Dana forced a smile. She would have been confident enough of taking on Lynn and Karla, but Nina Hedegaard was incredibly fit and had quick reflexes. At that moment, Mukesh Nair stormed in, bathed in sweat, and the bubble of Dana’s quick getaway burst.
‘Karla,’ he called, exhausted. ‘There you are. And Nina! Miss Lawrence, thank heavens.’
‘Our plan has changed,’ said Lynn. ‘Nina’s flying up with the shuttle.’ She walked over to the console and spoke into the microphone: ‘Sushma, Eva, back to the control centre. Right away!’
Dana folded her arms behind her back. Nina was by far the better pilot; any objections on her part would have been futile.
‘You have a lot to make up for,’ she said strictly. ‘I’m sure you realise that.’
‘I’m sorry, really I am!’ Nina lowered her gaze. ‘I’ll get them out of there.’
‘I’ll come too. You’ll need help.’
Without waiting for an answer, Dana walked across the control centre, went into the room containing Sophie’s corpse and jumped back. Feigning rage and horror, she spun round towards Lynn.
‘Damn it! Why didn’t you tell me about that?’
‘Because it’s not important,’ answered Lynn calmly.
‘Not important? Again something that’s not important? Are you completely insa—’
In a flash, Lynn stormed over, grabbed Dana by the neck and threw her against the doorframe, making her head jerk back and crash against it painfully.
‘Just you dare,’ she hissed.
‘You are insane.’
‘If you suggest one more time that I’m insane, you’ll get a very tangible impression of what insanity really is. Mukesh, put your suit on, the box with the XL label! Karla, box S!’
Dana stared at her with unconcealed rage. Her entire body was trembling. She could have killed Julian’s daughter with a few unspectacular hand movements, right this very second. Without breaking eye contact, she put one finger after another around Lynn’s wrist and wrenched it from her throat.
‘Now, now, Lynn,’ she whispered. ‘Not in front of the guests! How would that look?’
* * *
After Gaia’s last nod, the airlock was jutting out from the viewing platform at such an angle that it was now pointing at the far-away Earth like a cannon. They held on to the railing, and each other, as the cabin bulkheads glided to the side.
‘Oh, wonderful,’ said Miranda sarcastically. The view over the terrace couldn’t have been more worrying.
The world had tipped by forty-five degrees; millions of tonnes of rock seemed to be eager to topple towards them from the ravine opposite. Where the terrace ended, Tim and Ögi were huddled against the railing to prevent whichever one of them might lose their grip from falling into the depths. Miranda reached out for the frame of the open airlock, grasped hold of it and pulled herself outside. The boots of her bio-suit were equipped with powerful treads to prevent them from slipping. Her fingers found a grip in an indentation. With her legs spread and the unrolled wad of material – several tablecloths from Selene knotted together – slung around her hips, she worked her way up the slope. The makeshift rope had been O’Keefe’s brilliant idea; the other end of it was fastened to Olympiada’s chest guard.
‘Okay. Pass her towards me.’
Heidrun steered the Russian woman out of the airlock, waited until she had a firm grasp on the railing, then let her go. Olympiada immediately crumpled over and slipped down the slope, but instead of falling she hung on the end of Miranda’s umbilical cord. Miranda climbed further up along the shaft of the cabin until she was able to crawl under it. With her feet wedged against the wall of the shaft, she heaved Olympiada up, unknotted the cloth and let it back down. Heidrun then hurried swiftly upwards, followed by O’Keefe, who had rammed the ice pick into the airlock door to prevent it from shutting and sending the shaft back down.
‘Everything okay there?’ called Ögi.
‘More than okay!’ said Heidrun.
‘Good. We’re coming up to you.’
It was relatively easy to pull themselves up over the railing, but once they got there it was still a fair distance to the airlock. Miranda threw the rope to them. After two attempts, Tim finally got hold of it, knotted it around the bars of the railing, and they made their way across hand over hand. It was incredibly tight behind the cabin with six of them, but at least they had a stable wall at their backs to prevent them from sliding down. They clung on alongside one another, hardly daring to move through fear that too much movement could tip Gaia’s head clean off.
