‘There was no need to kill Mimi and Marc,’ he said hastily. ‘You did that out of pure pleasure at least.’
Hanna shook his head thoughtfully.
‘You don’t understand, Warren. You know people like me from the movies, and you think we’re all psychopaths. But killing isn’t a pleasure or a burden. It’s an act of depersonalisation. You can’t see a person and a goal at the same time. Back in the Schröter Valley, those three were too close, even Mimi and Marc. Marc, for example, would have been able to climb back along the cantilever and follow me in the second rover, not to mention Peter. I couldn’t take any kind of risk.’
‘In that case why didn’t you just kill all of—’
‘Because I thought the rest of you were up on Snake Hill, and therefore too far away to be dangerous to me. Whether you believe me or not, Warren, I’m trying to spare lives.’
‘How comforting,’ Locatelli murmured.
‘But I hadn’t reckoned with you. Why were you suddenly there?’
‘I’d gone back.’
‘Why? You didn’t want to see the lovely view?’
‘Forgot my camera.’ His voice sounded awkward to his own ears, embarrassed and hurt. Hanna smiled sympathetically.
‘The most trivial things can change the course of your life,’ he said. ‘That’s how things are.’
Locatelli pursed his lips, stared at the tips of his boots and fought down an attack of hysterical laughter. There he sat, worrying about whether his confession of forgetfulness would be posthumously weighed against his actions, reducing his heroic status. Would it? At least there would be some kind of obituary! A stirring speech. A toast, a bit of music: Oh Danny Boy—
He looked up.
‘Why am I still alive, Carl? Aren’t you in a hurry? What’s all this game-playing about?’
Hanna looked at him from dark, unfathomable eyes.
‘I’m not playing games, Warren. I’m not treacherous enough for that. You were unconscious for over an hour. While you were out, I analysed our situation. Doesn’t look so great.’
‘Mine certainly doesn’t.’
‘Nor mine. I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t able to get the thing off the ground at the last minute. We should really have been able to avoid the crash-landing with vertical counter-thrust. But the jets failed above the ground, when we were flying through those clouds of dust, perhaps they got blocked. Unfortunately, when we came down it knocked away our ground struts, so the Ganymede is lying on its belly, dug a fair way into the ground. I probably don’t need to tell you what that means.’
Locatelli threw his head back and closed his eyes.
‘We can’t get out,’ he said. ‘The airlock shaft won’t extend.’
‘A bit of a design flaw, if you ask my opinion. Installing the only portal on the underside.’
‘No emergency exit?’
‘Oh, there is: the freight-room in the tail. It can be vacuumed out and flooded with air, so in principle it’s an airlock too. The rear hatch can be lowered and extended into a ramp – but as I said, the Ganymede has ploughed several kilometres through the regolith, before clattering its way into a rock face over the last few metres. There are boulders lying around all over the place, as far as the eye can see. I think some of them are blocking the hatch. It won’t open more than half a metre.’
Locatelli thought about it. It was funny, in fact. Really funny.
‘Why are you surprised?’ he laughed hoarsely. ‘You’re in jail, Carl. Right where you belong.’
‘But so are you.’
‘So? Does it make any kind of difference whether you finish me off here or out there?’
‘Warren—’
‘It doesn’t matter. It couldn’t matter less! Welcome to prison.’
‘If I’d wanted to finish you off, you would never have come round. You understand? I don’t plan to finish you off.’
Locatelli hesitated. His laughter died away.
‘You really mean that?’
‘At the moment you aren’t any sort of threat to me. You’re not going to dupe me again like you did in the airlock. So you have the choice of being obstructive or cooperating.’
‘And what,’ Locatelli said slowly, ‘would my outlook be like if I chose to cooperate?’
‘Your temporary survival.’
‘But temporary isn’t enough.’
‘All I can offer. Or let’s say, if you play along, at least you won’t face any danger from me. I can promise you that much.’
Locatelli fell silent for a second.
‘Fine, then. I’m listening.’
Rover
Over the past half-hour Amber had given up all hope of ever reaching the production plant. Seen from a high altitude, the Aristarchus Plateau looked like a softly undulating picture-book landscape for lunar drivers, particularly along the Schröter Valley, where the terrain appeared to be entirely smooth, almost as if planed. But at ground level you got an idea of the day-to-day life of an ant. Everything grew into an obstacle. As effortlessly as the rovers were able to drive over smaller bumps and boulders in their path, thanks to their flexible axles, they proved more susceptible to the tiny craters, potholes and cracks that opened up in front of them, forcing them to navigate from one hindrance to the next at between twenty and thirty kilometres an hour. It was only once they were past a collection of bigger craters on the way towards the Oceanus Procellarum that the ground evened out and their progress became faster.
Since then, Amber had looked into the sky more and more often, in the hope of seeing the Ganymede appearing on the horizon, while her hope made way for the horrible certainty that Locatelli hadn’t made it. Momoka, who was driving the second rover, had lapsed into silence. No one was particularly talkative. Only after quite a long time did Amber speak to her father-in-law on a special frequency so that the others couldn’t listen in on the conversation.
‘You kept a few things to yourself back then.’
‘How do you work that out?’
‘Just a gut feeling.’ She scanned the horizon. ‘A little thing that tells women when men are lying or not telling the whole truth.’
‘That’s enough of your intuition.’
‘No, really. It’s just that women are more gifted at lying. We’ve perfected the repertoire of dissimulation – that’s why we can see the truth gleaming as if through fine silk when you lie. You talked about the possibility of an attack. On some Orley facility somewhere or other. Carl runs amok, communication fails, and in retrospect it becomes clear that he went behind your back two days ago and took a night-time joyride on the Lunar Express.’
‘And none of it makes any sense.’
‘No, it does. It makes sense if Carl’s the guy who’s supposed to carry out the attack.’
‘Here on the Moon?’
‘Don’t act like I’m retarded. Here on the Moon! Which would mean that it isn’t just some facility or other, but one in particular.’
They scooted on across the dark, monotonous basalt of the Oceanus Procellarum, already within the vicinity of the Mare Imbrium. For the first time they were able to take the rover up to its top speed, albeit at the cost of a very bumpy ride, as the chassis seesawed up and down and the vehicle kept lifting off the ground. In the distance, hills became visible, the Gruithuisen region, a chain of craters, mountains and extinct volcanic domes that stretched all the way to Cape Heraclides.
‘One more thing,’ said Julian. ‘Can I talk to you about Lynn?’
‘As long as it leads to an answer to my question, whenever you like.’
‘How does she seem to you?’
‘She’s got a problem.’