’re just waiting for the inevitable,” Haneul said. “I was talking about ways I might be able to use weather magic to soften the landing, but my control over air is not as strong as I’d like. I don’t suppose you could change into an airbag big enough to protect all of us?”
“I could,” I said dubiously, “but I wouldn’t be a very good airbag, and I couldn’t keep myself from smothering you if we landed wrong and I got knocked out. How much longer until we land?”
“Another ten minutes,” Sujin said. Despite the forced cheer of their tone, their voice wavered. “At least we haven’t seen any ghosts yet.”
“They’re waiting to greet us as equals,” Haneul said. Her attempt at a joke was followed by a dismal silence, and she sighed. “Sorry. That came out wrong.”
I twisted and turned in the harness, trying to find a more comfortable position. All my limbs ached, and my back was sore from being stuck like this for the past several hours. I wondered if whoever had designed the straps had ever been forced to put them to the test. The heat kept rising. By now I was soaked with sweat, and thirsty, too.
“I should have had more to drink while I was unharnessed,” I said. I couldn’t get anything now, when we were so close to landing.
“Maybe after we walk away from this I’ll conjure you some plum soda,” Sujin said, and we both laughed uneasily.
The capsule began to brake, and it became hotter than ever.
“I see trees,” Haneul said abruptly. “This might not have been the best place to land.”
All thoughts of thirst vanished. A forest was a sign we might be near Jeonbok. But I didn’t want to crash into it. . . . Unless the branches would soften our landing?
I strained for a glimpse of any signs of past civilization, hoping that Captain Hwan’s maps were up-to-date. “If even the most recent survey maps aren’t reliable,” I said, suddenly full of dread, “who knows what we’ll find on the surface when we get out. . . .”
“Ghosts,” Sujin said. “Navigating is going to be interesting, that’s for sure.”
We lapsed into an unhappy silence.
“Five minutes to landing,” Sujin announced. “See you all on the other side.”
“To survival,” I said.
To my surprise, Haneul laughed, although not without some bitterness. “To survival.”
The pod’s emergency-landing parachute deployed. One moment we were slowing, slowing, almost to the point where I imagined us as a feather burning up as it floated down. The next moment, we collided into something—a great overgrown copse of trees, from the crazed impression of branches and leaves and broken twigs that I glimpsed through the viewport as we turned topsy-turvy.
We rolled and tumbled. I yipped in spite of myself, digging my fingers into the harness as if it could keep me from swinging from side to side. The safety straps helped, although not as much as I would have liked. I heard the others shouting as well. At last the ship settled into a less alarming back-and-forth rocking.
“Everyone okay?” Sujin called out.
I shook my head to get rid of a crick in my neck, staring cross-eyed at the hatch. I was almost upside down and all the blood had rushed to my head. The second time Sujin asked, I was able to answer, in a shaky voice. “Still here. Do you think it’s safe to get out?”
“Safe is relative,” Haneul said.
It was good to hear her voice. “We can’t stay in here forever,” I said. “We need to grab whatever supplies we can from the pod and go out and retrieve the Pearl. Then we can figure out what to do next.”
“At least food and drink won’t be a problem as long as I’m around,” Sujin quipped.
“First things first,” Haneul said. “Be careful getting out of your harness. We don’t know how stable the pod is, and we don’t want it to tumble down from the trees.”
I unhooked myself as carefully as I could and still managed to land hard on my shoulder. It was pure luck that I didn’t dislocate it. Haneul and Sujin had an easier time. Still, every time one of us moved, the pod swayed alarmingly, and we could hear the creaking and groaning of the branches that cradled it.
The other thing I noticed was the gravity, significantly lighter than what I was used to on Jinju or what was standard on starships. It gave a bouncy feeling to all my movements, which would have been fun under less harrowing circumstances. Given our precarious position, I didn’t dare experiment with it yet.
Sujin rummaged quickly through the supplies. Cautiously, so we didn’t overbalance the ship, we divided up the slate, medical kit, and survival gear. I got the slate and quickly loaded it up with the survey data so we’d have something to work with.
“Assuming we landed where we wanted to,” I said, “once Captain Hwan gets down here, this will be his first guess for where we’ve gone. So we have to move fast.”
Haneul’s shoulders hunched. “I wish things hadn’t turned out like this.”
“Me too,” Sujin said. “But the situation is what it is.”
“Let’s all take a look at the map,” Haneul said, recovering her poise, “just in case something happens and we end up getting separated.” This took more finagling, since we couldn’t cluster together without risking the pod tumbling down.
If we could trust my repair of the navigation system, we’d landed at the southern edge of Jeonbok. The maps had indicated that the woods had been cleared at one point, but they must have grown back over the years. A nearby river wound past Jeonbok toward a lake. If we got really lost, we could navigate by the river.
Eventually we were ready.
I’m coming for you, Jun, I thought fiercely. I had to hold on to that, had to believe I could rescue him easily once I got this business with the Dragon Pearl sorted.
“Now what?” Haneul said.
I took a deep breath and immediately regretted it. The air inside the pod was still unpleasantly damp and smelly. I checked the gauges. “We have barely enough fuel to launch back into orbit. There won’t be any margin for error. So if Captain Hwan catches up to us while we’re in flight, we won’t be able to evade.”
“I don’t think it’s going to make a difference,” Haneul said. “How would we get the pod out of these trees? And anyway, Captain Hwan has a lot of ways to track us.”
I had to concede that. Everything was going wrong with this plan. We’d have to figure out a solution later, once we’d secured the Pearl.
“Check to see if the atmosphere out there is breathable, would you, Min?” Sujin said. “I’d hate to crack the hatch open only to suffocate.”
“I can do that,” I said, glowering at the pod’s computer display. It took me some time to bring the sensor suite online. It wouldn’t be accurate enough for real survey work, but we only needed to know if there was sufficient oxygen and no poisonous gases. Fortunately, the display lit up blue. We were in the clear.
We all looked at each other and exhaled in relief at the same time.
“Okay,” Sujin said, “let’s open this tin can.”
Things could have been worse. Sure, we were marooned on a plague-infected planet where we’d probably be murdered by ghosts, but at least we had breathable air. Some planets had a toxic atmosphere or none at all, or were too cold or hot for even supernatural creatures to survive without serious gear.