‘Lynn, everyone’s outside now,’ said Tim.
The glass wall shook. Heidrun reached for Ögi’s hand.
‘Lynn?’
No answer.
‘Strange,’ sighed Miranda. ‘I never thought I’d end up regretting it.’
‘Regretting what?’ asked Olympiada hoarsely.
‘The swimming accident.’
‘Before Miami?’ She cleared her throat. ‘The one you went to court for?’
‘Yes, exactly. My poor Louis.’
‘What exactly do you regret?’ asked O’Keefe, tired. ‘The fact that he died, or that you helped?’
‘I was found innocent,’ said Miranda, in an almost cheerful tone. ‘They couldn’t prove anything.’
A new quake ran through Gaia’s skull and refused to let up. Olympiada groaned and fastened her grip to O’Keefe’s thigh.
‘Lynn!’ screamed Tim. ‘What’s going on there?’
‘Tim?’ It was Lynn. Finally! ‘Hold on, I’m on my way. We’re coming to get you.’
* * *
Lynn had insisted on their all leaving the Gaia together. In the maelstrom of her disintegrating sanity, the realisation still won through that Dana was playing dirty somehow, and that it wouldn’t have been a good idea to let her fly alone with Nina. Resolving both evacuation and rescue at the same time seemed to be the most efficient plan, and had a sense of well-ordered finality. She graciously acknowledged Dana’s laboriously concealed rage and ferocious hate and felt herself become strangely calm. Yet at the same time she was overwhelmed by the desire to roar with laughter. It was just that, if she started, she probably wouldn’t ever be able to stop.
They went into the sweltering body of the Callisto. Nina opened the rear hatch and ignited the jets. They rose vertically up into the star-sprinkled circus dome, below which they had once had the best seats in the house for viewing magic tricks and clownery, and where they now had to pull off the murderous acrobatics of saving lives.
‘Hey, you guys,’ said Nina. ‘Are you still there?’
‘Not for much longer,’ prophesied Heidrun.
‘We can forget the shuttle airlock. It’s too near to the engines, and I have to maintain the counter-thrust in order not to slip. I’ll approach in reverse with the rear hatch open, okay? I’ll have to avoid touching the head, so get ready to do some chin-ups.’
‘Chin-ups, somersaults, we’ll do whatever you want.’
They ascended further. First Gaia’s back was visible from the cockpit of the shuttle, then the neck with its exposed steel backbone came into full view. Lynn couldn’t help thinking about what Gaia embodied in Julian’s eyes: her own image, to excess. And they really were becoming more and more alike. Two queens about to lose their heads.
The Callisto rose up slowly over the curve of the skull.
O’Keefe helped the others onto their feet. Pressed between the airlock wall and the terrace floor, they gripped to one another and waved at the helmeted silhouette behind the cockpit window. The shuttle began to turn on its axis, first turning its side towards them, then the open rear with the lowered tailboard.
‘Nearer!’ shouted Tim.
A jolt went through the head. Ögi lost his grip and was caught by Heidrun. The Callisto swivelled two of its jets. With absolute precision, Nina Hedegaard steered the huge craft backwards. The tailboard came closer, closer still, too close—
‘Stop!’
<
br /> The shuttle stopped, motionless in open space.
‘Can you make it?’ asked Nina.
O’Keefe raised both hands, grabbed the edge and pulled himself up onto the tailboard with a powerful swinging motion. He turned round right away, lay down on his stomach and stretched his arms out below.
‘Nina? Can you lower the machine a little further?’
‘I’ll try.’
His right hand brushed Heidrun’s fingertips. The Callisto sank another metre, now hovering at helmet-height across from the others.
‘That’s as far as I can go,’ said Nina. ‘I’m afraid of touching the head.’
‘That’ll do.’ Heidrun clambered up to O’Keefe on the hatch. To the right of her, Ögi pulled himself up, crouched down and grasped Olympiada, who was handed up to him from below, steadying herself on his shoulder. Hands stretched out towards Miranda and Tim, helping them up.
