“I've done this four times. This was the first with nothing in between.”

The music stops and Lena kneels. She has pressed her palm flat to a surface three times before: the earth at the launch field, the Ares viewport with Earth behind it, the glass with Mars beneath it. This time there is nothing in between. On Earth, Sarah Chen puts her own palm to the screen, and a handprint stays in the red soil beside the first bootprint.