Frank Schätzing - Limit

‘Tim! Tim!’

‘Everything’s okay, Lynn,’ he panted. ‘Everything’s—’

Okay? Nothing was okay. With both arms – thank God he wasn’t heavy – he pulled himself up on the flying device, noticing with relief that one of its telescopic legs had got wedged in the railings, then realising, with horror, that it was slowly slipping out.

A jolt went through the hopper.

Dismayed, Tim dangled in open air, unable to decide whether he should resume his ascent and thereby rip the hopper out of its anchorage once and for all, or not move at all, which would only delay his death by a few seconds. At the next moment, a figure appeared behind the terrace railing, climbed over it and slid carefully downwards, both hands bent around the rails.

‘Climb up onto me,’ panted Ögi. ‘Come on!’

Ögi’s feet were now level with Tim’s helmet, right next to him. Tim gasped for air, reached his arm out—

The hopper came loose.

Swinging back and forth, he hung on to Ögi’s ankles, grasped his shin guards, clung to his knees, climbed up him like a ladder and over the railing, then helped his rescuer to get back to safety. In front of them, tilted to about forty-five degrees, the floor of the terrace rose up into the heights like a smooth slide.

He had survived.

But they’d now lost all three grasshoppers.

‘No! I’m flying up there.’

Lynn pushed herself away from the control panel, crumpled over and fell against Mukesh. Horrified, the Indian stared at the wall monitor, watching the terrible images being transmitted by Tim’s camera and the external cameras on the opposite side of the ravine. The fibre-optic connection to the Mama Quilla Club had been broken, but they could now hear the voices of those trapped via the helmet radio.

‘It’s stopped.’ Miranda, out of breath. ‘What do we do now?’

‘Olympiada?’ O’Keefe.

‘I’m here.’ Olympiada spoke, sounding haggard.

‘Where?’

‘Behind the bar, I’m… behind the bar.’

‘My darling?’ Ögi, distraught. ‘Where on earth—’

‘I don’t know.’ Heidrun, sucking in air through her teeth. ‘Somewhere. Hit my head.’

‘Everyone out!’ Tim. ‘You can’t stay there. See whether the airlock is working.’

Lynn’s temples were throbbing with hypnotic rhythm. Colourful smog began to whirl around. Having to watch Gaia’s skull tilt so suddenly that the chin was now almost resting on the chest had made her heart stop, and now it was pumping all the harder to make up for it. Gaia looked as though she were sleeping. Her head must truly now be hanging on to the shoulders by a thread.

‘Everything’s at an angle,’ said O’Keefe. ‘We’re tumbling all over each other like skittles. I don’t know if we’ll even get into the airlock.’

Head. Head. Head. How much longer would her head stay on her shoulders?

‘We’ll come and get you,’ she said. ‘We still have seven grasshoppers. I’ll fly.’

‘Me too,’ said Mukesh.

‘We need a third. Quickly! Fetch Karla – she’s in the best state out of all of us.’

Mukesh hurried out. Lynn followed him and plundered the depot with the substitute spacesuits. Several were missing, including hers. Suddenly remembering that not all the suits were stored in the lobby, she ran back into the control centre and to the closed bulkhead on the rear wall. Behind it lay a small storeroom for spare equipment, including fire extinguishers, suits and air masks. She waited until the steel door had glided to the side, walked in, and was surprised to find the light on. Her gaze fell on the locker with the equipment, on the piles of boxes, on the dead faces of the air masks neatly lined up in their cabinets, and on the dead face of Sophie Thiel, who was leaning upright against the wall. Her eyes were open, and her pretty face had been divided in two by a streak of dried blood originating from a hole in her forehead.

Lynn didn’t move.

She just stood there, gawping at the corpse. Strangely – and thankfully, in the face of everything – it didn’t unleash any emotions in her. None at all. Maybe it was just the fact that its appearance was too much and too late, or the pushiness with which it demanded its moment in the limelight amidst an inferno of Dante-like proportions, as if they didn’t have other problems. So after a few seconds she ignored Sophie and started carrying out the boxes containing the bio-suits.

‘Hello, Lynn.’

She looked up, confused.

Dana Lawrence was standing in the doorway.

Heidrun and O’Keefe made their way hand over hand over table and chair legs, supporting, pulling and pushing Olympiada up towards the airlock. Contrary to what she had thought, the Russian woman had not fallen behind the bar but behind the DJ booth. Meanwhile, Miranda hung on to the side of the airlock like a monkey on a pole, her hand lying across the sensor field to keep it open.

‘Can you guys make it? Shall I help?’

‘I can get up there by myself,’ groaned Olympiada defiantly.

‘No, you can’t,’ said Heidrun. ‘Your leg is injured; you can hardly stand on it.’

The main problem resulting from the change to their spatial surroundings was not so much the tilting of the floor, as that of the airlock. The front section was now turned towards Gaia’s glass face and pointing downwards. And it wasn’t just that it was incredibly difficult to get into it in this way; if they didn’t watch out up there, they would fall outside faster than they intended.

‘You’ll have to try to get behind the elevator as soon as you get to the terrace,’ said Tim. ‘It will give you something to grip. Oh, and bring something long and sharp with you, like a knife.’

‘What for?’ groaned O’Keefe, as he steered Olympiada towards Miranda Winter’s outstretched hand.

‘To block the cabin so it doesn’t go down again.’

‘I said I could manage.’ Olympiada wrapped her hands around the cabin railing and pulled herself into the elevator with a grimly determined expression. ‘Go and look for your knife, Finn.’

They grasped the railing tightly and waited. O’Keefe was only gone for a minute. When he came back, carrying an ice pick, he had a wad of material flung over his shoulder. Miranda let the bulkheads close and pump the air out.

The cabin shuddered.

‘Not again,’ groaned Olympiada.

‘Don’t worry,’ Miranda reassured her. ‘It’ll stop in a second.’

‘What are you planning to do?’ asked Dana.

The bulkheads had finally opened and the armoured plating had crept back into the hidden cavities. Freed from her prison, Dana had jumped down from the gallery over the bridge into the lobby, all the while thinking through her next steps: to break off the rescue mission, capture the Callisto, and get the hell out of here. In the course of the past hour and a half, she had been forced to win back trust by making out she sympathised with Lynn, but that was over now. Julian’s hated daughter was alone in the control centre. She was no serious opponent; the loss of Dana’s weapon wouldn’t make the task easy, but she could make do with her hands.

‘I’m flying up there,’ said Lynn, her face devoid of any expression, then went back into the room and hauled out two large boxes containing spacesuits. Dana cocked her head. Had she not seen Sophie? No, there was no way she hadn’t seen her, but why did she seem so unaffected? Surely such a sight would have thrown her off track, but Lynn looked indifferent, as if she were on autopilot. Her gaze empty, she took off her jacket and began to unbutton her blouse.

‘Come on, Dana, get yourself a suit too.’