He took a moment to recover. “What’s eating her? Jealousy?”

“No,” Geena said. “Well, maybe a little. Mostly she resents your being here. The interruption to her routine.”

“Wow.”

“You get a little cabin fever up here.”

They came to another tunnel, set in the floor, with an open hatch.

He said, “And what’s down this rabbit hole?”

She said softly, “The Moon…” And she pushed him through the hatch.

It was just another Soyuz capsule, another crude ball of earthy Russian metal. Geena pushed him through the orbital module to the descent module, pointed at the right-hand seat and told him to buckle up.

For a few minutes longer the hatch above his head stayed open, and he could hear the crew frantically jamming last-minute cargo into the orbital module above him.

The Soyuz was basically the same design as the one in which he’d ridden to orbit. But there were some differences in the instrumentation: a small laptop computer, duct-taped to a wall, English labels hand-printed and stuck over some of the Russian gear. He got the sense of improvisation, of beat-the-clock preparation, of this simple little craft being hastily upgraded to be capable of taking three humans to the Moon, and back again.

The sense of hurry was not reassuring, right now.

Geena came swimming down. She wriggled over to the left-hand seat and pulled a checklist from a plastic pouch stuck on the wall.

Arkady followed, muscular limbs in a blue jumpsuit, crowding into the centre seat.

So the crew was complete, thought Henry. Geena was trained to fly the lander; Arkady would handle the Soyuz; and he was Mister Moon. Given the circumstances they were a well-matched crew. Complementary.

So why, then, was the atmosphere so stiff?

“Fifteen minutes to TLI.”

Radio voices responded to Geena, from the mission controls in Korolyov and Houston, English and Russian voices ticking through checklist items. Geena responded in kind, her Russian tinged with California.

“Shouldn’t we be wearing spacesuits?”

She turned to him, distracted. “The launch window is kind of tight here.”

“So, shut up, Henry.”

“Shut up, Henry.”

Arkady’s knees were jammed up against Henry’s. Try as he might, Henry just couldn’t get away from that gouging physical contact. The Soyuz seemed much more crowded with three than with two.

And now Sixt’s Moon-like face loomed briefly in the open hatch, and he nodded gravely, before he slammed the hatch shut.

Once more, Henry was sealed in.

Henry heard a hiss as the short tunnel between Station and Soyuz was evacuated. Then the clamps that held the craft together were released, and a spring connector pushed the Soyuz away. The undocking was a small symphony of thumps, bangs and obscure jolts.

Then the light in the porthole beside him started to change.

He could see the great powder-grey structure of the Station once more, drifting away from him. The Station was lined up so its long axis pointed down towards the centre of the blue Earth, and its big solar panels trailed after it in its orbit. He wondered dimly if the Station’s position had something to do with stability: maybe the orientation was tweaked that way by the Earth’s faint tides, and the solar panels felt the soft breeze of the remnants of the atmosphere, even so high, so that the Station sailed like some immense ship through this silent ocean.

Arkady saw him looking. “When Station is operational we will line it up with the long axis in the direction of flight. That eliminates tidal effects, from our zero-G manufacturing experiments—”

“When it’s operational.”

Arkady smiled sadly.

The checks continued, in English and Russian. Henry could follow maybe half of what was spoken, pick up maybe ten per cent of the sense.

…Roger, Geena, this is Houston. We’re all set here. We’re even ahead of schedule.

“Rog.”

Green lights here. Your attitudes look like they’re on the nose…

The basic Russian systems seemed to have been augmented by American electronics, to handle the extra functions required of the ship on this Moon flight. Arkady mostly worked at the basic Soyuz controls, while Geena tapped on her laptop. They worked pretty smoothly, all things considered, but sometimes they stumbled, and they had to repeat what they were doing in English and Russian.

The Soyuz turned in space, firing its attitude thrusters. Every clattering thruster pulse felt like a punch in the back. Henry could feel the shove of his couch and the hull wall, physically swinging him around.

Now there was another clatter he recognized. “We docked with something.”

“Very good,” said Geena drily. “We just picked up our booster stack, Henry.”

They flew into Earth shadow. When Henry peered through his window he could see fans of crystals spewing out in geometrically perfect straight lines from the attitude thrusters: rocket exhaust, in Moonlight.

Geena said, “The five-minute light is on. We should have the thirty-second light in — ah, five seconds — coming up — two, one, light:

Very good. We got TM confirmation. Timing is perfect, you guys.

“Roger that.”

I’ll count you down to autosequence and you’ll call at five… Confirming, flight directors have been around the horn at Houston and over in Korolyov, and we confirm you are go for TLI. Geena, you are go for TLI.

He asked, “What’s an autosequence?”

“The program for firing the rockets,” Geena said.

“The rockets that will take us to the Moon?”

“You got it,” she murmured.

“Yes.” Arkady’s voice was sombre. “But the ship is smart. It has aligned itself with the horizon and with the stars, and is ready to fire the new engines strapped to it. I am not concerned. The ship is much wiser than we are…”

“Umm,” said Henry. “I just wish they’d had time to test this stuff.”

“You can’t have everything,” murmured Geena. “Henry, this is going to be eyeballs-out.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

Here we go. Countdown to autosequence. We’ve got — ah — ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five —

Geena flipped a switch. “Arm.”

Three, two, one, sequence.

“Got it,” Geena said. “Right in the groove. Green on the attitude. She’s holding like we’re locked in cement.”

“Copy that.”

Here we go. Coming up to the five count.

“Roger.”

Coming up — now — five, four, three, two —

Henry gripped the frame of his chair, and braced his back.

— one —

“Oh, shit.”

Zero.

He heard a low, deep rumble. Henry felt himself fall forward into his straps, as if he was falling into the nose of the cabin. The push was sharp, initially, then settled down to a steady thrust, a little more than Earth-normal gravity. “Eyeballs-out, hell,” he said.

“Didn’t have time to design it out,” Geena shouted back. “Sorry.”

Henry turned and looked out his window.

He was flying over the Pacific night. He could see the light of the engine, a pale orange spot, reflected in the wrinkled Moonlit hide of ocean. Anybody down there, looking up, would be able to see the burn, see the first Moonship in a generation veering off into space.

But already Earth was sliding past his window. He could feel the craft sliding sideways, pushing out of Earth orbit, heading for the Moon.

You’re looking good here. Right down the old centre line.

“Thirty thousand feet per second,” Geena said. “Thirty-three. Thirty-four. Thirty-five…”

After a couple of minutes the thrust shut down, without warning. Henry watched the others, but they didn’t seem concerned. There was a series of metallic bangs.

“Second stage,” Arkady said evenly. “Three, two, one—”