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Their route led them straight up over one of the floodlight masts and over the back of the spaceship.

‘It takes two to three days to get to the Moon by shuttle. They’re spacious, but just for fun try imagining during the flight that you’re on your way to Mars. Six months in a box like that, the sheer horror of it! Human beings aren’t machines; they need social contact, private lives, space, music, good food, beautiful design, food for the senses. That’s why the spaceship being created here isn’t like any conventional ship. Once it’s completed it will be an astonishing size; here you’re only seeing the main body, almost two hundred metres in length. To put it more precisely, it’s constructed
from individual elements which are linked up with one another: partly burnt-out tanks from old space shuttles, partly new, larger models. Together they form the working and command area. There will be laboratories and conference rooms, greenhouses and processing plants. The sleep and training modules rotate on centrifugal outriggers around the main body of the ship to allow the presence of a weak artificial gravity, similar to the gravity on Mars. The next construction stage will be to extend it at the front and back, using masts several hundred metres in length.’

‘Several hundred metres?’ echoed Heidrun. ‘Good grief! How long is the ship going to be?’

‘About a kilometre, or so I’ve heard. And that’s excluding the sun wings and generators. Around two-thirds of them are situated on the front mast, at the peak of which there will be a nuclear reactor to provide the power. Hence the unconventional design: the living quarters have to be at least seven hundred metres away from the source of radiation.’

‘And when will the flight be?’ Edwards enquired.

‘Realists have their sights set on 2030, but Washington would prefer it to be earlier. After all, it’s not just a race to get to the Moon. The USA will do everything they possibly can, even if it means …’

‘… occupying the Red Planet,’ completed Rogachev. ‘We get the picture. Has Orley rented the entire hangar to the Americans?’

‘Part of it,’ said Nina. ‘Other areas of the station have been rented to the Germans, French, Indian and Japanese. Russians too. They’re all running research stations up here.’

‘But not the Chinese?’

‘No, not the Chinese.’

Rogachev dropped the subject. Their flight led over the hangar towards the outer ring with its work stations and manipulators. Nina pointed out the far ends of the masts, which sprouted spherical objects: ‘The site and orbit regulation system. Orb-like tanks feed into the thrusters, which can be used to sink, lift or move the station.’

‘But why?’ asked O’Keefe. ‘I thought it had to stay at exactly this height?’

‘In principle, yes. On the other hand, if a meteorite or a particularly big lump of space debris were to come rushing towards us, we would need to be able to adjust the station’s position a little. Generally speaking we would know about things like that weeks in advance. A vertical shift would usually suffice, but sometimes it makes more sense to get out of the way by moving slightly to the side.’

‘That’s why the anchor station is a swimming island!’ called Mimi Parker. ‘So it can be moved around in synchrony with the OSS!’

‘Exactly,’ said Nina.

‘That’s crazy! And does it happen often? That kind of bombardment?’

‘Rarely.’

‘And you’d know the path of all objects like that?’ O’Keefe dug deeper.

‘Well.’ Peter hesitated. ‘The large ones, yes. But small odds and ends pass through here a million times without us needing to know about it: nano-particles, micro-meteorites.’

‘And what if something like that hits my suit?’ Edwards suddenly sounded as if he was longing to be back inside the station.

‘Then you’d have one more hole,’ said Heidrun, ‘and a nicely positioned one, hopefully.’

‘No, the suit can take that. The armoured plating absorbs nano-particles, and if a pinprick-sized hole really did appear, it wouldn’t have any immediate impact. The fabric is interfaced with a polymer layer; its molecular chains close up as soon as the material reaches its melting point. And the friction heat from the impact of a micrometeorite alone would be enough to do that. You might end up with a small wound, but nothing more than you’d get from stepping on a sea urchin or having a run-in with your cat. The chance of crossing paths with a micrometeorite is far less than, let’s say, your chances of getting eaten by a shark.’

‘How reassuring,’ said Locatelli, his voice sounding strained.

