Stone pulled himself into the tunnel at the core of the Multiple Docking Adapter, close to the entrance to the Soyuz Docking Module. Muldoon and Bleeker were already there, and the little tunnel, packed with instrument boxes and oxygen bottles, was crowded. Stone’s job was to work the small handheld TV camera and relay handshake pictures back to Earth.

There was a soft tapping. Muldoon opened the hatch.

Vladimir Viktorenko, beaming broadly, reached out and shook Muldoon’s hand. “My friend. I am very happy to see you.” He came tumbling out of the hatch, squat and exuberant, and gave Muldoon a bear hug. He gave Muldoon a little packet of bread and salt, a traditional Russian greeting. Solovyov followed his commander out. And there were the five of them crowded into the docking adapter’s tunnel, grinning and hugging, always with one eye on the camera.

Muldoon led them through the clutter of Moonlab toward the wardroom. Viktorenko and Solovyov made the obligatory polite remarks about the bird, but, Stone thought, they were being kind.

The first task of each new crew up there was to use its Apollo Service Module to tweak Moonlab’s orbit. The Moon’s gravity field was so lumpy that anything left in low lunar orbit would soon fall to the surface. And when he’d first approached ’Lab in Grissom, Stone might have been tempted to let the thing just fall.

After five years Moonlab’s outside hull was pretty much dinged up, with big fist-sized meteorite holes knocked in the shield. The solar cells, also dented by meteorites, had degraded, and so the power was down to half its peak. Inside, the lights were dim, and jerry-built air ducts ran everywhere to make up for the broken fans. Stone was already sick of half-heated meals, lukewarm coffee, and tepid bathing water.

And the interior was like someone’s utility room — more like a survival shelter than a laboratory, Stone thought — with every surface scuffed and scarred, every piece of equipment patched up, every wall encrusted with junk. Moonlab was an improvised lash-up anyhow, and the place really hadn’t been designed for growth; and every time a crew had gone up with some new experiment or a replacement article it had just bolted the kit to whatever free hydrogen-tank wall space there was, and left it there forever. After five years, the walls were growing inward, as if coated with a metallic coral. Sometimes you couldn’t even find the pieces of kit you needed, and you had to radio down to previous crews to find out where they’d left stuff.

The place was kept hygienic — it had to be — but you wouldn’t call it clean. Hell, you had highly trained pilots and scientists up there. They didn’t want to spend their lives on maintenance, for God’s sake; they had work to do. And the result was unpleasant, sometimes.