Frank Schätzing - Limit

‘Hey, you guys,’ said Nina. ‘Are you still there?’

‘Not for much longer,’ prophesied Heidrun.

‘We can forget the shuttle airlock. It’s too near to the engines, and I have to maintain the counter-thrust in order not to slip. I’ll approach in reverse with the rear hatch open, okay? I’ll have to avoid touching the head, so get ready to do some chin-ups.’

‘Chin-ups, somersaults, we’ll do whatever you want.’

They ascended further. First Gaia’s back was visible from the cockpit of the shuttle, then the neck with its exposed steel backbone came into full view. Lynn couldn’t help thinking about what Gaia embodied in Julian’s eyes: her own image, to excess. And they really were becoming more and more alike. Two queens about to lose their heads.

The Callisto rose up slowly over the curve of the skull.

O’Keefe helped the others onto their feet. Pressed between the airlock wall and the terrace floor, they gripped to one another and waved at the helmeted silhouette behind the cockpit window. The shuttle began to turn on its axis, first turning its side towards them, then the open rear with the lowered tailboard.

‘Nearer!’ shouted Tim.

A jolt went through the head. Ögi lost his grip and was caught by Heidrun. The Callisto swivelled two of its jets. With absolute precision, Nina Hedegaard steered the huge craft backwards. The tailboard came closer, closer still, too close—

‘Stop!’

The shuttle stopped, motionless in open space.

‘Can you make it?’ asked Nina.

O’Keefe raised both hands, grabbed the edge and pulled himself up onto the tailboard with a powerful swinging motion. He turned round right away, lay down on his stomach and stretched his arms out below.

‘Nina? Can you lower the machine a little further?’

‘I’ll try.’

His right hand brushed Heidrun’s fingertips. The Callisto sank another metre, now hovering at helmet-height across from the others.

‘That’s as far as I can go,’ said Nina. ‘I’m afraid of touching the head.’

‘That’ll do.’ Heidrun clambered up to O’Keefe on the hatch. To the right of her, Ögi pulled himself up, crouched down and grasped Olympiada, who was handed up to him from below, steadying herself on his shoulder. Hands stretched out towards Miranda and Tim, helping them up.

‘We made it,’ whispered Olympiada, then crumpled over, as the damaged bone in her shin finally broke. With a scream, she rolled over the edge of the hatch and tumbled back into the tiny gap between the terrace and the airlock.

‘Olympiada!’

Miranda, who was almost all the way up, dropped back down next to the Russian woman and grabbed her under the arms.

‘No – don’t—’

‘Are you crazy? Up you go – as if I would leave you lying here.’

‘I’m useless,’ whimpered Olympiada.

‘No, you’re wonderful, you just don’t know it yet.’

Miranda effortlessly lifted the petite woman up and towards O’Keefe, who pulled her back onto the tailboard and handed her over to Tim.

‘Yeah!’ called Miranda. ‘See, there was nothing to it!’

She laughed and stretched her arms out. O’Keefe went to grab her, but her hands were suddenly out of reach. Confused, he leaned his upper body further forward. She was moving away from him at an ever greater speed, and for a moment he thought Nina had flown away without her. Then he realised the shuttle hadn’t moved an inch.

Gaia’s head was breaking off!

‘Miranda!’ he screamed.

He could hear her choking gasps in his helmet as if she were right there next to him, while her tottering form dwindled before his eyes. She was waving her arms wildly, which in some gruesome way could have been mistaken for a gesture of exuberance, the way they knew her to be, always in a good mood, always pushing herself to the very limit, but as she called O’Keefe’s name, her voice expressed the absolute despair of a person who knew that nothing and no one would be able to save them.

‘Finn! Finn! – Finn!’

‘Miranda!’

Then she fell.

Her body tipped over the cabin shaft, flashed in the sunlight and then disappeared behind the head of Gaia, which did a half-turn, seemed to stand still for a moment, then fell completely from the shoulders, crashing into the immense Romanesque window of the abdominal wall.

‘Inside, everyone inside!’ shouted O’Keefe, his voice cracking. ‘Nina!’

‘What’s wrong, Finn, we—’

‘She fell!’ He jumped into the cargo hold. ‘Miranda fell overboard; you have to go round to the front section.’

‘Is everyone else in?’

His eyes darted around. Next to him, Tim stumbled across, a groaning Olympiada in his arms, and collapsed down to the floor of the hold.

‘Yes! Quickly, for heaven’s sake, go quickly!’

Not waiting until the hatch was closed, he ran like crazy to the connecting bulkhead and pushed himself through while there was still barely a crack’s width open. Stumbling along the central gangway, he was hurled against a seat, the revving of the engines in his ears as Nina steered the Callisto backwards over the figure’s tattered stump of a neck. Then he struggled to his feet again and rushed into the cockpit.

And looked down.

The abdominal cavity was destroyed. Fireballs appeared which extinguished as soon as they were ignited. Rubble rained down as the ribcage containing the suites collapsed floor by floor. Then, Gaia’s immense, regal skull, the glazing on the face surprisingly still intact, rolled over the gentle inclination of the upper thigh towards the valley, passed the knee almost hesitantly and shattered on the plateau two hundred metres below.

‘Go down! Down!’

The shuttle sank, but Miranda was nowhere to be seen, neither on the upper surface of the thigh, now covered in debris, nor on the moon surface around it.

‘To the plateau! She was torn down with it! You have to—’

‘Finn—’

‘No! Look! Look for her!’

Without arguing, Nina turned the shuttle around, descended further and flew in a curve directly over and around the widely scattered remains of the head. By now, the others were gathering together in the space behind the cockpit.

‘She can’t have disappeared!’ screamed O’Keefe.

‘Finn.’

He felt the soft pressure of a hand on his upper arm and turned round. Heidrun had taken her helmet off and was looking at him with red eyes.

‘She can’t have just disappeared,’ he repeated softly.

‘She’s dead, Finn. Miranda’s dead.’

He stared at her.

Then he started to cry. Blinded by tears, he sank to the floor in front of Heidrun. He couldn’t remember ever having cried.

Lynn sat in the first row of seats, distancing herself from the group, completely expressionless. She had beamed her former light for the last time, had unified the group in the glow of the dying star that she was, had illuminated them, blinded and driven back Dana, her enemy, but the fuel of her life’s energy was used up now, her collapse unavoidable. Everything inside her skull was rushing around with maximum kinetic energy: impressions, facts, probability of occurrences. Dependable knowledge was pulverised into hypotheses. The unending condensing of impressions caused them to be fractured into the smallest, the very smallest thought particles, to which no time, no perceptual level, no history could be assigned. Increasingly brief thought phases, thought particles whirling at the speed of light, a collapsing spirit, unceasingly crashing without the opposing pressure of will, falling short of the event horizon, no transmission, only reception now, ongoing compromise, the end of all processes, of all contour, all form, just situation, and even the pitiful remains of what had once been Lynn Orley would corrode and evaporate under their own pressure, leaving nothing behind but an abandoned, imaginary space.