Frank Schätzing - Limit

‘Well, would you be prepared to climb on board with me? I mean, you’re certainly not here because you’re afraid of Moscow.’

Rogachev stroked his chin.

‘You know what?’ he said. ‘I suggest we sleep on it and enjoy a few days of holiday first.’

The Charon was essentially a tube, seven metres in diameter and twenty-eight metres long, segmented into three parts and connected to a landing module. A flying omnibus, divided up into sleeping quarters and command cockpit, bistro and seating area, whose creator had failed to do it the honour of making it aerodynamic given that it would never be required to pass through an atmosphere. The Apollo capsules and the Orion, originally planned as successor to the space shuttle, hadn’t exactly met the expectations of design-accustomed cinema-goers either, but they had at least been able to offer a chicly rounded little nose, which began to give off a red glow on entering the thermosphere. Compared with this, the Charon had all the charm of a household appliance. A tonne of white and grey, smooth here, corrugated there, partly filled with fuel, partly with astronauts, and adorned with the O of Orley Enterprises.

‘Prepare for braking manoeuvre,’ said Peter’s voice over the loudspeaker.

Two and a half days in a space shuttle, even if it was incredibly spacious and decorated in a colour scheme developed by psychologists, still brought thoughts of detention centres to mind. The enchantment of the unfamiliar lost its lustre when confronted with the proximity and monotony of their surroundings, and came out in debates about the state of the planet, as well as unexpected chumminess and openly expressed dislike. Sushma and Mukesh Nair, aided by their charismatic shyness, rallied like-minded people around them, including Eva Borelius, Karla Kramp, Marc Edwards and Mimi Parker. They engaged in relaxed conversation, that is until Mimi initiated a discussion about Darwinism: wasn’t it just some dead end the natural sciences had ended up in thanks to atheistic arrogance, from which only a creationist world-view could offer the way out? Life, she concluded, was far too complex to have come about by chance in some ancient ocean, and especially not four billion years ago. Karla responded that comments like that questioned the complexity of some of the people present, a riposte which unleashed a series of heated reactions. Aileen Donoghue came to Mimi’s aid, saying that although she didn’t want to tie herself down to the specifics of a few thousand years more or less, she still questioned any relationship between the species. It was much more likely that all living beings had been created by God in one breath. Karla commented that it was perfectly obvious that Mimi was descended from apes. Besides which, the first two chapters in the Book of Moses each dealt with the creation of mankind differently, so even the Old Testament couldn’t offer any unity on the process of creation, in so far as one could base serious scientific knowledge on one single, historically questionable book.

Meanwhile, bonds were formed between Rebecca Hsu, Momoka Omura, Olympiada Rogacheva and Miranda Winter. Evelyn Chambers got on well with everyone, apart from Chuck Donoghue perhaps, who had told Mimi in confidence that he thought Evelyn was godless, a comment which she had immediately passed on to Olympiada and Amber Orley, who, in turn, had told Evelyn. Locatelli, who had now recovered from his space sickness, started showing off again with stories of sailing and motor yachts and how he had won the America’s Cup, of his love of running, solar-powered racing cars and the possibility of extracting enough energy even out of a tick that it could make its contribution to the protection of the environment.

‘Every single body, even the human one, is a machine,’ he said. ‘And machines create warmth. All of you here are nothing more than machines, mere heaters. I tell you, people, if we collected everyone around the world into one great big machine, we wouldn’t need helium-3.’

‘And what about the soul?’ asked Mimi indignantly.

‘Bah, the soul!’ Locatelli threw his arms apart, floated away a little and tapped his finger against his skull. ‘The soul is software, my dear lady. Just thinking flesh. But if there were a soul, I would be the first to build a machine out of it. Hahaha!’

‘Locatelli was telling us the most amazing things,’ said Heidrun to Walo later. ‘Do you know what you are?’

‘What am I, my love?’

‘An oven. Now come here and warm me up.’

Mimi and Karla made their peace with one another, Hanna played guitar – unifying the others at least on a musical level, and winning a fan in Locatelli, who was photographing him constantly – and O’Keefe read screenplays. Each one of them acted as though their noses weren’t filled with the steadily intensifying mélange of sweat, intimate odours, flatulence and hair sebum, against which even the high-tech air synthesiser on board was struggling in vain. Space travel might be fascinating, but one of its disadvantages was definitely not being able to open a window to let some fresh air in. Evelyn wondered how it was supposed to work on long-term missions, with all the smells and increasing tension. Hadn’t a Russian cosmonaut once said that all the prerequisites for committing murder were there if two men were shut into a narrow cabin and left alone together for two months? But perhaps they would take different people on a mission like that. No individualists, certainly not a load of crazy super-rich people and celebrities. Peter Black, their pilot, certainly seemed well-balanced, one might even say quite boring. A team player without any flamboyant or alarmist characteristics.

‘Start braking manoeuvre.’

From a distance of 220 kilometres away they could still see half of the Moon, revealing magnificent detail. It looked so round, on account of its modest proportions, that there seemed good reason to fear they wouldn’t be able to get a grip when landing and would just slide down the side. Nina Hedegaard floated over to help them put on their pressure suits, which also contained bladder bags.

‘For later, when we land,’ she explained with a puzzling smile.

‘And who says we’ll need to go?’ called out Momoka Omura.

‘Physics.’ Nina’s dimples deepened. ‘Your bladder could take the onset of gravity as a reason to empty itself without any advance warning. Do you want to soak your pressure suit?’

Momoka looked down at herself as if she already had.

‘This whole venture seems to be somewhat lacking in the elegance stakes,’ she said, pulling on what she had to wear.

Nina shooed the Moon walkers through the connecting airlock into the landing craft, yet another barrel, this time conically shaped at the top and equipped with four powerful telescopic legs. In comparison with the living module it offered all the movement radius of a sardine-tin. Most of them let the procedure of being strapped in wash over them with the embalmed facial expression of old hands; after all, it was only two and a half days ago that they had sat alongside one another in just the same way, waiting for the shuttle to catapult them from the docking port of the OSS into outer space with an impressive blast of fire. But contrary to all their expectations, the ship had moved away slowly as if it were trying to disappear unnoticed. It was only once they were at a suitable distance from the space city that Peter had ignited the thruster, accelerating to maximum speed then turning off the engines, after which they had raced silently through space towards their pockmarked destination.

The time for relaxing was over, and everyone was happy about it. It was good to finally arrive.