Stone replied for her. “That would be an honor, Ralph.”

She checked her cuff checklist. Reagan was right on cue. Trust an old actor.

She turned toward the MESA.

She imagined the TV pictures of herself on their way to Earth: she would be a stiff, angular figure, posed on the footpad, her outline fuzzed by false colors against the crimson of Mars.

She took a still Hasselblad camera from the MESA platform. After some fumbling, she fitted the camera to a mount above her chest panel.

She turned around slowly, letting the camera snap a panoramic mosaic. Then she picked up a small TV camera, and fixed that in place on her chest, beside the Hasselblad.

The quality of the radio link changed; a Houston capcom came on the line. “Go ahead, Mr. President. Out.”

Natalie and Phil, I’m talking to you by a radio linkup from the Oval Office at the White House.

Reagan’s gravelly voice was lively, interested. He sure plays the part well. She found herself drawing a little more upright, as if coming to attention.

Now, the NASA technical people tell me that it will take four minutes for my words to reach you, and four more before I get to hear your reply. So I figure we can’t have much of a conversation. I just want to say this, as you talk to us from the Valley of Mangala. Our progress in space — continuing to take giant steps for all mankind — is a tribute to American teamwork and excellence. And we can be proud to say: We are first; we are the best; and we are so because we’re free.

America has always been greatest when we dared to be great. We have reached for greatness again. We can follow our dreams to the planets and to distant stars, living and working in space for peaceful, economic, and scientific gain…

York — standing on the pad in the reality of the glowing landscape, and with the weight of her pack heavy on her back — endured the remote, distorted voice.

…Now I’m going to shut up, Natalie and Phil, but I want you to indulge us with just a couple of minutes of your time. Please tell us how it feels to be, at last, on the surface of Mars.

Reagan fell silent, and the radio link hissed.

Stone said: “Thank you, Mr. President. It’s an honor and a privilege for us to be here, representing not only the United States, but all of mankind. Natalie…”

Natalie, tell them how it feels.

The oldest question in the world, the most difficult to answer — and, maybe, the most important, she thought.

The one question the Apollo astronauts could never answer.

Now I must try.

In the pink sky, the sun was continuing to strengthen, and the world was a bowl of shades of red and brown, of light scattering from the dust on the ground and suspended in the air. The light from the hatchway shone as brilliantly white as before, incongruous.

“Okay, sir. The MEM is standing here on the flats north of Mangala Vallis. It’s a late-fall morning — we’re only about eighty days away from the winter solstice, here in the northern hemisphere of Mars. The sky is uniformly ocher. The dust suffuses everything with a pale, salmon hue. The red planet isn’t really so red: the dominant color is a moderate yellow-brown, reflected from the land. There’s no green, or blue, anywhere. If humans ever colonize Mars for good — no, make that when — we’ll have to invent a lot of new words for shades of brown.

“I’m almost on the Martian equator. To give you some reference, the great Tharsis Bulge, with its three huge shield volcanoes, is a couple of thousand miles to the east of me; and Olympus Mons, the greatest volcano in the Solar System, is about the same distance to the north. But I can’t see the volcanoes, or the Bulge, from here; although this is a small world, Martian features are too huge, overwhelming on a human scale.

“We’re close enough to Tharsis for this region to have been affected by the uplift of the Bulge. So, although the surface here looks as flat as a beach at low tide, I know that when I look away from the MEM I’m probably looking down a slope of a few tenths of a degree.”

She took a long, slow look around at the panorama of Mangala Vallis.

“The MEM is standing on a surface which is littered with rocks. The rocks, I would say, range in size from maybe half a yard up to two yards. The rocks show vesicles. That is, there are small bubbles in the surface of the rocks; it means the rocks are probably bits of frozen lava, and the bubbles were caused by the escape of gases from within the molten rocks. Gases lost maybe a billion years ago. The rocks are uniformly pitted and fluted, I would guess by wind erosion. I can see smaller formations that look like pebbles, but I’m pretty sure they are duricrust aggregate. Just bits of the surface stuck together. The surface is not like sand; it’s evidently much finer-grained. The grains are no more than a micron or so wide. I’m sure that the dust is the result of the slow weathering of the rocks, with much oxidation having occurred; the rocks have the characteristic deep red-brown coloration of smectite clays…

“I can see how geological processes are continuing to shape this landscape. The surface has clearly been scoured by wind: the landscape is eroded, and the dust under my feet has surely been transported from around the planet. From a geological point of view, there is clearly a sequence of events represented here: impact, wind, volcanic activity, possibly flooding, probably ground ice.

“The Moon is an old world; we think its story ended, essentially, a billion or more years ago. But it’s obvious to me, standing here, that Mars, like Earth, is still evolving. Still alive.”

There was a long silence on the radio link.

“Natalie,” Stone said gently. “Are you all right?”

“Yes. Yes, I’m fine, Phil.”

She thought of her words dispersing, radiating away to Earth and beyond; she wished she could call them back. It’s not enough. It could never be enough.

But, I guess, it was the best I could do.

It was time.

She said, “I’ll step off the footpad now.”

She held on to the ladder with her right hand and leaned out to the left. She raised her left boot over the lip of the footpad, pushed it out a little way, and — silently, carefully — lowered it to the dust.

Nobody spoke; Stone, Gershon, remote Earth. It was as if the whole of creation was focused on her, on this moment.

She tested her weight, bouncing on her left boot in the gentle gravity. The Martian regolith was firm enough to hold her. As she had known it would be.

She was standing with one foot on this clumsy artifact from Earth, the other on the virgin terrain of Mangala. She looked around, briefly, at the empty landscape, framed by the rounded rim of her faceplate, and she could see the play of soft ocher light over her nose and cheeks, the flesh of a human face, here on Mars.

Holding on to the ladder, she placed her right foot on the ground. Then, cautiously, she let go of the ladder. She was standing freely on Mars.

She took a step forward, then another.

Her boots left clear, firm prints, which showed the ridging of the soles. She wished she could take her shoes off, press her bare toes into the sand of this Martian beach, feel the fine, powdery stuff for herself.

Her suit was comfortable, warm. She could hear the whir of the 20,000-rpm fans in her backpack. She had 180-degree vision through her faceplate; she had no sense of enclosure, of confinement.

She took a few more steps.

She bounced across the surface. Moving on Mars was dreamlike, somewhere between walking and floating. She had no real difficulty in moving around. In fact it was easier than the sims she’d performed on the ground. But she was very aware of the mass of the equipment on her back, and she had to lean forward to maintain her balance. It was difficult to bend at the knees, so that her movement came mostly from her ankles and toes; she suspected her legs would tire quickly. But my monkey toes are strong, pawing through this Mars dust.