Chapter 6

"Alright, guys, there it is!" Bulma exclaimed. "Namek!"

Gohan and Kuririn ran up from their bunk to look out the window at the
green sphere before them. That had really been a worthwhile shortcut!
It had only taken them three days to get here after leaving their
friends in the mirrored ship.

"It’s beautiful," Gohan breathed excitedly.

"What say we go in for a closer look?" Bulma asked, with a glint of
excitement flashing in her eyes.

"Yeah!!" Gohan exclaimed. Kuririn smiled at Bulma. They were finally
there!

"Buckle up!" Bulma ordered. "We’re going down!" She waited for them
to strap in, and then gave the computer the landing commands. The
ship zoomed down toward the surface.

"I hate this part," Kuririn muttered, as the ship quivered in its
entry.

Suddenly the ship began rolling to one side. The ship’s computer was
going crazy with warning signals. The whole left half of the ship was
not responding to its commands. Bulma suddenly realized that she had
made a grave error in her program. Well, there was no time to fix it
now. She was going to have to land the ship manually.

"What’s going on, Bulma?" Gohan asked. "Why are we rolling?"

"The ship isn’t responding to my flight program," she said, grabbing
the directional levers to level out their flight path. "I’m going to
land us manually. Hang on. We’re in for a bumpy ride!" She worked
fiercely at the controls to stabilize their flight path. She finally
got the ship upright, and worked to slow their descent, which was much
too fast for comfort. After a couple minutes of careful slowing, the
reverse thrusters quit on her. This was bad. She could still steer,
but she had no way of slowing them down. The ground was rapidly
approaching. There was nothing but trees below her. She had no
choice. She had to try to slow them down somehow.

"Hang on guys," she said, easing the ship down toward the treetops.
"This is gonna be rough." She eased the ship closer to the trees.
Carefully trying to avoid trees large enough to tear the ship to bits,
she let the ship fly into the large canopy of leaves. Immediately,
the ship jerked from the shock, and it was pulled farther down into
the forest. A loud grinding noise told Bulma that the legs were
scraping the ground. There was nothing she could do. She’d lost all
control of the ship. She watched helplessly as they crunched through
trees as if they were twigs. They did seem to be slowing, at least.

Suddenly a huge tree loomed ahead of them. They were going to hit it!
That tree was big enough to stop them, and if it did, it would
certainly stop them hard.

"Brace yourselves, guys," Bulma said, gulping. "This is going to
hurt!"

With a sickening crack, the ship slammed into the massive tree,
jerking Bulma forward so hard that her restraint harness nearly
snapped. Then, all was silence. The ship had stopped.

"Are you guys okay?" Bulma asked, unbuckling herself from her chair
and turning around to check on Kuririn and Gohan. They were paler
than usual, but seemed okay.

"I’m all right," Gohan said, unbuckling his restraint harness.

"Same here," Kuririn said, doing the same. "But that sure was a bumpy
ride."

"Well, at least we landed safely," Bulma said. "Come on. Let’s go
look out the window to see where we are."

They ran up to the window and looked past the big tree toward the
horizon. There was nothing but trees for as far as the eye could see.

"Wow," breathed Gohan. "Now I know why the planet was so green. Look
at all the trees!"

Bulma gasped. "Whoa! I’m glad this big tree was here," she said,
pointing down, "because look where we are!"

Kuririn and Gohan looked at where she was pointing and gasped too.
They were right on the edge of an enormous cliff!

"It’s a good thing we stopped when we did," Gohan muttered. Kuririn
and Bulma nodded in agreement.

Kuririn studied the trees for a few seconds. "Hey, Bulma," he said
suddenly. "Are you sure this is Namek?"

"Well," she answered, "I’m sure I followed Zeshin’s directions exactly.
This must be Namek."

"But I don’t see any Nameks yet," Kuririn said. "And I’m sure that if
there were any, at least one would be here by now."

"I know!" Gohan exclaimed. "Why don’t you check your dragon radar
for dragonballs, Bulma"

"Good thinking, Gohan!" Bulma exclaimed. She dug through her bag to
find it. Suddenly the ship lurched forward, sending Bulma crashing
into the control panel. Then the ship was still again.

"Both of you get in your seats and buckle up!" She ordered, trying not
to move too much. But before anyone could do anything else, the tree
that was holding the ship up lurched forward again, only this time, it
went over the edge of the cliff, and the ship followed it down. That
was the last thing Bulma remembered.


On to Chapter Seven...