“But it has not been easy. I became a test pilot at the Moscow Institute for Aviation. I applied to serve as a cosmonaut. I was rejected three times. I remember the fourth time. I walked to the train station through a field of rye. I took off my boots and slung them over my shoulder. A golden field of ripening wheat was swaying around me; there were skylarks in the blue sky. I was overwhelmed by the thick aroma of Earth’s bounty. Thus, in my military uniform with the stripes of a sergeant, I walked barefoot to become a cosmonaut.”

I don’t believe this guy, Henry thought. He’s a Russian Jimmy Stewart.

“…I worked in the designers” office. I flew jets from Noviy Aidar. I flew helicopters in Viazniki. I trained; every morning I exercised, and jogged five kilometres. I became much stronger.

“But I had to wait for my first flight. After glasnost the money which was made available for spaceflight in Russia was much reduced. There were few seats, hotly contested. It was the advent of our joint project with the Americans, first on Mir and then Station, which gave me my doorway to space… But I never doubted it would come.”

He worked as he spoke, his blue eyes flicking over the checklists, his voice level. His eyes were the same colour as Geena’s, Henry noted absently.

Behind Arkady, unnoticed, a baseball-sized Earth slid past the window.

“And now here you are.”

“Here I am, having travelled further than any cosmonaut before me, further even than Gagarin, flying between Earth and Moon.”

“Lucky guy.”

“No. Not luck. It is the faith of others.” He studied Henry. “I have found that many times in my life, friends and strangers alike have been prepared to help me because they believe in me. I am very happy because of this, and I am always careful not to betray their trust.”

Henry thought Arkady was the most serious person he had ever met.

Henry drifted back up to the orbital module, and tried Arkady’s back-compressing trick. It took a little practice to lodge his head and feet — he kept slipping and bouncing away, like a compressed spring — but after a time he got it and, he was not surprised, it seemed to help.

Geena, too, took the time out to look back at the Earth. But the experience seemed unreal to her; she was unable to take in the reality of the immense distance she was traversing. She had spent a lot of time in space, but all of it, before TLI, in low Earth orbit. Always she had had the Earth, a huge, barely curving blue wall, outside her window, as if she was flying low over some huge map of the world. On orbit, the Earth was still the anchor of her sense of place, her sense of self.

Out here, it was different.