‘Tyre tracks,’ said Julian.
‘Your buggy,’ confirmed Oleg. ‘Hanna has driven down along the path and out onto the plain. I don’t know how well he knows the area, but what else could he be interested in other than the place we also want to get to?’
‘So the bastard just fucked off!’ Momoka came over with Evelyn, down from the hill where Warren Locatelli lay.
‘Momoka,’ began Julian, ‘I’m so terribly—’
‘There’s no need. No outpourings of sympathy, please. The only thing I’m interested in is killing him.’
‘We’ll give Warren a proper burial.’
‘There’s no time for that.’ Her voice had lost all modulation. Autopilot driven by rage. ‘I looked at Warren’s face, Julian. And do you know what? He spoke to me. Not some jabbering from the other side, not that old shit. He would speak to you too, if you took the effort to go over there to him. You just have to look him in the face. He doesn’t look the same as he did before, but you can hear him say loudly and clearly that humans have no business being up here. None at all! Not us, and not you either,’ she added in a hostile tone.
‘Momoka, I—’
‘He said we should never have accepted your invitation!’
But you did, thought Julian, though he didn’t say a word.
‘Carl has driven to the mining zone,’ said Amber.
‘Very well.’ Momoka marched over to the rovers. ‘We have to go there anyway, right?’
‘No, wait,’ said Julian.
‘For what?’ She stopped. ‘You seemed to be in a hurry just now.’
‘I’ve found some additional oxygen reserves in the storage space of the shuttle. Really, Momoka, we have time to give him a decent—’
‘That’s very sensitive of you, but Warren is already buried. Carl slit open his stomach and took off his helmet. I don’t see any reason to stone him too.’
There was icy silence for a second.
‘So?’ she asked. ‘Shall we go?’
‘I’ll drive,’ said Evelyn.
‘I’m happy to as well—’ Oleg offered.
‘None of you will drive,’ decided Momoka. ‘If any of us has reason to drive, then it’s me. To follow him.’
‘Are you sure?’ asked Amber cautiously.
‘I’ve never been so sure,’ said Momoka, and her voice made her visor steam up.
‘Fine.’ Julian looked out over the plain. ‘Seeing as we don’t have any satellite connection, I’ll link the four of us on one frequency. From now on, no one will be able to hear us, not even Carl, should we get close to him. It might help.’
Gaia, Vallis Alpina
‘There must be a way!’
Tim had lost all sense of time. Seconds seemed to drag out endlessly, but at the same time an hour dwindled into a disheartening nothing, brief enough to feel useless. Although the deaths had had the relative advantage of distracting them from the bomb, it took on a new, tyrannical presence now that they had alerted the prisoners to the threatening cataclysm. Strangely, Lynn seemed to gain more strength the more confused the situation became. It wasn’t that she was really doing any better, but catastrophes, real catastrophes, seemed to have an exorcising effect on the demons in her head – even her perception of Tim was gradually becoming closer to his true nature. They were nothing other than the monsters of hypothesis, creatures from the family of what-ifs, the genus of could-bes, all equipped with the torture devices of paths left untaken.
He felt deeply sorry for his sister.
The fear that her work could turn out to be vulnerable and faulty must have cost her every last rational thought. Tim was now convinced that his uneasiness, fed by Dana Lawrence’s suspicions, had proved to be a tragic misunderstanding. Lynn wasn’t the one trying to cause damage to her own creation and its occupants. Her mind might be struggling against disintegration, but for the moment there was probably nothing better than for her to be forced to react by her nightmares being realised. After all, she was even explaining the latest developments to Dana, her newly elected arch enemy, and taking a huge, humbling leap by asking the fired director for her advice.
‘We’ve looked at the images from the external camera,’ she said. ‘The flames have clearly led to a partial breakdown in the steel skeleton within Gaia’s neck. So the fire should have been extinguished, but now the structure is damaged. There are a number of gaping leaks up there.’
Dana was silent. She seemed to be thinking.
‘Come on, Dana,’ pressed Lynn. ‘I need your assessment of the situation.’
‘Well, what’s yours?’
‘That there’s only one way out for Miranda, Olympiada and Finn, and it’s not downwards.’
‘Over the viewing terrace, you mean?’
‘Yes. Out through the airlock in the Mama Quilla Club.’
‘We’d have to overcome two problems with that,’ said Dana. ‘First, you can’t climb up over the outside of the head.’
‘Yes, you can. We planned for a roll-out ladder in case of emergency.’
‘But it wasn’t installed.’
‘Why not? According to the safety regulations—’
‘For optical reasons. On your instructions, by the way,’ added Dana, with audible satisfaction. ‘We could carry out the installation of course, but it would be dreadfully complicated under the prevailing conditions and it would also take a considerable amount of time.’
‘The second problem is harder to solve,’ interjected O’Keefe, who was switched on to their frequency. So the fibre-optic connection still seemed to be intact at least. ‘We don’t have any spacesuits up here. So the terrace won’t be much help to us.’
‘Couldn’t we bring some up?’ asked Ögi. He was relentlessly pacing the room, taking equally long, precisely measured steps, or so it seemed to Tim. He was the only one who had stayed behind in the control centre. The others were seated in the lobby, trying to get a grip on things with Heidrun’s help. ‘E1 still seems to be functioning.’
‘But E1 only goes to the neck,’ said Tim.
‘Forget it.’ Lynn shook her head. ‘The shaft is completely sealed off to protect us from the vacuum. After the structural changes up there the doors wouldn’t open up again anyway. There’s only one option.’
‘Through the airlock,’ said Dana.
‘Yes.’ Lynn dug her teeth into her lower lip. ‘From the outside. We have to get the suits inside through the airlock of the viewing platform.’
‘But for that you’ll have to bring them up first,’ said Finn. ‘And it won’t stop creaking up here so it has to be quick! I don’t know how much longer the head will hold.’
‘Callisto,’ said Dana. ‘Bring them up on the Callisto.’
‘Where is Nina anyway?’ asked Tim.
Lynn looked at him in surprise. In the heat of the moment she had completely forgotten the Danish pilot.
‘Wasn’t she with you in the bar?’ asked Lynn.
‘Who – Nina?’ O’Keefe shook his head. ‘No.’
‘And has someone down here—’ Lynn paused. ‘Oh, shit! In order to bring up the Callisto, we need someone who can carry out precision manoeuvres in a large craft.’ The last trace of colour drained from her face. ‘We have to find Nina!’
‘We can’t wait that long,’ urged Finn.
‘Then—’ She tried to catch her breath in an effort to fight off a panic attack. ‘We could – we have ten grasshoppers in the garage! Almost all of you have already flown a craft like that.’