Ganymede
Locatelli stared at the control displays.
He had worked out by now that Hanna was taking his bearings from the holographic map, a kind of substitute LPCS. The outside cameras synched a real-time image of the visible area of the landscape with a 3D model in the computer into which you’d programmed your destination and route. That meant you could hold a steady course, practically on autopilot, because the system continually corrected itself, although that called for a high altitude. Locatelli guessed that Hanna had programmed in a destination that the controls were unable to tell him anything about. He would have bet that the Canadian was flying back to the hotel, but they were too far west for that. To get to Gaia he would have had to take a northeasterly course, and instead it looked as if he was stubbornly heading due north at fifty degrees longitude.
Was Hanna trying to get to the Pole?
Questions accumulated. Why did Hanna not use LPCS? How did you land a thing like that? How did you slow down? They were hurtling along at twelve hundred kilometres an hour, ten kilometres up, extremely worrying. How long would their fuel hold out if the jets had to constantly generate thrust in order to keep Ganymede at this altitude and accelerate at the same time?
He picked up his helmet and tried to make contact with Momoka via his suit connection. When he received no answer, he tried to get through to Julian and switched to conference reception. Nothing but atmospheric hiss. Perhaps the suit systems didn’t work at such distances. After all, they had been flying northwards for half an hour. Glancing at the map, he scanned the distances and reached the conclusion that there must by now be over five hundred kilometres between the shuttle and the Aristarchus Plateau. On the right, a considerable way off, a crater stood out in the middle of a plateau: Mairan, the map told him. Another, Louville, appeared over the edge of the horizon to the north. It was time to get to know the cockpit. It must at least be possible to contact the hotel from the Ganymede.
His eye fell on a diagram above the windscreen, which he hadn’t noticed until then. A simple set of instructions, but enough to get him to the main menu, and suddenly everything was much easier than he’d thought. Admittedly he still didn’t know how to fly the thing, but at least he knew how to work the radio. His disappointment was all the greater, then, when he still heard nothing but silence. At first he thought the radio mustn’t be working, but then at last he worked out that the satellites were out of operation.
So that was why Hanna had switched to map navigation.
At the same moment he understood why he couldn’t get through to anybody on conventional channels. Traditional radio meant that the partners had to be within visible range of each other, so that there was nothing between the transmitter and the receiver to absorb the radio waves, and in the case of the Moon the strong curvature quickly absorbed all contact. That was why his connection with Momoka and the others had been severed earlier on as well, because they had been on the other side of Snake Hill when the chase was taking place. Which was how he now knew the exact time of the satellite failure.
It coincided with Hanna’s escape.
Coincidence? Never in a million years! There was something bigger going on here.
Behind him, Hanna groaned quietly. Locatelli turned his head. After a long search he had finally found a few straps for lashing down cargo, and tied him to the front row of seats. You couldn’t exactly have claimed that he was trussed up like a parcel, but Hanna wouldn’t be able to free himself quickly enough to stop Locatelli shooting him in the leg with his own gun. He studied the murderer’s pale face for a moment, but the Canadian kept his eyes closed.
He turned back to the control panel. After a while he thought he had worked out various things, such as how to regulate the altitude of Ganymede, to make it climb or descend by—
That was it. Of course!
Locatelli was suddenly very excited. The Moon had no atmosphere, so in fact flight altitude couldn’t have anything to do with it, although of course it meant you were eating into your fuel supplies. It didn’t alter the general conditions, a vacuum was a vacuum. But the higher he climbed, the less noticeable the curvature became, until it was entirely irrelevant. As far as he remembered, only the Rupes Toscanelli Plateau stretched north-east of the Schröter Valley, with Snake Hill. If they weren’t cowering under the spurs of rock right now, but had fought their way through to the space station, he had to get through to them!
His fingers darted over the controls. The shuttle had a frightening number of jets, he established, some pointing stiffly downwards, others backwards, others still were on a pivot. He decided to ignore the pivotable ones, and switch thrust entirely to the vertical. He entered a value at random—
Suddenly the air was squeezed from his lungs.
Damn it! Too much, much too much! What sort of stupid bloody idiot was he! Why hadn’t he started with less? The idea of a calm flight was out of the window. The Ganymede shot upwards like mad, rattled, vibrated and bucked as if trying to shake him out of its innards. He quickly reduced the thrust, worked out that not all the jets were firing evenly, hence the vibrations, corrected, regulated, balanced, and the shuttle calmed down, continued climbing, now at a more moderate speed.
Good, Warren. Very good!
‘Locatelli to Orley,’ he shouted. ‘Momoka. Julian. Come in, please.’
All kinds of white noise emerged from the speakers, but nothing that even slightly resembled human articulation. The Ganymede was approaching the thirteen-kilometre mark. After its initial bickering, it allowed itself to be ridden like the most placid of ponies, climbing constantly higher, while Locatelli shouted Julian and Momoka’s names in turn.
Fourteen kilometres.
The landscape stretched below him. Again there was rattling and trembling, as the irritable automatic controls registered deviations from the longitudinal bearings and roughly compensated for them.
‘Locatelli to Orley. Julian! Momoka! Oleg, Evelyn. Can anybody hear me? Come in! Locatelli to—’
14.6 – 14.7 – 14.8
He gradually started to feel queasy, even though the rational part of his brain quickly reassured him that he could theoretically fly into outer space. All just a matter of fuel.
‘Momoka! Julian!’
15.4 – 15.5 – 15.6
Nothing.
‘Warren Locatelli to Orley. Come in please.’
Hiss. Crackle.
‘Locatelli to Orley. Julian! Momoka!’
‘Warren!’
Aristarchus Plateau
‘Warren! Warren! I’ve got Warren on the line!’
Momoka started to do a kind of St Vitus’ dance around the charred rover, whose bed they had started to load with batteries. They paused, all listening. His voice rang out with promising volume in their helmets, clear and distinct, as if he were standing right next to them.
‘Warren, darling, sweetie!’ cried Momoka. ‘Where are you? Sweetheart, oh my sweetheart! Are you okay?’
‘All fine. You?’
‘A few of us are missing, we don’t know exactly what happened. Peter, Mimi, Marc—’
‘Dead,’ said Locatelli.
Not that any confirmation was required. But the word fell like a blade and guillotined the unregenerate little optimist who had, until that moment, been tirelessly coming out with all kinds of murmured ifs and could-bes. There was a moment of hurt silence.
‘Where are you now?’ asked Julian, audibly chastened.
‘In the shuttle. Carl, the bastard, slung Peter into the gorge and then blew up Mimi and Marc, and then he hijacked the shuttle, but I managed to get on board.’