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What was happening right now on the Aristarchus Plateau?

Amber, he thought, come in! Please!

* * *

Gaia’s underground floors, by Dana’s estimation, deserved particular attention, because it was from there that a bomb would release its greatest destructive force. Michio Funaki and Ashwini Anand had been assigned to the staff accommodation areas, Lynn and Sophie to the underground greenhouses, aquaria and storage units. Gaia’s mirror world stretched down deep – but then staff plans for 2026 allowed for one employee per guest.

‘In the meantime I will try to reach the Peary Base,’ Dana had said before they went off in different directions.

‘How, without a satellite?’ Tim had asked.

‘Via the dedicated line. There’s a direct laser connection between Gaia and the base. We send the data back and forth via a system of mirrors.’

‘What do you mean, mirrors? Ordinary, common-or-garden mirrors?’

‘The first one is on the far side of the gorge. A thin, very high mast. You can see it from your suite.’

‘And how many are there?’

‘Not all that many. A dozen to the Pole. Arranged in such a way that the light-beam passes around crater rims and mountains. To reach shuttles, spaceships or even the Earth, of course you need satellites, but for intralunar communication between two fixed points there’s nothing better. No atmosphere to scatter the light, no rain – so I’ll set out our situation to them in the hope that they aren’t having any problems with their satellites there, but my optimism is muted.’

And then, after Lynn had disappeared with Sophie into the lift, Dana had taken him aside.

‘Tim, this is awkward for me. You know I don’t tend to beat around the bush, but in this case—’

He sighed, troubled by dark forebodings. ‘Is it about Lynn?’

‘Yes. What’s up with her?’

Tim looked at the floor, at the walls, wherever you looked to keep from returning the other person’s gaze.

‘Look, Lynn and I never had personal contact,’ Dana went on. ‘But she supported
my appointment at the time, and trained me up, in the camp, on the Moon, confidently and competently, entirely admirable. Now she strikes me as irresponsible, erratic, belligerent. She’s changed completely.’

‘I—’ Tim hemmed and hawed for a moment. ‘I’ll talk to her.’

‘I didn’t ask you to.’

Her quizzical eyes fastened on his. Suddenly it occurred to Tim that Dana Lawrence wasn’t blinking. He hadn’t seen her blink for ages. He remembered a film,
Alien
, a quite old but still excellent flick that Julian loved, in which one of the crew members was unexpectedly revealed as an android.

‘I don’t know how I should answer that,’ he said.

‘No, you do, you know very well.’ She lowered her voice. ‘Lynn is your sister, Tim. I want to know if we can trust her. Has she got herself under control?’

The clouds began to clear in Tim’s head. He looked at the manager, illuminated by the realisation of what she actually meant.

‘Are you suggesting Lynn is Carl’s accomplice?’ he asked, almost lost for words.

‘I just want to hear what you think.’

‘You’re crazy.’

‘All of this is crazy. Come on, we’re running out of time. It would be a great weight off my mind if I was wrong, but three days ago Lynn tried with all her might to persuade her father that he was imagining things. She wanted to withhold the surveillance camera videos from him, she left me in the dark about Edda Hoff’s warning, although she really
should
have talked to me. All in all she’s behaving as if we had dreamed up the events of the past thirty minutes, even though she herself has been involved from the very start.’

That’s not true, Tim wanted to say, and in fact Dana was wrong about one thing. Lynn hadn’t been there from the start. Sophie had taken the call while his sister had been sitting in the Selene with the manager and the cooks, talking about the possibility of a picnic at the bottom of the Vallis Alpina. Jennifer Shaw had wanted to talk to Lynn or her father, so Sophie had immediately sent a message to the Selene and the security advisors had immediately put it through to Julian on the Aristarchus Plateau. By the time Lynn and Dana had reached headquarters, the conversation was already well under way.

But what difference did that make?

‘As you said before, Lynn is my sister.’ He straightened up and shifted away a little. ‘I’d walk on hot coals for her.’

‘That’s not enough for me.’

‘Well, it’ll have to be.’

‘Tim.’ Dana sighed. ‘I just want to make sure that we’re not about to face
problems from somewhere we least expect it. Tell me what’s up. I’ll treat our conversation with complete confidentiality, no one will find out about it if you don’t want them to. Not Julian, and certainly not Lynn.’

