The soldier measured out a length of about a metre with his hands.
‘—and not much thicker than a shoe box, they won’t be all that easy to find. A mini-nuke has the advantage of fitting into the smallest hiding-place, whatever infernal power it’s capable of unleashing.’ He smiled. ‘For example a small, automatic spaceship fired into space piggy-backing on a satellite.’
Jericho stared at the monitor. Behind Vogelaar the skies had opened.
‘I wanted to know if anyone had been doing any sort of shopping on the black market not long ago. My contact confirmed this. Just two years before, in the no man’s land between North and South, Korean nuclear material had switched owners in a private transaction. I’m always suspicious these days, and as everybody knows you should treat hearsay with caution – but there are lots of signs that I knew the buyer very well.’
‘I don’t believe it,’ Tu said. ‘They fired an atom bomb into space?’
Vogelaar leaned forward.
‘Our old friend Kenny Xin had bought the thing. And I knew already why he had hit on the idea of building the launching pad in our quiet little jungle paradise. The whole thing was illegal in the extreme! It wouldn’t have been possible to plant an atom bomb unnoticed on a state space agency. Kenny’s employers had to find a neutral country, ideally a banana republic, whose ruling clique wasn’t above any kind of deal. Some unloved patch of soil where no one was watching your every move. And the ideal launching pads for rockets are distributed in the area around the equator. Which was proof for me that China’s Communist Party, at least at the highest levels of government, wasn’t involved in this one, or else they could simply have launched the phoney satellite from their official launch pads in Xichang, Taiyuan, Hainan or Mongolia, and not a soul would ever have guessed what it was carrying. So in my opinion we’re dealing with a non-state, criminal or terrorist association. Which doesn’t mean that individual state organisations aren’t involved. Let’s not forget, China’s Secret Services have been developing a grotesque life of their own in the meantime, and Washington doesn’t always know what the CIA’s getting up to. But it could also be that there’s a big company behind it. Or else good old Dr Mabuse, if anyone still remembers him.’
‘And the bomb’s target—’ whispered Yoyo.
Vogelaar leaned back, took a swig from his drink and stroked his moustache.
‘This file was actually conceived as life insurance,’ he said. ‘For me and for my wife, whom you may have met as Nyela. Clearly it hasn’t been able to save us, so now it will serve to bring down the men behind the organisation. Kenny would definitely be of crucial importance, because he has contact with the head of the gang and might know his identity. I’ve attached his eye-scans, fingerprints and voice samples, under KXIN_PERS, but he definitely isn’t the instigator. So who is? Certainly not Korea, they’re just flogging off their Great Leader’s belongings. The Communist Party, secretly arming space? As I’ve said, they wouldn’t have needed a launch pad in Equatorial Guinea to do that. Zheng-style forces close to the government? Possibly. Perhaps the answer lies in the race to the Moon. China has made it clear more than once that it condemns America’s rush into space, and Beijing is also projecting its dissatisfaction onto Orley Enterprises, Zheng’s successful competitor. Or else somebody’s trying to use China, because it’s doing so well against the backdrop of the scramble for helium-3 and so on. With a strategically deployed atom bomb you could set the superpowers against one another, but what would be the point? They would both emerge weakened from an armed conflict. But perhaps that’s exactly what they want to achieve, so who could profit from their weakness?’
The jet sped along in a straight line. UFOs could have been flying ahead of them and they wouldn’t even have noticed. Their attention was focused on the monitor.
‘Now we get to the question of where the bomb is at the moment. Still in the satellite? Or was it dropped as the launch vehicle was carrying it into space? There was no nuclear explosion on Earth, but okay, it needn’t have exploded. On the other hand it would be idiotic to send a bomb first into orbit and from there back to Earth. Now, I think I can give a partial answer. Because even in the control room we were able to look over Kenny’s people’s shoulders. Under DISCONNECT_SAT you’ll find film material that not only shows the satellite maintaining its position in orbit, but also something breaking away and flying off on an independent course. There’s no doubt about what it is, but where did the mini-nuke go after decoupling? That’s easy to answer too. Somewhere that an atom bomb couldn’t have been sent by official channels. And what for? To destroy something that can’t be easily destroyed from Earth. The target lies in space.’
