Unassing the Area

The lander continued rising, though at a speed that wouldn’t overtax its inertial compensator. The pilot did, however, continue random walking to the point where someone that wasn’t aware of what was going on might think that he was drunk. The vessel sure was swaying and lurching about like he was, anyway.

They stopped briefly at the fifty kilometer mark, since that was the flight ceiling for the unmanned collection drones that had been sent to collect samples from the ocean. Even with gravity drives, there was still a practical limit for machines that small.