Less than three hundred miles beneath York, a mottled, battered landscape slid by. She could see Arabia, a bright yellow circular area, and to its right an irregular, blue-black patch, the volcanic plateau called the Syrtis Major Planum. Syrtis had been the first Martian feature observed by telescope from Earth. And now I am falling ass-backwards over Syrtis itself; I can see it before me, a lurid patch the size of my hand.

She felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up, prickling. She was so close that Syrtis slid across her field of view, falling toward her as Ares slid deeper into Mars’s gravity well, moving past her fast enough for it to change the lighting conditions in her cabin.

The belly of Mars seemed to bulge out at her. Mars was a small world; in contrast to Earth, she could see its curvature prominently, even at such a low altitude.

She tried to be analytical, to separate the panorama into geological units…

But it was a battered, tired landscape. The land was the color of bruises, inflicted by the ancient meteorite impacts: like accumulated porphyrin, which the little world was unable to break down. Bruises on the face of a corpse, left there for all time. It was a surprisingly depressing panorama, obviously lifeless.

“Thirty seconds,” Stone said.

York turned briefly to her own workstation. On the first pass around the planet, the science platform was working at full capacity, taking observations of the surface and atmosphere. Even the tail-off of the radio carrier during loss of signal, as Earth was eclipsed by the atmosphere of Mars, would give a lot of information about the structure of the Martian air.

These first observations were important. If the burn went wrong, and the mission turned into nothing more than a flyby, it could be that these contingency observations would be the most significant data that Ares would return.

Ares dipped lower, and swept over the line between night and day. She was granted a brief glimpse of a line of craters picked out by the last of the sun, their wind-eroded rims casting long shadows across the ancient, resilient surface.

“Ares, Houston, coming up to loss of signal,” Young said from distant Mission Control. “You’re go all the way, guys.”

“Thanks a lot,” Stone said. “See you on the other side, John. Ten. Nine.”

…Then the cratered contrast was gone, and Ares flew into shadow, over a land immersed in unbroken darkness. The Solar System is full of empty, unlit worlds, she thought. Earth is the exception. She felt isolated, vulnerable. A long way from home.

“Three. Two. One.”

Static burst from the grilles on the science-station racks, from the little speakers in her headset.

LOS had come right on time. That meant their trajectory was true.

Gershon laughed, explosively. “How about that. Right on the button. Hey, Phil. I wonder if they just turned it off. Wouldn’t that be terrific? I can imagine John saying, ‘They’re just a bunch of uptight assholes. Whatever happens, just turn the damn thing off…’ ”

York could see Stone in profile, beyond the cupped headrest of his couch. He was grinning, but it was a tight grin that showed a lot of teeth. “Let’s go to the MOI checklist, Ralph. Ah, coming up on ten minutes fifteen to MOI.”

York craned her head upward, staring at the circular patch of darkness that was Mars. She summoned up a map of the surface in her mind. Ares was traveling over the Hesperia Planum, another volcanic plain to the east of Syrtis, close to the equator.

She could see traces, outlines, glimmers of white against the darkness. Has to be starlight, picking out the CO2 ice.

She had seen nomads’ campfires burn, pinpricks in the night of the huge deserts of Earth. But there were no fires in the Martian desert. In fact, of all the worlds of the Solar System, only Earth — with its oxygen-rich atmosphere — knew fire.

“Five minutes to the burn.”

She was sealed into her suit, shut in with the hiss of oxygen, the whir of fans, the scratch of her own breathing. She felt isolated, cut off. Lousy design. I need to hold somebody’s hand.

“Okay, Ralph,” Stone said. “Translation control power, on.”

“On.”

“Rotational hand controller number two, armed.”

“Armed.”

“Okay. Stand by for the primary TVC check.”

“Pressures coming up nicely,” Gershon said. “Everything is great…”

A hundred feet behind them, the big MS-II injection stage was rousing from its long, interplanetary hibernation. Heaters in the big cryogenic tanks were boiling off vapor, bringing up a pressure sufficient to force propellant and oxidizer out of the tanks, and Stone and Gershon were running tests of the sequence which would bring the hydrogen and oxygen into explosive combination inside the combustion chambers of the four J-2S engines.

In the window above her, she could see a segment of a circle: bone white in the starlight, quite precise, immense.

“…Oh, my God.”

Stone twisted, awkward in his suit, and peered over his shoulder. “What’s wrong?”

“Look at that. I think it’s Hellas.” The deepest impact crater on Mars. And white, with its frozen lake of carbon dioxide. Somewhere in there, the Soviets had set down Mars 9.

Stone grunted. “You’re going to be looking at that for a long time.” He turned his back, his disapproval evident, and resumed the preburn checklist with Gershon.

“Thirty seconds,” Stone said. “Everything is looking nominal. Still go for MOI.”

He placed his gloved hand over the big plastic firing button.

The whole burn was automated, York knew, controlled by computers in the cluster’s Instrumentation Unit, the big doughnut of electronics behind the Mission Module. Multiple computers, endlessly checking everything and backing each other up and taking polls among themselves. It was hard to see what could go wrong. Nevertheless, Stone sat there with his hand on the button, ready to take over if he had to. To York, it looked comical — and yet, somehow heroic as well. Touching.

“Twenty seconds,” Stone said. “Brace, guys.”

“All systems are go for MOI,” Gershon said.

York checked her own racks. “Roger, go.”

She checked the restraints across her chest, rapidly, and settled her head against her canvas headrest. She tried to make sure there were no creases or folds in the thick layers of the pressure suit under her legs or back.

She felt her heart pound, and chill sweat broke out across her cheeks and under her chin.

“T minus ten seconds,” Gershon said.

Stone’s hands hovered over his controls.

“Eight seconds.”

“I got a 99,” Stone said. He pushed a button. “Press to proceed.”

York felt air rush out of her in a sigh.

“Six seconds,” Gershon said. “Five, four. Ullage.”

There was a brief rattle, a sharp kick in the small of her back. Eight small solid-fuel rockets, clustered around the base of the MS-II, had given the booster a small shove, helping the propellants settle in their tanks.

Gershon said, “Two. One. Ignition.”

The crisp ullage shove died, to be replaced by a smooth, steady push that she felt in her back, her neck, her thighs.

The force built up rapidly. The silence was eerie. She had her back to the direction of thrust, and she felt as if she was sitting up and being hurled forward, into some unknown future.

“Fifteen seconds in,” Stone said. “Point five G. Climbing.”

After a year of zero G, the pressure already felt enormous. So much for all those hours of exercises; didn’t do a damn bit of good.

There was a shudder, a vibration that set into the walls and equipment racks around her. Loose gear rattled. She heard a clatter somewhere behind her: some bit of equipment, inadequately stowed, falling the length of the Command Module.

“One G,” Stone called. “Two.”

The pressure built up further, compressing her chest.