‘Now go.’ The corner of her mouth twitched. ‘Quickly!’
* * *
There was something inherently calming about the empty, coolly lit corridor, designed to reinstate and strengthen trust in technological advancement. Its rationality made it seem immune to corruption from recklessly caused catastrophes, but Tim reminded himself that, in a way, it had all started here, with the appearance of Carl Hanna rousing Julian’s mistrust. He wondered whether the bomb was hidden below them. A few hours hadn’t been enough to search every nook and cranny. How small was a mini-nuke? Was it under the conveyor belt that stretched out alongside them? Under one of the floor tiles? Behind the wall, in the ceiling?
They had suggested that Sushma, Mukesh, Eva and Karla take the Lunar Express to the foot of the Montes Alpes and wait there at a safe distance until they had either freed the prisoners or been blown to smithereens with the hotel. But they had all insisted on staying, even Sushma, who had bravely tried to suppress her fear. In order to give their battered morale a boost, Lynn had ended up sending the women to look for Nina Hedegaard, since this would at least keep them occupied. Tim hoped fervently that his sister wouldn’t crack up back at the control centre, but was reassured to a certain extent by the fact that Mukesh had stayed with her. They reached the garage and saw the rafters of the retractable roof disappear into their cases. The starry sky was twinkling above them. A dozen buggies stood there waiting for a party that would never take place.
The shapeless Callisto rested opposite them with clumsy assertiveness, as if suggesting it was capable of flying to Mars. Ugly but reliable, as poor Chuck had joked just the day before. Compared with the shuttle, the laughable grasshoppers looked like toys.
‘Who’s flying in front?’ asked Heidrun.
‘Tim,’ said Ögi decisively as he stowed the box containing Olympiada’s suit into the small cargo hold. ‘Then you, then me, to make sure I don’t lose you.’
‘Lynn,’ said Tim over his helmet radio, ‘we’re setting off.’
He still couldn’t get used to the lack of engine noise. The hopper rose without a sound, exited the garage and started its ascent. From behind, Gaia looked just the same as it always had: superior and indestructible. The camera in his helmet sent images back to the control centre. He flew in an arc, as agreed with Lynn beforehand, so she could get an idea of how the front section looked. He intensified the thrust, let the force carry him towards the shoulder of the huge figure, then held his breath.
‘Good God.’ Walo’s voice piped up in his helmet.
It had been obvious even from the side view that something wasn’t right. Parts of the façade were missing or lay in ruins, and in places the naked steel of the support framework was exposed. Now, as they flew directly towards it, the full extent of the destruction was revealed. The contourless face was no longer focused on the Earth, but just beneath it. Where the neck had once been, there was now a gaping, black, collapsed hole. The complete front section was broken away, and Gaia’s chin was sunk so far that only the lower half of the elevator doors was still peeping out.
Tim steered the hopper closer. The colossal skull seemed to be hanging by a thread at the neck. E2 stood open, its insides just a gullet corroded by flames. Steel columns, grotesquely deformed, faced towards him. His stomach filled with dread as he dared to look down one more time. There was debris distributed all over the figure’s upper thigh, albeit not much. And it looked as if Gaia were nodding to him. Finn was right: they had come not a moment too soon.
On the ascent, he saw the sealed-off Chang’e, and was convinced he could make out smoke and rust inside it, burnt furnishings, but the dark windows with their gold filtering concealed what lay beyond, leaving any detail to the imagination. Out of the blue, he was overcome by an attack of vertigo. The hopper’s platform had no railings, and any flying carpet would have seemed like a spacious dance floor in comparison. Quickly reassuring himself that Heidrun and Walo were behind him, he passed Selene and the Luna Bar and followed the arch of the forehead round to the viewing platform. Figures started to move beneath him: O’Keefe, Olympiada and Miranda were making their way towards the airlock. He swivelled the jets, reduced his speed, overshot the terrace a little, turned and came to a standstill right next to the railing. Not the most elegant of landings. Alongside him, at an appropriate distance, Heidrun landed as if she had been flying hoppers her whole life. Meanwhile, Ögi flew a lap of honour amidst a great deal of cursing, then finally forced the hopper down, clattering one of the telescopic legs along the railing in the process.
