Cities stunned him with their night brightness. If there was cloud, it would soak up and diffuse the illumination, and he would see the shape of the city as a huge, amorphous bowl of light. And if the sky was clear, he seemed to be able to make out every detail as clearly as if he were taking a T-38 on a buzz just over the rooftops. He saw streets and highways like ribbons of light, yellow and orange, and tall buildings ablaze like boxes of diamonds. He saw bridges and out-of-town highways shining with the headlights of lines of cars. It was as if he could feel all that light, and heat, pouring up out of the atmosphere to him…

“We need you to help us, Ben. You’re the only one talking to us up there. Stay with it, now.”

“Yeah.” But it hurts, Natalie…

“I know it’s hard, Ben. Come on. Work with me. Can you reach the preburn checklist? It’s Velcroed over the—”

“Walk me through it, would you, Natalie.”

“Yes. Yes, sure. You just follow me. We’ll be fine. Okay. Thrust switches to normal.”

“Thrust switches normal.”

“Inject prevalves on.”

He had to reach for that one; the pain lay in great sheets across his back and arms. “Okay. Inject prevalves on.”

“One minute to the burn, Ben. Arm the translational controller.”

Priest pulled the handle over until the label ARMED showed clearly. “Armed.”

“Okay, now. Ullage.”

Priest pushed the translational controller; the Apollo-N shifted forward, the small kick of its reaction jets settling the propellants in the big Service Module SPS engine, in preparation for the main deorbit burn.

“Good. Very good, Ben. Thirty seconds,” York said. “Thrust-on enable, Ben.”

Priest unlocked the control and gave it a half turn. “Enabled.”

“Say again, Ben.”

“Enabled.” Even his throat hurt, damn it.

“Fifteen seconds. You’ve done it, Ben. Sit tight, now.”

Sure. And what if the SPS doesn’t fire? Christ knows what condition the Service Module is in after the goddamn NERVA blew up under it; we’ve been losing power and telemetry since the explosion… And they had to assume that the Command Module’s systems — the guidance electronics and the computers for instance — hadn’t been too badly damaged by NERVA; he didn’t think all those roentgens passing through could have done the ship’s brains a lot of good.

He braced himself for the kick in the back.

“Two, one. Fire.”

Nothing.

He shuddered, the tension in his aching muscles releasing in spasms.

“Okay,” York said calmly. “Direct delta-vee switch, Ben.”

“Direct delta-vee.” He reached for the manual fire switch and jerked it out and up, ignoring the pain in his arm.

There was a hiss, a rattly thrust which pushed him into his couch.

There was a green light before him. “Retrofire,” he whispered.