Limit

by Frank Schätzing

  ‘We spent most of the trip home,’ he said, ‘debating the colour of the Moon.’

  Incredible. So that was the grand summary of six expensive landings on a rock hundreds of thousands of kilometres away from Earth? That no one even knew what colour it was?

  ‘It looks kind of yellow to me,’ said Rebecca Hsu, after gazing silently out of the small porthole for a long while. Hardly any of them were venturing over to the row of windows any more. From there, throughout the two days since their launch, they had watched their home planet get smaller and smaller, a ghostly dwindling of familiarity. It was as if they were dividing their loyalty equally at the midway point between the Earth and Moon before fully succumbing to the fascination of the satellite. From 10,000 kilometres away it could still be seen in its entirety, starkly silhouetted against the blackness of outer space around it. And yet this object of romantic contemplation had billowed to become a sphere with menacing presence, a battlefield, scarred by billions of years of celestial bombardment. In complete silence, unbroken by the soundtrack of civilisation, they raced towards this strange, alien world. Only the tinnitus-like hiss of the life-support systems indicated that there was any technological activity on board at all. Beyond that, the silence made their heartbeats thunder like bush drums and the blood swirl in their veins. It roused lively chatter within the body about the state of its chemical processes and pushed their imaginations to the very limit.

  Olympiada Rogacheva paddled up, in awe of her weightlessness. They had advanced another thousand kilometres towards the satellite, and could now see only three-quarters of it.

  ‘It doesn’t look yellow,’ she murmured. ‘To me it seems more mouse-grey.’

  ‘Metallic grey,’ Rogachev corrected her coldly.

  ‘I’m not so sure,’ Evelyn Chambers looked over from the next window. ‘Metallic? Really?’

  ‘Yes, really. Look. Up there to the right, the big, round patch. Dark, like molten iron.’

  ‘You’ve been in the steel industry for too long, Oleg. You could find something metallic in a chocolate pudding.’

  ‘Of course he could – the spoon! Woohoo!’ Miranda Winter did a somersault, cheering gleefully. Most of the others had tired of doing zero-gravity acrobatics. But Miranda couldn’t get enough of them and was rapidly getting on the others’ nerves. She was incapable of holding a conversation without rolling through the air, squealing and cackling, thumping people in the ribs or whacking them on the chin as she did. Evelyn, on the receiving end of a kick in the small of her back, snapped: ‘You’re not a merry-go-round, Miranda. Give it a rest, will you!’

  ‘But I feel like one!’

  ‘Then close yourself down for repairs or something. It’s too cramped in here for all that.’

  ‘Hey, Miranda.’ O’Keefe looked up from reading his book: ‘Why don’t you try imagining you’re a blue whale instead?’

  ‘What? Why?’

  ‘Blue whales wouldn’t act like that. They’re content to just hang around, more or less motionless, and eat plankton.’

  ‘They blow water too,’ Heidrun commented. ‘Do you want to see Miranda blow water?’

  ‘Sure, why not?’

  ‘You’re all being silly,’ Miranda concluded. ‘By the way, I think it’s kind of blue. The moon, I mean. It’s almost eerie.’

  ‘Uhhh,’ O’Keefe shuddered.

  ‘So what colour is it?’ Olympiada wanted to know.

  ‘It’s every colour, and yet none.’ Julian Orley came through the connecting hatch that separated the living quarters of the Charon from the landing module. ‘No one knows.’

  ‘How come?’ Rogachev wrinkled his forehead. ‘I mean, surely we’ve had enough time to figure that out?’

  ‘Of course. The problem is that no one has seen it through anything other than toned or filtered windows and visors yet. And on top of that, the Moon doesn’t have a particularly high albedo—’

  ‘A what?’ asked Miranda, rotating like a pig on a spit.

  ‘Reflectivity. The fraction of solar energy which is reflected back to space. The reflection rate of lunar rock is not especially high, particularly not in the maria—’

  ‘I’m not following a word you say.’

  ‘The dry plains on the surface of the Moon,’ explained Julian patiently. ‘Collectively, they’re called maria. The plural of mare. They appear to be even darker than the mountain rings in the craters.’

  ‘So why does the Moon look white when we look at it from Earth?’

