Frank Schätzing - Limit

Who had survived?

Lynn, she thought. And Tim. Those two at least. They were somewhere in the hotel, possibly in the control centre.

Time to make contact.

The behaviour of bodies in a vacuum has always inspired vivid speculation. Some of these stories correspond to fact. Objects of soft consistency with air pockets, for example, stretch apart like dough as the gas forces its way out. This isn’t caused by the vacuum sucking it out, but by the atmosphere exerting pressure. Some things deform, others explode. Frothy, chocolate-coated marshmallows balloon up to four times their volume. If the original ambient pressure were then to be reinstated, they would transform into shapeless grease, indicating profound structural dilapidation. A knotted condom, however, would regain its original form after a temporary existence as a balloon. Of course, it certainly wouldn’t be advisable to use it for its originally intended purpose. A cow’s lung would collapse into shreds, while holey cheese and aubergines would show no visible change, and nor would chickens’ eggs. Beer foams up like crazy, pommes frites secrete fat and solidify, and ketchup sachets buckle.

When it comes to human beings, the rumour stubbornly persists that we would explode if exposed to a vacuum. After all, we’re more like marshmallows than condoms in consistency: soft, porous, and interwoven with gases and fluids. And yet, something much more complex happened when Warren Locatelli’s helmet came off. Pressurised water in deep-sea trenches on Earth doesn’t start to boil until it reaches 200 to 300 degrees Celsius, whereas in the rarefied air of Mount Everest it would start to boil at 70 degrees; on the same principle, the liquid components in Locatelli’s skull boiled within a fraction of a second of being exposed to a complete lack of pressure, then immediately cooled again due to the induced loss of energy. Anything that vaporises in a vacuum creates evaporative cooling, so the now liquefied Locatelli froze as soon as he had boiled. His skull didn’t explode, but his physiognomy went through rapid changes and left behind a mask-like grimace, coated with a thin layer of ice. As he was in the shadow of a rock overhang, the ice would stay until the beams of light stretched across and evaporated it. Lastly, Locatelli would suffer terrible sunburn, but luckily he wouldn’t feel a thing. He died so suddenly that the last thing he noticed was the beauty of the starlit sky.

Hanna sat up straight.

It was just as he had said. The act of killing was neither a burden nor a source of pleasure. His victims never came back to haunt him in his sleep. If he had been convinced that Locatelli posed a danger to him, he would have shot him. But at some point in the course of the last two hours, he had become convinced that he didn’t need to. Locatelli’s bravery had won his respect, and even though the guy had been a pompous, arrogant jerk, Hanna had developed something akin to a fondness for him, accompanied by the desire to protect him. The prospect of saving Locatelli’s life had, in some indefinable way, done him good.

At least he had saved him from suffering.

He turned away and erased the dead man from his memory. He had to finish the job.

The buggy lay on its side, having been pushed against the rock face by the Ganymede. Hanna heaved the vehicle back upright and inspected it. He immediately noticed that one of the axles had been so badly damaged that the question was not whether it would break, but when . He could only hope that the buggy would hold out until he reached the mining station.

Without giving Locatelli or the shuttle another glance, he drove off.

It was unbelievable, thought Finn O’Keefe, how deathly pale Mukesh suddenly looked. Incomprehensible that someone whose natural pigmentation resembled that of Italian espresso could ever look so pale. His blood-drained face was as empty as the words he used in a vain attempt to raise their morale.

‘They’ll come for us, Sushma, don’t worry.’

‘Who’s “they”?’

‘You know, our friend Funaki—’

‘No, Mukesh, there’s no one left, he can’t get hold of anyone!’ Sushma began to sob. ‘No one’s answering at the control centre, and it’s on fire, everything’s in flames down there!’

How strange. O’Keefe couldn’t stop staring at Mukesh. Particularly his nose. It was as though it had gone numb, a pale radish stuck onto Mr Tomato’s face. The subject of his interest laid his arm protectively around Sushma’s shoulders.

‘He’ll get in touch with someone, my love. I’m sure of it.’

‘Has it got a little warmer already?’ Rebecca Hsu’s brow was wrinkled with alarm. ‘By a few degrees?’

‘No,’ said Eva Borelius.

‘Well, I think it has.’

‘ You’ve probably got warmer, Rebecca.’ Karla Kramp went over to the landing and looked down. ‘A side effect of stress hormones, increased blood pressure. It’s completely normal at your age.’

O’Keefe followed her. Two storeys below, the spiral staircase ended at a steel barrier.

‘Perhaps we should try to open the bulkheads,’ he suggested.

Funaki looked over at them and shook his head.

‘As long as the indicators on the control panel are still lit red, we’d better leave it alone. There’s a risk of fatality.’

‘But why?’ Miranda fished a strawberry out of her daiquiri and sucked the fruit pulp from its little green star. ‘The automatic system has shut down, so it should be okay for us to take a look, shouldn’t it?’ Her skin was reminiscent of cooked lobster; her face and cleavage glowing. Her chemical-saturated hair had been badly singed above the forehead, and even her eyebrows were damaged. Regardless of all that, she exuded the kind of confidence found only in people who are either especially superior or especially simple.

‘It’s not that easy,’ said Funaki.

‘Nonsense.’ She licked strawberry juices from the corner of her mouth. ‘Just a quick look. If it’s still burning, we’ll close up again quickly.’

‘You wouldn’t even be able to get the bulkheads open.’

‘Finn has strong muscles, and Mukesh—’

‘It has nothing to do with body strength. Not when the partial pressure of the oxygen has dropped.’

‘I see.’ Miranda raised what remained of her eyebrows in interest. ‘Wasn’t he one of the Arthurian knights?’

‘Sorry?’

‘Partial.’

‘Percival,’ said Olympiada Rogacheva wearily.

‘Oh, that’s right. So what does he have to do with our oxygen?’

‘Michio, you old Samurai,’ O’Keefe turned round. ‘Please be so kind as to talk in a way that the billionairess can understand you. I think you meant to say that there’s now a vacuum on the other side, right? Which means we need to think of another way of getting out of here.’

‘But how?’ Eva looked at him helplessly. ‘Without the elevator.’

They had climbed down to Selene in order to inspect the staff elevator, the only one of the three lifts that went through into the restaurant area, but Funaki had energetically intervened:

‘Not until the system or control centre signal that it’s safe! We don’t know what’s happening in the elevator shaft. If you don’t want to be hit by a wall of flames, then don’t even think about opening those doors.’

But the control centre still hadn’t been in touch.

‘If we need to we can climb down through the ventilation shaft,’ he had added. ‘It’s not the most comfortable of methods, but it’s safe.’

A while had passed since then. Karla looked back down into the worm casing of the spiral staircase.