The doctor said, “Schastleevava pootee! Nye nada peet alkagolya.”

“Have a good journey,” Geena translated. “But drink no alcohol.”

“There goes my plan for the day.”

“Here.” Geena handed him a pencil.

“What’s this?”

“Sign your name on the door.”

Henry did so, adding his signature to a patina of graffiti here. “Another cosmonaut ritual?”

“Dating back to Gagarin himself.” Geena smiled.

Henry picked up his polarizing microscope.

He was taken for breakfast, in an opulent dining hall. The food was meat drowned in butter and sour cream. Henry was hungry, but when he bit into the meal he could almost feel his arteries furring up. This was no place to be a vegetarian, it seemed.

There were others here, mostly men, some in uniform: cosmonauts, doctors, managers, engineers. They ate breakfast too, but largely in silence. He could sense them staring at him, but when he looked directly towards them they looked away.

Heavy cutlery clinked on thick china plates.

He leaned to Geena. “What’s with these guys? Are they jealous?”

“Some are. The other cosmonauts here. Some have waited years for a flight into space, and now they have to watch two Americans fly their ship—”

“I know, I know. Here I am, taking their berth. Just like JSC. What about the rest?”

“Only the most senior managers are here. It’s an honour for them.”

“Why? What’s the fascination? The fact that we’re going into space?”

Geena turned to him, pale blue eyes as empty as church windows. “No. The fact that we’ll probably die.”

When he was done he was led, with Geena, from the building, into the fresh air. It was mid-morning now. The sky was high and blue, the air hot with a billowing breeze. This was Kazakhstan. He was far to the north here — further north than Chicago, for instance — but he was still in the heart of the world continent, and it was a land of hot, parched summers and glacial winters.

They walked down a little path that wound between rows of elms, to a car park that might have been located outside any mall in any city in America. There were buses, police cars, what looked like press vehicles with TV cameras stuck to their roofs.

Cape Canaveral, it was not.

There was an air of casual cheerfulness, of slow progress to their ultimate destination. People came up to Geena, and offered comments, backslaps and jokes. It was very different from the way he’d followed Geena through launches at Canaveral: informal, as if this was some huge family vacation.

But nobody spoke to Henry. It was as if, he thought, he had left the planet already.

They clambered aboard a bus. An Orthodox priest stood by the door and blessed them, mumbling incomprehensibly. Henry bowed back, more for the benefit of the old priest than himself. He stowed his polarizing microscope under his seat.