There were so many ships, forty two in all, landing on Pegasus that day, that they had drawn straws for the landing pattern. There were a few crew members from the planet guiding ships to and fro, but no kind of air traffic control to speak of. This was both a help, and a hindrance to Wash, who did his best flying instinctively. A few of the pilots he had argued with earlier had taken to cutting off his flight path just to annoy him. A few, more than a few, were hotdogging for some reason, and Wash saw no reason to do that. Very few of them actually impressed him. The one that impressed him the most was the pilot of Raydor's ship, the Contessa. The green hued Firefly had pulled a complete loop before landing gently and solidly in front of the crew member waving them down.

Serenity's number came up somewhere in the middle, and the crew had cautiously stepped out to watch the rest of the ships land. Mal was glad that Wash had stayed levelheaded enough not to try some of the stunts that some of the other pilots were doing. A Death's Head was landing right now, and the look of it took al up short. Not long ago, the crew had come up against a very dangerous and skilled bounty hunter named Jubal Early who had piloted a ship much like this one, only so heavily modified that it was unrecgnizable. He breathed a little easier when a very attractive woman got out of the ship. It could have been a sasquatch, Mal reckoned, just so long as it wasn't Early.

Monty stopped by to say hello, and to inquire after his wife, Bridget. Mal said that he had left her on the moon Monty had abandoned her on, and left it at that. The less Monty knew about the job they had pulled afterwards, the better. Actually, the less everyone knew about that job, in which Mal had stolen, with a little assistance, the prototype of all handheld laser technology, The Lassiter, the happier Mal would be. It was still on board, seeing how as no one Mal knew would touch the thing. Very valuable and completely unsellable.