He heard a series of jolts and bangs: that was the solar panel wings, the optical sighting system periscope, perhaps the rendezvous antenna on its stand, being ripped off the hull. His craft was being stripped down to its basics by this brutal passage.

In the first ten seconds, hardly any of his velocity gone, he covered ten miles, scouring across the Moon’s shadowed surface.

But the seconds wore on, his heart continued to beat, and the structure of the craft was still holding. He allowed himself a grin. This rattling Soyuz was a tank, ploughing resolutely through the lunar ice; the Americans” tin-foil Apollo would not have lasted a dozen yards!

He caught glimpses of the Moon, fleeing past his window: dune fields lit up by a red, spectral glow, obscured by sprays of steam. The glow was his own, he realized: it was the hull of his Soyuz and the dirt of the Moon, turned red hot by his spectacular arrival.

He must be a wonderful sight, raising parabolic plumes of glowing spray and steam to either side, as he cut his geometrically straight line across the surface of the Moon. If the Moon were tipped up a little more, in fact, on Earth they would even be able to see, with the naked eye, the gash he must cut in the surface.

Twenty seconds, seventeen miles covered; thirty seconds, twenty-four miles…

His velocity was dropping, then, almost as planned. Yet the ride grew no less violent, the shuddering dips and bangs of the craft no less pronounced. Sometimes the bangs were very severe, as the Soyuz hit some inhomogeneity in the ice.

Suddenly the deceleration increased, and he was thrown with fresh vigour against the restraint straps. But he had been expecting that; as his velocity reduced the Soyuz was sinking more deeply into the lunar ice, digging in, braking him more rapidly.

Now a full minute had elapsed since that first jarring touchdown, and, by God, he was still breathing. Just ten miles to go, and his speed must be no more than Mach Two, and falling…

He had of course broken all land-speed records in the process of this landing. And, whatever the outcome, he would become the first human to die on another planet, the first to create a myth on this world without history, without monuments. Let them engrave that on the statue they would build to him, on Leninski Prospect!

Seventy seconds, eighty; forty-five miles, forty-seven. The shuddering of the craft, the howling of the metal scraping on poorly-lubricated ice, all of it seemed to him to be smoothing out and reducing. The vibration now was much diminished, and he was even able to read his instruments.

Ninety seconds. Another lurch, a plummet downwards, another savage bite of deceleration.

Now the attitude thrusters had cut out, and he would complete his final glide unpowered, the Soyuz ploughing ever deeper into the ice of the Moon.