He found himself looking into a tunnel, about eighty centimetres wide and a couple of metres long. This was the entrance – they called it the node – between his capsule and the reception area of Ark Angel. Reconditioned air, cold and dry, blew into his face. He pushed up with his feet, the lightest movement possible. Effortlessly, he rose. It was just like he had seen in countless films. He was flying.
The node led into the first module. Ark Angel had been built for tourists. It called itself a space hotel. But of course, it was in truth a space station very similar to Mir or the ISS, with very little room and every available inch crammed with cupboards, lockers and all the wires, pipes, dials, gauges, switches, circuits and other essentials needed to keep its inhabitants alive. Each section was a cylinder about the size of an ordinary caravan, lit with a harsh white light and jammed with equipment and handrails on three sides. There were more handrails and Velcro straps on the fourth. Alex understood that to stop himself floating off he would have to hook his hands or feet into the floor.
He had expected the interior to be silent. Instead he was aware of the humming of the air conditioners, the throb of pumps circulating liquid coolants through the walls, the grinding of metal against metal … tonnes of it bolted together even as it spun round in orbit. He breathed in deeply. The air was very dry. He wondered how it was produced. Did it come out of a bottle or was there a machine?
Alex floated – or tried to. Once again, he pushed too hard with his feet and the entire chamber turned upside down as he spun helplessly around, totally out of control. Despite the injection, he was suffering from what NASA called space adaptation syndrome. In other words, he was about to throw up. He tried to steady himself. One of his hands caught the wall, sending him spinning the other way. He no longer knew what was up and what was down. He couldn’t even see the capsule that had brought him here.
He reached out and managed to hook a finger into one of the straps. That slowed him. But the whole experience so far had been horrible. Alex had seen Star Wars. He’d watched Harrison Ford blast his way across the universe, and like millions of others he’d bought into the dream. The reality was nothing like it. His body was sending his brain weird signals. He was sweating. The balance of his inner ear had gone. His bones, no longer needed, were leaking calcium. His back was aching because of the elongation of his spine. Inside his stomach, his guts were floating helplessly, and because of the shift in his fluid level, he felt a desperate need to go to the toilet. None of this had ever happened to Harrison Ford.
And it got worse. Alex stopped spinning and found himself floating in the very centre of the module. Either he was moving very slowly or he wasn’t moving at all. The rails and Velcro straps were now uselessly high above his head. He stretched out his arms and discovered that the walls were a couple of centimetres out of reach. It was like some terrible nightmare. Every time he strained forward, his body moved back. He was quite literally stranded, floating helplessly, going nowhere.
What now? How did he make himself go up or down? He jerked his body and pedalled with his legs. It didn’t help. He tried waving his arms like a bird in a bad cartoon. Nothing.
Alex started to panic. Nobody had warned him about this. He was stuck in zero gravity and he began to wonder if he wasn’t doomed to remain like this until Ark Angel blew itself apart. He couldn’t move!
It took him what seemed like an eternity to work it out. It was amazing really that a physics lesson on a damp Wednesday at Brookland School should suddenly come to mind and save his life. He took off his shoes and threw them with all his strength. The forward motion produced an opposite reaction, a bit like the recoil from a gun. Alex was thrown back and managed to grab hold of a handrail. He clung there for a moment, breathing heavily. It had been a nasty moment and he would have to be very careful it didn’t happen again.
He had to get moving. He hadn’t been able to see the observation module and the remaining stages of Gabriel 7 on the far side of the space station, but he knew they were there. The rocket had docked automatically almost an hour ago and had brought with it an activated bomb. He looked at his watch again. Twenty-five minutes had passed! There was barely an hour left. If the bomb exploded at the right time and in the right place, he would be vaporized, and a four hundred tonne missile would begin its deadly journey back to earth. Alex thought back to the map of Ark Angel he had been shown and knew that he had to navigate his way through an interlocking series of modules to reach his destination. He remembered what Ed Shulsky had told him.
