By now, Konrad, Elsa and Ziegler and a few of the injured crew arrived in the corridor. At the sound of Mesler’s cries, Konrad and Elsa had hurriedly untangled themselves from one another. Like a scene from a domestic comedy, the lovers had gathered their discarded uniforms together and attempted to dress as quickly as possible. But in their haste, Elsa had accidentally put Konrad’s tunic on, while he abandoned his modesty and travelled bare-chested to the airlock, after he had tried and failed to put on Elsa’s smaller jacket. Both of them managed to appear calm and collected, but while Ziegler may have been innocent to that night’s activities, when he saw the ill-fitting tunic hanging from Elsa’s shoulders, it didn’t take the wily prisoner long to work out what had happened between them.
‘I presume you’ve finished what you were doing,’ Ziegler said as he pushed by.
Both Konrad and Elsa blushed at the comment.
Blomberg scowled at the prisoners. ‘You there!’ He zeroed in on Ziegler. ‘Help me here.’
Ziegler pointed at himself innocently.
‘What’s the matter?’ Blomberg shouted again. ‘Did the prison gruel make you deaf? Come on, help me restrain the officer before he kills us all!’
Ziegler did as he was instructed and joined the doctor. He pressed himself against the squirming Mesler. But now that he had a new audience, Mesler spoke up again.
‘There’s a hole in the hull,’ he shouted. ‘I was in the reactor when I dropped the welder. It melted through the wall and I’m not dead. Don’t you see? The air should have killed me. The air should have killed you too! Something has happened out on the surface.’
‘Calm yourself,’ Blomberg gently took hold of Mesler’s shaking shoulders. ‘You need to sleep and rest, my friend. You’ve been working on those batteries and in that reactor for too long. You’re burnt out, exhausted.’
Mesler violently shook his head. ‘I’ll prove you wrong. I’ll prove you all wrong.’
Konrad listened to the enraged officer with keen interest. The sheer conviction of Mesler’s words was intriguing because ever since the crash, Konrad had found the officer to be the only voice of reason amidst the chaos and carnage. In normal circumstances, the officer’s apparent collapse would have been a terrible omen, if one was needed that the end was near, but what intrigued Konrad the most was what if Mesler was telling the truth, and by some unfathomable miracle the air was breathable? They would be free of the metal tomb they were in. They could truly venture forth from the module, and even escape the suffocating presence of the spire and its mysterious contents. He knew what he had to do.
With a sense of trepidation, Konrad inched forward toward the airlock. Elsa saw what he was doing and grabbed his wrist tightly as she attempted to pull him back.
‘What are you doing?!’ she whispered with an understandable sense of fear.
‘Trust me…’ Konrad replied as he gently pried Elsa’s small fingers from his arm and stepped into the airlock. Once inside he triggered the hatch to close behind him.
When Ziegler saw what his friend was doing, he released Mesler and raced towards the descending doorway. ‘Konrad! What are doing?’
Blomberg did the same. ‘What’s that idiot doing? Get out of there. Get out!’ He played with the airlock’s controls, but they remained inoperative while the door was closing. There was no turning back for Konrad now. Blomberg slapped the door angrily as its locks hissed into place. ‘Dummkopf!’ he shouted angrily.
With a stomach-churning bang, the hatch slammed shut behind Konrad. It left him alone inside the airlock. He looked back at the sealed door and saw Mesler huddled behind the thick port-hole. The officer eagerly waved Konrad forward towards the chamber’s imposing floor to ceiling door.
At that moment, a siren screeched as a set of pistons heaved and creaked, and Konrad watched the hissing cylinders push the outer wall in the night air. Every muscle in Konrad’s body tensed up, his breathing growing shorter and shorter, until eventually, his breathing stopped altogether as he held his breath. As soon as the metallic barrier slammed into the dusty ground, the air, poisonous or not, swirled around Konrad, its freezing gusts playing across his face and body. He then inhaled deeply.
He waited for the poisonous effects to violently take hold of his body, but nothing happened. No burning of his throat and lungs, no coughing or choking. All he felt was the sensation of breathing in good old-fashioned fresh air.
For a time Konrad simply stood still, breathing in and out. His head whirled as his body absorbed the nourishing atmosphere, gorging itself like a ravenous man at a feast. For years he had only breathed the sterile, industrial atmospheres of Nazi space-craft and satellites such as Neu Magdeburg, but here in contrast, the air he now inhaled was natural and fresh, its touch upon his skin like that of Elsa’s.
Emboldened, Konrad made his way down the ramp into the darkness. His bare feet pressed into the alien soil, the gritty particles feeling impossible large between his toes as he playfully kicked up the soil like an excited child. He then gazed around the night landscape. A small portion of the spire stood starkly in the light cast from the airlock, a grandiose tombstone standing over the pile of earth that marked the graves of the Odin’s crew, but far in the distance, Konrad saw something quite unexpected.
A light started to flower on the distant horizon.
As this new dawn broke, the drab night melted away into a cascade of colours: purples, oranges, yellows and blues. He raised his hand over his eyes to shield them from the unfamiliar sun that rose above him, its virginal rays reflecting dazzlingly off the tower’s endless walls whose true scale was now free from the suffocating dust. Bending down, he scooped up a handful of dirt and rubbed the particles between his hands, the gun-metal soil staining his palms, the smell of ozone wafting on the wind around him beneath the now blue sky. It was as if Konrad had been transported back in time to be given the honour of witnessing dawn on the day of creation. This honour had, of course, previously belonged solely to God, but Konrad felt ecstatic as he now joined this unique fellowship.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
With a triumphant clang, the chain-link moorings were released from the rover. “Rover” was perhaps the wrong word to describe the giant tank-like vehicle. An angular chassis was slung between four huge tyres, while a two-man cab sat above the vehicle’s muscular engine and bulbous cargo-compartment. A large red and white registration number adorned one side of the rover, while a Teutonic cross and the obligatory swastika graced the opposite side of its dull grey hull. Mesler sat in the cab, his hands hovering over a bewildering series of joysticks and gauges. He pressed the start-stop button to activate the monstrous diesel engine, which spluttered and coughed as it filled the open airlock with a thick fog of acrid exhaust fumes like some bronchial giant rising from a deep sleep. As the cab rocked, Konrad appeared below the vehicle and clambered on board. After his bold and dramatic actions that revealed the atmosphere’s current life-sustaining qualities he had sensibly dressed in a discarded tunic from the crew. He had wisely removed the uniform’s swastika and decorative cuff-band. Nevertheless, it still looked odd to see the prisoner standing with the field-grey tunic draped over his baggy stripped trousers and scuffed boots like a mangy pirate. He adjusted the tunic and the leather-belt, noting its infamous motto: God is with us. He wondered if that was true as he dropped into the rover’s cramped cab.