Frank Schätzing - Limit

Oh, clever Tim! Playing the ally.

‘Me too,’ she said gratefully.

‘I guess that’s normal, right?’

‘It won’t be for long.’

‘And when will we be back in the light?’ asked Miranda at the same moment.

‘Just another hour,’ hissed Nina. Jussssst , she said, so affected, so foolish. Julian’s stupid little hobby. But feeling Tim’s hand pressing against hers, Lynn started to relax, and suddenly remembered that she actually liked the Danish woman. So then why did she react so strongly, so aggressively? What’s happening to me? she wondered.

What the hell is happening to me?

Once the surface of the Moon had had nothing to offer for a while, the external cameras began to transmit pictures of the starry sky into the Charon, and O’Keefe felt an unexpected rush of familiarity. Even on the OSS he would have gladly gone back to Earth like a shot. Now he just felt a vague longing. Perhaps because the myriad of lights outside were not unlike the sight of distant, illuminated houses and streets, or because the human being, an aquatic mammal, was by virtue of its own origins a child of the cosmos, built from its elements. The contradictory nature of his emotions confused him, like a child who always wanted to be held by the person who wasn’t holding it at that moment. He tried to suppress the thought, but ended up thinking and thinking for an hour, unceasingly, about what he really wanted and where he belonged.

His gaze wandered over to Heidrun. She was two rows in front of him, listening to Ögi tell her something in hushed tones. O’Keefe wrinkled his nose and stared at the monitor. The picture changed. For a moment he couldn’t figure out what the light blobs were supposed to be, but then he realised he was looking at sun-illuminated peaks which were rising out of the shadows. A sigh of relief went through the Charon. They were flying in the light again, towards the North Pole.

‘We’ll detach the landing module now,’ said Black. ‘The mother ship stays in orbit until we dock back onto it in a week’s time. Nina will help you put your helmets on. It may not feel like it, but we’re still flying at five times the speed of sound, so prepare yourselves for the next braking manoeuvre.’

‘Hey, Momoka,’ whispered O’Keefe.

The Japanese woman turned her head around lethargically. ‘What’s up?’

‘Everything okay there?’

‘Of course.’

O’Keefe grinned. ‘Then don’t wet yourself.’

Locatelli let out a hoarse laugh. Before Momoka had time to come up with a rebuke, Nina appeared and pushed the helmet over her head. Within minutes, they were all sitting there with heads like identical golf balls. They heard a hiss as the connection hatch between the mother ship and landing module closed, then a hollow clunk. The landing module freed itself and moved slowly away. So far, there was no sign of the slamming of the brakes they’d been warned about. The landscape changed once more. The shadows became longer again, an indication that they were approaching the polar region. Lava plateaux gave way to craters and mountain ridges. O’Keefe thought he glimpsed a dust cloud in the far distance just over the site, and then the pressure kicked in, the now almost familiar abuse of the thorax and lungs, except that this time the engines were roaring considerably louder than they had been two hours ago. Worried, he wondered whether they might be in difficulties, until he realised that until now it had always been the thrusters far back in the living quarters which were ignited. For the first time, the landing module was manoeuvring by using the engine directly beneath them.

Black’s lighting a fire right under our arses, he thought.

With infernal counter-thrust, the landing module reduced its speed again as it rushed quickly, much too quickly, towards the surface of the Moon. A display on the screen counted down the distance kilometre by kilometre. What was happening? If they didn’t slow down soon they’d be making their own crater. He thought about Julian’s portrayal of the transformation of kinetic energy into heat, felt his ribcage getting tighter, tried to concentrate on the screen. Were his eyeballs shaking? What had they told them in their training? That you weren’t cut out to be an astronaut if you couldn’t control your eyes, because any shaking in the pupils caused blurriness and double vision. They had to be calmly fixed on the instruments. The correct instruments, that’s what really mattered! How could you press the right buttons if you were seeing double?

Were Black’s eyeballs shaking?

The next moment he felt ashamed, full of scorn at himself. He was such an idiot! The centrifuge at the practice site, the launch of the space elevator, braking in the Moon’s orbit; each one had put a lot of pressure on him. Compared with all that, this landing was a walk in the park. He should have been calm personified, but the nerves were reaching out towards him with their electricity-laden fingers, and he had to admit to himself that his inability to breathe properly wasn’t down to the pressure, but the sheer fear of smashing into the Moon.

Four kilometres, five.

The second display revealed that they were steadily slowing down, and he breathed out a sigh of relief. All the worry had been in vain. Three kilometres until touchdown. A mountain ridge came into view, a high plateau, lights which segmented a landing field surrounded by protective barriers. Pipes and domes nestled amongst the rock like armoured woodlice, lying in wait for unsuspecting quarry. Solar fields, masts and antennae shimmered in the light of the low-lying sun; a barrel-shaped structure crowned a nearby hilltop. Further in the distance, open, hangar-like structures could be seen; huge machines crawled through a kind of open-cast mine. A rail system connected the habitats to the spaceport, led into a platform, then branched away from it in a wide curve. O’Keefe saw flights of stairs, hydraulic ramps and manipulator arms which were pointed towards a loading bay, then something white with tall, wide wheels drove along the road and stopped on a bridge; possibly manned, possibly a robot. The Charon shook and sank towards the ground. For a moment it was possible to make out a skyline of massive towers with large, bulky flying machines in between them, tanks and containers, unidentified objects. Something that looked like a praying mantis on wheels rolled off across the airfield, the sheer extent of which was now clear: the size of three or four football pitches. The surrounding land and buildings disappeared behind its dam-like borders, then their spaceship touched down carefully with feather-like elegance, teetered imperceptibly, and came to a standstill.

Something tugged softly at O’Keefe. At first he couldn’t place it, but then the realisation amazed him all the more because of the simplicity of the explanation. Gravity! For the first time since they had set off from the Isla de las Estrellas, excluding acceleration and braking manoeuvres, he was no longer weightless. He had a bodyweight again, and even if it was only a sixth of his weight on Earth, it was still wonderful to weigh something again, a relief after all the days of just drifting around! Hasta la vista , Miranda, he thought, that’s an end to the acrobatics. No more somersaults, no more elbow attacks. A gust of noise ebbed away in his ear canals, a synaptic afterglow; the engines had been turned off long before, but he just couldn’t believe it.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ said Black, a little dramatically, ‘congratulations! You’ve done it. Nina and I will now help you put on your life-support systems, show you how to regulate the oxygen, cooling and pressure and activate your walkie-talkie systems. After that we’ll go through a series of leak tests – you should already be familiar with those from the external expedition on the OSS, and if not, there’s no cause for concern. We’ll supervise everything. As soon as the checks are done, I’ll pump the air out of the cabin, and we’ll explain the process of disembarcation. Please don’t think I’m being rude if I climb out first, it’s only to further the preservation of your heroism, because I’ll film you as you leave the Charon and we’ll also record your comments for posterity. Does that all make sense? Welcome to the Moon!’