Frank Schätzing - Limit

Edwards was about to reply, but the answer stuck in his throat. The astronaut raised the long object, aimed it at the seat contraption and fired. Instead of gunpowder the little piece of plasticene detonated in the shell. The liquid from the jelly capsule evaporated, swelled to many times its volume and produced sufficient pressure to fire the projectile at him at high speed. It pierced Parker’s helmet, at which point the shower gel and shampoo combined to form what they really were, namely explosives, and the chairlift flew apart along with its occupants, flinging steel, fibre-glass, electronics and body parts in all directions.

Hanna reholstered his weapon and strode towards the parked rovers.

Locatelli was faster. He jumped, scrabbled, slipped down the path, but he had a longer distance to travel. So he looked on as the fleeing astronaut reached the front of a rover and swung himself onto the driver’s seat. Now once more within view of Julian’s group, he heard a Babel of voices breaking out in his helmet, provoked by something that Amber had said. A moment later the murderer drove away at great speed.

‘Shit,’ wheezed Locatelli. ‘Stop, you bastard!’

‘Warren, what’s going on?’ said Momoka. ‘Answer, please.’

‘I’m here.’

‘Amber said you’d made contact with Black and heard screams. She says—’

Locatelli stumbled. His leaps were too high, too risky. He missed the path, spread his arms out, landed on a steep bank of gravel and turned a somersault.

‘Warren! For Christ’s sake, what’s going on?’

Up and down switched places. He hurtled downwards at great speed, towards the edge of the gorge. His body, light as a child’s, took off every few metres, soared briefly before landing again, so that he could no longer see or hear; dust, nothing but dust, but his suit didn’t seem to have been damaged. Otherwise I’d be dead, he thought, that doesn’t take long out here, you’re dead before you’ve even noticed.

‘Warren!’

‘A minute,’ he yelled. ‘Ow! Ouch! A minute!’

‘Where are—’

The connection went dead. He slid along the plain on his belly, pushed himself up and landed on his feet, hurried to the second rover. With one spring he was behind the wheel. By now he was being yelled at from all directions, but he’d stopped paying the slightest attention. He didn’t doubt for a moment what the guy was planning, namely to leave them here and clear off on Ganymede.

Was the bastard listening?

It was better to turn off all his connections. The other guy should learn as late as possible that someone was following him. He quickly pressed the central switch, silenced the voices in his head, put his foot on the accelerator and dashed after the fleeing man.

Tim had just appeared in the control centre when Dana gave a warning about some sort of catastrophe. The atmospheric barometer was clearly below freezing, with the hotel manager as cooling element, it seemed to him, while Sophie’s features were helpless and Lynn’s desolate. She looked to Tim like a drowning woman whose fear did battle with the fury of not having learned to swim in time.

‘What’s up?’ he asked.

Dana looked at him thoughtfully. Then she delivered her report. Concise, to the point, toneless, without euphemism or down-playing of any kind. Within a minute Tim knew that someone was trying to blow Gaia to atoms, that the Chinese might be behind it, but that in all likelihood it was Carl Hanna, nice, guitar-playing Carl, in whose company Amber was currently out and about.

‘For heaven’s sake,’ he said. ‘How certain is it that there’s a bomb?’

‘Nothing’s certain. Speculations, but as long as they haven’t been refuted we should give them the status of facts.’ Her eyes emitted a freezing beam towards Lynn. ‘Miss Orley, any ideas, in your capacity as boss?’

Lynn gasped for air.

‘There isn’t the slightest reason to blow up Gaia! It must be a mistake.’

‘Thanks, that’s a great help to us. Give me a directive, or allow me to make some suggestions of my own. We could order an evacuation, for example.’

Lynn clenched her fists. She looked as if she wanted to tear out Dana’s voice box.

‘ If there really was a bomb in the hotel, why didn’t it go off ages ago? I mean, who or what was it being aimed at? The construction site? Anyone in particular?’

‘We’re all in danger,’ said Tim. ‘Who’s going to bring an atom bomb to the Moon with a view to sparing human lives?’

‘Exactly.’ Lynn looked at them in turn. ‘And so far we’ve all gathered together every night, so why hasn’t anything happened? Perhaps because there is no bomb? Because someone’s just trying to scare us?’

‘Hmm,’ said Sophie hesitantly. ‘As this guy Jericho’s already said, Hanna’s task might have been to get the bomb here. If it reached the Moon a year ago—’

‘Did Gaia even exist a year ago?’ asked Tim.

‘In its raw state.’ Lynn nodded.

‘That means it could have been here since then.’

‘An atom bomb?’ Dana’s face expressed scepticism. ‘Sorry, but even I don’t believe that . I don’t know much about mini-nukes, I have no idea about atomic weapons, but I think I know they give off radiation. Wouldn’t this bomb do that too? How long could you ignore something like that?’

‘Perhaps Hanna only brought it up here the day before yesterday,’ Sophie concluded. ‘On his night-time—’

‘That’s pure speculation!’ Lynn flung her hand in the air with exasperation. ‘Just because he had some dust on his trousers. And even if he did, why didn’t he set it off ages ago?’

‘Perhaps he was waiting for the right moment,’ Tim suggested.

‘And when would that be?’

‘No idea.’ Sophie shook her head. Her curls flew around as if having a party, in spite of the drama of the situation. ‘Certainly not now. Apart from Miss Orley and Tim there are only comparatively unimportant people here.’

‘Fine!’ said Lynn triumphantly. ‘Then that means that we don’t have to evacuate after all.’

‘I’m not keen on an evacuation, if that’s what you mean,’ Dana replied calmly. ‘But I’ll do it if it strikes me as advisable. For the time being I agree with Sophie. Things will probably only get critical when the shuttles come back, which should be happening at about seven o’clock. At the moment it’s’ – she looked at the electronic display – ‘16.20. More than two and a half hours to look for the thing.’

‘Excuse me?’ Lynn rolled her eyes. ‘We’re supposed to comb the hotel?’

‘Yes. In teams.’

‘We’d be looking for a needle in a haystack!’

‘And finding it if there is one. Sophie, get the rest of them together. We’ll concentrate on places where a thing like that could be hidden.’

‘How big is a mini-nuke?’ Sophie asked helplessly.

‘The size of a briefcase?’ Dana shrugged. ‘Does anyone know?’

Shaking of heads. On the screen Sophie opened several windows with schema-grams and tables full of numbers.

‘At any rate, we’re not registering any unusual radiation levels,’ she said. ‘No increased radioactivity, no additional sources of heat.’

‘Because there’s no bomb here,’ sulked Lynn.

‘And the sensors cover every area?’ asked Tim.

‘Every accessible area, yes.’

‘We should address another issue before we set off on our search,’ said Dana. ‘In my view we’re not just dealing with a bomb.’

‘What else, then?’

‘With a traitor.’

‘Oh Christ!’ Lynn shook her head. ‘I thought Carl was the bad guy.’