She’d always criticized earlier generations of astronauts for their lack of eloquence. Maybe it wasn’t so easy after all.

“ETs depleted,” York reported. “Ready for sep.”

“Roger,” Stone said.

More than two million pounds of fuel, a treasure that had taken five years to haul up to Earth orbit, had burned off in sixteen minutes.

“Three, two, one. Fire.”

Outside, pyrotechnics would be severing the securing bolts and frames at the top and bottom of each tank, and guillotines should be slicing across the wide feed pipes which had carried fuel from the tanks into the MS-II’s belly. York half expected to hear a rattle of bolts, muffled clangs, like the staging during the Saturn VB launch, but she heard and felt nothing.

“ET sep is good,” she said.

“Confirm ET sep,” said Crippen.

“Hey, how about that.” Gershon was looking out of his window. “I can see a tank.”

York twisted in her couch and turned to look. Silhouetted against the gray-blue of Earth, the discarded ET was a fat, cone-tipped cigar case, colored muddy brown and silver. On its flank she could see bits of lettering, and small patches of orange insulation amid the silver. Propellant dribbled from one of the severed feed pipes, a stream of crystals which glittered against the skin of Earth. The dribble made it look as if the ET had been wounded, like a great harpooned whale.

The tank rapidly receded from Ares, falling away and tumbling slowly.

Both tanks were moving quickly enough to have escaped Earth’s gravity well with Ares. The tanks would become independent satellites of the sun, lasting maybe for billions of years before falling into a planet’s gravity well.

She waved the tank good-bye, with a little flourish of her gloved fingers. Good luck, baby.

The engines finally died. She felt it as an easing away of acceleration — a gentle reduction of the subliminal noise and vibration from the remote engines.

“That’s it,” Stone said. “Shutdown. Everything looks nominal.”

Crippen called up: “You have a whole room of people down here who say you are looking good, Ares.”

Gershon whooped in reply. “It was one hell of a ride, Bob.”

Stone said drily, “From up here the burn was copacetic, Houston. Thank you.” He began to uncouple his helmet and gloves.

York watched the receding Earth fold over on itself, becoming a tight, compact ball in space, with the Atlantic Ocean thrust outward toward her, wrinkled, glistening.

The Ares cluster was only a couple of hundred miles farther from the Earth than in its low orbit. But it was traveling so fast that Earth’s gravity could no longer hold it. Four hundred miles a minute, York thought: so fast that she would cross the orbit of the Moon in just twelve hours.

Crippen said, “Is that music I hear in the background?”

“No,” Stone said. “Ralph is singing.”

Saturday, August 7, 1971

MANNED SPACECRAFT CENTER, HOUSTON