Limit

by Frank Schätzing

  A trajectory that couldn’t be reconstructed.

  Okay, they’d messed up Peary. They wouldn’t mess up the OSS. At half past nine, when they had all long-since arrived on Isla de las Estrellas, or were back on the way to their own countries, the space station would vaporise, leaving only a few thousand kilometres of feather-light carbon rope to fall into the Pacific. They probably didn’t even need to get the bomb out of the spaceship. The Charon was supposed to be at anchor for at least two days, as she had learned in the terminal. It didn’t really make any difference whether she hid the mini-nuke in the ceiling cover of the airlock or just left it where it was.

  08.59

  08.58

  She looked contentedly at the blinking box. And as she was savouring her triumph, the hairs on the back of her neck stood up.

  There was someone there.

  Right behind her.

  Dana swung round.

  That moment she felt a kick in the chest that threw her against the wall of the cabin. The mini-nuke slipped from her hands and sailed away. Lynn reached out for it, missed it, ended up at an angle and started rotating on her own axis. Dana dashed after the spinning bomb, felt a hand gripping her ankle and was pulled back. In front of her eyes Julian’s daughter darted upwards, grabbed the box and fled, carried on her own momentum, to the lounge and from there to the landing module.

  She must not leave the Charon.

  Dana hurried after her. Just before the airlock she caught up with Lynn, grabbed her by the collar and dragged her back inside the unit. Lynn somersaulted, tightly gripping the bomb, and wedged herself, legs spread, in the passageway to the habitation module. Lawrence risked a glance over her shoulder. Through the open bulkhead she could see into the airlock and glimpse the connecting corridor. There was still no one to be seen, but she knew the airlock was under surveillance. She couldn’t afford to let the silent struggle continue outside the Charon.

  Julian’s daughter stared at her, gripping the ticking atom bomb like a cherished object from which she never wanted to be parted.

  ‘Indecisive?’ she grinned.

  ‘Give me that thing, Lynn.’ Dana was breathing heavily, less out of exertion than out of rage. ‘Right now.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It’s an expensive scientific device. I don’t know what’s got into you, but you’re about to ruin a very high-level experiment. Your father will be furious.’

  ‘Oh, really?’ Lynn rolled her eyes spookily. ‘Will he?’

  ‘Lynn, please!’

  ‘I know what this is, you bitch. It’s a bomb, exactly like the one you and Carl hid in the base.’

  ‘You’re confused, Lynn. You—’

  ‘Don’t you dare!’ yelled Lynn. ‘I’m completely fine.’

  ‘Okay.’ Dana raised conciliatory hands. ‘You’re completely fine. But that isn’t a bomb.’

  ‘Then you won’t have a problem letting me out!’

  Dana clenched her fists and didn’t move, as her thoughts did somersaults. She had to get hold of the mini-nuke, but what was she to do with the madwoman who clearly wasn’t as crazy as all that? If she let Lynn live and go back to the others, she might just as well hand over the bomb and admit everything.

  ‘Problems?’ Lynn giggled. ‘Without me the lift won’t return to Earth, will it? They’ll spend hours looking for me, and you’ll have to join in. There’s nothing you can do.’

  ‘Give me the box,’ Dana said, struggling to control herself, and floated closer.

  Lynn lowered the bomb. For a moment it looked as if she was wondering whether she could comply with Dana’s demand, then she suddenly threw herself back into the habitation module.

  ‘And now?’ she asked.

  Dana bared her teeth.

  And suddenly she lost her head, reached for the disguised pocket on her thigh and brought out Carl Hanna’s gun. Lynn’s eyes widened. She leapt after the bomb. Her hand hit the sensor that controlled the bulkhead between the module and the habitation unit. Dana cursed, but the connecting door closed too quickly, no chance of getting through it, at best she’d be trapped. Through the narrowing gap she saw Lynn’s torso, her flying, ash-blonde hair half covering her face, took aim and shot.

  The bulkhead thumped shut. She went straight to the control panel and tried to open it again, but it didn’t budge. Lynn must have activated the emergency lock.

