It was dark in here. The habitable compartments made up a kind of cramped corridor, strung out together, patchily lit by floods. There was a constant rattling of machinery, thumps and bangs and whirs. Oddly, he couldn’t smell anything at all, save a little sparky ozone. That made a certain sense. The air was recycled, with carbon dioxide absorbent and contaminant filters. It must be dry, clean, healthy. And it must be irradiated by the raw uv coming in the windows, ionized to ozone.

The windows were small, well-separated portholes. They were grimy, coated with dusty fingermarks. Any dirt in the air up here was going to stay there, he supposed, until it stuck to some surface, or got sucked out by the filters.

After all you couldn’t open a window to let out the fug.

The walls were covered by thick insulation blankets. Every square inch of usable surface seemed to be crammed with equipment: boxes of electronic gear, pipes and air-ducts lashed together with silver tape, crudely lagged. Cables were strung about everywhere, floating like seaweed. It was like some old geezer’s home workshop, he thought, encrusted by years of make-do-and-mend, pieces of equipment crudely taped to the walls, instrument panels and air scrub cartridges and exercise gear sticking out at every angle, and towels hanging like flags from colour-coded holders on the walls.

This wasn’t so much a science platform as a survival shelter, he thought. It was strange to think of humans struggling to survive in all this dimness and clutter, while the silence and beauty of space, of the Earthscape itself, hung beyond the scuffed walls.

Right now there were five people up here, in a Station built for three: himself, Geena and Arkady plus two regular crew. Everybody was working but himself, it seemed, hauling equipment and supplies back and forth along the cramped modules. Less than an hour to TLI, Henry thought, and they were still loading. So much for checklists. He wondered what crucial item was being forgotten, what key mistake was being made, right this minute…

He saw Arkady carrying his petrological microscope, ugly wooden box and all, and he felt obscurely reassured.

Geena introduced the crew briefly. There was a tough, competent-looking woman of about fifty called Bonnie Jones, and a guy called Sixt Guth. Sixt had to be at least sixty, Henry thought: fit and lithe, his head totally free of hair, as if it had worn smooth. He was struggling with a pack of consumables, but he stopped to shake Henry’s hand. That left something on his palm, Henry realized, a kind of grey sheen.

Sixt saw him looking. “Sorry. Metal dust,” he said. “From the Progress.”

“The Progress?”

“The supply ships the Russkies use. Like unmanned Soyuz. Pieces of shit. Half of them are looted for food by the ground crews in Kazakhstan.” Sixt winked at Henry. “So you’re going to the Moon. I envy you.”