Vogelaar put his fingers together.
‘I’ll give you one last mystery for the road. It concerns the fact that I am speaking to you in the year 2024. I don’t want to bore you with personal stories, but our cute little state is bankrupt, no one is fighting over our oil any more, Mayé is starting to go round the bend, and to be honest I’d somehow imagined my government job would be more one of supporting the interests of the state. But no matter. Just bear in mind that construction of the launch pad began two years ago, and I’m sure the planning of the enterprise goes back even further than that. So the deployment of the bomb was planned a long time ago. Now it’s up there. When’s it going to go off? What is certain is that the target must have existed years ago, or else people knew that it would exist at the time of the launch of the satellite. As I said, I’m not a space expert, there are a few potential targets around the Earth and on the Moon, but to my knowledge only one has been completed and opened, probably this year. A hotel, planned for ages, location the Moon, building contractor Orley Enterprises. Does that tell us anything? Of course it does! Julian Orley, Zheng’s great adversary, responsible for the permanent disadvantage of the Chinese.’
Vogelaar raised his glass in a toast to them. Behind him, Equatorial Guinea drowned in tropical torrents.
‘So have fun with your investigation. I haven’t been able to assemble anything more than this, you’ll have to find out the rest for yourselves. And come and see me, if you know where my grave is. Nyela and I would be delighted.’
The recording ended. The only sound was the even humming of the turbines. Slowly, as if in a trance, Yoyo turned her head and looked first at Jericho and then at Tu. Her lips formed two words.
‘Edda Hoff.’
‘Yes.’ Tu nodded grimly. ‘And fast!’
30 May 2025
THE WARNING
Aristarchus Plateau, The Moon
The space shuttle Ganymede was a Hornet-model flying machine, with ion propulsion and pivotable jets to achieve thrust in any desired direction. In outward appearance it resembled a grotesquely swollen transport helicopter, Eurocopter HTH class without rotors, but sitting on short, fat legs; inside it offered the comfort of a private jet. All thirty-six seats could be turned into couches at the press of a button, each seat had its own multimedia console. There was a tiny, extravagantly equipped galley which lacked only alcohol, in line with the regulation that crews must not dull their senses in the course of the day.
At present Gaia had two Hornet shuttles, the Ganymede and the Callisto. That afternoon they were both hurtling through the vacuum, more than 1400 kilometres apart: Callisto heading towards Rupes Recta, a colossal fault in the middle of the Mare Nubium, 250 metres deep and so long that you had a sense that it circled the whole of the Moon; Ganymede flying straight towards the Aristarchus Plateau, an archipelago of craters in the middle of the Ocean of Storms. A few hours previously the Callisto, flown by Nina Hedegaard and carrying the Ögis, Nairs, Donoghues and Finn, had visited the Descartes Highlands, where the landing stage of Apollo 16 dozed in the sun and a derelict moon-car exuded a nostalgic charm, while Ganymede had borne down upon the crater of Copernicus. From the lofty heights of its outer ring, the travellers had admired its rough central range, they had penetrated its capacious interior and shuddered to think
what sort of giant must have fallen from the sky here 800 million years ago.
The world was nothing but stone, and yet it was so much more.
The soft, undulating structure of its plains led you to forget that the maria were not true seas, nor the crater bottoms lakes. Curious structures suggested former habitation, as if H. G. Wells’ space-travelling heroes had actually encountered insect-oid selenites and herds of moon-cows here, before being abducted into the machine world of the lunar underground. They had seen a lot that day, Carl Hanna, Marc Edwards and Mimi Parker, Amber and the Locatellis, Evelyn Chambers and Oleg Rogachev, whose wife lay grimly by the moon pool, but Julian insisted that the highlight was still to come. The first spurs of the high plateau appeared in the north-west. Peter Black made the shuttle climb high above the Aristarchus Crater, which looked as if it was cast out of light.
