Frank Schätzing - Limit

‘You can ask anything you like.’ Rogachev’s smile melted the ice between his blond eyelashes a little. ‘As long as you don’t expect to get an answer to everything.’

‘What are you doing on that computer all the time?’

‘Julian deserves a response. We had a fantastic week thanks to him. However it may have ended, we were given a lot. And now we’ve got to give something in return.’

‘You want to invest?’ asked Mukesh Nair, floating over.

‘Why not?’

‘After this disaster?’

‘So?’ Oleg Rogachev shrugged. ‘Did people stop building ships just because the Titanic went down?’

‘I’ll admit, I’m uneasy.’

‘You know how failure works, Mukesh. It’s always sparked by a fear of crisis. It starts with a soluble problem, but it drags a psychosis along behind it. A shark psychosis. It only takes one shark to paralyse the tourism of a whole region, because no one will go into the water even though the likelihood of being eaten tends to zero. The collapse of the economy, of the financial markets, has always involved psychoses. Not the individual terrorist attack, not the bankruptcy of an individual bank, the threat comes from the general paralysis that follows. Should I make my decision to invest in Julian’s project, in the breakthrough of the global energy supply, dependent on a shark?’

‘The shark was an atom bomb , Oleg!’ Nair opened his eyes wide. ‘Possibly the start of a global conflict.’

‘Or not.’

‘At any rate, there was nothing Julian could have done about it,’ Evelyn confirmed. ‘We were the victim of an attack meant for somebody else. We were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.’

‘But someone must know who was behind it!’

‘And what are you going to do if they don’t?’ Rogachev asked ironically. ‘Suspend all space travel?’

‘You know very well that’s not what I think,’ Mukesh grumbled. ‘I just wonder if an investment would be sensible .’

‘I do too.’

‘And?’

Rogachev pointed at the computer screen. ‘I’ve worked it out. There’s about six hundred thousand tonnes of helium-3 stored on the Moon, ten times the potential energy yield of all the oil, gas and coal supplies on Earth. Perhaps even more, because the concentration of the isotope on the back of the Moon might be even higher than it is in the Earth’s shadow. That’s five metres of saturated regolith; the most interesting part is the first two to three metres, or exactly the depth ploughed by the beetles.’ Rogachev typed on his computer. ‘Leaving out transport to Earth, the energy balance is as follows: one gram of regolith equals seventeen hundred and fifty Joules. Some of this is lost in heating and processing, leaving us with, let’s say, fifteen hundred Joules. That’s an area of ten thousand square kilometres that needs to be ploughed and processed to cover the current energy needs of Earth. One thousandth of the Moon’s surface. Where productivity is concerned, beetles work with sunlight, which means that they spend half the year without energy, meaning that we would need twice as many of the things as we have at present.’

‘And how many is that?’

‘A few thousand.’

‘A few thousand ?’ cried Mukesh.

‘Yes, of course,’ said Oleg, unmoved. ‘Assuming we’re deploying that many, then supplies would last for around four thousand years, always assuming that the world population stagnates and the Third World’s energy needs remain lower than those of the developed countries. Neither of these two things will be the case. Realistically, we can expect a global population of twenty-five billion by the end of the century, and an overall increase in electricity usage. In that case the Moon will supply us with energy for seven hundred years at most.’

‘And then?’ asked Evelyn Chambers.

‘We’ll have used up another fossil resource, and we’ll be standing right where we are today. The Moon will have been levelled, uninteresting to hotels and pleasure trips, but may have been able to preserve a few conservation areas. Whether we’ll be able to see them for dust is a whole other question.’

‘Thousands of mining machines.’ Nair shook his head. ‘That’s crazy! We’ll never be able to pay for them.’

‘We will.’ Rogachev snapped the computer shut. ‘We had a deficit problem with space travel, too. The lift changed everything, and building a few thousand machines like that isn’t such big news. Thousands of tanks will be built too, and a levelled moon is just a levelled moon.’

‘Shit,’ Chambers said to herself.

‘Yes, shit. I know what you’re thinking. Yet again we’ve destroyed a natural wonder for the sake of a short-term effect.’

‘But it’s going to be worth it?’

‘It’ll be worth it for seven hundred years, and from a distance the Moon won’t look much different from what it looks like today.’ Oleg pursed his lips. ‘So I think I’m going to invest part of the originally planned sum in Orley Space.’

‘Congratulations.’

‘Not least on your advice.’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘Have you forgotten? Isla de las Estrellas?’

‘I hadn’t been to the mining zone then.’

‘I understand. Shark psychosis.’

‘No, not at all. You’ve just expressed in words what I’d already worked out in the land of mists. The idiocy of the whole thing. When we talk about moon mining, most people think about a few lonely bulldozers lost in the vastness of the Moon. Instead, we’re losing the Moon to the bulldozers.’ She shook her head. ‘Of course it’s better to destroy the Moon than the Earth, aneutronic fusion is clean, and if it lasts seven hundred years, then fine. But I’m still allowed to think it’s crap.’

‘I thought I’d put the other half of the money into buying up Warren Locatelli’s Lightyears.’

‘What?’ Mukesh Nair rolled his eyes. ‘You want to—’

‘I don’t want to look ruthless.’ Rogachev raised both hands. ‘Warren’s dead, but holding back won’t bring him back to life. He was a little god, and like all gods he left a vacuum. In my view, Lightyears is the best imaginable candidate for a buyout. Warren Locatelli did amazing things in solar technology, there’s still much to come and the best brains in the sector are working for his company. So let’s be under no illusions: solar technology’s going to be the only way of solving our energy problems in the long term!’ He smiled. ‘So we may not even have to level the Moon.’

‘And you’re sure that Lightyears will simply allow itself to be swallowed up?’ the Indian asked suspiciously.

‘Hostile takeover.’

‘You’ll have to offer a huge amount of money.’

‘I know. Are you in?’

‘God almighty, you ask some questions!’ Nair rubbed his fleshy nose. ‘This isn’t really my area. I’m just a simple—’

‘Farmer’s son, I know.’

‘I’ll have to think about it, Oleg.’

‘Do that. I’ve already talked to Julian. He’s with me. Walo too.’

‘One of them gets a leg, the other an arm,’ hummed Evelyn, as Nair floated off with solar cells in his eyes. Rogachev smiled his vulpine smile and remained silent for a moment.

‘And you?’ he asked. ‘What are you going to do?’

She looked at him. ‘About Julian?

‘You do administer the capital of public opinion, as you put it so nicely.’

‘Don’t worry.’ Evelyn pulled a face. ‘I won’t hurt him.’

‘A good friend,’ Rogachev chuckled.

‘Friendship hasn’t got much to do with it, Oleg. I was well disposed towards his projects before I went to the Moon, and I still am, regardless of what I think about the plundering that’s going on up there. He’s a pioneer, an innovator. No criminal gang is going to blow my sympathies for him out of my head just like that.’