The HELIX capsule drifts in low Earth orbit, small and scorched, its boosters long gone. Below it the planet fills the lower half of the frame, blue and white and enormous. Ahead, growing, is the thing the capsule was built to find.
The HELIX Ares is not a rocket. It is a ship: a long central spine with a great wheel turning slowly around it, a torus habitat ring for gravity, solar arrays spread like wings. It was assembled in orbit over years for exactly this, and it has been waiting.
Inside the capsule the four crew sit harnessed in white flight suits, helmets off now, all of them looking out the window at the Ares. Lena's face at the viewport is lit by its blue-white glow.
The capsule approaches the docking port at the forward end of the spine, turning so that its collar leads. The two rings close toward each other with millimetre precision, and meet. Inside, a short pressurised tunnel connects capsule to ship: white walls, handrails, a hatch at the far end. Mikhail reaches it first and grips both sides of the frame. Then James. Then Yuki. Then Lena, each of them pausing in the open doorway before pulling through, because this is the last threshold between the world they know and seven months of nothing.
The music is a few piano notes, far apart, echoing. It will stay that way for a long time.
The central spine of the Ares runs ahead of them in zero gravity: blue instrument lighting, equipment racks lining the curved walls, viewports showing black. The four drift down it in a loose line, the spacecraft already feeling less like a machine and more like a house with the lights left on. At the floor of the spine a circular hatchway opens into the rotating habitat ring, and Lena lowers herself through it, feeling weight return to her body as she descends.
The ring is a corridor that curves upward in both directions, warm white light, the floor always climbing away ahead of you. James walks it slowly, trailing one hand along the wall. Yuki enters the science module, a compact room of benches and sample drawers, opens a storage locker, and carefully lifts out six small potted plants she was never cleared to bring. She sets them under the light one by one.
In the common area a mission briefing console glows at the end of the hallway. On it, a rendered map of the Mars landing site, and beside it a still image from the surface: a large four-legged construction robot, designated HELIX-R1, caught mid-stride on a red plain. James stands in front of the screen, his reflection faint in its surface, looking at the machine that has been building his house for two years.
Then the months. Lena sits at the common-area table alone with a cup and the long view out the window. Mikhail floats at the spine cockpit, checking instruments nobody needs checked. James runs on the treadmill in the exercise module with the stars wheeling slowly past. Yuki in her lab, the plants a little taller each time we see them. The four of them at the table together, in the navy crew uniforms now, saying little.
Lena at the viewport. Behind her Earth is a small blue dot, and she holds the worn photograph. She puts her palm flat against the glass, the second time she has done this, and holds it there with the dot of her whole world under her hand.
Outside, the Ares fires its main engines, a long sustained plume from the rear of the spine, the ring turning on through it. Then the burn ends and the ship falls silent again. Far from Earth now, solar arrays catching faint starlight, the Ares drifts on into the dark. Behind it, Earth is a small bright point, and getting smaller.
