‘It looks good. Very good even.’
‘Mukesh.’ Sushma grabbed her husband’s upper arm and looked at him pleadingly. ‘Did you hear what he said? We could go now—’
‘No, no.’ Funaki, with one leg still in the cabin, turned around hurriedly and shook his head. ‘We’re supposed to send it down empty. Just like Miss Orley said.’
‘But it’s fine.’ Sushma’s shoulders were quivering with tension. ‘It’s intact, isn’t it? Every time we send it back and forth, it could only get more dangerous. I want to go down now, please, Mukesh.’
‘Oh, honey, I don’t know.’ Mukesh looked at Funaki uncertainly. ‘If Michio says—’
‘It’s my decision!’
The Japanese man pulled a face and scratched himself behind the ear.
‘I’m in,’ said Karla. ‘I agree.’
‘What, you want to go down now?’ asked Eva. ‘Do you think that’s a good idea?’
‘What is there to debate? The cabin made it up, so it will make it back down again too. Sushma’s right.’
‘I’m coming in any case,’ said Hsu. ‘Finn?’
O’Keefe shook his head.
‘I’m staying here.’
‘Me too,’ said Olympiada.
Funaki looked helplessly at Miranda Winter. She ran her hands through the singed tips of her hair and pinched her nose.
‘So, the thing is, I believe in voices,’ she said, rolling her eyes towards the ceiling. ‘Voices from the universe, you know – sometimes you have to listen really closely, then the universe speaks to you and tells you what you have to do.’
‘Uh-huh,’ said Karla.
‘You have to listen with your whole body of course.’
O’Keefe gave her a friendly nod. ‘And what does it say, the cosmos?’
‘To wait. I mean, that I should wait!’ she hurried to confirm. ‘It can only speak for me after all.’
‘Of course.’
‘We’re losing time,’ urged Funaki. ‘They’ve already called the elevator back down again. The light’s flashing.’
Mukesh grasped Sushma’s hand.
‘Come on’ he said.
They walked past Funaki into the cabin, followed by Hsu, Karla and Eva, who peered in sceptically.
‘You’re coming too?’ asked Karla, surprised.
‘Do you think I’m going to let you go down by yourselves?’
‘It’s best if you stay in Selene.’ Mukesh called out to those staying behind. ‘We’ll send the elevator back right away.’
The doors closed.
Am I too cautious? wondered O’Keefe. When all is said and done, am I just a coward?
Suddenly the disquieting feeling crept over him that he’d just thrown away his last chance of getting out of here alive.
‘It’s awful,’ said Eva softly. ‘When I think of how Aileen and Chuck—’
‘Don’t think about it then,’ said Karla, staring straight ahead.
The cabin set itself in motion.
‘It’s moving,’ commented Hsu.
‘I just hope it will a second time too,’ said Sushma, concerned. ‘The others should have come with us.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Mukesh reassured her. ‘It will.’
The familiar feeling of weight loss set in. The elevator sped up, past—
—the cabin of E2, the interior of which was shimmering with red-yellow embers as the oxygen tank incessantly spat flames out into the wasteland of the neck. Inside the lift it was getting hotter and hotter. In spite of their density, the panes of the glazed section at the front were straining to brace themselves against the fire, but in vain, as the pressure began to shift to the inside and forced the components of the cabin slowly but steadily apart. The elevator shafts were separated from one another by thin, longitudinal walls, that were pierced by passageways a metre square. Contrary to their outer appearance, they were incredibly robust, made of mooncrete and designed to stand up to even heavy loads.
Not as heavy as this, though, admittedly.
For over three-quarters of an hour, ferrostatic tension had been building up inside the cabin. Now that the tolerable maximum had been exceeded, it exploded with such destructive force that one of the side casings split off with a deafening noise, smashed the shaft wall into pieces and spread out like shrapnel into the neighbouring shaft, making the staff elevator come to a jolting standstill.
It stopped so abruptly that its passengers were torn off their feet, shot up weight-lessly, banged their heads together and tumbled down wildly. In the next moment, something crashed down onto the roof, making the cabin shake heftily.
‘What was that?’ Sushma sat up and looked around, her eyes wide. ‘What happened?’
‘We’re stuck!’
‘Mukesh?’ Panic rippled through her voice. ‘I want to get out. I want to get out immediately.’
‘Calm down, my love, I’m sure everything is—’
‘I want to get out. I want to get out!’
He took her arm and spoke to her insistently, quickly and under his breath. One after another, they clambered to their feet, their faces pale and anxious.
‘Did you hear that crash?’ Hsu stared up at the roof of the cabin.
‘But we were already past it,’ Karla said to herself, as if wanting to make the obvious impossible. ‘We were already below the gallery.’
‘Something stopped us.’ Eva glanced at the controls. The lights had gone out. She pressed the button for the intercom system. ‘Hello? Can anyone hear us?’
No answer.
‘What a mess,’ cursed Hsu.
‘I want to get out,’ pleaded Sushma. ‘Please, I want—’
‘Don’t start!’ Hsu barked at her. ‘You were the one that talked us into getting in this thing. It’s because of you that we’re stuck.’
‘You didn’t have to come too!’ Mukesh replied furiously. ‘Leave her be.’
‘Oh, shut it, Mukesh.’
‘Hey!’ Eva interrupted. ‘Don’t argue, we—’
Something made a crunching noise above them. A hollow, grinding noise joined it, followed by deathly silence.
The cabin jolted.
Then it fell.
‘You did what?’
Lynn stared at the monitor and Funaki’s baffled face.
‘They wanted to get in at all costs, Miss Orley,’ the Japanese man groaned. He gazed downwards. His head jerked forwards and backwards in quick succession, gestures of submission. ‘What was I supposed to do? I’m not an army general – people have their own free will.’
‘But it didn’t work! And we can’t make contact with them any more.’
‘Did they – get stuck?’
Lynn glanced at the controls. They had seen the cabin stop suddenly under the gallery, but after that the icon had disappeared.
No one said a word. Walo Ögi was pacing through the room, while Heidrun and Tim stared at the controls as if they could conjure up the icon again just by gazing at it.
There was a state of emergency in Lynn’s mind.
The drugs had unleashed their narcotic effect while the acute drama lashed away at her, pushing her beyond her limits. She felt confused, drunk almost, but at the same time acutely aware of every detail of her surroundings, a strange, unsettling clarity. There was no before and after, no more primary and secondary perception. Everything bombarded her at once, while less and less was making its way out. Different levels of reality layered on top of one another, broke apart, forced their way back together again, splintered, and created surreal backing scenery for the performance of incomprehensible plays. The blood rushed in her ears. For the hundredth, thousandth, zillionth time, she asked herself how on earth she could have let herself in for this, building space stations and moon hotels, instead of finally standing up to Julian and making it clear to him that she wasn’t perfect, wasn’t a superhuman, wasn’t even a healthy human for that matter. She should have told him that the task would destroy her, that you may well need a lunatic to create something brilliant and crazy, but certainly not to maintain it or even promote it. Because that, precisely that, was a task for the healthy ones, the mentally clear and stable, those who flirted with lunacy, flirted with it without a care in the world, not having the slightest idea what it really felt like.