  ‘Because it has no atmosphere. Sunlight hits its surface unfiltered, in just the same way it would an astronaut’s unprotected retina. The UV rays outside are far more dangerous to our eyes than they would be on Earth, that’s why the spaceship’s windows are tinted.’

  ‘But loads of lunar samples have been brought back to Earth,’ said Rogachev. ‘What colour are they?’

  ‘Dark grey. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that the whole moon is dark grey. Perhaps some parts of it are brown, or even yellow.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said O’Keefe from behind his book.

  ‘Everyone sees it slightly differently. Everyone has their own moon, one might say.’ Julian went over to join Evelyn. They were passing over a lone gigantic crater which lay far below them. Molten light seemed to stream from its slopes down to the surface surrounding it. ‘That’s Copernicus by the way. According to popular opinion it’s the most spectacular of all the lunar craters and over eight hundred million years old. It’s a good ninety kilometres wide, with slopes that would present a challenge to any mountaineer, but the most impressive thing about it is how deep it is. Do you see that massive shadow inside it? It’s almost four kilometres down to the very bottom.’

  ‘There are mountains right in the middle of it,’ observed Evelyn.

  ‘How is that possible?’ wondered Olympiada. ‘I mean, in the middle of the point of impact? Shouldn’t it all be flat?’

  Julian fell silent for a while.

  ‘Imagine it like this,’ he said. ‘Picture the surface of the Moon, just as you see it now, but without Copernicus. Okay? Everything is still and peaceful. So far! Then, a boulder eleven kilometres in diameter rushes up from the depths of outer space at a speed of seventy kilometres per second, two hundred times the speed of sound. There’s no atmosphere, nothing at all that could slow it down. Imagine what kind of impact it would make crashing into the surface. That alone would happen in just a few thousandths of a second. The meteor would penetrate the surface by about a hundred metres – not particularly deep you might say, and an eleven-kilometre crater like that wouldn’t be such a big deal. But there’s a little more to it than that. The complex thing about meteorites is that they transform all their kinetic energy into heat at the moment of impact. In other words, they explode! It’s this explosion that can create a hole ten to twenty times bigger than the meteorite itself. Millions of tonnes of rock are blasted in all directions and, in a flash, a wall forms around the crater. The whole thing happens at such speed, the displaced layers of lunar basalt can’t be restructured as quickly, so the surface gives in to the shock pressure and is compressed many kilometres deep. Meanwhile, huge clouds of debris are collecting overhead. The meteorite, of course, is now fully transformed into heat and no longer exists in its previous form, so the ground rebounds, shooting upwards to form a massive peak in the centre of the crater. The rock clouds continue to spread rapidly and once again the absence of any atmosphere to contain the radius of the cloud makes itself felt. Instead the debris is flung further and further out before descending, hundreds of kilometres away, like billions of missiles. You can still see this ring of fall-out today, known as an ejecta blanket, especially when there’s a full moon. It has a different albedo to the darker volcanic rock around it, and seems to glow from within. In actual fact it’s just reflecting a little more sunlight. So, that’s how you should picture Copernicus coming about. Victor Hugo, by the way, claimed to see an eye within it that looked back at whoever was looking at
the Moon.’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ said Olympiada dejectedly.

  Julian smiled knowingly to himself, relishing the awkward silence that followed his account. All around him cosmic bombs were crashing into their thoughts and converting kinetic energy into questions such as, in the event of a similar impact threatening Earth, whether it would be better to seek refuge in the cellar or to go for one last beer.

  ‘I guess our atmosphere wouldn’t be of much help?’ Rebecca Hsu suggested.

  ‘Well …’ Julian pursed his lips. ‘Meteorites are always plummeting down to Earth, around forty tonnes of them a day in fact. Most of them are the size of a grain of sand or pebble and end up burning themselves out. Now and again one the size of a fist will come along, and occasionally something bigger will crash into tundra or the sea. In 1908, for example, a sixty-metre-wide fragment of a comet exploded over Siberia and devastated an area the size of New York.’

  ‘I remember hearing about that,’ said Rogachev drily. ‘We lost some forest, a few sheep and a shepherd.’

