He was trained for emergency landing. The Soyuz was designed to come down on land, somewhere in the Soviet Union, and there would be choppers to pick him up. In theory. But he was taken to the bush in Kazakhstan, a place the capsule might come down where helicopters wouldn’t be able to land, and he practised getting into a recovery chair lowered from a helicopter.

And he underwent what the American managers called water egress training. With Arkady and Geena, he was dropped in a mocked-up Soyuz entry module into the Black Sea. It was a July day and it was hot — around thirty Centigrade — and the three of them, stiffly non-communicative, struggled in the hot, cramped capsule, bobbing in the sea, to change out of their spacesuits and into survival gear. It took three hours to get ready, and when Arkady finally opened the hatch, steam gushed out, and briny sea air replaced the stink of vomit that had come to dominate in the capsule.

They had to float in the water, holding onto each other in a triangle. The rescue crews left them there for another hour before fishing them out, and barely a word passed between them.

And in the middle of all this robust Russian training, they were visited by Frank Turtle and his team, red-eyed from jet lag and overwork, with bundles of charts and vu-graphs and laptops, who took Geena and Arkady through the procedures they were working out in such haste: procedures for the real mission, beyond the technicalities of Soyuz and Station — the flight to the Moon itself.

But still, final approval for launch didn’t come.

Then, one August morning, Henry was woken, to see the new images, of fire and ash and flood coming out of the west coast of America, and he knew there would be no more hesitation.

20

The editorial review was not going well. And, Joely Stern thought with dismay, it was only 9.00 a.m.

Cecilia Stanley, her editor, read from the copy glowing on her screen. “…And from there Earthquake and Thunder went south… They went south first and sank the ground… Every little while there would be an earthquake, then another earthquake, and another earthquake… And then the water would fill those places… ‘That is what human beings will thrive on,’ said Earthquake… Shit, Joely. Earthquake and Thunder. What is this, Sesame Street?”

Joely kept her temper. She’d already lost it once too often in this job.

As an insurance, though, she had her ID in her pocket, in case she was fired on the spot.

“It’s a Yurok myth,” she said evenly.

Sitting behind her desk of expensive dressed stone, Cecilia was a severe, toothy woman of thirty-five. A classic corporate climber; a devourer of souls, thought Joely. “And just what,” Cecilia said in her cool way, “precisely is a Yurok?”