‘I’m actually a gliding and ballooning enthusiast,’ he said apologetically, before unloading his box and carrying it to the airlock, a double bulkhead in the floor which measured several metres in diameter, ‘but Switzerland is a little more spacious.’
Tim jumped off his hopper.
‘Finn, we’re above you,’ he said. Lynn had connected their helmet radios with Gaia’s internal network so that everyone could communicate at once. A few seconds passed, then O’Keefe chimed in:
‘Okay, Tim. What should we do?’
‘Nothing just yet. We’ll call up the airlock elevator, send the boxes with the spacesuits down to you and—’
He stopped.
Was it his imagination, or had the floor begun to shake under his feet?
‘Hurry up!’ called O’Keefe. ‘It’s starting again!’
Where was the control console for the airlock? There. His fingers darted as he entered the command, and the air was sucked out at an agonisingly slow speed. The shaking intensified and became like an earthquake. Then the whole thing stopped as abruptly as it had begun.
‘The elevator’s on its way up,’ Ögi gasped breathlessly.
The airlock doors opened in the floor beneath them. A glass cabin pushed its way out, spacious enough to hold a dozen people, and opened at the front. They quickly piled the boxes inside.
‘I’ll go down with them,’ said Heidrun.
‘What?’ Ögi looked alarmed. ‘Why?’
‘To help them. With the suits, so it’s quicker.’ Before he could protest, she had disappeared into the cabin and pressed the down switch. The elevator closed.
‘My darling,’ whispered Ögi.
‘Don’t worry, commander. We’ll all be back in five minutes.’
* * *
Finn O’Keefe saw the elevator approaching, with someone in it whose slim legs were familiar to him even through centimetre-thick, steel-strengthened artificial fibres. He waited impatiently until the internal pressure was restored and the front bulkhead had glided to the side.
‘Here we go!’ said Heidrun, throwing the first of the boxes towards him.
Olympiada, as white as chalk, handed the second box on to Miranda, then began to empty her own.
‘Thank you,’ she said earnestly. ‘I’ll never forget this.’
In immense hurry, they slipped into their gear: helping one another, closing hinges, fastening clamps, heaving packs onto their backs and putting their helmets on.
‘Would it be asking too much to want to get out of the hotel right away?’ asked Miranda. ‘It’s just, you know, I don’t want to get blown into the sky, and I’ve emptied the minibar already, so—’
‘You can count on it,’ said Lynn’s voice.
‘Oh, don’t get me wrong,’ Miranda hurried to assure her. ‘There’s nothing wrong with your hotel.’
‘Yes, there is. It’s a piece of shit,’ said Lynn coldly.
Miranda giggled.
At that very moment, the floor gave way.
* * *
For one strange moment, Tim thought the entire opposite side of the ravine was being lifted up by elemental forces. Then, as he watched the grasshoppers hopping across the terrace and Ögi whooshing towards the railings with his arms flailing about, he lost his balance, landed on his stomach and slid behind the flying machines.
Gaia was bowing her head in face of the inevitable.
Chaos roared in his
helmet. Anyone who had a voice was screaming in competition with all the others. He rolled over, got back on his feet and stretched out, which was a mistake, because he lost his balance again right away. He was pulled forcefully against the railing, tumbled right over it and smacked down onto the smooth, sloping glass surface.
And slid down.
No, he thought. No!
In fear and panic, he tried to get a grip on the reflective surface, but there was nothing there to get hold of. He slipped further, away from the protective enclosure of the terrace. One of the hoppers sailed down behind him and crashed onto the glass. Tim reached out for it and grasped the steering handle just as he saw another flying device disappear into the depths. It suddenly felt as if he were hovering in the air; he couldn’t get a grip any more and hung over the abyss, his legs flailing around. With his hand clamped onto the machine’s handle, he screamed ‘Stop!’ – and as if his plea, his wretched wish to survive, had been acknowledged somewhere out there amongst the cold gaze of the myriad stars, the movement of the huge skull came to an abrupt halt.
‘Tim! Tim!’
