But she’d always understood the real purpose of all those sims. It wasn’t to train her. It was to beat the unfamiliarity out of her, to destroy her fear.

For this mission, there hadn’t been the time for that. And here she was, exposed. More alone than she had ever been.

She raised her right hand and, just for an instant, raised her gold visor.

The sunlight was dazzling, glaring directly into her helmet and bouncing off the module’s sheer hull, and she screwed up her eyes. But the stars were still there: the sky crowded, the constellations immediately familiar.

Somehow she felt reassured, anchored in the universe again.

She closed up her visor and waited for her eyes to clear. Then she turned to her work.

Henry and Geena were loosely tethered to the Soyuz, inspecting the lander.

The Shoemaker was, Henry supposed, about the size of a small car. It was just a platform, with four spindly, open-strut legs protruding beneath it. There was a single rocket nozzle sticking out from under it, surrounded by four fat tanks containing propellant and oxidizer. And at the corners there were four little clusters of smaller rocket nozzles, attitude thruster assemblies, with flaring shields behind them. The whole thing was maybe six feet tall, from pads to the table surface, and on top of the table there were a couple of open metal rectangles, the size and shape of door frames.

And that was all: no more than the prototype unmanned craft he’d inspected at JPL, before his program was canned, minus the elaborate sample-return stage on top.

Henry’s training, which had focused on the hazards of launch and reentry, hadn’t covered this. He looked around. “Where’s the rest of it?”

Geena’s voice was tight. “You’re not helping, Henry.”

“No, I mean it. I see the landing stage, but where’s the cabin? Where are the seats? Where’s the ascent stage?”

“Come here.”

With one hand anchored to a strut, she grabbed his shoulder and spun him around. She guided him backwards, into the right-hand door frame. The metal rectangle neatly encompassed his backpack; Geena snapped latches, and the pack was secured, and so was Henry. He was stuck there, like a turtle glued by its shell, his arms and legs dangling.

“Put your feet down here.” She guided his feet to a little sloping shelf on the top of the platform.

He placed his feet where she showed him. There was a handrail in front of him, and he grabbed onto that, and he felt a little more secure. Not much, though. And in fact, the little foot platform made him feel as if he was tipping forward, about to fall off the damn thing.