It just didn’t look the same place as from orbit. Most of the shadows she’d used to guide the landing, particularly those pooled at the bottom of the craters, were invisible now. Not only that, she couldn’t see even the larger craters beyond a hundred feet or so, so flattened was the landscape by her perspective.

Maybe there was just a hint of colour. Golds and tans. But it was washed out, as if poking out from under a layer of dust. Shades of concrete, she thought. It was a little like looking out over her driveway, back in Clear Lake, under the glare of the security night lights.

She didn’t share these non-geological thoughts with Henry.

She looked at the sunlight bathing her gloved hand. The fabric of her sleeve glowed with an intense brightness, as if it had just been manufactured. She thought she could feel, in fact, a ghostly trace of the sun’s warmth, seeping through the layers of cloth surrounding her.

But she shivered, under the black sky. She could feel her heartbeat rise, and hoped it didn’t show up on the monitors on the ground.

For it was wrong. How could so much light be falling on her, and not dispel the darkness above? Some ancient part of her brain, adapted for billions of years to life in the pond-like atmosphere of Earth, seemed to be rebelling against these new conditions.

Going to take some getting used to, she thought. That’s all.

She looked past her feet, the way she now had to climb down, in her role as mission commander, to step on the Moon. The Shoemaker’s footpads had settled barely an inch into the ground, and the little ladder, just two or three steps, was resting neatly against the dust.

Geena released her restraints. They rolled themselves up silently into their holders.

She took a step forward, to the edge of the platform. She was at the centre of a radial array of streaks and stripes, the disturbance they’d made in the ancient dust of the Moon as they descended.

She felt giddy, vertiginous. Ridiculous. She’d ridden down from orbit on this contraption, and now here she was three feet above the dust, and she felt dizzy. But even so, she had to hold onto the control post before she got over it.

She turned to Henry. He was still in his restraints, standing calmly, watching her. His oversuit glowed brilliant white in the unfiltered sunlight. He held out a gloved hand to her.

She took it. Their gloves were so thick she could only feel the bulk of his suit, not his flesh and bone within.

Holding on to Henry, she turned, got hold of the handrail, and bent forward. She put her foot on the top rung of the ladder, then the second.