‘Now, now, Lynn,’ she whispered. ‘Not in front of the guests! How would that look?’
After Gaia’s last nod, the airlock was jutting out from the viewing platform at such an angle that it was now pointing at the far-away Earth like a cannon. They held on to the railing, and each other, as the cabin bulkheads glided to the side.
‘Oh, wonderful,’ said Miranda sarcastically. The view over the terrace couldn’t have been more worrying.
The world had tipped by forty-five degrees; millions of tonnes of rock seemed to be eager to topple towards them from the ravine opposite. Where the terrace ended, Tim and Ögi were huddled against the railing to prevent whichever one of them might lose their grip from falling into the depths. Miranda reached out for the frame of the open airlock, grasped hold of it and pulled herself outside. The boots of her bio-suit were equipped with powerful treads to prevent them from slipping. Her fingers found a grip in an indentation. With her legs spread and the unrolled wad of material – several tablecloths from Selene knotted together – slung around her hips, she worked her way up the slope. The makeshift rope had been O’Keefe’s brilliant idea; the other end of it was fastened to Olympiada’s chest guard.
‘Okay. Pass her towards me.’
Heidrun steered the Russian woman out of the airlock, waited until she had a firm grasp on the railing, then let her go. Olympiada immediately crumpled over and slipped down the slope, but instead of falling she hung on the end of Miranda’s umbilical cord. Miranda climbed further up along the shaft of the cabin until she was able to crawl under it. With her feet wedged against the wall of the shaft, she heaved Olympiada up, unknotted the cloth and let it back down. Heidrun then hurried swiftly upwards, followed by O’Keefe, who had rammed the ice pick into the airlock door to prevent it from shutting and sending the shaft back down.
‘Everything okay there?’ called Ögi.
‘More than okay!’ said Heidrun.
‘Good. We’re coming up to you.’
It was relatively easy to pull themselves up over the railing, but once they got there it was still a fair distance to the airlock. Miranda threw the rope to them. After two attempts, Tim finally got hold of it, knotted it around the bars of the railing, and they made their way across hand over hand. It was incredibly tight behind the cabin with six of them, but at least they had a stable wall at their backs to prevent them from sliding down. They clung on alongside one another, hardly daring to move through fear that too much movement could tip Gaia’s head clean off.
‘Lynn, everyone’s outside now,’ said Tim.
The glass wall shook. Heidrun reached for Ögi’s hand.
‘Lynn?’
No answer.
‘Strange,’ sighed Miranda. ‘I never thought I’d end up regretting it.’
‘Regretting what?’ asked Olympiada hoarsely.
‘The swimming accident.’
‘Before Miami?’ She cleared her throat. ‘The one you went to court for?’
‘Yes, exactly. My poor Louis.’
‘What exactly do you regret?’ asked O’Keefe, tired. ‘The fact that he died, or that you helped?’
‘I was found innocent,’ said Miranda, in an almost cheerful tone. ‘They couldn’t prove anything.’
A new quake ran through Gaia’s skull and refused to let up. Olympiada groaned and fastened her grip to O’Keefe’s thigh.
‘Lynn!’ screamed Tim. ‘What’s going on there?’
‘Tim?’ It was Lynn. Finally! ‘Hold on, I’m on my way. We’re coming to get you.’
Lynn had insisted on their all leaving the Gaia together. In the maelstrom of her disintegrating sanity, the realisation still won through that Dana was playing dirty somehow, and that it wouldn’t have been a good idea to let her fly alone with Nina. Resolving both evacuation and rescue at the same time seemed to be the most efficient plan, and had a sense of well-ordered finality. She graciously acknowledged Dana’s laboriously concealed rage and ferocious hate and felt herself become strangely calm. Yet at the same time she was overwhelmed by the desire to roar with laughter. It was just that, if she started, she probably wouldn’t ever be able to stop.
They went into the sweltering body of the Callisto. Nina opened the rear hatch and ignited the jets. They rose vertically up into the star-sprinkled circus dome, below which they had once had the best seats in the house for viewing magic tricks and clownery, and where they now had to pull off the murderous acrobatics of saving lives.
‘Hey, you guys,’ said Nina. ‘Are you still there?’
‘Not for much longer,’ prophesied Heidrun.
‘We can forget the shuttle airlock. It’s too near to the engines, and I have to maintain the counter-thrust in order not to slip. I’ll approach in reverse with the rear hatch open, okay? I’ll have to avoid touching the head, so get ready to do some chin-ups.’
‘Chin-ups, somersaults, we’ll do whatever you want.’
They ascended further. First Gaia’s back was visible from the cockpit of the shuttle, then the neck with its exposed steel backbone came into full view. Lynn couldn’t help thinking about what Gaia embodied in Julian’s eyes: her own image, to excess. And they really were becoming more and more alike. Two queens about to lose their heads.
The Callisto rose up slowly over the curve of the skull.
O’Keefe helped the others onto their feet. Pressed between the airlock wall and the terrace floor, they gripped to one another and waved at the helmeted silhouette behind the cockpit window. The shuttle began to turn on its axis, first turning its side towards them, then the open rear with the lowered tailboard.
‘Nearer!’ shouted Tim.
A jolt went through the head. Ögi lost his grip and was caught by Heidrun. The Callisto swivelled two of its jets. With absolute precision, Nina Hedegaard steered the huge craft backwards. The tailboard came closer, closer still, too close—
‘Stop!’
The shuttle stopped, motionless in open space.
‘Can you make it?’ asked Nina.
O’Keefe raised both hands, grabbed the edge and pulled himself up onto the tailboard with a powerful swinging motion. He turned round right away, lay down on his stomach and stretched his arms out below.
‘Nina? Can you lower the machine a little further?’
‘I’ll try.’
His right hand brushed Heidrun’s fingertips. The Callisto sank another metre, now hovering at helmet-height across from the others.
‘That’s as far as I can go,’ said Nina. ‘I’m afraid of touching the head.’
‘That’ll do.’ Heidrun clambered up to O’Keefe on the hatch. To the right of her, Ögi pulled himself up, crouched down and grasped Olympiada, who was handed up to him from below, steadying herself on his shoulder. Hands stretched out towards Miranda and Tim, helping them up.
‘We made it,’ whispered Olympiada, then crumpled over, as the damaged bone in her shin finally broke. With a scream, she rolled over the edge of the hatch and tumbled back into the tiny gap between the terrace and the airlock.
‘Olympiada!’
Miranda, who was almost all the way up, dropped back down next to the Russian woman and grabbed her under the arms.
‘No – don’t—’
‘Are you crazy? Up you go – as if I would leave you lying here.’
‘I’m useless,’ whimpered Olympiada.
‘No, you’re wonderful, you just don’t know it yet.’
Miranda effortlessly lifted the petite woman up and towards O’Keefe, who pulled her back onto the tailboard and handed her over to Tim.