‘Everything’s okay, Lynn,’ he panted. ‘Everything’s—’
Okay? Nothing was okay. With both arms – thank God he wasn’t heavy – he pulled himself up on the flying device, noticing with relief that one of its telescopic legs had got wedged in the railings, then realising, with horror, that it was slowly slipping out.
A jolt went through the hopper.
Dismayed, Tim dangled in open air, unable to decide whether he should resume his ascent and thereby rip the hopper out of its anchorage once and for all, or not move at all, which would only delay his death by a few seconds. At the next moment, a figure appeared behind the terrace railing, climbed over it and slid carefully downwards, both hands bent around the rails.
‘Climb up onto me,’ panted Ögi. ‘Come on!’
Ögi’s feet were now level with Tim’s helmet, right next to him. Tim gasped for air, reached his arm out—
The hopper came loose.
Swinging back and forth, he hung on to Ögi’s ankles, grasped his shin guards, clung to his knees, climbed up him like a ladder and over the railing, then helped his rescuer to get back to safety. In front of them, tilted to about forty-five degrees, the floor of the terrace rose up into the heights like a smooth slide.
He had survived.
But they’d now lost all three grasshoppers.
* * *
‘No! I’m flying up there.’
Lynn pushed herself away from the control panel, crumpled over and fell against Mukesh. Horrified, the Indian stared at the wall monitor, watching the terrible images being transmitted by Tim’s camera and the external cameras on the opposite side of the ravine. The fibre-optic connection to the Mama Quilla Club had been broken, but they could now hear the voices of those trapped via the helmet radio.
‘It’s stopped.’ Miranda, out of breath. ‘What do we do now?’
‘Olympiada?’ O’Keefe.
‘I’m here.’ Olympiada spoke, sounding haggard.
‘Where?’
‘Behind the bar, I’m … behind the bar.’
‘My darling?’ Ögi, distraught. ‘Where on earth—’
‘I don’t know.’ Heidrun, sucking in air through her teeth. ‘Somewhere. Hit my head.’
‘Everyone out!’ Tim. ‘You can’t stay there. See whether the airlock is working.’
Lynn’s temples were throbbing with hypnotic rhythm. Colourful smog began to whirl around. Having to watch Gaia’s skull tilt so suddenly that the chin was now almost resting on the chest had made her heart stop, and now it was pumping all the harder to make up for it. Gaia looked as though she were sleeping. Her head must truly now be hanging on to the shoulders by a thread.
‘Everything’s at an angle,’ said O’Keefe. ‘We’re tumbling all over each other like skittles. I don’t know if we’ll even get into the airlock.’
Head. Head. Head. How much longer would her head stay on her shoulders?
‘We’ll come and get you,’ she said. ‘We still have seven grasshoppers. I’ll fly.’
‘Me too,’ said Mukesh.
‘We need a third. Quickly! Fetch Karla – she’s in the best state out of all of us.’
Mukesh hurried out. Lynn followed him and plundered the depot with the substitute spacesuits. Several were missing, including hers. Suddenly remembering that not all the suits were stored in the lobby, she ran back into the control centre and to the closed bulkhead on the rear wall. Behind it lay a small storeroom for spare equipment, including fire extinguishers, suits and air masks. She waited until the steel door had glided to the side, walked in, and was surprised to find the light on. Her gaze fell on the locker with the equipment, on the piles of boxes, on the dead faces of the air masks neatly lined up in their cabinets, and on the dead face of Sophie Thiel, who was leaning upright against the wall. Her eyes were open, and her pretty face had been divided in two by a streak of dried blood originating from a hole in her forehead.
Lynn didn’t move.
She just stood there, gawping at the corpse. Strangely – and thankfully, in the face of everything – it didn’t unleash any emotions in her. None at all. Maybe it was just the fact that its appearance was too much and too late, or the pushiness with which it demanded its moment in the limelight amidst an inferno of Dante-like proportions, as if they didn’t have other problems. So after a few seconds she ignored Sophie and started carrying out the boxes containing the bio-suits.
‘Hello, Lynn.’
She looked up, confused.
Dana Lawrence was standing in the doorway.
