“Ball-breaking work. Henry, Columbia, over there on the pad, was turned around from its last mission in two weeks. We already have two orbiters in space right now. We only have two simulators; we’re sending this crew up untrained. We think the operational safety of the Shuttle system was pegged at 95%, after Challenger. But that’s thanks to the safety checks. We have no idea what risks we’re running now. We don’t even have time to calculate them.”

So it’s my fault if Columbia blows on the pad, today?

But he let her talk. He understood how hard it was to overcome a generations-old culture; if this was her way of working it out of her system, fine.

…Despite the countdown, the launch was somehow unexpected.

There was a flare of dazzling yellow flame, liquid and vibrant, from the solid rocket boosters, and then the whole unlikely stack lifted smoothly off the ground, twisting as it rose. It trailed a cloud of white smoke, illuminated from within by yellow-red fire, and a throaty, crackling noise that seemed to ripple down from the sky.

The energy was palpable, like a seismic event. But it had been made by human hands. All around him, people were whooping, laughing. Crying.

Geena looked at Henry, her face shadowed by booster light. “Now do you see what it was all about?”

Moved, he said, truthfully, “Yes.”

“We could have been on Mars by now,” she said. “On the moons of Jupiter. We could have had colonies big enough to survive off the planet.”

“Maybe we could have. But we don’t. And now—”

“And now, we have to struggle like hell just to get back to the goddamn Moon, which we abandoned in 1972. You still sure you want to go through with this?”

“I don’t think I have a choice.”

The Shuttle rose on its stack of billowing smoke, and a warm wind pulsed over them as rocket light glimmered from the patient Atlantic.

When he got back to his room, there was bad news from Scotland, and elsewhere.

15

Jane was woken by the gentle tone of her mobile phone.

She propped herself up on her shoulder, and took the call in a whisper. Then she folded up the phone and put it away.

It had been Henry, calling from NASA.

The surge which had killed her father had subsided. But now, it seemed, the Moonseed’s spread had started again: out of Edinburgh, and elsewhere.

She gave herself one second, before letting that sink into her consciousness. She closed her eyes and relished the warmth of the Red Cross blankets wrapped around her, the soft, untroubled breathing of her son a few feet away.

Time to move on.