The group had crossed the outer edge of the ring and were now following the course of another pylon. O’Keefe would have liked ideally to turn around and go back. There should have been a fantastic view over the roof to the torus from here. But his spacesuit was like a horse that knew the way and went off all on its own. In front of him the pennons spread like a flock of dark glistening birds with mythical wingspans, keeping watch over these curious patches of civilisation in space. And beyond the solar panels that supplied the station with energy, there was only open space.

‘This section should be of particular interest to you, Mr Locatelli. It’s your stuff!’ said Peter. ‘We’d have needed four to five times as many panels using conventional solar technology.’

Locatelli said something along the lines of that being entirely true. Then he added a few other things. O’Keefe thought he picked up the words revolution and humanity, followed by millstone, which was probably supposed to be milestone. Either way, for some reason it all jumbled up and sounded like guttural porridge.

‘You should be really proud of it, sir,’ said Peter. ‘Sir?’

The object of his praise lifted both arms as if he were about to conduct an orchestra. A few syllables escaped from his throat.

‘Is everything okay, sir?’

Locatelli groaned. Then they heard eruptive retching.

‘B-4, abort,’ said Nina calmly. ‘Warren Locatelli. I’ll accompany him back to the airlock. The group will continue on as planned.’

* * *

One day, Mukesh Nair told them, back when he was still a boy in the small village of Loni Kalbhor, they had cut his uncle down from the roof beam of his hut, where he had hanged himself. Suicides amongst farmers were a part of daily life back then, the bitter harvest of the Indian agricultural crisis. Mukesh had wandered through the fallow sugarcane fields, wondering what could be done to stem the flood of cheap imports from the so-called developed nations, whose agriculture lounged around in a feather bed of generous subsidies as it deluged the world with dirt-cheap fruit and vegetables, while Indian farmers saw no other way out of their debt than to take their own life.

He had realised back then that you couldn’t misinterpret globalisation as a process which politicians and companies initiated, accelerated and controlled as they pleased. It wasn’t something that could be turned off and on, not a cause, but the symptom of an idea that was as old as humanity itself: the exchange of culture and wares. Rejecting that would have been as naïve as suing the weather for crop failures. From the day human beings had first ventured into other humans’ territories to trade or make war, it had always been about doing it in such a way that they could participate and profit from it as much as possible. Nair realised that the farmers’ misery couldn’t be blamed on some sinister pact between the First World states, but came down to the failure of the rulers in New Delhi to play to India’s strengths. And one of those strengths – even though, historically, the country had always been synonymous with hunger – was nourishing the world.

Back then, Nair and a group of others had led the Green Revolution. He went to the villages, encouraging the farmers to switch from sugarcane to chilli, tomatoes, aubergines and courgettes. He provided them with seeds and fertiliser, introduced them to new technologies, secured them cheap credit to relieve their debt, pledged minimum purchases and gave them shares in the profit of his supermarket chain, which he built from scratch by utilising modern refrigeration technology, naming it Tomato after his favourite vegetable. Thanks to sophisticated logistics, the perishable goods found their way so quickly from the fields to the counters of the Tomato supermarkets that all the imported products looked old and rotten in comparison. Desperate farmers, who until recently had been faced with the choice of either going into the city as day labourers or stringing themselves up in the attic, became entrepreneurs. Tomato boomed. More and
more branches opened, more and more farmers joined forces with Nair’s entourage in the new, emerging India.

‘The inhabitants of our hot, microbe-contaminated metropolises loved our air-conditioned, clean fresh-food markets from the word go,’ said Nair. ‘We had competitors pursuing similar concepts, of course, partly with the support of foreign multi-corporate giants. But I only ever saw my competitors as allies. When it mattered most, we were a hair’s breadth ahead of the rest.’

By now, there were branches of Tomato all over the world. Nair had swallowed up most of his competitors. While India’s agricultural products were now being exported to the most remote corners of the world, Nair had long since gone on to explore a new field of activity, branching out into genetics and blessing the flood-prone coastal areas of his country with a saltwater-resistant rice.