“Don’t try to defuse it unless you’re sure you know what you’re doing, Alex. You press the wrong button, you’ll be doing Drevin’s work for him. Just move it into the sleeping area. That’s all you have to do. Move it and then get the hell out. Fast.”
It was ticking right now. Alex could imagine it. Just the two of them. Him and a bomb on a space station orbiting the earth.
He was about to set off when he heard something. The clang of a hatch closing. It was quite unmistakable. He stopped and listened. Nothing. What next? Martians? He must have imagined it. Alex pushed off with his feet, as gently as possible, trying to steer himself towards the next module. Once again he had pushed too hard. His shoulder hit the roof – or the floor – of the node and for a second time he found himself spinning out of control.
He reached out with his hands to steady himself and found himself holding onto a lever that jutted out of the wall. It was a shutter release. Unable to contain his curiosity, he opened it, wondering if it would give him a view of the earth. But the space station was facing the wrong way. Alex reeled back, almost blinded, as brilliant light burst into the module. Professor Sing had warned him not to look directly into the sun. Even in that brief instant, Alex had almost blinded himself.
He closed the shutter again and waited for his sight to return, then continued, gently flying into the sleeping area, the bunks attached vertically to the wall with straps to keep the crew members or guests from drifting off. In space you could sleep sideways, standing or upside down; it made no difference. There was a long, brightly lit corridor straight ahead – four or five modules bolted together. Everything was white. This was the very heart of Ark Angel, with the dining room, the exercise room, the showers and lavatories, a living room and two laboratories all laid out next to one another. Gabriel 7 would have docked at the far end.
Alex tensed himself, preparing to make the next leap. He reached out with the palms of his hands. And froze.
A man had appeared in front of him, dressed in an identical suit to his own. The man was wearing a skullcap but, seeing Alex, he tore it off, revealing a mirror image of the world three hundred miles below.
Kaspar. Of course.
Alex had forgotten about him. So had everyone else. But Professor Sing must have known that Kaspar had been on board Gabriel 7 – that was the one piece of information he had been keeping to himself. Why? Had he been so scared of Kaspar that he couldn’t bring himself to reveal the whole truth?
It looked as if Alex would never know. Kaspar had seen him. He was only twenty metres away, at the other end of the corridor. He hadn’t spoken a word but now – expertly, as if he had been trained – he pushed forward, floating through the air towards him. He was confident, in perfect control.
And he was holding a knife.
RE-ENTRY
It was something straight out of a nightmare. It was every nightmare rolled into one. The hideously tattooed face, the knife, Ark Angel, outer space… Alex could only watch helplessly as Kaspar headed towards him, flying, arms outstretched, legs trailing behind.
What was he doing in the space station?
And suddenly Alex understood.
The second rocket, the orang-utan, Drevin’s so-called experiment in weightlessness – they had all been part of the plan. There was no experiment. There never had been.
Kaspar had gone up in Gabriel 7. And Alex knew why. His own experience of the launch should have made him see that it would have bee
n completely insane to try sending an armed bomb into space. The terrible vibrations would have set it off before it had even left the atmosphere. Only when it was in space could it be armed, and that had meant sending someone up with it. Kaspar. But now he needed to get back again. That was the point of the second rocket. Professor Sing must have known all along. The Soyuz had been sent up to collect him. And Kaspar would surely have left instructions behind. If anything went wrong, if the rocket didn’t arrive, the professor would have been killed. No wonder he had looked so nervous! In the end, he had made a choice. Send the rocket and let the two of them fight it out.
That was something else Alex understood. There were now two of them in the space station. But there was only one seat home.
Kaspar passed through the first node, where he was bathed momentarily in soft, pink light before he emerged into the glare of the next module. He seemed to be adept at manipulating himself in zero gravity. He had aimed carefully and pushed off lightly. One hand touched a wall to correct himself; the other still clasped the knife. He was taking his time – but then he knew Alex had nowhere to hide. Just seconds remained before they would come face to face in a module barely large enough for them both.
