This was the stuff NASA was good at. Responding to an emergency. It was an organizational tic that irritated the balls off him when he was trying to push his projects through, but now it might be useful.

If there was a way to get to the Moon fast, NASA would find it.

He finished his food and stepped outside. The sky had turned pink-grey.

On a whim, he cut down a couple more streets and walked to the Embankment that lined the north-east bank of the river. The Thames was broad and placid and clean. There was a garden here, cut through by a roadway, and he found a place he could sit and look at Waterloo Bridge and the big modern concrete buildings squatting like toads on the south bank, the Queen Elizabeth Hall and the National Theatre.

The sun had set to the south-west, behind the rooftops of London. The horizon was tinged with a silvery lustre. Above that a yellowish haze, like LA smog, filled the western sky. The haze changed in colour and extent, ranging from a greenish yellow through orange and deep scarlet.

As he sat there and watched, the dusk crept on, and orange and olive tints washed through the whole of the sky — even to the east, over the river, which shone like copper in the light. Deep scarlet was gathering in the west now, even as the first stars started to appear, directly above him.

The sunset colours faded for a time, and the deep summer blue filtered down the sky, making it look almost normal. But now a new surge of blood-red seeped into the western sky, and looked set to linger long after the conclusion of a normal sunset.

Volcano sky. Shit. He’d seen nothing like it since Pinatubo.

He was getting cold, and he was tired as hell, and he got out of his seat to look for a cab.

He was due to leave the next day, for Washington. He wondered if he’d ever see Britain again.

6

Geena set up a meeting at the Outpost, with Jays Malone and the young missions-operations whiz he knew called Frank Turtle. When she arrived Jays and Frank were already here, sitting at a table with a couple of empty bottles apiece; she ordered a fresh round, with a Diet Coke for herself.

After introductions the guys resumed their conversation.

“…We were planning a shit-load of weird stuff before Challenger blew,” said Frank Turtle, talking rapidly, a little nervously, perhaps over-awed. “We were going to launch Galileo and Ulysses on Shuttle. Because both of those ships were going to Jupiter — and because the launch window was tight — we’d actually have had two Shuttles on orbit at the same time.