The pressure over his wounded back increased, and he longed for microgravity to return. But it didn’t, and he just had to lie there immersed in pain, enduring it.

“Copy the retrofire, Ben.” York’s voice was trembling. “We copy that. We’ll do the rest. Stay with me, now.”

The pain overwhelmed him, turning his thoughts to mud.

Beyond his window, Earth slid away from him. The big SPS was working, changing the ship’s trajectory.

“Be advised that old SPS is a damn fine engine, Houston,” he whispered. Even after having a nuke go off under it, the thing had still worked, faithfully bringing him home. How about that.

Then someone was talking to him. Maybe it was Natalie. He couldn’t even recognize her voice, through the fog of pain. That last checklist had just about used him up. Either this bird was going to fly him home or it wasn’t; there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it anymore.

He could see Natalie’s face before him: serious, bony, a little too long, with those big heavy eyebrows creased in concentration; he remembered her face above his, in the dark, that night after the Mars 9 landing.

He couldn’t visualize Karen at all.

What a mess he’d made of his life — the warm heart of it anyhow — by his negligence, his focus on his career, his indecision. And all for these few hours in space.

He’d change things when he got back down, and back to health. By God, I will.

The thrust sighed to silence, and he had a couple of minutes of blessed relief in the smooth balm of microgravity.

There was a muffled rattle, all around the base of the cabin. That would be the ring of pyrotechnic bolts at the base of the conical Command Module, firing under command from Houston, and casting off the messed-up Service Module.

He might be able to see the Service Module as it drifted away. His duty, probably, was to find a camera and photograph the damn thing. Sure. He couldn’t even close a fist; every time he tried, the pain in his hand was like an explosion of light.

There was something rising above the Earth’s atmosphere; it was golden brown, serene. The Moon. How about that. It was right slap in the middle of his window. He thought of Joe Muldoon and his crew up there with the Soviets; probably Muldoon would be following the progress of this reentry.

The couch kicked him, gently; fresh pain washed over his skin. That was the Command Module’s own small attitude controllers: Houston, or the onboard computer, was trying to keep the Command Module in its forty-mile-wide reentry corridor.