“The rockets that will take us to the Moon?”

“You got it,” she murmured.

“Yes.” Arkady’s voice was sombre. “But the ship is smart. It has aligned itself with the horizon and with the stars, and is ready to fire the new engines strapped to it. I am not concerned. The ship is much wiser than we are…”

“Umm,” said Henry. “I just wish they’d had time to test this stuff.”

“You can’t have everything,” murmured Geena. “Henry, this is going to be eyeballs-out.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

Here we go. Countdown to autosequence. We’ve got — ah — ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five —

Geena flipped a switch. “Arm.”

Three, two, one, sequence.

“Got it,” Geena said. “Right in the groove. Green on the attitude. She’s holding like we’re locked in cement.”

“Copy that.”

Here we go. Coming up to the five count.

“Roger.”

Coming up — now — five, four, three, two —

Henry gripped the frame of his chair, and braced his back.

— one —

“Oh, shit.”

Zero.

He heard a low, deep rumble. Henry felt himself fall forward into his straps, as if he was falling into the nose of the cabin. The push was sharp, initially, then settled down to a steady thrust, a little more than Earth-normal gravity. “Eyeballs-out, hell,” he said.

“Didn’t have time to design it out,” Geena shouted back. “Sorry.”

Henry turned and looked out his window.

He was flying over the Pacific night. He could see the light of the engine, a pale orange spot, reflected in the wrinkled Moonlit hide of ocean. Anybody down there, looking up, would be able to see the burn, see the first Moonship in a generation veering off into space.

But already Earth was sliding past his window. He could feel the craft sliding sideways, pushing out of Earth orbit, heading for the Moon.

You’re looking good here. Right down the old centre line.

“Thirty thousand feet per second,” Geena said. “Thirty-three. Thirty-four. Thirty-five…”

After a couple of minutes the thrust shut down, without warning. Henry watched the others, but they didn’t seem concerned. There was a series of metallic bangs.

“Second stage,” Arkady said evenly. “Three, two, one—”

Another jolt from the ship’s nose, eyeballs-out again, a thrust that lasted for two more minutes. Then that died — and the ship flipped over — and a final meaty push in the small of his back.

The computer shut down the engine. The push died in an instant, and Henry felt himself pitch up out of his couch.

So it was done, so quickly. He was moving at more than twenty-four thousand miles an hour, fast enough to coast all the way to the lip of Earth’s gravity well, and then downhill to a rocky Moon. But inside the little descent module, with its homely clatter of vents and fans and generators, there was no sense of speed.