‘And that,’ said Julian, ‘is the very thing that unites us.’

They watched a small harvest robot plucking cherry tomatoes from the vines with its intricate claws, sucking them up inside itself before they had the chance to roll away.

‘We will occupy outer space, colonise the Moon and Mars. Perhaps a little less quickly than we imagined, but it will happen, if only because there are a number of sound reasons why we should. We are standing on the threshold of an era in which the Earth will be only one of the many places where we can live and develop industries.’

Julian paused.

‘But you won’t be able to make a fortune with fruit and vegetables beyond the Earth just yet, Mukesh. The journey towards establishing Tomato branches on the Moon will be a long one! Bernard, you could supply the Moon with water of course – it’s vital for any new development – but you’ll barely make a cent in the process. And as far as your work is concerned, Eva: long-term stays in outer space, on the Moon and on the surface of other planets, will all confront medicine with totally new challenges. And yet research will remain a loss-making business initially, just as I subsidise America’s space travel to help promote the most important resource for a clean and lasting energy supply, and the way I subsidised the development of the necessary reactors. If you want to change the world and be a pioneer the first thing you need to do is
spend money
. Carl, you made your fortune through clever investments in oil and gas, then switched sides to solar technology, but in space these new technologies wouldn’t yet make any decent turnover. So why should you invest in Orley Enterprises?’

He looked at each of them in turn.

‘I’ll tell you why. Because we’re united by something more than just what we produce, finance and research, and that’s our concern for the wellbeing of mankind.
Take Eva for example, who has successfully cultivated synthetic skin, nerves and cardiac muscle cells. Incredibly significant work, reliable, highly lucrative, but that’s only the half of it, because above all it provides
hope
for coronary-risk patients, cancer patients and burn victims! And Bernard, a man who has provided the poorest of the poor around the globe with access to clean water. Or Mukesh, who opened up a new way of life for India’s farmers and fed the world. Carl, whose investment in renewable energies helps to make its actual use possible. And what’s my dream? You already know. You know why we’re here. Ever since experts began to think about clean, risk-free fusion technology, about how the fuel of the future, helium-3, can be transported from the Moon to Earth, I’ve been obsessed with the idea of providing our planet with this new, inexhaustible source of energy. I’ve gone through many years of deficit to develop reactors until they were ready for production and to build the first functioning space elevator so we could give mankind a springboard into outer space. And do you know what?’

He smiled contentedly and paused for several seconds.

‘All that idealism has paid off. Now I
want to
and I
will
make money from it! And you should all join me in doing so! In Orley Enterprises, the most important technology experts in the world. It’s people like us who move or stop this wonderful planet thirty-six thousand kilometres beneath us. It’s down to
us
. It may not increase your sales of vegetables, water or medication if we join forces, but you’ll be part of the biggest conglomerate in the world. Tomorrow, Orley Energy will become world market leader in the energy sector with its fusion reactors and environmentally friendly power. With the help of more space elevators and space stations, Orley Space will accelerate the conquest of the solar system for mankind’s use, and, together with Orley Travel, expand space tourism too. Believe me, all of that put together will
pay off
! Everyone wants to go into orbit, everyone wants to go to the Moon, to Mars and beyond, both humans and nations. At the beginning of the century we thought the dream was over, but it’s only just begun, my friends! And yet only very few countries possess the technologies the whole world needs, and Orley Technologies are way ahead of the game on this one. And everyone, everyone without exception, will pay the price!’

‘Yes,’ said Nair in awe. ‘Yes!’

Hanna smiled and nodded.

Everyone will pay the price—

Everything Julian had said, with his usual eloquence and persuasiveness, reduced down to this last sentence in his ears. He had voiced what had been left behind by rulers retreating from the globalisation process, the attempt for economy to become independent, the privatisation of politics: a vacuum that had been filled with businessmen.
He defined the future as a product. Even the days ahead wouldn’t change that, quite the opposite in fact. The world would be sold yet again.