Alex searched around him for a weapon, anything he could use to defend himself. But everything was packed down too neatly. The cupboards and lockers were closed. He was still feeling sick and disorientated and every movement he made threatened to propel him in the wrong direction. If he lost control and went into another spin he would be finished. Kaspar would cut him to pieces.
Kaspar passed through the next node. In a few moments he would arrive in the same module as Alex. The sleeping area. This was the place Professor Sing and Ed Shulsky had shown him on the map. The heart of Ark Angel. It seemed an appropriate meeting point. Maybe he could reason with Kaspar. The mission was pointless now – surely he would see sense?
But Alex doubted it. Kaspar’s eyes looked empty, mad. There was a twisted smile on his lips. The knife he was holding was a Sabatier, the blade a single piece of high carbon stainless steel, hand-honed and about ten centimetres long. Where had he got it from? He couldn’t possibly have brought it with him. Then Alex remembered. Ark Angel was a hotel. One day it might have a chef cutting sirloin steak for some American multimillionaire, and someone had made sure he was properly equipped. Kaspar must have picked up the knife as he passed through the kitchen.
As Kaspar entered the sleeping area, Alex did the only thing he could. He crouched low, then kicked out, propelling himself along, a few inches above the floor, as if he were swimming underwater in a pool. His movement caught Kaspar unawares, and the man sailed past above him. Alex realized that there was one thing you couldn’t do in zero gravity: change direction. Kaspar continued to the far wall, but as he passed him he slashed down with the knife. Alex felt the tip cut into the suit between his shoulder blades. He was lucky. Another few millimetres and it would have drawn blood. It had sliced the suit’s material but hadn’t pierced his skin.
Kaspar reached the far wall and clung onto one of the handholds. Alex continued through into the next module and managed to stop himself. He found himself surrounded by gym equipment: a treadmill, a pair of chest expanders, a rowing machine – but nothing he could throw at Kaspar. Where were the weights? Of course, there was no point having weights in a weightless environment. Alex scrabbled for one of the lockers and the door fell open. There were tools inside. A hammer, a curiously shaped ratchet, some sort of bolt tightener. He grabbed the hammer, pulled it free and held it in front of him.
Alex turned and saw Kaspar preparing to launch a second attack. The man seemed crazed, as if he were on drugs. Perhaps he was. Or perhaps he found the experience of being in space as terrifying as Alex did.
“Kaspar!” Alex wasn’t sure what to call him. What was his real name? Magnus Payne? But that wasn’t how the two knew each other. “It’s over,” he went on. “There’s no point in this. Drevin is dead. The CIA’s in control on Flamingo Bay.”
“You’re lying!”
“How do you think I got here? There’s nothing for you to do. Dropping Ark Angel on Washington – there’s no point. Drevin’s dead.”
“No!”
Two continents twisted in anger and disbelief as Kaspar kicked off, this time travelling diagonally down. Alex knew there was no point trying to reason with him. Whatever had happened on Flamingo Bay, Kaspar needed the Soyuz. Alex stood in his way. So Alex had to die.
Kaspar flew towards him. Alex brought the hammer round and threw it with all his strength. For a moment he thought it would travel in slow motion. Wasn’t that what happened in films? But it didn’t. The hammer spun at full speed through the air and hit Kaspar on the shoulder. But would the hammer do any damage if it weighed nothing? Once again Alex thought back to his physics class, starting work on his GCSEs. The hammer picked up energy because of motion; the energy was dispersed when it came to rest. In this instance, it came to rest because it had hit Kaspar square on. Kaspar howled and dropped the knife. Energy dispersed equalled pain!
But the forward motion was enough to send Alex stumbling back, and for a moment he lost control. His shoulders crashed into a wall. Or perhaps it was the ceiling or the floor. It made no difference. Kaspar had leapt forward. He plunged down as if he had been fired from a gun, and a second later he was on top of Alex.
