Dawn comes up over the landing site slowly, the way it does on a planet with a thin sky. The capsule stands where it landed, beside the outpost, the dust of yesterday settled into a soft ring around its legs. Inside, Mikhail lowers Lena's helmet over her head and locks it into place with both hands, checking the seal twice. He does not say anything. There is nothing to say that she does not already know.
The hatch handle turns. The green HATCH light glows. And then the door swings open and butterscotch light floods the cabin, a colour none of them have ever stood in.
Twenty light-minutes away, Mission Control is a dark room full of people who have stopped breathing. Every face is turned to the giant screen. Director Sarah Chen sits with her hands clasped against her lips.
Lena steps out onto the top of the ladder and stands there, a silhouette against the sky. Below her, at the foot of the ladder, HELIX-R1 and the other robots wait in a loose semicircle, the way a family waits on a platform. Beyond them the red plain runs flat to the horizon. The camera pulls wide until she is a tiny figure on the side of a white capsule, and the world around her is very large.
Her gloved hand grips the rail. She takes the first rung.
Mikhail watches from the open hatch above her. James and Yuki watch from the capsule window, Yuki's hand resting on the glass. Lena's boots descend rung by rung, and in Mission Control nobody moves at all.
The last rung. Her boot hovers above the red soil. Behind her visor she takes one long breath, and over her shoulder the plain stretches away, rust and rose and gold under the rising sun. In Mission Control Sarah Chen leans toward the screen and whispers something the microphones do not catch.
The boot presses down. A small puff of dust.
The first bootprint on Mars, sharp-edged in the fine soil. Lena looks up at the butterscotch sky.
And Earth erupts. Mission Control comes to its feet, cheering, hugging, people in headsets weeping on each other's shoulders. Sarah Chen covers her mouth and cries without trying to hide it. A crane shot rises over the landing site: Lena alone on the plain beside the capsule, one human being and a planet. Then Mikhail climbs down. James and Yuki step down after him, and Yuki kneels and lets a handful of red soil run through her glove, watching it fall.
In a city square on Earth it is night, and a crowd roars at a giant screen. In a living room a child presses close to the television.
R1 rolls up to Lena and stops. She rests a hand on its head, and the robot that built her house holds very still. The four of them stand together on Mars for the first time. Mikhail plants the HELIX flag, and it hangs against the sky, silver and blue on butterscotch. They pull in close until their helmets touch. Mission Control applauds through tears. A drone pulls back and back: four tiny figures, a capsule, an outpost, and the endless plain.
The sun breaks over the horizon behind them. They walk toward the habitat with long shadows ahead of them, and behind the visor Lena's face is tears and a smile.
Then the music stops, and she kneels.
She presses her palm flat into the red soil, fingers spread, the way she pressed it into the earth at the launch facility and against the glass of the Ares and against the glass with Mars behind it. This time there is nothing in between. On Earth, Sarah Chen stands alone at the screen and puts her own palm against the image of Lena's. When Lena lifts her hand there is a handprint in the soil beside the first bootprint.
Dusk. The four walk home toward the lit habitat, and above them, in a darkening sky, Earth is a tiny blue star.
