Right on schedule the first-stage engines shut down.

The acceleration vanished.

It was as if they were sitting in a catapult. She was thrown forward, toward the instrument panel, and slammed up against her restraints. The canvas straps hauled her back into her seat, and then she was shoved forward again.

The first-stage engines had compressed the whole stack like an accordion; when the engines cut, the accordion just stretched out and rebounded. It was incredibly violent.

Just like a train wreck, in fact. Another thing they didn’t tell me about in the sims.

She heard the clatter of explosive bolts, blowing away the dying MS-IC. And there were more bangs, thumps in her back transmitted through her couch: small ullage rockets, firing to settle the liquid oxygen and hydrogen in the huge second-stage tanks.

Vibration returned as the second-stage engines ignited, and she was shoved back into her seat.

There was a loud bang over her head, startling her, as if someone was hammering on the skin of the Command Module. Flame and smoke flared beyond her window.

“Tower,” Stone reported.

“Roger, tower.”

The emergency escape rocket had blown itself away, taking the conical cap over the Command Module with it. Daylight, startlingly brilliant, streamed into the cabin, lapping over their orange pressure suits, dimming the instruments.

York peered out of her window. There was a darkening blue sky above, a vivid bright segment of clouds and wrinkled ocean below.

Stone said drily, “Ah, Houston, we advise the visual is go today.”

There was a lot of debris coming past York’s exposed window, from the jettisoned escape tower and the MS-IC. It looked like confetti, floating away from the vehicle, turning and sparkling in the sun.

Young said: “Press for engine cutoff.”

“Rog,” Stone said. “Press to ECO.”