‘The Arena of the Spirits,’ Julian whispered with an air of mystery, a youthful grin playing around the corners of his mouth. ‘An observation point for sinister light phenomena. Some people are convinced that Aristarchus is inhabited by demons.’
‘Interesting,’ said Evelyn Chambers. ‘Perhaps we should leave Momoka here for a while.’
‘That would be the end of any sinister phenomena,’ Momoka observed drily. ‘After only an hour in my company the last demon would have emigrated to Mars.’
Locatelli raised his eyebrows, full of admiration at how coquettishly his wife was twisting and turning in the mirror of her own self-criticism.
‘And can you tell us something about the cause?’ Rogachev asked.
‘Yeah, well, there are a lot of arguments about that. For decades light phenomena have been witnessed in Aristarchus and other craters, but until a few years ago ultra-orthodox astronomers refused even to acknowledge the existence of such “Lunar Transient Phenomena”.’
‘Perhaps volcanoes?’ Hanna suggested.
‘Wilhelm Herschel, an astronomer of the late eighteenth century, was convinced of that. Very popular in his day. He was one of the first to spot red dots in the lunar night, some of them around here. Herschel supposed they were glowing lava. Later his sightings were confirmed, other observers reported a violet haze, menacingly dark clouds, lightning, flames and sparks, all extremely mysterious.’
‘To spit lava, the Moon would have to have a liquid core,’ said Amber. ‘Does it?’
‘You see, that’s the rub.’ Julian smiled. ‘It’s generally assumed that it does, but so deep underground that volcanic eruptions are ruled out as an explanation.’
Momoka peered suspiciously out of the side windows into Aristarchus’ gaping mouth.
‘You can stop trying to make things so exciting,’ Evelyn said after a while.
‘Wouldn’t you rather believe in demons?’
‘I don’t see demons as romantic,’ said Parker. ‘It would mean the Devil living on the Moon.’
‘So?’ Locatelli shrugged. ‘Sooner here than in California.’
‘So the Devil is someone you make jokes about.’
‘Fine.’ Julian raised his hands. ‘There is a bit of volcanic activity up here. No lava streams, admittedly, but it’s been noted that the phenomena always occur when the Moon is closest to the Earth, so when gravity is tugging at it particularly hard. The consequences are lunar quakes. When that happens, pores and cracks appear, hot gases emerge from the deeper regions to the surface, bursting out at high pressure, regolith is fired out, albedo accumulates at the exit point, and already you have a glowing cloud.’
‘I get it,’ said Momoka. ‘It needs to fart.’
‘You should stop giving away all the tricks,’ Amber said with a sideways glance at Parker. ‘I thought the demons were more exciting.’
‘And what’s that thing there?’ Edwards narrowed his eyes and pointed outside. Something massive was twisting its way north-west of the crater, across the plateau with all its furrows and potholes. It looked like a huge snake, or rather like the cast for a snake, a beast of mythical proportions. The funnel-shaped head joined a twisting body that narrowed until it opened up, thin and pointed, in the next plain along. The whole thing looked as if it had once been the resting-place of Ananden, the ancient Indian world snake that carried the earth and the universe, the scaly, breathing throne of the god Vishnu.
‘That,’ said Julian, ‘is Schröter’s Valley.’
Black soared above the formation at great height, so that they could admire its vast dimensions, the whole of the great Moon valley, as Julian explained, four billion years old; and other people had in fact been struck by its serpentine nature. The head crater, six kilometres across, was called Cobra’s Head, a cobra that twisted 168 kilometres to the shore of the Oceanus Procellarum. On a plateau that overlooked Cobra’s Head from the north-east, a levelled area came into view, lined with hangars and collectors. A radio mast gleamed in the sunlight. Black brought the vehicle down towards the landing field and set Ganymede down gently on its beetle legs.
