He could see a face, sunlit in a porthole, peering out at him, human pink against the engineering dullness of the Station, the blue of Earth.

As the Soyuz’s nose nuzzled into its docking port, struts and shadows and powder-grey blankets filled his window.

He could feel the moment of docking: a slow grind of metal, a hard thump, a noisy rattle of latches. Then the Soyuz swung back and forth, gently, for long minutes; he heard metal creak around him.

They swam up into the orbital module. When Geena opened the hatch, Henry could smell hot metal: the Soyuz hull, which had been exposed to vacuum.

Jesus, he thought. This is real.

And when he looked into the Station, at human faces grinning at him, Henry felt an unexpected gush of emotion. It really meant something, he found, to fly up through all that rocket energy and rattling metal, and arrive somewhere.

Here was Arkady, waiting on the other side of the hatch. He was hanging with his head down, his body disappearing into the dimness beyond. He was wearing a Green Bay Packers T-shirt, cut-off jeans and thick socks.

Geena reached out a hand to him. He pulled her up, and they embraced. But they broke when Henry came blundering up behind.

“Pay the cab fare,” Henry said to Arkady. “I got no change.”

Neither of them laughed. Henry looked from one to the other. Suddenly, unexpectedly, he felt like a gooseberry.

“We do not have much time,” Arkady said gravely.

Geena checked her watch, a big Moonwalker’s Rolex strapped to her arm. “TLI is minus fifty.”

“What’s TLI?”

“Trans-lunar injection. When we leave Earth orbit, for—”

“The Moon. Minus fifty what? Hours?”

She grinned. “Minutes.”

He gaped at her. “You guys are crazy.”

“The launch window is complicated, Henry. It will last about a day — after that the plane of our orbit will drift and we’ll have to wait a month — and we have pushbutton opportunities of a minute or so, once an orbit—”

Arkady put a hand on his shoulder. “We will take care of it. If you need to defecate, I would recommend you do it here, in the departure lounge, so to speak. It will be rather more comfortable than later.”

Henry shrugged him off. “What is it with you astronauts and my toilet functions? I’ll take my chances.”

“As you wish.” Arkady floated off.

Henry struggled after Geena, through the Station. He hadn’t got his sea legs yet, and he kept getting his elbows or his clumsy feet hung up.