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Chapter 4 - The Balloon

   Jennifer continued to stare at Jasen through the visor she had closed over her face. She could see him fairly well through the haze the LCD glass created.
   "Didn't Control say that we were supposed to hit a glancing blow?" Jasen asked. "I mean, we aren't suppose to hit that rock in the center are we?"
   "Well, that's the way I understand it," replied Jack. "We won't be staying there for long anyway. The gravity on a mass that size is so minimal that it couldn't hold us unless we landed very softly. Or, if we hit hard enough to stick..." Jack faded off for a few awkward seconds.
   "The problem is," Jack continued, "we aren't going to land softly enough to stay put. But we'll hit it plenty hard enough to smash us. We won't stick though."
   "From what I saw of the computer simulation," said Jasen thoughtfully, "we will roll on the flatter side of the asteroid, but the impact very likely will crush all the areas of the saucer involved."
   "That doesn't sound like much fun!" One of the moon farmers had spoken up. "I really don't think that I want to know all of the details in advance." 
   "What if we could cushion the impact some?" asked Jasen. He could hear some muttering from inside Jennifer's helmet. Something about there not being any giant pillows around. Jasen ignored her.

"That would be great young man," said an older passenger. "But we don't have any way of doing that, do we?"     "Well, I was thinking..." Jasen paused, then asked, "Have you seen a balloon before?" Several of the passengers said that they had.      "I had one once when I was at school," explained Jasen. "They're pretty hard to come by on the moon. I remember seeing pictures of them in textbooks. Some people on the Earth even use them to fly. I mean, they fill them with helium and then the big ones have enough lift to carry them in the air.