Earth was diminishing all the time and Mars growing larger, casting a red glow through the dimmed mid-deck. According to the display, our next scheduled meal would coincide with our first planetary fly-by. I brought my arm towards the porthole and skimmed its surface with two fingers, trailing them across the planets. Tyler and K had done the same – a primitive compulsion, an inability to acknowledge scale. Allen would like it, the psychologists too – the desire to touch the fibreglass when planets appear.
