Spain, would be on
Earth. The _Brainchild_ would be dropping through Eisberg's magnetic
field at an angle, but it wouldn't be the ninety-degree angle of the
equator. It would have been nice if the base could have been built at
one of the poles, but that would have put the labs in an uncomfortable
position, since there was no solid land at either pole.

Mike the Angel didn't like the idea of having to land on Eisberg without
jets any more than Multhaus did, but he was almost certain that the ship
would take the strain.

He took the companionway up to the Control Bridge, went in, and handed
the landing sheet to Black Bart. The captain scowled at it, shrugged,
and put it on his desk.

"Will we make it, sir?" Mike said. "Any word from the _Fireball_?"

Black Bart nodded. "She's orbiting outside the atmosphere. Captain
Wurster will send down a ship to pick us up as soon as we've finished
our business here."

The _Fireball_, being much faster than the clumsy _Brainchild_, had left
Earth later than the slower ship, and had arrived earlier.

"_Now hear this! Now hear this! Third Warning! Landing orbit begins in
one minute! Landing begins in one minute!_"

Sixty seconds later the _Brainchild_ began her long, logarithmic drop
toward the surface of Eisberg.

Landing a ship on her jets isn't an easy job, but at least an ion rocket
is built for the job. Maybe someday the Translation drive will be
modified for planetary landings, but so far such a landing has been, as
someone put it, "50 per cent raw energy and 50 per cent prayer." The
landing was worse than the take-off, a truism which has held since the
first glider took off from the surface of Earth in the nineteenth
century. What goes up doesn't necessarily have to come down, but when it
does, the job is a lot rougher than getting up was.

The plasmasphere of Eisberg differed from that of Earth in two ways.
First, the ionizing source of radiation--the primary star--was farther
away from Eisberg than Sol was from Earth, which tended to reduce the
total ionization. Second, the upper atmosphere of Eisberg was pretty
much pure hydrogen, which is somewhat easier to ionize than oxygen or
nitrogen. And, since there was no ozonosphere to block out the UV
radiation from the primary, the thickness of the ionosphere beneath the
plasmasphere was greater.

Not until the _Brainchild_ hit the bare fringes of the upper atmosphere
did she act any differently than she had in space.