‘We made it,’ whispered Olympiada, then crumpled over, as the damaged bone in her shin finally broke. With a scream, she rolled over the edge of the hatch and tumbled back into the tiny gap between the terrace and the airlock.
‘Olympiada!’
Miranda, who was almost all the way up, dropped back down next to the Russian woman and grabbed her under the arms.
‘No – don’t—’
‘Are you crazy? Up you go – as if I would leave you lying here.’
‘I’m useless,’ whimpered Olympiada.
‘No, you’re wonderful, you just don’t know it yet.’
Miranda effortlessly lifted the petite woman up and towards O’Keefe, who pulled her back onto the tailboard and handed her over to Tim.
‘Yeah!’ called Miranda. ‘See, there was nothing to it!’
She laughed and stretched her arms out. O’Keefe went to grab her, but her hands were suddenly out of reach. Confused, he leaned his upper body further forward. She was moving away from him at an ever greater speed, and for a moment he thought Nina had flown away without her. Then he realised the shuttle hadn’t moved an inch.
Gaia’s head was breaking off!
‘Miranda!’ he screamed.
He could hear her choking gasps in his helmet as if she were right there next to him, while her tottering form dwindled before his eyes. She was waving her arms wildly, which in some gruesome way could have been mistaken for a gesture of exuberance, the way they knew her to be, always in a good mood, always pushing herself to the very limit, but as she called O’Keefe’s name, her voice expressed the absolute despair of a person who knew that nothing and no one would be able to save them.
‘Finn! Finn! – Finn!’
‘Miranda!’
Then she fell.
Her body tipped over the cabin shaft, flashed in the sunlight and then disappeared behind the head of Gaia, which did a half-turn, seemed to stand still for a moment, then fell completely from the shoulders, crashing into the immense Romanesque window of the abdominal wall.
‘Inside, everyone inside!’ shouted O’Keefe, his voice cracking. ‘Nina!’
‘What’s wrong, Finn, we—’
‘She fell!’ He jumped into the cargo hold. ‘Miranda fell overboard; you have to go round to the front section.’
‘Is everyone else in?’
His eyes darted around. Next to him, Tim stumbled across, a groaning Olympiada in his arms, and collapsed down to the floor of the hold.
‘Yes! Quickly, for heaven’s sake, go quickly!’
Not waiting until the hatch was closed, he ran like crazy to the connecting bulkhead and pushed himself through while there was still barely a crack’s width open. Stumbling along the central gangway, he was hurled against a seat, the revving of the engines in his ears as Nina steered the Callisto backwards over the figure’s tattered stump of a neck. Then he struggled to his feet again and rushed into the cockpit.
And looked down.
The abdominal cavity was destroyed. Fireballs appeared which extinguished as soon as they were ignited. Rubble rained down as the ribcage containing the suites collapsed floor by floor. Then, Gaia’s immense, regal skull, the glazing on the face surprisingly still intact, rolled over the gentle inclination of the upper thigh towards the valley, passed the knee almost hesitantly and shattered on the plateau two hundred metres below.
‘Go down! Down!’
The shuttle sank, but Miranda was nowhere to be seen, neither on the upper surface of the thigh, now covered in debris, nor on the moon surface around it.
‘To the plateau! She was torn down with it! You have to—’
‘Finn—’
‘No! Look! Look for her!’
Without arguing, Nina turned the shuttle around, descended further and flew in a curve directly over and around the widely scattered remains of the head. By now, the others were gathering together in the space behind the cockpit.
‘She can’t have disappeared!’ screamed O’Keefe.
‘Finn.’
He felt the soft pressure of a hand on his upper arm and turned round. Heidrun had taken her helmet off and was looking at him with red eyes.
‘She can’t have just disappeared,’ he repeated softly.
‘She’s dead, Finn. Miranda’s dead.’
He stared at her.
Then he started to cry. Blinded by tears, he sank to the floor in front of Heidrun. He couldn’t remember ever having cried.
