They put Saul up in a hotel next to the runway, where he woke early the next morning, still feeling bruised and sore and tired. Mitchell had already departed the room he’d taken next door to Saul’s own, and so Saul ate alone in the hotel’s tiny restaurant, staring out across the desert landscape towards the Saturn rocket a few kilometres distant.

Lester picked him up just before eight, driving him to another building nearby that turned out to contain a suite of changing rooms, the walls lined with sportswear-model spacesuits. He found Mitchell there, following Amy’s detailed instructions and by that time already halfway into donning his own suit.

Amy waved Saul over to join them, ordering him to strip down before showing him how to put on a pair of rubber-lined long johns studded with flexible microscopic monitors. Following that, he clambered inside one of the racked spacesuits, which proved to be a one-piece garment entered through a diagonal zip running from the crotch all the way up to one shoulder. A how-to, uploaded to his contacts, described the function of each piece of equipment his suit contained in interminable detail, before guiding him through a full systems check that required him to put on a helmet and pressurize the suit to check for potential leaks or any other problems. Once he had the helmet on, icons appeared along the bottom of its curved interior surface, each bearing a name: Saul, Amy, Mitchell and Lester.

‘Jesus,’ exclaimed Amy, when she noticed Saul struggling to remove his helmet a few minutes later. ‘Trust an amateur.’ With a sorrowful look, she helped him unlock it from his suit’s neck ring.

‘How does the suit feel?’ she asked.

‘Itchy,’ Saul replied. ‘Not very easy to move.’

‘Believe me, it’ll be harder once we get to the lunar surface, but we’ll be there to guide you along the way.’ She turned and snapped her fingers at Mitchell, until she had his attention, too. ‘Didn’t you say Saul’s been up in space before?’

‘Just a sub-orb jump,’ Mitchell replied, still adjusting the fabric hood he had pulled over his head.

‘Right,’ Amy turned back to Saul, ‘well, this time it’s going to be a little different. We’re launching way ahead of schedule as it is, which means you need to be ready for anything.’

‘Like what?’

She patted his shoulder. ‘I wouldn’t want to worry your pretty little head with the grisly details. You’ve got your rubber underwear on, that’s the main thing.’

Mitchell glanced across at him. ‘Like when we jumped,’ he explained. ‘You have to pee inside your suit, remember?’

‘Somehow I’d managed to wipe that detail from my mind,’ Saul grumbled. ‘What about, uh, everything else?’

‘There’s a hose attachment for that,’ said Lester, helpfully.