The next morning, the lieutenant is worried about the third stage of the Soyuz capsule, which is supposed to launch from the Baikonur cosmodrome in the Russian republic of Kazakhstan. He's also worried about what's going to happen to the capsule if it doesn't make it to the moon. He hopes that the launch will go off on time and that the capsule will be able to land safely in the southern part of the world. The lieutenant tells him that the mission is going well, but that it's too soon to tell whether or not the mission will be successful. He also tells the lieutenant that Donovan has been very kind to Lou, who's been out of the coma for a few days. He says that Lou inherited some of her physical features from her father, and that's why she looks the way she does. He thanks the lieutenant for being able to confirm all of his theories about Lou's appearance. He adds that he's glad that the lieutenant was able to do so, because he had an insatiable curiosity about the things he saw in the El-Kharab pass. He was so curious that he went into a hermit's cave and didn't tell anyone about what he saw for a long time. He admits that he was wrong about some of the things that he saw, but he says that when he was younger, he wasn't so strong as he is now.