‘Excuse me?’ Lynn rolled her eyes. ‘We’re supposed to comb the hotel?’
‘Yes. In teams.’
‘We’d be looking for a needle in a haystack!’
‘And finding it if there is one. Sophie, get the rest of them together. We’ll concentrate on places where a thing like that could be hidden.’
‘How big is a mini-nuke?’ Sophie asked helplessly.
‘The size of a briefcase?’ Dana shrugged. ‘Does anyone know?’
Shaking of heads. On the screen Sophie opened several windows with schema-grams and tables full of numbers.
‘At any rate, we’re not registering any unusual radiation levels,’ she said. ‘No increased radioactivity, no additional sources of heat.’
‘Because there’s no bomb here,’ sulked Lynn.
‘And the sensors cover every area?’ asked Tim.
‘Every accessible area, yes.’
‘We should address another issue before we set off on our search,’ said Dana. ‘In my view we’re not just dealing with a bomb.’
‘What else, then?’
‘With a traitor.’
‘Oh Christ!’ Lynn shook her head. ‘I thought Carl was the bad guy.’
‘Carl is a bad guy. But who re-edited the video? Who helped him leave Gaia on the Lunar Express?’ she added with a sidelong glance at Lynn. ‘Your father seems to have a very keen faculty of observation.’
‘You think one of us is working for Carl?’ asked Tim.
‘You don’t?’
‘I don’t know enough about it.’
‘You know exactly as much as the rest of us do. How is Hanna going to cope up here all by himself? Acting and blurring his traces at the same time? Why did the satellites fail when his name was mentioned? How much can we put down to chance?’
‘But who would it be?’ Sophie’s girlish face was filled with horror. ‘Nobody on the staff. And certainly not one of the guests.’
‘Hanna came here as a guest. A guest personally chosen by Julian Orley. How could he win so much trust?’ Dana studied Lynn. Her gaze wandered on to Sophie, and settled on Tim. ‘So, the other one, who is he? Or is it a she? Someone in this room?’
‘Utter nonsense,’ snapped Lynn.
‘Could be. But that’s one reason for us to search in teams.’ Dana smiled thinly. ‘So that we can keep an eye on each other.’
Aristarchus Plateau
Hanna only registered that he was being chased after quite a long time. The last thing he had heard amidst the chaos in his helmet was that there was no longer any connection between Gaia and headquarters in London, or the Chinese jet. Hydra had discussed a few possible ways of paralysing communication from the Moon or the Earth if the situation required. Clearly Ebola had been active. Now they were only connected by the radio in their suits, or by the aerials of the rovers and the shuttle, although that required visible contact. The last voice he had heard was Locatelli’s, which had clearly been closer to him than the others.
Was he charging after him?
Hanna swerved around a small crater. The rover’s top speed was eighty kilometres an hour, but that was almost impossible to reach. The vehicle was light, particularly when under-occupied, and kept lifting off the ground, leaving clouds of dust behind. Somewhere in the washed-out grey the other vehicle had suddenly appeared, and it was quickly approaching. Either the driver had underestimated the particular qualities of gravity up here, or he was working from professional experience.
Locatelli was a racing driver.
It had to be him!
Hanna briefly considered stopping and blowing him up, but the swirl of dust wouldn’t exactly help his aim, and he would also lose time. Better to increase his distance. Once he had reached the shuttle it didn’t matter what became of Locatelli and the others. It wasn’t likely they’d manage to leave the Aristarchus Plateau, but even if they did, they wouldn’t be able to stop him. He had more than enough time left to carry out the operation and settle in the OSS. From there he could—
The right front wheel sped up. The rover performed a leap, landed crookedly, skidded along and wrapped Hanna in grey clouds. For a moment he lost his bearings. Uncertain in which direction to turn, he set off again, found himself facing the gaping depths of the Schröter Valley, and at the very last second quickly whipped the wheel around, saved himself as best he could. Clearly the only weapon that could be used against Locatelli was speed.
Dust. The monster that swallowed everything up.
Locatelli cursed. The bastard in front of him was whirling up so much of it that he had to hold back to keep from getting too close to him and dashing blindly to his death. Then, all of a sudden, it looked as if the murderer himself were driving into the abyss. He was just short of the edge when he regained control over his vehicle and whipped it on, whirling up clouds of tiny particles that glittered in their billions in the sunlight, as if the regolith were filled with glass. Darkness fell around Locatelli, then the clouds lifted. A moment later he saw the rover right in front of him with astonishing clarity. The subfloor had changed, asphalted terrain now, only a few hundred metres still to go to the Ganymede. Dark and massive, it rested on its beetle legs—
What had the guy actually fired at him? A tiny island of pensiveness appeared in the whipped-up ocean of his fury, a place of quiet contemplation. What in hell’s name was he doing here? What could he do to someone who was carrying deadly weapons and had no discernible qualms about using them? A moment later new waves of fury thundered through him, blowing away all his reservations. The murderer didn’t even seem to find him worth a bullet. He hurtled like mad towards the shuttle, brought the rover to a standstill under the tail, jumped from his seat and hurried to the lock shaft that protruded from the Ganymede’s abdomen like a monstrous birth canal. Only at the last second, with one leg in the cabin, did he pause and turn his reflective visor towards Locatelli.
‘You miserable creep!’ cried Locatelli, trying to wrest from the electric motor a performance that it had never managed before. ‘Wait, just wait!’
The astronaut put his hand to his thigh and drew the long, flat thing.
He finally realised what an unfavourable position his recklessness had placed him in. He saw himself through the eyes of his enemy, the cross-hairs practically painted on his helmet, one big invitation to pull the trigger—
‘Shit,’ he whispered.
He let go of the wheel as if it were made of red-hot steel, jumped from the rover, turned a somersault and skidded away across the smooth asphalt, as the vehicle dashed on with no one to stop it, straight towards Ganymede and the astronaut. A bright flash outshone the cold, white sun in the sky. The rover was hurled upwards, stood upright, and spat parts of its frame, splinters of chassis, scraps of gold foil and electronic components in all directions. Locatelli instinctively threw his arms together over his helmet. Beside him, debris ploughed grooves into the asphalt. He quickly rolled onto his back, then as he sat up he saw one of the wheels wobbling wildly towards him; he catapulted himself out of the way and got to his feet.
No! Not on my watch!
Crouching and expecting the worst, he ran across the landing field, but his adversary had vanished. He saw the illuminated cabin climbing the lock shaft. A few minutes more. He couldn’t let the murderer steal the Ganymede and leave them in the desert. Heedless of the injuries he had dealt himself in his stunt, he ran under the body of the shuttle to the lock shaft. The lift cabin was gone, but the display showed a red light, and while it was red, Black had explained to them, the shaft couldn’t be retracted. The astronaut must still be in the lock, which was probably being filled with air at that very minute. Good, very good.