Obviously fighting back his curiosity Will ushered her in through the sliding glass doors and led her through the building to the launch facility at the rear of the complex. As they stepped through the air-tight door into the hangar, Dorothy looked up at the gleaming shape of the SDC probe and gave a whistle of admiration.

‘Behold, the Virgil.’

Dorothy had followed the design and construction of the probe with interest. She knew that Virgil was the most sophisticated and successful British spacecraft ever built. Built as a successor to the ill-fated XK-5 space freighter, it was a two-stage, medium-lift, reusable launch vehicle, the lift stage separating after lift-off, returning to Earth and landing vertically, whilst the three-man probe itself was capable of re-entering the atmosphere and landing like a conventional aircraft.

As they made her way across the hangar towards the launch gantry, a woman in a white lab coat emerged from the shadows at the base of the spacecraft. Dorothy turned to Will angrily.

‘I thought I said that no one else was to be involved or the deal was off!’

Will stopped and frowned, taken aback by the tone in her voice. ‘And if you think I’m capable of launching a state-of-the-art space vehicle into orbit single-handed then you’re sadly deluded.’

Dorothy looked away, took a deep breath. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘The world doesn’t work the way you seem to want it to. You might think that you can go it alone, that you don’t need anyone else, but sometimes you do. Sometimes you just have to trust people.’

Trust! Dorothy just stared at him, aware that any further words at this point might not come out the way she intended. He knew more about her life than most people but even he didn’t know all of it.

To her relief, he said nothing further. He just gave her a sad smile and then shifted his attention to the woman approaching them

‘Dorothy, this is Sam O’Connor. She’ll be acting as Mission Controller on this little jaunt. Sam, this is Dorothy McShane.’

Sam shook her hand firmly, her smile warm and genuine. ‘Nice to meet you. Will’s talked about you a lot.’

‘Once,’ Will countered with a grin.

‘Or twice.’ Sam smiled back at Will. ‘He doesn’t seem to have a bad word to say about you.’

With an unexpected pang of sorrow, Dorothy realised that the two of them were far more than just co-workers. ‘Yeah, well, he’s easily fooled,’ she said, forcing herself to sound far more flippant than she was actually feeling. Fortunately, Sam was far more intrigued by the box that she was carrying.

‘So this is it?’ Sam raised an eyebrow. ‘This is what’s going to get us to the Moon before the Chinese?’

Dorothy nodded. ‘Oh yes.’

Sam shot a quick glance at Will, then shrugged. ‘You’d better follow me then.’