The rocket hit the snow and skidded. It didn't seem to slow at all. We must of been doing over 100 km/hr bumping along the ice. We didn't flip or roll over, but we didn't seem to be slowing. "Firing retro rockets" said Tom. Damn I thought, I've always wanted to say that! Tom fired the forward thruster and the craft jerked. Libby yelled. After the thruster had fired for about 5 seconds the nose started to deviate to the right.

"Stop retro', it'll put us in a spin". I yelled to Tom, but he had already cut
the forward thruster before I had finished speaking.. The craft straightened and
it had slowed a bit, though we were still sliding much to fast toward the icy
cliff.
"Try again, just for 2 seconds. Then cut it". I told Tom. He fired the forward
thruster for a short burst and the craft didn't veer one way or the other.
"I'll keep doing it in short bursts, each time we can loose a bit of speed."
Tom fired the forward thruster in a series short bursts, stopping after a few
seconds. Each time we lost a bit of speed, and for the first time I believed we
were actually going to make it. It took about a dozen bursts before we finally
stopped, the nose of the rocket plowing in a snow drift, just meters away from
the base of the cliff. We all cheered.
"Well done, Tom." I said. "Let get out and see if we can work out where we are."

Tom pulled at the hatch release and a burst of cold air entered. "I think we have landed a good few k's short of the landing zone, We unpacked the rocket and put as much of the provisions as we could in our packs. We had enough supplies for 2 maybe 3 days. What we couldn't carry we packed back in the rocket. After that we covered the rocket with snow, which wasn't all that hard because the nose was half buried in snow. I was grateful we had a spade because it would have been very cold digging the snow by hand. After about 20 minutes we finished and headed south along the cliff face, keeping close to the edge so as we would be harder to see. I estimated it was about 20 k's to ??ramp.
We marched for 2 hours before we had a break. XXXXXXXXXX

It was getting late and even though it wasn't dark I thought we should stop. We had been walking for 8 hours and had covered nearly 30 kilometers. We chose a
place behind some large XXXX. It kept us out of site and provided some cover.
After dinner we quickly fell asleep, exhausted.