Launch: Don

Don watched Marco being suited up even as his own three technicians expertly pulled his suit up and around his waist, then paused at shoulder level to allow him to push his arms into the thick sleeves. Marco's techs were greener, except for Ahmed Aqlan, who had finally flown in from Dubai about four days before launch to finish up with his Payload Integration team, just after Abdul Qawi had hurried off apologetically to some distant contractor crisis. Ahmed was already working hard on Team Two back in Dubai. The Emirati seemed to have aged five years since Don had last seen him, but he was meticulous when it came to procedure and kept up a quiet running commentary.

Don caught Marco's eye. "So far it's just another drill, huh?" he said. The Brazilian yawned, grinned and gave a shake of thumb and pinkie, his ubiquitous 'OK' sign. Then he squirmed into the suit's upper half and struggled for a moment. It wasn't easy to don and use the suits, even though derived partly from the utterly reliable Sokol KV-4 suit, but Don thought Ahmed's team had done well in improving the design and manufacture. At least they no longer had to use thick rubber bands to seal the suit, as generations of cosmonauts had done without much complaint on the earlier Sokols. He got busy adjusting the tightness around his ribs and listening to his four techs talking to each other, as they double- and triple-checked each cooling connector and the air seals at wrists, neck and the front. He did his own checks, but the suits didn't permit him to reach everywhere. He tried to get comfortable in the thick diaper. No, this wasn't like the drills. This was final, like the dawn of an execution. They had been awake for more than two hours already, breakfasting in silence, listening to the meteorologists on the Centre's local radio. And the sun was not even up. He felt the weight of finality bearing down upon him. He shivered, not from the cold, but from the inescapable trajectory he and the others were bound on.

The techs had almost finished, and only Ahmed hovered around, checking things. Asya and Annika were suiting up in the other room.

It was a measure of how closely they had worked that Marco noticed Don's accelerated breathing and the anxiety that he didn't quite let show. "Hey," he murmured, so nobody else would hear, "what's up, Doc?"

That long-standing almost-joke got Don to squeeze off a grin, but he felt like a wild tiger newly caged. "Oh, I don't know," he muttered, collecting his thoughts. "Nothing new. Just that we're actually doing this, and probably not coming back." Marco's slight nod and owlish blink encouraged him that he wasn't the only one. "It's like death, you know? You spend your whole life knowing that it's coming, and then suddenly-"

But then Ahmed beckoned them, and they picked up their helmets and walked into the corridor. Ahmed was the ideal of self-effacement. It was hard to notice that he was really there sometimes, but Don paused to exchange a few words of thanks and best wishes. They had all been doing this a lot – saying goodbye – for quite a while. He asked, "How's Nowal bearing up?"

Ahmed shrugged. "As usual, like a rock star, as you would say. She has many meetings with the businessmen and UAE ministers who push for more Arab astronauts and more local contracts. It is always a painful subject with them."

"Yeah," he sighed. "I know there were at least three good astronaut candidates. Felt like I was jumping the queue. Emiratis, I mean. Did they get onto a later team?"

Ahmed nodded. "All but one. He is still very sick. And we will find more for the Amlaq crews."

Don smiled and clapped Ahmed on the arm: one last contact with someone who had invested himself totally in this mission. Don and the team had been spared most of the management-level wrangling about crew selection and business deals, but everyone knew it had almost destroyed SSI's chances of getting this first crew to Mars this year. Don only had to think of NewSpace's tug-of-war attempt to ready a second Mars mission to know that space exploration could quickly find itself at the mercy of investment groups and party politics. Not even the public outcry at the ongoing revelations had kept that mission from a 26-month delay. Now NewSpace's second attempt would limp in to Arcadia Planitia a whole Mars year after SSI's first.

He could hear that Annika wasn't quite finished in the ladies' suiting room, so he hung back until she came out. There was no sign of Asya. "Hey, the good news is that we won't need to wear these on our Mars excursions," he said, and she smiled.

"That's right," she replied, beaming at him. Good: her eyes were shining, not wild with nerves. Not yet. They walked down the wide corridor to where the bus would take them to the pad. Marco was a few steps ahead. "I am still, like, dreaming. It's like a dream," said Annika. "I can't wait to get there. To Arcadia Base, I mean." She chatted on, relieving some of her own built-up tension. But Don's train of thought had switched tracks and now he pictured setting up base, searching for the crew of the Smaug and being prepared to discover six cold corpses. The very thought of Arcadia Base hollowed him out, but by now, after the separation-by-correspondence, after Julia later applied for the NewSpace mission, after these years, he was well practiced at keeping the thought of Julia at arm's length. She might as well be a stranger again. It was almost as if she'd died years ago. Even during the uncountable press conferences and interviews, he had learned to answer their pointed questions with emotional detachment and a thin smile: So, Professor Luther, it's well known that your estranged wife was a member of the lost NewSpace crew. What do you think are your chances of finding her alive and reuniting with her? – Good question. Well, of course we're going to be able to make a complete and thorough search of their base and the surrounding area, so if they are still alive, we'll find them. Personally I would be very happy to find that Julia and every member of that crew have survived. He knew the answers by rote, without letting them touch his heart.

But now he could leave all that behind, couldn't he? No. It was going to get harder to keep the pot from spilling, the closer they got to Arcadia Base.

They were going all the way out of Earth's grip and across the millions of empty miles to Mars: the Red Planet, which was just an orange spark in the sky from Earth. Come on, you've been up before. But his quick sub-orbitals and the five days at the Bigelow were almost nothing in comparison. Faced with such thoughts, he knew that he wasn't up to it. He wanted so badly to pull out and give up. What kept him going? The embarrassment he would cause? The thought of Julia? The science?

The scalpel-like regret and hurt was down deep, like a whale. He could hear it moaning now and again. Julia, I let you down, it would say. Irrational, but incontrovertible. Today it was buried deep, but it was going to surface eventually.

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Onwards to Launch: Annika

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