* * *
Heidrun and O’Keefe made their way hand over hand over table and chair legs, supporting, pulling and pushing Olympiada up towards the airlock. Contrary to what she had thought, the Russian woman had not fallen behind the bar but behind the DJ booth. Meanwhile, Miranda hung on to the side of the airlock like a monkey on a pole, her hand lying across the sensor field to keep it open.
‘Can you guys make it? Shall I help?’
‘I can get up there by myself,’ groaned Olympiada defiantly.
‘No, you can’t,’ said Heidrun. ‘Your leg is injured; you can hardly stand on it.’
The main problem resulting from the change to their spatial surroundings was not so much the tilting of the floor, as that of the airlock. The front section was now turned towards Gaia’s glass face and pointing downwards. And it wasn’t just that it was incredibly difficult to get into it in this way; if they didn’t watch out up there, they would fall outside faster than they intended.
‘You’ll have to try to get behind the elevator as soon as you get to the terrace,’ said Tim. ‘It will give you something to grip. Oh, and bring something long and sharp with you, like a knife.’
‘What for?’ groaned O’Keefe, as he steered Olympiada towards Miranda Winter’s outstretched hand.
‘To block the cabin so it doesn’t go down again.’
‘I said I could manage.’ Olympiada wrapped her hands around the cabin railing and pulled herself into the elevator with a grimly determined expression. ‘Go and look for your knife, Finn.’
They grasped the railing tightly and waited. O’Keefe was only gone for a minute. When he came back, carrying an ice pick, he had a wad of material flung over his shoulder. Miranda let the bulkheads close and pump the air out.
The cabin shuddered.
‘Not again,’ groaned Olympiada.
‘Don’t worry,’ Miranda reassured her. ‘It’ll stop in a second.’
* * *
‘What are you planning to do?’ asked Dana.
The bulkheads had finally opened and the armoured plating had crept back into the hidden cavities. Freed from her prison, Dana had jumped down from the gallery over the bridge into the lobby, all the while thinking through her next steps: to break off the rescue mission, capture the Callisto, and get the hell out of here. In the course of the past hour and a half,
she had been forced to win back trust by making out she sympathised with Lynn, but that was over now. Julian’s hated daughter was alone in the control centre. She was no serious opponent; the loss of Dana’s weapon wouldn’t make the task easy, but she could make do with her hands.
‘I’m flying up there,’ said Lynn, her face devoid of any expression, then went back into the room and hauled out two large boxes containing spacesuits. Dana cocked her head. Had she not seen Sophie? No, there was no way she hadn’t seen her, but why did she seem so unaffected? Surely such a sight would have thrown her off track, but Lynn looked indifferent, as if she were on autopilot. Her gaze empty, she took off her jacket and began to unbutton her blouse.
‘Come on, Dana, get yourself a suit too.’
‘What for?’
‘You’re flying one of the hoppers. The more of us there are, the quicker—’ Suddenly she stopped and stared at Dana with her red-rimmed eyes. ‘Hey, you’ve piloted the Callisto before, right?’
Dana came slowly closer, bent over and readied her own bodily murder weapons.
‘Yes,’ she said slowly.
‘Good, then we’ll do it like that. No hoppers.’
Incoherent conversation came out of the loudspeakers, hastily uttered sentences. Silently, Dana walked around the console.
‘Hey, Dana!’ Lynn wrinkled her forehead. ‘Are you listening to me?’
She moved faster. Lynn craned her head back, looked her up and down from beneath her half-closed eyelids and took a step back. Her expression came back to life. A hardly perceptible flicker betrayed her suspicion.
‘You’ll fly the Callisto, do you hear me?’
Sure, thought Dana, but without you.
‘No, that won’t be necessary!’
As if she’d been hit by lightning, Dana stopped and turned round. Nina had come into the control centre, accompanied by Karla. She was dressed in her spacesuit, carrying her helmet under her arm, and looked thoroughly contrite.
‘I’m sorry, Lynn, Miss Lawrence, I’m very sorry indeed: I wasn’t at my post. I fell asleep in the rest area. Karla walked past me three times, but then she managed to find me after all and told me everything. I’ll fly the shuttle.’