Then the helmet was lowered over her head. At her neck, metal rasped against metal.

She was sealed in. The sounds from outside were diminished, her vision distorted by the curvature of the glass of the helmet. The noise of her own breathing, and of the blood pumping at her neck, was loud in her ears.

Then she had to lie back in the chair and wait, for a half hour that seemed much longer. Her air-supply console was filling her suit with pure oxygen, purging her system of nitrogen.

The suit techs fussed around the three of them, checking things, smiling through the glass, their faces broad and unreal. The techs moved through an intricate, silent choreography. They were like workers around three queen ants, she thought.

Ralph Gershon had a suit tech drape a towel over his helmet, and he lay back in his reclining chair with his gloved hands folded over his chest. He showed every sign of taking a nap.

When the waiting period was done, the suit techs covered her boots with yellow overshoes and lifted her up out of the chair. They swapped her air hoses over to a suitcase-sized portable unit and handed the unit to her to carry.

The three of them formed up in a line — Stone first, then York, Gershon last — for the short walk out of the MSOB to the transfer van.

It was an effort just to walk. The weight of the suit would have been bad enough, but she had to fight with every step against the grip of the inflated garment around her legs and waist; it was like trying to walk against elastic rope. It was confining, alienating.

The irony was, these bulky, clumsy, antiquated, Apollo-style pressure suits would only be needed during the launch phase, and later for the return to Earth. The suits would spend most of the mission stowed in the Command Module of their Apollo ferry craft. The MEM contained suits of a much more modern design for the EVA operations on Mars.

The halls were lined with people: astronauts and managers and NASA support staff, friends and family, all applauding soundlessly. York had to walk through a kind of corridor of faces, smiling in at her, smeared out and distorted by the helmet over her head.

They passed Stone’s family, Phyllis and the two boys. Stone stopped, put down his air unit, and reached out. He hugged his wife against the huge, crumpling chest of his suit, and he let the boys grab at his gloved fingers. He ruffled their hair and blew kisses at them. The boys looked tiny, skinny, against the suit’s soft orange expanse.