  She hammered furiously against the steel door.

  Too late.

  * * *

  Her body drifted somersaulting through the lounge.

  Spirals turned before her eyes. With a great effort, Lynn focused her ideas on the command panel in the rear zone, straightened out, gripped the edge of the next passageway and impelled herself forwards to the control console.

  The terminal. She had to call the terminal.

  ‘Lynn Orley,’ she gasped. ‘Can anyone hear me?’ Oops! Something wrong with her voice? Why did she sound so feeble, so crushed?

  ‘Miss Orley, yes, I can hear you.’

  ‘Put me through to my father. He’s in his – his suite. Quickly, get a move on!’

  ‘Straight away, Miss Orley.’

  Something had found its way through the crack. Something that hurt and dulled her senses. Everything went dark.

  ‘Julian,’ she whispered. ‘Daddy?’

  * * *

  Dana was beside herself. She’d been duped. She’d let her feelings take control, rather than diplomacy. Flight was the only option now. It didn’t matter whether she’d killed Lynn, wounded her, or even missed her entirely, she had to get out of the OSS before the lift arrived. She furiously catapulted herself out of the landing module, pelted down the corridor and into the torus, took aim and shot one of the astronauts in the head.

  The man tipped sideways and drifted slowly away. With her legs outstretched she braked herself and aimed the barrel of her gun at the other one. He stared at her in silent horror, his hands over the touchscreen.

  ‘Get one of the evacuation pods!’ she yelled. ‘Quickly!’

  The man trembled.

  ‘Go, now! Get it!’

  Inflamed with rage, she whacked him in the face. He gripped the console to stay upright.

  ‘I can’t,’ he panted.

  ‘Are you mad?’ Of course he could, why couldn’t he? ‘Do you want to die?’

  ‘No – please—’

  Stupid jerk! Trying to hold her up! All the docking ports could be relocated along the ring, she knew that. He would just park the Charon somewhere else, and instead take one of the pods to the airlock and anchor it there.

  ‘Just do it,’ she hissed.

  ‘I can’t, I really can’t.’ The astronaut gulped and licked his lips. ‘Not during the launching process.’

  ‘Why the launching process?’

  ‘Wh-when a ship launches, I can’t relocate the docking port, I have to wait till—’

  ‘Launches?’ she yelled at him. ‘What’s launching?’

  ‘The—’ He closed his eyes. The movement of his lips was oddly out of time with what he said, as if he were praying at the same time. Spittle glistened at the corners of his mouth, and he was losing control of his bladder.

  ‘Open your mouth, damn it!’

  ‘The Charon. It’s the Charon. It’s – it’s launching.’

  * * *

  ‘Daddy?’

  Julian gave a start. He had just been talking to Jennifer Shaw, when a second window had appeared in the holowall.

  ‘Lynn,’ he said with surprise. ‘Sorry, Jennifer.’

  ‘Daddy, you’ve got to stop her.’

  Her face was right up against the camera, sunken and waxy, as if she were about to lose consciousness. He immediately switched Shaw to standby.

  ‘Lynn, is everything okay?’

  She shook her head feebly.

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘In the spaceship. I’ve launched Charon.’

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘I’m flying away – I�
��m taking – the bomb away from here.’ Julian saw her eyelids fluttering and her head tipping over. ‘She’s smuggled a second bomb on board, she or – Carl, I don’t know—’

  ‘Lynn!’

  His hands gripped the console. Slow as snake venom the realisation of what was happening seeped into his consciousness. Of course! It made horrible sense. This wasn’t just a blow against the Americans, it was an attack on space travel!

  ‘Lynn, don’t do it!’ he urged. ‘Bring Charon back! You can’t do this!’

  ‘You’ve got to stop her,’ she whispered. ‘Dana – it’s Dana Lawrence. She’s the – she’s Hanna’s—’

  ‘Lynn! No!’

  ‘I’m – I’m sorry, Daddy.’ Her words were barely audible, a breath. She closed her eyes. ‘So sorry.’