  ‘You would have lost a lot more if it had hit Moscow. But yes, in the main, the universe is essentially past the worst. Meteorites like the one that caused Copernicus have become few and far between.’

  ‘How far between exactly?’ drawled Heidrun.

  Julian pretended to give it some thought. ‘The last really significant one came down sixty-five million years ago in the area that’s now known as Yucatán. The shock-waves travelled all around the world, causing several years of continuous winter, which led to the loss of considerable amounts of flora and fauna, and unfortunately, almost all the dinosaurs.’

  ‘That doesn’t answer my question.’

  ‘You really want to know when the next one will hit?’

  ‘Just for my own planning purposes, yes.’

  ‘Well, according to statistical data there’s a global catastrophe every twenty-six million years. How catastrophic exactly depends on the size of the impactor. An asteroid seventy-five metres in diameter has the explosive force of one hundred Hiroshima bombs. Anything exceeding two kilometres can trigger a global winter and would mean the end of mankind.’

  ‘So, according to that we’re forty million years overdue,’ established O’Keefe. ‘How big was the dinosaur-killer again?’

  ‘Ten kilometres.’

  ‘Thank you, Julian, I’m very glad you’ve brought us up here away from it all.’

  ‘So what can we do about it?’ asked Rebecca.

  ‘Very little. The nations with space programmes have avoided dealing with the problem for years, preferring instead to devote their energy to building up an expensive battery of mid-range missiles. But what we really need is a functioning meteorite defence system. When the hammer falls it won’t matter whether you’re a Muslim, Jew, Hindu or Christian, atheist or fundamentalist, or who you’re fighting with, none of that will matter. Crash, and that’s it! We don’t need weapons against each other. What we really need is one that can save us all.’

  ‘So true.’ Rogachev looked at him, expressionless. Then he glided over, took Julian by the arm and pulled him slightly apart from the others.

  ‘But haven’t you had that for ages already?’ he added, quietly. ‘Aren’t you in the process of developing weapons against meteorites too?’

  ‘We’ve created a development team, yes.’ Julian nodded.

  ‘You’re developing weapons on the OSS?’

  ‘Defence systems.’

  ‘How reassuring for all of us.’ The Russian smiled thinly.

  ‘It’s a research group, Oleg.’

  ‘Well, I hear the Pentagon are very interested in this research group.’

  ‘Don’t worry.’ Julian smiled back. ‘I know the rumours. Both Russia and China are constantly accusing us of producing space weapons for the Americans. But it’s all nonsense! The sole purpose of our research is to be able to act if the laws of probability come into their own. I sure as hell want to be able to shoot if something like that’s on a collision course.’

  ‘Weapons can be used against all kinds of things, Julian. You’ve secured America a position of power in space. You yourself are striving to rule over the energy supply by controlling the technologies. You’re wielding a great deal of power, and you’re trying to tell me you’re not pursuing your own interests?’

  ‘Look out of the window,’ said Julian calmly. ‘Look at that blue-white jewel.’

  ‘I see it.’

  ‘And? Are you homesick?’

  Rogachev hesitated. ‘I don’t really use terms like that.’

  ‘You can choose whether to believe me on this or not, Oleg, but once this trip is behind you, you’ll be a different person. You’ll have realised that our planet is a fragile little Christmas tree bauble, covered by a wafer-thin layer of breathable air, so far at least. No borders or national states, just land, sea and a few billion people who have to share the bauble because it’s the only one they’ve got. Every decision that’s not aimed at keeping our planet together, every aggression for some resource or religious idea will sicken you. Perhaps you’ll stand on the peak of some crater and cry, or maybe you’ll just ask a few sensible questions, but it will change you. There’s no way back once you’ve seen the Earth from space, from the distance of the Moon. There’s nothing you can do but fall in love with it. Do you really think I would allow someone to misuse my technologies?’

  Rogachev fell silent for a while.

  ‘I don’t believe you would want to allow it,’ he said. ‘I’m just asking myself whether you have any choice in the matter.’

  ‘I do, the more friends I get.’

  ‘But you’re a world champion in making enemies! I know you have a league of extraordinary gentlemen in mind, a world power of independent investors, but for that you’re intruding massively into national interests. How does it fit together? You want my money, Russian money, but on the other hand you don’t want anything to do with Moscow.’

