“Roger on the sep,” Young said.

“Smooth as glass, John.”

The solid boosters would be falling away like matchsticks, dribbling smoke and flames. The strap-on solid boosters were the most visible enhancement of the VB over the core Saturn V design; with their help the VB was capable of carrying twice the payload of the V to Earth orbit.

“Five thousand one hundred feet per second,” Stone said. “Thirty-three miles downrange.”

She glanced at the G-meter. Three times the force of gravity. It wasn’t comfortable, but she had endured a lot worse in the centrifuge.

Cool air played inside her helmet, bringing with it the smell of metal and plastic.

With the SRBs gone, the ride was a lot easier. Liquid motors were fundamentally smoother burners than solids. She could hear the mounting, steady roar of the MS-IC’s engines, the continuing purr of the Command Module’s equipment.

Everything was smooth, ticking, regular. Inside the cosy little cabin, it was like being inside a huge sewing machine. Whir, purr. Save for the press of the acceleration it was unreal: as if this was, after all, just another sim.

“Three minutes,” Stone said. “Altitude forty-three miles, downrange seventy miles.”

“Coming up on staging,” Gershon said. “Stand by for the train wreck.”

Right on schedule the first-stage engines shut down.

The acceleration vanished.

It was as if they were sitting in a catapult. She was thrown forward, toward the instrument panel, and slammed up against her restraints. The canvas straps hauled her back into her seat, and then she was shoved forward again.

The first-stage engines had compressed the whole stack like an accordion; when the engines cut, the accordion just stretched out and rebounded. It was incredibly violent.

Just like a train wreck, in fact. Another thing they didn’t tell me about in the sims.

She heard the clatter of explosive bolts, blowing away the dying MS-IC. And there were more bangs, thumps in her back transmitted through her couch: small ullage rockets, firing to settle the liquid oxygen and hydrogen in the huge second-stage tanks.

Vibration returned as the second-stage engines ignited, and she was shoved back into her seat.

There was a loud bang over her head, startling her, as if someone was hammering on the skin of the Command Module. Flame and smoke flared beyond her window.

“Tower,” Stone reported.

“Roger, tower.”

The emergency escape rocket had blown itself away, taking the conical cap over the Command Module with it. Daylight, startlingly brilliant, streamed into the cabin, lapping over their orange pressure suits, dimming the instruments.

York peered out of her window. There was a darkening blue sky above, a vivid bright segment of clouds and wrinkled ocean below.

Stone said drily, “Ah, Houston, we advise the visual is go today.”

There was a lot of debris coming past York’s exposed window, from the jettisoned escape tower and the MS-IC. It looked like confetti, floating away from the vehicle, turning and sparkling in the sun.

Young said: “Press for engine cutoff.”

“Rog,” Stone said. “Press to ECO.”

Whatever else happened, Ares was to continue on, up to cutoff of the MS-II’s main engines. On to orbit.

“Ares, you are go at five plus thirty, with ECO at eight plus thirty-four.”

Ares had reached Mach 15, at an altitude of eighty miles. And still the engines burned; still they climbed upward. Earth’s gravity well was deep.

“Eight minutes. Ares, Houston, you are go at eight.”

“Looking good,” Stone said.

The residual engine noise and vibration died, suddenly. The recoil was powerful. York was thrown forward again, and bounced back in her canvas restraints.

“ECO!” Stone called.

Engine cutoff; the MS-II stage was spent.

…And this time, the weight didn’t come back. It was like taking a fast car over a bump in the road, and never coming back down again.

“Standing by for MS-II sep.”

There was another muffled bang, a soft jolt.

John Young said, “Roger, we confirm the sep, Ares.”

“Uh, we are one zero one point four by one zero three point six.”

“Roger, we copy, one zero one point four by one zero three point six…”

The parameters of an almost perfect circular orbit about the Earth, a hundred miles high.

Phil Stone’s voice was as level as Young’s. Just another day at the office. But the stack he commanded was moving at five miles per second.

York gazed out of the window, at the glistening curvature of Earth, the crumpled skin of ocean, the clouds layered on like whipped cream.

I’m in orbit. My God. She felt a huge relief that she was still alive, that she had survived that immense expenditure of energy.

Above her head, the little cosmonaut was floating, his chain slack and coiling up.

Joe Muldoon peered through the Lunar Module’s triangular window. Muldoon was fascinated by the play of light and color on the lunar surface. If he looked straight ahead, to the west, away from the rising sun, the flat landscape reflected back the light in a shimmering golden brown sheen. But to either side there was a softer tan. And if he leaned forward to look off to the side, away from the line of the sun, the surface looked a dull ash gray, as if he was looking through a polarizing filter.

Even the light here wasn’t Earthlike.

Outside, Armstrong was moving about with what looked like ease, bouncing across the beachlike lunar surface like a balloon. His white suit gleamed in the sunlight, the brightest object on the surface of the Moon, but his lower legs and light blue overshoes were already stained dark gray by dust.

Muldoon couldn’t see Armstrong’s face, behind his reflective golden sun visor.

He checked the time. It was fourteen minutes after the commander’s egress.

“Neil, are you ready for me to come out?”

Armstrong called back. “Yes. Just stand by a second. First let me move the LEC over the edge for you.”

Armstrong floated about the LM, pushing aside the LEC, the crude rope-and-pulley lunar equipment conveyor which Muldoon had been using to pass equipment down to his commander on the surface.

Muldoon turned around in the evacuated cabin and got to his knees. He crawled backwards, out through the LM’s small hatch, and over the porch, the platform which bridged to the egress ladder fixed to the LM’s front leg. The pressurized suit seemed to resist every movement, as if he were enclosed in a form-fitting balloon; he even had trouble closing his gloved fingers around the porch’s handles.

Armstrong guided him out. “Okay, you saw what difficulties I was having. I’ll try to watch your PLSS from underneath here. Your PLSS looks like it’s clearing okay. The shoes are about to come over the sill… Okay, now drop your PLSS down. There you go, you’re clear and spidery, you’re good. About an inch of clearance on top of your PLSS.”

When he got to the ladder’s top rung, Muldoon took hold of the handrails and pulled himself upright. He could see the small TV camera, which Armstrong had deployed to film his own egress, sitting on its stowage tray hinged out from the LM. The camera watched him silently. He said, “Now I want to back up and partially close the hatch. Making sure I haven’t left the key in the ignition, and the handbrake is on…”

“A particularly good thought.”

“We’d walk far to find a rental car around here.”

He was ten feet or so above the lunar surface, with the gaunt planes of the LM’s ascent stage before him, the spiderlike descent stage below. “Okay, I’m on the top step, and I can look down over the pads. It’s a simple matter to hop down from one step to the next.”

“Yeah,” Armstrong said. “I found it to be very comfortable, and walking is also very comfortable. Joe, you’ve got three more rungs and then a long one.”