The blue and green skin of the man’s face was just inches away. Eyes full of hatred glared at him. Kaspar’s hands closed around his throat and began to tighten. The man was strangling him. And there was nothing Alex could do. He had no gadgets, no weapons. He couldn’t even move. He could feel metal plates against his shoulders, one of the lockers pressing into his back. Kaspar was floating horizontally above him, connected to Alex only by his hands. The breath was no longer reaching Alex’s lungs; the grip was too tight. He felt dizzy. In a few seconds he would pass out.
Barely knowing what he was doing, he scrabbled behind him. His knuckles brushed against some sort of lever. What was it? Even as his consciousness began to leave him, Alex remembered. He knew what the lever did. But now he couldn’t find it. Desperately he lashed out and his flailing hand caught hold of it. He pulled down.
The shutter opened and the light that had almost blinded him before exploded into the module a second time, shafting in over his shoulder. The window was facing directly into the sun and the light had a physical force as it burst in. Alex could feel it burning his neck and shoulders. The whole capsule seemed to disintegrate into a brilliant chaos of white and silver, all other colours sucked out.
Kaspar screamed as the light seared his eyes. It was as if he had been punched in the face by the sun itself, and his hands fell away, instinctively coming up to protect himself. Alex brought his legs up and kicked; his feet slammed into Kaspar’s stomach. Alex’s back was against the wall, and Kaspar was sent hurtling towards the other side of the module.
The Sabatier knife was right behind him.
It had been hovering there, its deadly point aimed at Kaspar’s neck. As Kaspar travelled backwards it went with him, but then the handle came into contact with the wall. The blade entered the city of Beijing and continued its journey, burrowing into the world’s surface. Kaspar’s body jerked as if he had been electrocuted. Then he was still.
Lying underneath him, Alex watched in disbelief. Kaspar’s arms were hanging down towards him. He was in the middle of the module, not touching any surface, suspended there. A string of bright crimson marbles appeared and began to orbit around his head. They grew larger. Now they were golf balls, trailing away, glistening red.
The knife had severed an artery. Kaspar’s blood hung around him like a grotesque Christmas decoration.
Alex had had enough. The module was heating up rapidly, still exposed to the sun, and he reached out and closed the shutter. A shadow fell across Kaspar’s face. The marbles darkened.
With his skin crawling, wanting to get away from the obscene, floating body, Alex dragged him
self into the next module using a series of Velcro grips. He found himself next to a space toilet, a grey plastic box with some sort of cone device floating at the end of a pipe. He needed to use it. He was going to be sick. Grimly he swallowed, forcing himself to stay calm. He didn’t want to find out what vomit looked like in outer space.
The bomb…
How much time did he have left? Alex looked at his watch. One minute past four. Just twenty-nine minutes left. He had to move quickly. To have come so far, to have been through so much, only to die now! He forced himself to concentrate, to control his movements. He remembered the map he had been shown in the control centre. He knew where he had to go.
The hatch leading into the capsule that had brought Kaspar into space was open, and Alex saw the bomb at once. It was shaped like a torpedo, black, with six tiny switches and a glass panel with a digital read-out. The whole thing was strapped to the wall, held in place with Velcro. With a ghastly sort of fascination, Alex lowered himself into the module and floated next to it. There was a six-figure display, rapidly counting down: 27:07:05. Alex checked it against his watch. Yes. Three minutes past four. He had just twenty-seven minutes left.
Could he turn it off? Alex examined the switches but there were no symbols, nothing to tell him what function they performed. Did he dare press one? If he made a mistake, he’d be blown to smithereens. He reached out a finger. His mouth was dry. Being so close to the bomb filled him with horror. But he had to try, didn’t he? Drevin might have perverted the genius of Ark Angel but, even so, the space station was a technological miracle, completely unique, the world’s first hotel in orbit around the earth. Could Alex really allow it to be destroyed? His finger rested against the top switch. All he had to do was flick it. It might deactivate the bomb, but it might set it off. The question was, did he dare take the risk?