  * * *

  The spaceship decoupled. The massive steel claws that connected it to the airlock opened to reveal the Charon.

  It drifted slowly out into open space.

  Julian’s voice reached her ear. He called her name, over and over again, as if he had lost his mind.

  Lynn lay down on her back.

  Nonsense, of course, she was weightless. Just a matter of perspective whether she was lying on her back or her belly. She might even have been lying on her side, of course she was lying on her side, all at the same time, but from here she could see the bomb that floated above her, spinning listlessly.

  The display blurred in front of her eyes.

  08.47

  No, not 8. Wasn’t that two zeros? 00.47?

  00.46

  46 minutes? Minutes, of course, what else. Or seconds?

  Not enough time. She needed thrust.

  Thrust!

  Before her eyes, little red spheres wobbled through space, some tiny, others as big as marbles. She reached for them, rubbed one to goo between her fingers, and suddenly she realised that the red bead curtain was coming out of her chest. There was something annoying there, eating away at her strength and restricting her movements, and she was terribly tired, but she couldn’t lapse into unconsciousness. She had to pick up speed to put some distance between herself and the OSS. Then, once she was far enough away, get rid of the bomb. Somehow. Throw it overboard. Or escape into the landing module and decouple the habitation unit with the mini-nuke. And get back.

  Something like that.

  Her jaws opened and closed like a fish. She painfully pumped air into her lungs and rolled around.

  * * *

  ‘Haskin,’ yelled Julian. He’d tried to call the terminal, but there had been no answer. Now he was talking to the technical department. In fact, Haskin hadn’t been on duty that night, but in the circumstances he’d been willing to assume charge of the standby team. Unfortunately he was in Torus-5, in the roof of OSS, far from the space harbour.

  ‘My God, Julian, what—’

  ‘Comb the station! Look for Dana Lawrence, arrest the woman. Possibly she’s in the terminal!’

  ‘Just a moment. I don’t understand—’

  ‘I don’t care whether you understand it or not! Look for Dana Lawrence – the woman’s a terrorist. No one’s answering in the terminal. And stop the Charon. Stop it!’

  He left Haskin’s helpless, startled face on the screen and whirled around to the cabin bulkhead.

  ‘Open up!’

  * * *

  Dana stared at the controls, with the barrel of the gun pressed against the astronaut’s temple, and listened to the radio traffic. She’d heard every word. The touching conversation between Lynn and her father, Julian’s patriarchal bellow. Lynn sounded injured, she’d managed to hit the miserable spoilsport. Small consolation, but Haskin’s men would be here soon.

  ‘Block access to the torus,’ she ordered.

  ‘I can’t,’ panted the astronaut.

  ‘You can! I know you can.’

  ‘You don’t know shit. I can close the entryways, but I can’t lock them. They’re going to get in, whether it suits you or not.’

  ‘What about the pod?’

  ‘The Charon’s too close. I swear that’s the truth!’

  Then she would have to do something else. She didn’t need the external airlock. There were emergency entrances to the pods themselves, wherever they happened to be parked, she just somehow had to get to the outer ring and grab one of them. That jabbering piece of humanity there couldn’t help her, but she might still need the guy. Lawrence whacked him over the head again and left the toppling body to its own devices as she headed for the shelves of helmets.

  * * *

  Julian was consumed with anxiety. He bumped his shoulders and his head as he dashed through Torus-1 towards the corridor that led up to the terminal, tried to regain control of himself, and that wasn’t good. He’d never found any of the distances in the station particularly great, but now he felt as if he were floating on the spot, and he kept crashing into things.

  He was terribly worried.

  She had looked as if the life was flowing out of her. Her voice had been getting more and more halting and thin – she must have been injured, seriously injured. But the worst thing was that Haskin had hardly any chance of getting the Charon back. It wasn’t a drifting astronaut this time, it was a massive spaceship, and if Lynn—

  Oh, no, he thought. Please not. Don’t start the engine.

  Lynn! Please don’t—

  * * *

  —start the engine.

