Frank Schätzing - Limit

The shapeless Callisto rested opposite them with clumsy assertiveness, as if suggesting it was capable of flying to Mars. Ugly but reliable , as poor Chuck had joked just the day before. Compared with the shuttle, the laughable grasshoppers looked like toys.

‘Who’s flying in front?’ asked Heidrun.

‘Tim,’ said Ögi decisively as he stowed the box containing Olympiada’s suit into the small cargo hold. ‘Then you, then me, to make sure I don’t lose you.’

‘Lynn,’ said Tim over his helmet radio, ‘we’re setting off.’

He still couldn’t get used to the lack of engine noise. The hopper rose without a sound, exited the garage and started its ascent. From behind, Gaia looked just the same as it always had: superior and indestructible. The camera in his helmet sent images back to the control centre. He flew in an arc, as agreed with Lynn beforehand, so she could get an idea of how the front section looked. He intensified the thrust, let the force carry him towards the shoulder of the huge figure, then held his breath.

‘Good God.’ Walo’s voice piped up in his helmet.

It had been obvious even from the side view that something wasn’t right. Parts of the façade were missing or lay in ruins, and in places the naked steel of the support framework was exposed. Now, as they flew directly towards it, the full extent of the destruction was revealed. The contourless face was no longer focused on the Earth, but just beneath it. Where the neck had once been, there was now a gaping, black, collapsed hole. The complete front section was broken away, and Gaia’s chin was sunk so far that only the lower half of the elevator doors was still peeping out.

Tim steered the hopper closer. The colossal skull seemed to be hanging by a thread at the neck. E2 stood open, its insides just a gullet corroded by flames. Steel columns, grotesquely deformed, faced towards him. His stomach filled with dread as he dared to look down one more time. There was debris distributed all over the figure’s upper thigh, albeit not much. And it looked as if Gaia were nodding to him. Finn was right: they had come not a moment too soon.

On the ascent, he saw the sealed-off Chang’e, and was convinced he could make out smoke and rust inside it, burnt furnishings, but the dark windows with their gold filtering concealed what lay beyond, leaving any detail to the imagination. Out of the blue, he was overcome by an attack of vertigo. The hopper’s platform had no railings, and any flying carpet would have seemed like a spacious dance floor in comparison. Quickly reassuring himself that Heidrun and Walo were behind him, he passed Selene and the Luna Bar and followed the arch of the forehead round to the viewing platform. Figures started to move beneath him: O’Keefe, Olympiada and Miranda were making their way towards the airlock. He swivelled the jets, reduced his speed, overshot the terrace a little, turned and came to a standstill right next to the railing. Not the most elegant of landings. Alongside him, at an appropriate distance, Heidrun landed as if she had been flying hoppers her whole life. Meanwhile, Ögi flew a lap of honour amidst a great deal of cursing, then finally forced the hopper down, clattering one of the telescopic legs along the railing in the process.

‘I’m actually a gliding and ballooning enthusiast,’ he said apologetically, before unloading his box and carrying it to the airlock, a double bulkhead in the floor which measured several metres in diameter, ‘but Switzerland is a little more spacious.’

Tim jumped off his hopper.

‘Finn, we’re above you,’ he said. Lynn had connected their helmet radios with Gaia’s internal network so that everyone could communicate at once. A few seconds passed, then O’Keefe chimed in:

‘Okay, Tim. What should we do?’

‘Nothing just yet. We’ll call up the airlock elevator, send the boxes with the spacesuits down to you and—’

He stopped.

Was it his imagination, or had the floor begun to shake under his feet?

‘Hurry up!’ called O’Keefe. ‘It’s starting again!’

Where was the control console for the airlock? There. His fingers darted as he entered the command, and the air was sucked out at an agonisingly slow speed. The shaking intensified and became like an earthquake. Then the whole thing stopped as abruptly as it had begun.

‘The elevator’s on its way up,’ Ögi gasped breathlessly.

The airlock doors opened in the floor beneath them. A glass cabin pushed its way out, spacious enough to hold a dozen people, and opened at the front. They quickly piled the boxes inside.

‘I’ll go down with them,’ said Heidrun.

‘What?’ Ögi looked alarmed. ‘Why?’

‘To help them. With the suits, so it’s quicker.’ Before he could protest, she had disappeared into the cabin and pressed the down switch. The elevator closed.

‘My darling,’ whispered Ögi.

‘Don’t worry, commander. We’ll all be back in five minutes.’

Finn O’Keefe saw the elevator approaching, with someone in it whose slim legs were familiar to him even through centimetre-thick, steel-strengthened artificial fibres. He waited impatiently until the internal pressure was restored and the front bulkhead had glided to the side.

‘Here we go!’ said Heidrun, throwing the first of the boxes towards him.

Olympiada, as white as chalk, handed the second box on to Miranda, then began to empty her own.

‘Thank you,’ she said earnestly. ‘I’ll never forget this.’

In immense hurry, they slipped into their gear: helping one another, closing hinges, fastening clamps, heaving packs onto their backs and putting their helmets on.

‘Would it be asking too much to want to get out of the hotel right away?’ asked Miranda. ‘It’s just, you know, I don’t want to get blown into the sky, and I’ve emptied the minibar already, so—’

‘You can count on it,’ said Lynn’s voice.

‘Oh, don’t get me wrong,’ Miranda hurried to assure her. ‘There’s nothing wrong with your hotel.’

‘Yes, there is. It’s a piece of shit,’ said Lynn coldly.

Miranda giggled.

At that very moment, the floor gave way.

For one strange moment, Tim thought the entire opposite side of the ravine was being lifted up by elemental forces. Then, as he watched the grasshoppers hopping across the terrace and Ögi whooshing towards the railings with his arms flailing about, he lost his balance, landed on his stomach and slid behind the flying machines.

Gaia was bowing her head in face of the inevitable.

Chaos roared in his helmet. Anyone who had a voice was screaming in competition with all the others. He rolled over, got back on his feet and stretched out, which was a mistake, because he lost his balance again right away. He was pulled forcefully against the railing, tumbled right over it and smacked down onto the smooth, sloping glass surface.

And slid down.

No, he thought. No!

In fear and panic, he tried to get a grip on the reflective surface, but there was nothing there to get hold of. He slipped further, away from the protective enclosure of the terrace. One of the hoppers sailed down behind him and crashed onto the glass. Tim reached out for it and grasped the steering handle just as he saw another flying device disappear into the depths. It suddenly felt as if he were hovering in the air; he couldn’t get a grip any more and hung over the abyss, his legs flailing around. With his hand clamped onto the machine’s handle, he screamed ‘Stop!’ – and as if his plea, his wretched wish to survive, had been acknowledged somewhere out there amongst the cold gaze of the myriad stars, the movement of the huge skull came to an abrupt halt.