NASA was following a policy of televising the most dramatic moments of the mission. It was all to drum up interest and enthusiasm for Ares, to allow the great American public to see what they were paying for. A feed from the Command Module to the TV companies had been provided during the launch itself, for example. But York wasn’t so sure that had been a good idea. The launch probably looked too damn comfortable to a generation that had been brought up on the glamorous pyrotechnics of Star Wars.

Stone nodded to York, and she pushed a button on her console to start the camera.

“Okay,” said Stone. “Welcome to Ares. You’re looking at us in our Command Module here. We’re in the middle of our TOI maneuver. We see out of our windows the sun going by, and, of course, the Earth. We can give you the time of day in our system of mission elapsed time: thirty-seven hours, and fifty-one minutes, and umpteen seconds. Now maybe Ralph can show you what we see out of our windows.”

Stone nodded to York. She reached up to pull the TV camera off its mount. Because of the thrust she couldn’t just float it; she had to pass the camera to Gershon. It felt massy, awkward, in the gentle acceleration of the MS-II.

“Okay, Houston, here you go,” Gershon said. “Here you see the Earth, falling away beneath us.”

“Copy, Ares. Fine images.”

“It really is a fantastic sight,” Gershon said. “We’re somewhere over the Atlantic right now, and I can see the eastern seaboard, from Florida all the way up to Newfoundland, as clear as crystal. I don’t know if that’s visible in your images.”

“We see it.”

“And as I look to my right, I can see, just toward the limb of the planet, what must be Western Europe and Africa. I can see Spain, and the British Isles, all kind of foreshortened. The British Isles are definitely a greener color than the brownish green that we have in Spain. There’s a little haze over Spain, and what looks like cumulus clouds piled up over the south of England.”

“Copy. That matches the weather reports we have today.”

“Good to know I’m looking at the right planet, Houston…”

Stone said, “I have a comment about the point on the Earth where the sun’s rays reflect back toward us. In general the color of the ocean is uniform, a rich blue, except for that region — a circle, maybe an eighth of the Earth’s radius. In this circular area, the blue of the water turns to a grayish color and I’m sure that’s where the sun’s rays are being reflected back on up toward us.”