‘Dana, really—’

‘I’ve
got
to be able to do my job!’

Tim said nothing for a moment.

‘She had a breakdown,’ he said flatly. ‘A few years ago. Exhausted, depressed. It came and went, but since then I can’t stop worrying that it might repeat itself.’

‘Burn-out?’

‘No, more of an—’ The word wouldn’t leave his lips.

‘Illness?’ Dana completed his sentence.

‘Lynn played it down, but – yes. A morbid disposition. Her – our mother was depressive. In the end she—’

He fell silent. Dana waited to see if he was going to add anything, but he thought he’d said enough.

‘Thanks,’ she said seriously. ‘Please keep an eye on your sister.’

He nodded unhappily, joined Kokoschka, and they set off, equipped with portable detectors, while he felt like a miserable bloody collaborator. At the same time he was tormented by Dana’s suspicion. Not because he saw Lynn as being exposed to unjustified suspicions, but because uncertainty was gnawing at him. Could he really walk on coals for Lynn? He would give his life for her, that much he knew, regardless of what she did.

But he just wasn’t
completely sure
.

Locatelli lay in a foetal position, legs bent, on the floor of the lock just by the bulkheads. Almost two-thirds of the cabin was glazed, but as long as he stayed down low, shielded by the screen, no one would be able to see him from the passenger space or the cockpit. He feverishly developed and rejected one plan after another. Every time he turned his head, he could just make out the indicators on the inside wall of the lock, showing pressure, air and ambient temperature. The cabin was pressurised, but he didn’t dare take off his helmet. He was too worried that the pilot might, at that precise moment, get the idea of subjecting the lock to an inspection, just as he was busying himself with his damned helmet. He had squeezed his way in between
the bulkheads as soon as they had slid apart, pressed the up button, dropped to the floor, without wasting a fragment of a second. And yet it couldn’t have escaped the guy that the cabin had gone back down again.

He cautiously raised himself up a little and peered around for anything that might serve as a weapon, but there was nothing inside the lock that could be used to slash or stab. The Ganymede was still accelerating. He guessed that there must be an autopilot, but as long as the shuttle hadn’t reached its final speed, whoever was sitting up at the front couldn’t take his eyes off the controls. Later it might be too late to shed his armour and his helmet. Perhaps he really
should
do it now.

At that moment an idea came to him.

He quickly released the catches of the helmet and took it off, set it down next to him and started frantically working away at his chest armour. The acceleration pressure eased off. He hastily fiddled around with the valves and fasteners, peeled himself out of his survival backpack and pushed everything a little way away. Now he was more mobile, and he also had something that could be used as a weapon in a surprise attack. Every muscle tensed, he lay there and waited. The shuttle flew in a curve, and went on gaining altitude. His head roared with the certainty that this was his only chance. If he didn’t catch and whack Peter or Carl, whichever of them was flying the Ganymede, at the first opportunity, he might as well say goodbye to the world.

Don’t complain, asshole, he thought, this was what you wanted. And strangely – or not – his inner voice, in all its condescension, and down to peculiarities of its modulation sounded exactly like Momoka’s.

Dana walked to her desk and paused.

Depressive. That explained a few things. But how did depressive states develop? Into apathy? Aggression? Would Lynn freak out? What was Julian’s daughter likely to do?

She established the laser connection with the Peary Base. After a few seconds the face of deputy commander Tommy Wachowski appeared on the screen. There wasn’t much in the way of regular exchange between hotel and base, which meant that it was ages since she had last spoken to him. Wachowski looked tense and relieved at the same time, as if she had taken a weight off his mind with her call. Dana
thought she knew the reason. A moment later Wachowski confirmed her suspicion.

‘Am I happy to see you,’ he growled. ‘I thought we’d never get through to anyone ever again.’

‘Have you been having problems with the satellites?’ she asked.

His eyes widened. ‘How do you know that?’

‘Because we have too. We were in contact with Earth when the connection went down. We haven’t been able to get through since then, not even to our shuttles.’

‘We’ve been having pretty much the same thing. Completely cut off. The problem is that we’re in the shadow of the libration. Alternative channels are out. We’re relying on LPCS; do you have any idea what’s going on?’

‘No.’ Dana shook her head. ‘At the moment we haven’t a clue. Not a clue. You?’

