And a day later he was called away to make a parachute jump. He resisted this, but Geena insisted he had to do it once, under controlled conditions, so he knew he could hack it if he had to do it for real.

He was given a couple of hours” familiarization, and then he was taken up in a Chinook. Geena, of course, went first. She didn’t hesitate in the open doorway but stepped straight out, her static line cracking sharply behind her.

When it was Henry’s turn, he leaned out of the doorway — it was impossible to believe he was standing here, on a platform in the air, with nothing separating him from the ground — but he could see Geena’s parachute, bleached white against the pale green of the ground. Somehow that sight dissolved his own fears, and he jumped without hesitation.

A few seconds of free fall, of the wind plucking at him as he approached terminal velocity, and then the chute opened behind him, and he fell into his harness like a doll.

The descent was tranquil. He could hear sounds from the ground, cars and sirens, though they were muffled, and he thought he heard bird song.

He didn’t want it to end. It was like being back in the pool again.

But it didn’t last.

In the middle of all this he tried to keep up with the developing science of the Moonseed, and the bad news from around the planet, and to work on the mission itself: at least, that limited part of it he could control. The surface EVA schedule. The detailed science objectives. Where he wanted to land. The equipment he needed to take. How it would be deployed on the lunar surface.

He demanded, but didn’t get, some practice time implanting seismographs wearing a spacesuit.

Frank Turtle looked miserable. “We haven’t had time to work up anything on those lines,” he said. “They mothballed all the old Apollo facilities, like the Peter Pan rig.”

“We’re just going to have to wing it,” Geena said grimly.

Henry wondered what a Peter Pan rig was.

But it was academic, because there was no time to pursue this before he was dropped in the Nevada desert, close to Reno, with Geena and a couple of cohorts from the Astronaut Office, for three days of survival training: what to do if your spacecraft comes home off course.