Gershon leaned forward, resting against his restraints. Through his window he could see the descent stage falling away; it was a truncated cone, with a great gouge dug out of its center. Cables and hoses, cut by the guillotines, dangled. Foil insulation had been blown off the stage by the ascent engine’s blast, and Gershon could see sheets of the stuff floating away, spreading outward in rings.

JK Lee was standing in the Viewing Room in back of the MOCR, chain-smoking. Whenever TV pictures had come down from the orbiting MEM over the last couple of days, you could clearly see the little plastic lemon, floating about under the alignment telescope. He could decode that symbol: it was a little message from the crew, from Ralph probably, meant for him.

But it didn’t faze him, or dilute his elation. No, sir! Sure the crew members were having problems, but they had to expect that; working out the problems was what this proving flight was for, after all. He was a little disappointed Ralph Gershon didn’t understand that, in fact. The important thing for Lee was that he was watching his ship, up there in orbit, glitches or not — his ship, delivered on time and against all the odds.

Lee felt a huge glow of triumph. It was as if, to achieve this day, he’d had to fight everybody — NASA management, the suppliers, the astronauts, half of Columbia, even his own treacherous body. But he’d made it, and the monument to his achievement was up there in orbit, larger than life in the big screens at the front of the MOCR, and on TV sets all around the world. What a victory! Lee had the feeling that nothing in his career from then on would mean as much to him as this triumph, right here, right now. Not even the moment when another of his babies, hatched from the Clean Room at Newport, set down its pads on Mars itself.

He could care less about Ralph’s fucking lemon.

He laughed out loud, uncaring who stared at him, and hauled out another cigarette.

Bleeker said, “Twenty-six seconds. We’re going to pitch over a little. Very smooth, very quiet ride.”

Gershon prepared for the MEM to pitch over. Thinking that it had reached five thousand feet above the surface of Mars, the MEM should tip up, programmed to head for a Mars-orbital rendezvous with the rest of the Ares cluster.

The horizon tilted to his right.

Gershon, already feeling heavy, was thrown against his restraints.

The pitch had been right on cue. But the tipping had felt sharper, more of a rattle, than he’d expected.

And the pitch continued; beyond his window, the cloudscape of Earth was rolling upward, turning from a floor to a wall.

Bleeker said, “What the fuck?”

“Hot mike, Adam,” Ted Curval called up.

They don’t know what’s going on, Gershon realized.