  Again and again she had to fight the descending darkness, while her fingers groped around, but as long as she couldn’t see anything it wasn’t much use. She knew she was still too close to the OSS. For safety’s sake she needed to get a lot further away, because otherwise there was a danger that the burning gases would damage parts of the construction. With the best will in the world she couldn’t remember the time span on the display of the mini-nuke, just that it was tight, bloody tight!

  She coughed. All around her, weird and beautiful, drifted the sparkling red beads of her blood. Weightlessness had the advantage that you couldn’t really collapse, you didn’t need any energy to stay on your feet, so that her physical systems were able to mobilise one last, impossible reserve of energy. Her vision cleared. Her fingers, determined, albeit hesitant and straying, went travelling: stretched and bent. Indicators lit up, a soft, automatic voice began to speak. She forced her body into the pilot’s seat, but she hadn’t the strength to buckle herself in. Just to start the acceleration process.

  Lynn stretched out her right arm. The tip of her index finger landed gently on the smooth surface of the touchscreen, and the jets ignited, developing maximum thrust. She was pressed into the padding and lost consciousness.

  The Charon fired away.

  * * *

  Leave the torus. Via one of the internal gangways. Get to one of the massive lattice masts that formed the spine of the OSS, climb along the struts to the space harbour, prepare one of the pods, decouple, set course for Earth. The things worked a bit like old-fashioned space shuttles, which they also superficially resembled, except that unlike their predecessors they had generous fuel supplies, so that once the stolen vehicle had entered the Earth’s atmosphere she could land anywhere in the world, where no one would find her.

  That was the plan.

  Lawrence floated to one of the two gangways, as her suit checked the life-support systems and made sure her helmet was on correctly. Behind the closed bulkhead lay a short tunnel, a mobile airlock whose segments were still telescoped together. When the space-lift reached the inside of the torus, they would stretch out to their full length and connect the torus with the cabin, so that the guests could transfer from there to the station, just as they had done on her arrival. She quickly opened the bulkhead. The opposite end of the airlock was sealed, with a porthole in the middle through which the external lights of the lift cables shimmered.

  She had been faster than Haskin. She no longer needed the unconscious astronaut. Just to pump the air out of the lock, open it and get out, without any of those
idiots stopping her. With her gun ready in its holster, she slipped into the tunnel.

  * * *

  Julian flew out of the corridor, bumped against the ceiling, ignored the pain, looked wildly in all directions. Someone drifted below him. Open eyes staring vacantly, liquid pearling from a small hole in his forehead. Where the bagel-shaped body of the torus curved away, a second body circulated slowly, impossible to say whether it was dead or unconscious. Julian pushed himself off, slid along just below the ceiling and saw that a bulkhead was open on the inward-facing side, immediately below him.

  One of the gangways branched off from it.

  Dana?

  Fury, hatred, fear, they all came together. He did a handstand, darted into the airlock, bumped against a person in a spacesuit who was about to operate the closing mechanism, pulled them away from the controls and deeper inside the airlock. He clearly recognised Dana Lawrence’s surprised Madonna face, as her UV visor was still raised, then their bodies struck the outer portal, rebounded and spun somersaulting back towards the torus. Dana fumbled for purchase, collided with the wall of the tunnel, pushed away and threw herself against him. Julian saw her fist flying at him, tried in vain to dodge it. A galaxy exploded in his head. He was slung around, flailed with his arms, fought for control. Dana came flying after him. The second blow broke his nose. He should have put on a helmet, bloody idiot, too late. Red and black mist floated in front of his eyes. He just managed to grab on to one of the hand-grips along the walls and kicked at random, hit Dana’s helmet and sent her flying round in circles.

  ‘What have you done with Lynn?’ he shouted. ‘What have you done with my daughter?’

  His hatred exploded. Again he kicked, his hand gripping the butt of his gun. Dana was whirled around, turned upside down, caught herself, launched at him and grabbed him by the shoulders. A moment later he flew off. Like a pinball he touched one side of the tunnel, then the other, and was carried out of the airlock.

  Where was Haskin? Where was the dozy standby crew?