* * *
Lynn sat in the first row of seats, distancing herself from the group, completely expressionless. She had beamed her former light for the last time, had unified the group in the glow of the dying star that she was, had illuminated them, blinded and driven back Dana, her enemy, but the fuel of her life’s energy was used up now, her collapse unavoidable. Everything inside her skull was rushing around with maximum kinetic energy: impressions, facts, probability of occurrences. Dependable knowledge was pulverised into hypotheses. The unending condensing of impressions caused them to be fractured into the smallest, the very smallest thought particles, to which no time, no perceptual level, no history could be assigned. Increasingly brief thought phases, thought particles whirling at the speed of light, a collapsing spirit, unceasingly crashing without the opposing pressure of will, falling short of the event horizon, no transmission, only reception now, ongoing compromise, the end of all processes, of all contour, all form, just situation, and even the pitiful remains of what had once been Lynn Orley would corrode and evaporate under their own pressure, leaving nothing behind but an abandoned, imaginary space.
Someone had died. So many had died.
Her memory was empty.
London, Great Britain
Yoyo, presumed missing, had arrived at the stroke of 22.00 just as Diane was carrying out the electronic exhumation of a person presumed dead. Presumed, because no one had been able to get even a fleeting glance of the corpse. Because it was still undiscovered, as all objects moving in unknown or unpredictable orbits tend to be.
‘Victor Thorn, known as Vic,’ Jericho said, without deigning to ask Yoyo why five minutes had turned into three hours and what Tu was up to in his state of rage.
‘I’m sorry, I …’ Yoyo fidgeted hesitantly. She had a frog in her throat and it had to come out. ‘I know I was planning to be back much sooner—’
‘Commander of the first moon base occupation. A NASA man. In 2021, he ran the show for six months.’
‘—Tian isn’t really like that. I mean, you know him.’
‘It seems that Thorn did a good job. So good, that in 2024 they entrusted him with another six-month mission.’
‘To be honest, we haven’t spoken that much,’ said Yoyo, a little shrilly. The frog was croaking on her tongue. ‘He was just terribly angry. We ended up watching a film, pretending everything was normal, you know. It was probably the worst conceivable moment, but you shouldn’t believe—’
‘Yoyo.’ Jericho sighed and shrugged his shoulders. ‘It’s your business. It has nothing to do with me.’
‘Of course it has something to
do with you!’
The frog was on the move.
‘No, it doesn’t.’ To his amazement, he meant it. The old, unconquered hurt which had lingered on him so long, like a bad odour on clothes, gave way to the insight that neither Tu nor Yoyo was responsible for his bad mood. However well they were getting on, it really had nothing to do with him. ‘It’s your lives, your story. You don’t have to tell me anything.’
Yoyo stared at the monitor unhappily. Their surroundings left a little to be desired in terms of intimacy. The space in the information centre had been screened in a makeshift way; people were working all around them, like microorganisms in the abdominal cavity of the Big O, digesting and processing information, then expelling it.
‘And if I want to tell you something?’
‘Then now is definitely not a good time.’
‘Fine.’ She sighed. ‘So what’s this about Thorn?’
‘Well, assuming that the explosion of the mini-nuke was planned for 2024 without fail – then someone must have been up there at the time: to hide, position and ignite the bomb. Either that or someone else was supposed to travel on after it and do that.’
‘Sounds logical.’
‘But no explosion was registered, and the people from MI6 think that storing a mini-nuke in a vacuum for too long could pose the risk of a premature decay. So why wasn’t it ignited?’
Yoyo looked at him, a small, steep line of thoughtfulness between her eyes.
‘Because the person in question wasn’t able to carry out the ignition as planned. Because something happened.’
‘Correct. So I sent Diane on the hunt. There’s information on the internet about all the space missions in the last year, and I stumbled across Thorn. A fatal accident during an external mission on the OSS, on 2 August 2024. It was completely unexpected and happened before he could take up his position on the Peary Base, but the most significant thing is that it was almost three months to the day after Mayé’s satellite was launched.’
Yoyo gnawed at her lower lip.
‘And the Chinese? Have you checked?’
‘You can’t “check” the Chinese,’ said Jericho. ‘The best you can find is their own statements, and according to them there was no loss of personnel in 2024.’
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