Frank Schätzing - Limit

Once again, they were pressed forcefully back into their seats until, at 70 kilometres above the Moon’s surface, Peter braked the spaceship down to a speed of 5600 kilometres per hour, rotated 180 degrees and stabilised in orbit. Below them, craters, rock formations and powdery grey plateaux drifted past. Just as in the space elevator, cameras were transmitting all the images from outside onto holographic monitors. They did a two-hour lap of honour around the satellite, during which Nina Hedegaard explained the sights and particularities of this foreign world to them.

‘As you already know from your preparatory training, a Moon day lasts quite a bit longer than an Earth one,’ she hissed in her Scandinavian-tinged English. ‘Fourteen Earth days, eighteen hours, twenty-two minutes and two seconds to be precise, and the Moon night is just as long. We call the boundary between light and shadow the terminator. It moves at an incredibly slow pace, which means you don’t need to be afraid of suddenly being plunged into darkness during a walk. But when it gets dark, it really does! The terminator is clear-cut: there’s light or shadow, but no dusk. Some of the sights lose their appeal in the dull midday light, so that’s why we’ll visit the most interesting places in the Moon’s morning or evening, when the shadows are long.’

Beneath them they noticed another impressive crater, followed by a bizarrely fissured landscape.

‘The Lunar Appenines,’ explained Nina. ‘The whole area is filled with rimae, groove-like structures. Early astronomers thought they were transport networks made by the Selenites. It’s a wonderful landscape! The broad valley winding upwards over there is Rima Hadley; it leads through the Swamp of Laziness, a funny name, because there’s neither a swamp there, nor is it lazy. But it’s like that all over the Moon, seas which aren’t actually seas and so on. Do you see the two mountains to the side of the rima? That’s Mons Hadley, and beneath it Mons Hadley Delta. Both of them are well known from photographs, you often see them with a Moon Rover in the foreground. The Apollo 15 landed not far from there. The lunar module’s landing gear is still there, along with some other things the astronauts left behind.’

‘What other things?’ asked Nair, his eyes gleaming.

‘Shit,’ muttered Locatelli.

‘Why do you always have to be so negative?’

‘I’m not. They left their shit behind. Everyone knows that, it would have been crazy not to, right? Believe me, wherever there’s landing gear like that there’ll be astronaut shit lying around somewhere.’

Nair nodded. Even that seemed to fascinate him. The spaceship flew swiftly over more rilles, mountains and craters and finally over the shore of the Sea of Tranquillity. Nina pointed out a small crater, named after Moltke and known for its sprawling cave system, created by flowing lava aeons ago.

‘Similar systems have been discovered in the walls and plateaux of the Peary Crater in the northern polar region, where the American moon base was built. We’ll visit Moltke at the start of the Moon evening, when the terminator is in the middle of the crater. It’s a unique sight! And then there’s the museum of course, admittedly a little barren scenically, but an essential visit nonetheless because—’

‘Let me guess,’ called Ögi. ‘Apollo 11.’

‘Correct,’ beamed Nina. ‘It’s essential to know that the Apollo missions were dependent on the narrow equatorial belt. Finding a spectacular landing place wasn’t the issue, it was just about setting foot on the Moon at all. Of course, it’s the symbolic value of the museum that matters most today. By now you’ll be able to find evidence of former visits all over the place, and in far more interesting locations, but Armstrong’s footprints – well, you can only find them there.’

The flight then took them right across the Mare Crisium, the darkest of the Moon seas, in which, as Nina explained, the highest gravity ever measured on the Moon can be found. For a while they saw nothing but wildly fissured landscapes and ever-increasing shadows which spilled ominously into the valleys and plateaux, forming vast pools and filling the craters until only the highest edges still lay in sunlight. Evelyn shuddered at the thought of having to stumble around in the shapeless darkness, then the very last of the brightly lit islands disappeared and enigmatic darkness covered the monitors, seeping into the arteries and convolutions of the brain and swallowing any peace of mind.

‘ The Dark Side of the Moon ,’ sighed Walo Ögi. ‘Anybody remember that? Pink Floyd? It was a classic album.’

Lynn, who had felt relatively stable during the journey, was now lost in the darkest depths of her soul. Once again, it seemed as if her courage and vitality had been sucked right out of her. On the far side of the Moon, you couldn’t see the Earth, nor, unfortunately, the sun. If there is a hell, she thought, then it wouldn’t be hot and fiery, but cold, a nihilistic blackness. It wouldn’t need the devil or demons, torture slabs, stakes or boiling cauldrons. The absence of the familiar, the inner and outer world, the end of all feeling; that was hell. It was almost like total blindness. It was the death of all hope, fading into fear.

Take a deep breath, feel the body.

She needed to move, she had to get out of here and run, because anyone who ran could make the cold star inside them glimmer again, but she sat there, belted in to her seat as the Charon raced through the darkness. What was Ögi talking about? The Dark Side of the Moon . Who was Pink Floyd? Why was Nina blabbering relentless nonsense? Couldn’t someone make the stupid goose shut up? Twist her neck, tear out her tongue?

‘The far side of the Moon isn’t necessarily dark,’ she whispered. ‘It’s just that the same side of it is always facing the Earth.’

Tim, who was sitting next to her, turned his head.

‘Did you say something?’

‘It’s just that the same side of it is always facing the Earth. You don’t see the far side, but it’s illuminated just as often as the front side.’ Breathless, she stumbled over her words. ‘The far side isn’t dark. Not necessarily. It’s just that the same side of it is—’

‘Are you afraid, Lynn?’

Tim’s concern. Like a rope thrown out for her to catch.

‘Nonsense.’ She drew air into her lungs. ‘I’ve already flown this route three times. There’s no need to be afraid. We’ll be back in the light again soon.’

‘—can assure you that you’re not missing much,’ Nina was saying. ‘The front side is far more interesting. Remarkably, there are practically no maria on the far side, no seas. It’s saturated with craters, rather monotonous, but nonetheless the ideal location for building a space telescope.’

‘Why there?’ asked Hanna.

‘Because the Earth is to the Moon what the Moon is to the Earth, namely a Chinese lantern that intermittently illuminates its surface. Even when it’s midnight on the Moon, the surface area is still partially illuminated by the waning residual light of the Earth. The rear side by contrast is, as you can see, as black at night as the cosmos around it: there’s no sunlight, no light from the Earth to outshine the view of the stars. Astronomers would love to set up an observation post here, but for now they have to content themselves with a telescope on the Moon’s North Pole. It’s a compromise at any rate: the sun is low-lying, and you can look at the starry sky on the far side from there.’

Lynn reached for Tim’s hand and squeezed it. Her thoughts were circling around murder and destruction.

‘I don’t know how you’re doing,’ he said softly, ‘but I’m finding this darkness quite oppressive.’