But this time, for once, Fire was getting closer to the object of his desire. She backed up against a tree, and he walked towards her, hands clasped, that ridiculous, tragic erection sticking out like a divining rod.

But a rock hit him hard in the side of the head.

The rock had been thrown by Stone.

Fire went down, toppling like a felled tree. He opened his hands to save himself before he hit the mud. His precious ashes scattered.

Runners ran forward. Dig and Blue got to their knees in the mud, and tried to scrape together the ashes and embers. But the embers were hissing, quickly extinguished in the mud.

Stone hadn’t grasped the chain of events that led from his own hurled rock to the death of the fire, or else he just didn’t want to know; either way he capered and howled, pressing the useless embers into the mud with his bare feet, and he aimed hefty kicks at Fire’s ribs.

Fire curled up, arms wrapped over his head, whimpering in misery. Emma winced, but she knew better than to try to intervene.

After that, the daylight seemed to run out quickly. As the sun descended towards the horizon, the golden air turned to a dismal brown. The shadows of trees to the west lengthened, clutching at the cowering Runners like claws.

In the absence of a fire the Runners gathered more closely than usual, the women clutching their children, even the usually solitary men huddling close.

The first predators began to call.

Sally came to Emma. “You have to use your spyglass,” she said. “Make a fire. And you have to do it now, before we run out of sun.”

Emma sighed. “I’m frightened of showing them too much of what we’ve got.”

“They aren’t going to steal your glass and start using it all over the savannah,” Sally said. “They don’t learn.”

“It’s not that. Right now they seem to think we are like them. If they think we’re too strange, they might reject us.”

The shadow of a distant tree slid across Sally’s face. “Sister, I don’t think it’s the time for philosophical dilemmas. In a couple of hours the hyenas are going to be chomping on our bones. And anyhow these guys have attention spans that make Maxie look like Michelangelo. By the morning, they’ll have forgotten it all. Come on, Emma. Just do it.”

“All right. Let’s try to keep our tools out of their sight, though.”

“Agreed.”

They spent a few minutes gathering dry wood, and building a little tepee a couple of feet high. Then they scraped together dried leaves and tinder.

Emma crouched down on the ground, folded her magnifying glass out of her knife, and angled it until she caught the crimson light of the low sun. She moved it back and forth until she had focused a tight spot of light on a few bits of dry tinder. Then she waited, the cold of the ground seeping into her, her awkwardly angled arm growing stiff. She grumbled, “I don’t know why the hell the South African air force didn’t just give me a box of matches.”

Some of the Runners came to watch what they were doing. They hooted excitedly, one woman even making rubbing-hands-warm motions. But when the tinder didn’t catch light immediately, they became baffled and quickly lost interest.

Her spot of light disappeared. She looked up to see a small silhouetted figure, a grasping hand.

“Maxie’s. Maxie’s!”

Sally scooped him up. “Get away, Maxie, for heaven’s sake.” Maxie, denied the toy, began wailing.

Unnoticed, the tinder had started smoking.

Emma immediately dropped her glass. She cupped the thread of smoke with her hands and blew gently. The smoke trail billowed, nearly died.

She sat back and beckoned to Fire. “Hey. Come over here. Come on. This is your job.”

Poor Fire sat squat on the ground, clutching his ribs, an immense lump forming on the side of his head.

“Umm, Fire smoke Fire. Fire Fire!”

At last he came forward, hobbling painfully. Shivering, he cupped his hands around the thread of smoke and blew, lips pursed.

It seemed to take him mere seconds to have a small flame going. With the precise motions of a surgeon, he began to feed the tiny red-yellow spot with bits of tinder.

When the smoke started to spread, the other Runners were drawn back. As the fire grew, they settled down around it, just as they did every night, and the men began to drag over heavy branches to make night logs.

Sally watched the Runners with cold contempt. “Not a word, not a gesture of congratulation or apology. Or surprise. Or relief. They’ve already forgotten how Fire lost his embers… The fire is just here, and they accept it. They really don’t think like us, do they?”

Emma stretched stiff limbs. “Right now, I couldn’t care less. Just so long as the fire keeps away the bad guys with the teeth.”

As Emma fell into sleep, a rough hand grabbed her shoulder.

She froze. Her eyes snapped open. The sky, full of ash and smoke, retained a lingering purple-black glow, enough to show her a lithe, crouching silhouette. It, he, leaned over her. She was pushed onto her back. She could smell Runner: a thick, pungent, meaty smell of flesh that had never once been washed.

In the back of her mind she had rehearsed for this, from the first day here. Don’t resist, she told herself. Don’t cry out. She had seen the Runners copulate, every day. It would be fast, brutal, and over.

For a moment her assailant was still, his breath hot. She stiffened, expecting hands to claw at her clothing. But that didn’t come. Instead a head, heavy, topped by tight curls, descended to her breast. She felt shuddering, a low moan.

Gingerly she reached up. She explored a flat skull, those extraordinary brow ridges like motorcycle goggles. And she touched a swollen mass on one temple. Her assailant flinched away.

It was Fire.

He was weeping. She remembered how he used to go to the old woman, Sing, for comfort, before she died. She wrapped one arm around his back. His muscles were hard sheets, his skin slick with dirt and sweat.

He reached up and grabbed her fingers. With a sharpness that made her yelp, he pulled her hand down towards his crotch. She found an erection as stiff as a piece of wood. She tried to pull away, but he pushed her hand back.

Gently, hesitantly, she wrapped her fingers around his hot penis. His hand took her wrist and pushed it back and forth.

She rubbed him once, twice. He came quickly, in a rapid gush against her leg. He sighed, released her wrist, and lay more heavily against her.

Half-crushed, barely able to breathe, she waited until his breathing was regular. Then, gingerly, she pushed at his shoulder. To her intense relief, he rolled away.

In the morning. Fire scooped up his embers and ash, and the Runners dispersed for their walk. It was as if none of the previous evening’s events had ever happened.

Reid Malenfant:

In the last hours he had to endure a visit from an Apollo astronaut: a walker on a now-vanished Moon, eighty-five years old, ramrod straight and tanned like a movie star. “You know, just before my flight we had a visit from Charles Lindbergh and his wife. He had figured that in the first second of my Saturn’s flight, it would burn ten times more fuel than he had all the way to Paris. We laughed about that, I can tell you. Well, Lindbergh came to see me before I flew, and here I am come to see you before your flight. Passing on the torch, if you will…”

And so Malenfant, with a mixture of humility and embarrassment, shook the hand of a man who had shaken the hand of Lindbergh.

It was, at last, the night before launch.

At Vandenberg, he stood in the crisp Californian night air. The BDB’s service structure was like an unfinished building, a steel cage containing catwalks and steps and elevators and enclosures. A dense tangle of pipes and ducts and tubing snaked through the metalwork. The slim booster itself was brilliantly lit, the sponsors” logos and NASA meatballs encrusting its hide shining brightly. Its main tanks were full of cryogenic propellants, and they spewed plumes of vapour into the air. No doubt in violation of a dozen safety rules, hard-hatted technicians, NASA and contractor grunts, scurried to and fro at the booster’s base, and electric carts whirred by. It was a scene of industry, of competence, of achievement.