The Moon was quite definitely more suited to route-marches than the Earth, because of its lower gravitation. Spacesuits quite definitely weren’t. Even though the exosuits provided a high level of comfort and mobility, you were, regardless of the air-conditioning, in an incubator. The more energy you expended, the more you sweated, and eight kilometres, even performing leaps that would have done credit to a kangaroo, remained eight kilometres.

Assailed by questions, Julian had divulged various things: he had talked about his nocturnal observation of the Lunar Express, about Hanna’s lies and dodges, and had told them something was under way against Orley Enterprises somewhere in the world. But the idea that terrorists might try to blow up his hotel with an atom bomb he kept to himself, just as he refrained from mentioning Lynn’s inexcusable derelictions of duty. He was terribly worried about her, but there was a great gulf of understanding in the mountain range of his concern, in which a horrible black worm of anxiety wriggled. Who had actually re-edited the video, who had hooked up Hanna? Because there was no doubt that the Canadian had been listening in earlier: he had gone into action even while that man Jericho had been setting out his suspicions! And finally, who had deactivated the satellites in perfect synchronisation with Hanna’s flight? The worm turned, glistened, quivered, and gave birth to the idea of an assistant, an accomplice in the hotel, male or female. Someone who had inexplicably refused to let him see the manipulated video, and whose attitude was becoming more mysterious with each passing hour.

‘And how are we going to get out of here?’ Evelyn wanted to know. ‘Back to the hotel, without a shuttle or radio contact?’

‘I’m just wondering where Carl’s trying to get to,’ Rogachev mused.

‘Like that matters right now,’ snorted Momoka.

‘Why was he in such a rush to get away? Nothing could have been pinned on him. Well, there’s the fact that he doesn’t stick too closely to the truth, but okay. Why the hurry?’

‘Maybe he’s planning something,’ said Amber. ‘Something he has to get done in time, now that his cover’s been blown.’

In time. That was it! How did the accomplice in the hotel manage to get away, if he existed at all? How acute was the danger of a bomb going off in Gaia within the next hour? Wouldn’t Hanna’s journey have had to take him back to Gaia, to set it off? Or was the bomb already ticking? In which case—

Lynn! He must have been crazy to suspect her! But even if she had some macabre, incomprehensible part in the drama, did she realise what she’d let herself in for? Did she have even the tiniest idea what was going on? Could Hanna have roped her in for his purposes, on some pretext or other? Could he have exploited her mental state, somehow hoodwinked her into doing things for him, the significance of which she completely misunderstood?

Perhaps he should have listened more closely to Tim.

Should have! The grammar of missed opportunities.

‘Julian?’

‘What?’

‘How are we going to get out of here?’ Evelyn asked again.

He hesitated. ‘Peter knows – he
knew
the Schröter spaceport better than I did. I don’t think there are any flying machines there, but there’s definitely a third moon-mobile. So we’ll get away in any event.’

‘But where to?’ asked Rogachev. ‘Crossing the Mare Imbrium in a moon car isn’t exactly an encouraging prospect.’

‘How far are we from the hotel, anyway?’ asked Amber.

‘About thirteen hundred kilometres.’

‘And how long will our oxygen hold out?’

‘Forget it,’ wheezed Momoka. ‘Certainly not long enough to get to the Vallis Alpina by car. What do you say, Julian? How long would it take to cover thirteen hundred kilometres at eighty max?’

‘Sixteen hours,’ said Julian. ‘But realistically we’ll hardly be able to go at eighty.’

‘Sixty?’

‘Maybe fifty.’

‘Oh, brilliant!’ laughed Momoka. ‘Then we can take bets on who packs up first. Us or the car.’

‘Stop it,’ said Amber.

‘My bet’s on us.’

‘This is pointless, Momoka. Why don’t we—’

‘Then the car will keep going for a while with our corpses inside, until eventually—’

‘Momoka!’ yelled Amber. ‘Shut. The. Fuck. Up!’

‘Right, that’s enough!’ Julian stopped and raised both hands. ‘I know we have a stack of terrible things to work out. Nothing makes any sense, practically no information is confirmed. At the moment the only thing we can do is think in a straight line,
from one step to the next
, and the next step will be an examination of the Schröter spaceport. We’ve got enough oxygen to do that.’ He paused. ‘Now that Peter’s dead—’