Arkady cut loose from the booster stack. Working the Soyuz’s attitude thrusters with two handheld joysticks, he turned the spacecraft so the windows were pointing back towards the Earth.

The discarded booster stack looked immense, glowing in the unfiltered sunlight. Henry saw it was made up of three fat, squat cylinders, bound together in some kind of rough framework. Geena told him what he was seeing: the upper stages of three American-built boosters called IUSs, which had been docked to the Soyuz’s nose. The final push had come from a Russian engine called a Block-D, strapped to the back of the craft. The Block-D, incidentally, would deliver them to the Moon. The booster stack was dumping exhaust, spewing sheets of sparkling ice particles into space, sheets which spiralled out as the stage turned. It was like some immense lawn sprinkler, Henry thought.

And beyond it, Henry could see the whole Earth, already small enough to fit into the frame of the little window. For the first time he could see the object of his life’s study, not as fragments of landscape, but as a planet, complete and entire, folded over on itself.

From out here, Earth’s dominant colour was blue, the deep, mature blue of the oceans, with clouds laced over them dazzling ice white. Where the land showed, he could make out the bright oranges and browns of the desert, but the softer greens of the temperate zones were washed out to a bluish grey. A world of ocean and desert.

But it was streaked with black. Even from here, the damage done by the Moonseed was visible.

And beyond its edge, only utter darkness.

As he watched the Earth got smaller.

They were receding so fast — he hadn’t expected this — that the Earth visibly shrank, even as he watched, as if he was riding some cramped elevator car.

Arkady pulsed the hand controllers once more. The booster stack receded, still rotating slowly, turning at last into a star-like point surrounded by a dim haze of vented propellant. And there came a time when Henry looked away, just for a moment, and when he turned back he’d lost the booster in the blackness.

The light of Earth and sun was so bright out there he couldn’t see the stars. The little craft was alone in space, sliding unpowered through the dark; and all the universe was either inside this little metal bottle, within a few inches of his outstretched hand, or thousands of miles away.

The three of them looked at each other, wondering what they had done, in such haste.

A little later, they flew through the shadow of the Earth.