‘Schröter space station,’ he said, and grinned conspiratorially at Julian. ‘Welcome to the Realm of the Spirits. The chances of us seeing any are slight, and yet, ladies and gentlemen, stay away from suspicious-looking holes and cracks. Helmets and armour on. Five in the lock at any one time, like this morning. Julian, Amber, Carl, Oleg and Evelyn first, followed by Marc, Mimi, Warren, Momoka and me. If I may ask you.’
Unlike the landing module of the Charon, in a Hornet shuttle you didn’t have to suck out all the air in the cabin, but left it via a lift that doubled as an airlock. Black extended the shaft. They took their chest armour from the shelf and helped each other into their tightly fitting suits, while Julian tried to banish the shadow that stripped his mood of its usual radiant power. Lynn was starting to change, he couldn’t deny it. She was showing signs of inner seclusion, had developed unattractive rings around her eyes and was treating him with growing and unprovoked aggression. In his puzzlement he had confided in Hanna – a mistake, perhaps, although he couldn’t say exactly why. The Canadian was fine, in fact. And yet he had recently started feeling slightly shy around Hanna, as if he would only have to look a bit more closely, and unsettling trigonometric connections would appear between him, Lynn and the ghostly train. The longer he brooded about it, the more certain he was that the solution was right before his eyes. He saw the truth without recognising it. A detail of banal validity, but as long as his inner projectionist slept the sleep of the just, he couldn’t reach it.
Along with the others, he entered the lock and put his helmet on. Through the viewing windows he could see the interior of the shuttle, while the air was being sucked out of the lock. He saw Locatelli delivering speeches, Momoka helping Parker into the survival backpack, then the lift cabin plummeted, emerged from the belly of the Ganymede and travelled down the shaft to just above the asphalt of the landing field. A ramp emerged from the floor of the cabin and they stepped outside along it. It had not been planned for shuttles to land on anything but solid surfaces, but if such a landing were necessary, any contact between the cabin and the fine dust of the regolith was to be kept to a minimum, because otherwise—
Julian hesitated.
All of a sudden it was as if the projectionist had rubbed his eyes. Yawning, he pulled himself together to climb down into the archive and look for the missing roll of film.
He had just seen it again: the truth.
And again he hadn’t understood it.
He watched with irritation as the second group left the lock. Black waved them over to one of the cylindrical hangars. Three open rovers were parked in it, surprisingly like historical moon-cars, but with three axles, bigger wheels and room for six people in each. The improved design of the rover, Black explained, made it faster than in the early years of lunar car manufacture, and also fit to drive on extremely uneven ground. Each of the wheel mountings could swing if necessary to a ninety-degree vertical, which was enough to let it simply drive over large boulders.
‘But not on the path that we’re about
to take,’ he added. ‘We’re following the northern stretch of the valley until the first turning of the cobra’s body. A rocky outcrop there, the spur of the Rupes Toscanelli scarp, runs right up to the edge of the gorge, Snake Hill. I’ll tell you no more than that for the time being.’
‘And how far are we going?’ Locatelli wanted to know.
‘Not far. Just eight kilometres, but the journey is spectacular, right along the edge of the Vallis.’
‘Can I drive?’ Locatelli was jumping around with excitement. ‘I really want to drive that thing!’
‘Of course.’ Black laughed. ‘The steering is easy, it’s the same as the buggies. You shouldn’t drive straight at the biggest obstacles, if you don’t want to go flying out of your seat, but otherwise—’
‘Of course not,’ said Locatelli, already imagining his foot on the accelerator.
‘Will we let him have his fun?’ Julian said to Momoka.
‘Of course. As long as you let me have the fun of driving in the other rover.’