‘Of course I’m right,’ panted Locatelli. ‘I’m generally right. The bane and blessing of my existence. The deeper your blasted shot goes in, the more it can do.’
‘Even so, I’m not sure the explosive will be enough. The stones are enormous.’
‘But porous! This stuff’s basalt, volcanic rock. With a bit of luck bits of it will come flying off, and you’ll destabilise the whole pile.’
‘Fine,’ Hanna agreed. ‘Let’s try that.’
They began deepening and widening the channel. After an interval the Canadian disappeared inside the ship, brought out the console struts of the grasshopper, and they went on digging with that makeshift tool; they scraped and scrabbled until Hanna thought the channel was deep enough. At an appropriate distance from the Ganymede, at a slightly elevated position, they piled the smaller stones from the surroundings into a wall, lay down flat behind it, and Hanna took aim.
‘Heads down!’
Like a newborn cosmos, a grey cloud expanded among the rocks. Warren Locatelli crouched lower. Bits of rock were hitting the basalt to right and left of the wall. When he raised his head above the parapet, it looked at first as if nothing had happened. Then he saw the huge boulder at the front shifting incredibly slowly and then spinning on its own axis. The one next to it dislodged as well, pushed its neighbour aside, and immediately collapsed, sending fragments scattering down the slope.
‘Yeah!’ cried Locatelli. ‘My idea. My idea!’
The big boulder was still spinning, and when it was jostled by a third that toppled into the gap, it finally leaned over, rolled heavily a few more metres and produced a chain reaction of tumbling debris that rattled cheerfully down the hill.
‘Yeah! Yeah!’
He jumped to his feet. They leapt from their improvised trench, and shoved the remaining rubble aside. Drunk on dopamine and thrilled by their joint success, Locatelli forgot the circumstances of their enmity, as if the disputes of the past few hours had been based on a script error, in which Hanna, the good mate, had been unjustly demonised, but was now, once again, someone with whom you could run races and blow up moon mountains. They freed the hatch of the Ganymede, and Hanna gave him a friendly slap on the shoulder.
‘Well done, Warren. Very good!’
That contact, even though he barely felt it through his thick armour, brought Warren to his senses with a start. He couldn’t get so drunk on his body’s stimulants that he would actually let Hanna touch him. He had always liked the Canadian, with his moderate machismo, his monosyllabic manner, and now he thought he could discern something vaguely friendly about him, which made things even worse.
‘Let’s get it over with,’ he said roughly. ‘You open the hatch, I drive the buggy out and—’
‘No, you can take a break,’ Hanna said equably. ‘I’ll drive it out myself.’
‘Why? Do you think I’ll try and get away?’
‘Yes, that’s exactly what I think.’
And you’re right, you fucker, thought Locatelli. He had flirted with the idea. Now he had conflicted feelings. He watched Hanna as he ran up the slope, climbed the nose of the Ganymede and disappeared from view. Suddenly he was aware that the hitman didn’t need him any more. Feeling uneasy, he took a step back, as the hatch swung open and started to lower. He could see the inside of the freight space. A ramp emerged from the tipping hatch, and there was Hanna, already standing next to the buggy. He sat down in the driver’s seat, checked the controls and started. The ramp came down towards the ground, and Locatelli spotted that its rim wasn’t going to make contact. The furrow that the shuttle had made had piled the debris up too far. It stopped a good metre above the regolith. For a moment the little vehicle looked like an animal about to spring, then it came to a standstill just beyond the edge of the ramp.
Locatelli hesitated. He didn’t really know what to hope for, or what to fear. For a moment he had been worried that Hanna might simply drive on and leave him here, in the shadow of a broken-down spaceship that could no longer even be flooded with breathable air. Now, when he saw the Canadian climbing out, the source of his unease shifted to the possibility that the Canadian would proceed to make short work of him before driving off. Nervously, he took a step towards the ramp.
‘What’s up?’ asked Hanna. ‘Aren’t you coming?’
‘Coming?’ echoed Locatelli.
‘You can still be useful to me.’
Useful. Aha.
‘And for how long,’ Locatelli asked, ‘will I be useful?’
‘Until we’ve reached the American extraction station.’ Hanna pointed outside at the dusty plain. ‘When you were unconscious, I did a rough calculation of our position. What I see from here tells me that we’re stranded precisely at the tip of Cape Heraclides. That means that the station is to the north-east, in the middle of the basalt lake, where the Sinus Iridum and the Mare Imbrium meet. About a hundred kilometres from here.’
‘And why do you want to go there?’
‘The station’s automated,’ said Hanna. ‘But inspectors are always going there. A terminal was set up for them. Pressurised. A proper little base, where you could live for several months. We’ll have to rely on our own sense of direction to get there, since all the satellites are out.’
‘Turn them back on, then.’
‘What makes you think I can do that?’
‘What makes you think I’ve got shit for brains?’ barked Locatelli. ‘They all failed when you set off on your crazy little journey. Are you trying to tell me that was coincidence?’
Hanna said nothing for a few moments.
‘Of course not,’ he said. ‘But it’s not in my power to correct that. We had to interrupt communication after I’d been busted, and now stop bugging me, okay? Help me to navigate and I’ll leave you at the extraction station. If you want to live—’
Hanna went on talking, but Locatelli wasn’t listening. He stared past the ramp. Something to the side of the Ganymede had attracted his attention.
‘—rid of me,’ Hanna was saying. ‘You’ve just got to—’
Why was dust swirling up where the body of the shuttle was in the regolith? Little clouds puffing up along its flank, like an approaching steam train. What was happening? The outlines of the spaceship blurred, its steel fuselage quivered. The edge of the ramp barely rose above the debris, but more dust was pouring out. The ground was trembling too.
‘—then we’ll—’
‘The shuttle’s slipping!’ yelled Locatelli.
Hanna jerked around. The Ganymede reared up, no longer stabilised by the boulders that they had blown away. A moment later it started moving again and slipped backwards, spraying up sand and gravel. Locatelli saw Hanna dash up and jump onto the ramp that was now hurtling towards them, which swept the buggy up and away; he tried to leap to safety, stumbled and fell. He was back on his feet in a moment, pushed himself away, dived to the side—
Another half-metre and he would have done it.
The moment the rim cut into his belly, he saw with crystal clarity the image of Carl Hanna who, a universe further off, had done the right thing and sought refuge in altitude. Then a searing pain erased all other thoughts. He instinctively gripped the steel, a torero impaled on the bull’s horns, shaken to the core by the downhill race of the Ganymede, which dropped one last time, pitched and slung him away in a high arc. He landed on his back several metres away, became aware that the shuttle had stopped sliding just as suddenly as it had started, wedged on a ledge of rock, saw the buggy somersaulting and Hanna leaping along the loading bed and jumping into the rubble.
He pressed both hands to his belly, as hard as he could.