  ‘So is it Russian money just because you’re Russian?’

  ‘Well, I’m sure they’d prefer it there if I invested my fortune in national space travel.’

  ‘Good luck. Let me know when you’ve managed to get your own space elevator.’

  ‘You don’t think we can?’

  ‘You don’t even believe it yourself! I own the patents. But still, I have to admit that I wouldn’t have got this far without America. We’ve both invested astronomical sums in space travel. But Russia is broke. Putin founded his Mafia state on oil and gas, and now no one wants it. You played poker and you lost. Don’t forget, Oleg, that Orley Enterprises is ten times the size of Rogamittel. We’re the biggest technology company in the world, but my investors and I still need each other nonetheless. But no one in Moscow would do you any favours. It may be a patriotic gesture, sponsoring Russia’s ramshackle space travel, but your money would just drain away. You wouldn’t last long enough to catch up with me, because your State would have sucked the very last drop out of you before you even had the chance, and without creating any decent results either.’

  This time Rogachev was silent for even longer. Then he smiled again.

  ‘Moscow would give you more of a free hand than Washington. Are you sure you don’t want to switch sides?’

  ‘I guessed you’d be obliged to ask me that.’

  ‘I was asked to test the waters, see how willing you might be.’

  ‘Firstly, we’re not in the Cold War any more. Secondly, Russia can’t afford my exclusivity. Thirdly, I’m not on anyone’s side. Does that answer your question?’

  ‘Let’s put it a different way. With the right conditions, would you be willing to sell your technologies to Russia too?’

  ‘Well, would you be prepared to climb on board with me? I mean, you’re certainly not here because you’re afraid of Moscow.’

  Rogachev stroked his chin.

  ‘You know what?’ he said. ‘I suggest we sleep on it and enjoy a few days of holiday first.’

  *
* *

  The Charon was essentially a tube, seven metres in diameter and twenty-eight metres long, segmented into three parts and connected to a landing module. A flying omnibus, divided up into sleeping quarters and command cockpit, bistro and seating area, whose creator had failed to do it the honour of making it aerodynamic given that it would never be required to pass through an atmosphere. The Apollo capsules and the Orion, originally planned as successor to the space shuttle, hadn’t exactly met the expectations of design-accustomed cinema-goers either, but they had at least been able to offer a chicly rounded little nose, which began to give off a red glow on entering the thermosphere. Compared with this, the Charon had all the charm of a household appliance. A tonne of white and grey, smooth here, corrugated there, partly filled with fuel, partly with astronauts, and adorned with the O of Orley Enterprises.

  ‘Prepare for braking manoeuvre,’ said Peter’s voice over the loudspeaker.

  Two and a half days in a space shuttle, even if it was incredibly spacious and decorated in a colour scheme developed by psychologists, still brought thoughts of detention centres to mind. The enchantment of the unfamiliar lost its lustre when confronted with the proximity and monotony of their surroundings, and came out in debates about the state of the planet, as well as unexpected chumminess and openly expressed dislike. Sushma and Mukesh Nair, aided by their charismatic shyness, rallied like-minded people around them, including Eva Borelius, Karla Kramp, Marc Edwards and Mimi Parker. They engaged in relaxed conversation, that is until Mimi initiated a discussion about Darwinism: wasn’t it just some dead end the natural sciences had ended up in thanks to atheistic arrogance, from which only a creationist world-view could offer the way out? Life, she concluded, was far too complex to have come about by chance in some ancient ocean, and especially not four billion years ago. Karla responded that comments like that questioned the complexity of some of the people present, a riposte which unleashed a series of heated reactions. Aileen Donoghue came to Mimi’s aid, saying that although she didn’t want to tie herself down to the specifics of a few thousand years more or less, she still questioned any relationship between the species. It was much more likely that all living beings had been created by God in one breath. Karla commented that it was perfectly obvious that Mimi was descended from apes. Besides which, the first two chapters in the Book of Moses each dealt with the creation of mankind differently, so even the Old Testament couldn’t offer any unity on the process of creation, in so far as one could base serious scientific knowledge on one single, historically questionable book.