She held on to the ladder with her right hand and leaned out to the left. She raised her left boot over the lip of the footpad, pushed it out a little way, and — silently, carefully — lowered it to the dust.

Nobody spoke; Stone, Gershon, remote Earth. It was as if the whole of creation was focused on her, on this moment.

She tested her weight, bouncing on her left boot in the gentle gravity. The Martian regolith was firm enough to hold her. As she had known it would be.

She was standing with one foot on this clumsy artifact from Earth, the other on the virgin terrain of Mangala. She looked around, briefly, at the empty landscape, framed by the rounded rim of her faceplate, and she could see the play of soft ocher light over her nose and cheeks, the flesh of a human face, here on Mars.

Holding on to the ladder, she placed her right foot on the ground. Then, cautiously, she let go of the ladder. She was standing freely on Mars.

She took a step forward, then another.

Her boots left clear, firm prints, which showed the ridging of the soles. She wished she could take her shoes off, press her bare toes into the sand of this Martian beach, feel the fine, powdery stuff for herself.

Her suit was comfortable, warm. She could hear the whir of the 20,000-rpm fans in her backpack. She had 180-degree vision through her faceplate; she had no sense of enclosure, of confinement.

She took a few more steps.

She bounced across the surface. Moving on Mars was dreamlike, somewhere between walking and floating. She had no real difficulty in moving around. In fact it was easier than the sims she’d performed on the ground. But she was very aware of the mass of the equipment on her back, and she had to lean forward to maintain her balance. It was difficult to bend at the knees, so that her movement came mostly from her ankles and toes; she suspected her legs would tire quickly. But my monkey toes are strong, pawing through this Mars dust.

Oddly, she felt as if the shades of Armstrong and Muldoon were beside her, as if she was echoing their first, famous expedition. It was a thought that somehow diminished this moment.

She turned to face Challenger. The MEM was an angular pyramid, huge before her, silhouetted against the light of the shrunken sun, and propped up in an unlikely fashion on its six fold-down legs. She was still in the shadow of Challenger. The ambient light was like a late sunset, with Challenger drenched in a weak, deep pink color; against that, the rectangle of fluorescent light from the hatch, framing Stone, was a harsh pearl-gray, startlingly alien.