É a novela "Decisão de som" por Robert Silverberg e Randall Garrett . Você pode lê-lo aqui . Ele foi adaptado para o rádio (drasticamente abreviado) como um episódio de Explorando o amanhã que você pode ouvir para aqui .
Aqui estão alguns trechos para mostrar como a história se encaixa na sua descrição.
A espaçonave está chegando de Marte:
The Martian Queen was a luxury liner of some five hundred metric tons, belonging to Barr Spaceways. She was, at the time, making a "short-run” orbit from Mars to Earth, carrying a hundred and fifty passengers and a crew of thirty, including stewards.
A causa do acidente é desconhecida:
Just exactly what went wrong with the drivers isn't known or knowable; the four men who might have known were dead within seconds after it happened. There are several things that could have caused the disaster—an accident which, except for the level-thinking of one man, might have caused the deaths of many more than the mere handful who died in a sudden blaze of light.
Os passageiros recebem uma mentira reconfortante que é literalmente verdadeira:
"Your attention please! Your attention please! The ship is falling out of control, but there is absolutely no danger of our hitting Earth. A rocket from the spaceport will be here in two minutes. Repeat: a rocket from the spaceport will be here in two minutes. Please wait quietly, and be ready for it when it comes.”
O perigo para as pessoas no solo é a onda de choque:
"But its actual impact with Earth’s surface isn't going to be the thing that will do the damage. It won’t matter whether it comes down in Long Island Sound or in Times Square—it’s the impact with the atmosphere that will cause about twenty million deaths.”
No one said anything. The five men in the screen looked at him in blank-faced horror.
"You know what happens when a jet plane goes over a city too low?" Stanley said. "A supersonic jet can break windows. What sort of sound wave do you think a five-hundred-metric-ton spaceship will cause at—seventy-two thousand miles an hour?
"I’ll tell you. It would flatten every structure for miles around. If that ship hits Long Island Sound, New York City will be toppling in ruins before it ever arrives! Every town on Long Island is going to be pancaked. From Newark, New Jersey, to Hartford, Connecticut, that shock wave will knock over everything standing. This isn’t a matter of a few people in a ship dying; it's a matter of millions!”
A espaçonave é bombardeada:
"Oh, it won’t land,” said Stanley. His voice sounded old and tired. "There won’t be any crash. I sent up an XV-19 under robot control several minutes before you gentlemen got together. It was loaded with a thermo nuclear warhead. Captain Deering will—or I should say has—guided it in. The Martian Queen was vaporized over a minute ago. It was the only thing to do.”