‘It’s not that,’ said Nina. ‘You’d be able to make out the top edge of the crater from here, except that the flank facing us is in shadow at the moment. Black against black. But if you turn round, you can make out the Vallis Alpina to the north-east.’
‘Oh, yes! Fantastic.’
‘It’s pretty long,’ said Mimi.
‘A hundred and thirty-four kilometres. Half a Grand Canyon. Come over this way a bit. Up here. Take a look.’
‘Where to?’
‘Follow my outstretched finger. That bright dot.’
‘Hey! That couldn’t possibly be—?’
‘Certainly is,’ cried Marc. ‘Our hotel!’
‘What? Where?’
‘There.’
‘To be perfectly honest, I can see nothing but sun and shade.’
‘No, there’s something there!’
A babble of words, a confusion of thoughts. It could only have been the second train. On closer reflection, hardly surprising. Lynn and Dana Lawrence were taking care of everything. The hotel was their domain. What did he know? Food, oxygen and fuel had arrived during the night. He was a guest like all the others, he could consider himself lucky that everything was working so smoothly. Be proud! Be proud of Lynn, whatever dire predictions Tim had been gloomily coming up with. Ridiculous, that boy! Did someone stressed build hotels like Gaia?
Or was Lynn another reflection on his retina, whose true nature escaped him?
Unbelievable! Now he was starting to do the same thing himself.
‘Julian?’
‘What?’
‘I suggested that we fly back.’ Nina’s sweet conspiratorial smile behind her helmet could be heard in every word. ‘Marc and Mimi want to get to the tennis court before dinner, and apart from that we’ll have plenty of time to freshen up.’
Freshen up. Cute code-words. His right hand rose mechanically to stroke his beard, and instead rubbed against the bottom edge of his visor.
‘Yes, of course. Let’s go.’
‘Maybe you’ve seen me in more spectacular settings before. And thought they were real, even though your rational mind told you it couldn’t all be real. But then that’s the illusionist’s job, tricking your reason. And believe me, modern technology can produce any kind of illusion.’
Finn O’Keefe spread his arms as he walked slowly on.
‘But illusions can’t produce emotions of the kind that I’m feeling right now. Because what you’re seeing here isn’t a trick! It’s by some way the most exciting place I’ve ever been, far more spectacular than any film.’
He stopped and turned towards the camera, with the radiant Gaia in the background.
‘Before, when you wanted to fly to the Moon, you had to sit in a cinema seat. Today you can experience what I’m experiencing. You can see the Earth, set in such a wonderful starry sky, as if you were seeing all the way to the edge of the universe. I could spend hours trying to describe my feelings to you, but I,’ he smiled, ‘am only Perry Rhodan. So let me express myself in the words of Edgar Mitchell, the sixth man to set foot on the satellite, in February 1971: Suddenly, from behind the rim of the Moon, in long, slow-motion moments of immense majesty, there emerges a sparkling blue and white jewel, a light, delicate sky-blue sphere laced with slowly swirling veils of white, rising gradually like a small pearl in a thick sea of black mystery. It takes more than a moment to fully realise this is Earth… home. A sight that changed me for ever.’
‘Thanks,’ Lynn exclaimed. ‘That was great!’
‘I don’t know.’ Finn shook his head. The banal realisation dawned on him that shaking your head in a spacesuit doesn’t communicate anything to anybody, because your helmet doesn’t shake with it. Peter Black checked the result on the display of his film camera. O’Keefe’s face was clearly recognisable through his closed visor. He had taken off the gold metallised UV filter, as the surroundings would otherwise have been reflected in it. In spite of his layered contact lenses he wouldn’t be able to walk around in the open for very long. And it certainly wasn’t a good idea to look into the Sun.
‘No, it’s great,’ Black agreed.
‘I think the quote’s too long,’ said Finn. ‘Far too long. A real sermon – I nearly dozed off.’
‘It’s sacred.’
‘No, it’s just too long, that’s all.’
‘We’ll cut in shots of the Earth,’ said Lynn. ‘But if you like we’ll do an alternative shot. There’s another quote from James Lovelclass="underline" People on Earth don’t understand what they have. Maybe because not many of them have the opportunity to leave it and then come back.’
‘Lovell won’t do,’ said Black. ‘He never set foot on the Moon.’
‘Is that so important?’ asked O’Keefe.
‘Yes, and there’s another reason why not. He was the commander of Apollo 13. Anybody remember? Houston, we have a problem. Lovell and his people nearly snuffed it.’
‘Didn’t Cernan say something clever?’ Lynn asked. ‘He was a pretty good talker.’
‘Nothing comes to mind.’
‘Armstrong?’
‘It’s one small step for—’
‘Forget it. Aldrin?’
Black thought for a moment. ‘Yeah, something short too. He who has been to the Moon has no more goals on Earth.’
‘That sounds a bit fatalistic,’ Finn complained.
‘What happened to the monkeys?’ Heidrun’s voice joined in. O’Keefe saw her coming down the hill in front of Shepard’s Green. Even faceless and armoured her elfin figure was unmistakable.
‘What monkeys?’ Lynn’s laugh was slightly too shrill.
‘Didn’t you send monkeys up at some point? What did they say?’
‘I think they spoke Russian,’ said Black.
‘What are you doing here?’ O’Keefe grinned. ‘Don’t you fancy golf?’
‘I’ve never fancied golf,’ Heidrun announced. ‘I just wanted to watch Walo falling in the dirt as he took his swing.’
‘I’ll tell him.’
‘He knows. Didn’t you boast about beating me at swimming, big-mouth? You’d have the opportunity.’
‘What, now?’
Instead of answering, she waved to him and skipped away on her gazelle-like legs.
‘We’ve got filming to do,’ he called after her; it was as superfluous as his head-shaking, since radio contact remained constant only while visual contact was maintained.
‘Dinner’s on me if you win,’ she whispered, a small, white snake in his ear. ‘Schnitzel and röstis.’
‘Hey, Finn?’ said Lynn.
‘Mm-hm?’
‘I think that’s a wrap.’ Was he wrong, or did she sound nervous? Throughout the whole shoot she’d had a tense expression on her face. ‘I think the Mitchell quote is fine.’
O’Keefe saw Heidrun setting off along the other side of the gorge.
‘Yes,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Me too, as a matter of fact.’
Nina Hedegaard was freshening herself up, and freshening Julian up as well. He lay on his back as she guided him like a joystick. He didn’t have to do much more than put his arms around her buttocks and contract his own from time to time, to establish counter-pressure – at least that was normally how things worked, but at the moment her soft, tanned, golden body weighed only nine and a half kilos, and threatened to bounce away whenever he thrust too enthusiastically. On the Moon, taking possession of strategically crucial millimetres called for basic knowledge of applied mechanics: where exactly to grip, what contribution the muscles had to make – biceps, triceps, pectoralis major – holding the hip bones like a hinge, drawing them to him, pushing them away at a precisely calculated angle, then bringing them back down… It was all frustratingly complicated. They managed to crack the problem at one point, but Julian didn’t feel entirely comfortable. As Hedegaard slowly writhed her way towards a G-spot tornado measuring 5 on the Fujita scale, he was lost in idiotic thoughts, like the consequences of sex on the Moon if a few meddlesome beams in New Zealand had been enough to make little Maoris. Could they expect decuplets? Would Nina squat like a termite queen in the rocky seclusion of the Gaia Hotel, her abdomen monstrously swollen, popping out a human child every four seconds, or would she simply burst?