“You know, if you carry on like this you’ll have me falling in love with you all over again.”
Emilia half closed her eyes as Ulysses, fully understanding what was expected of him now, leaned forward, wetting his lips with the tip of his tongue.
Beyond the nearest observation window, a million shooting stars flared, trailing flame, as they tore across the vast gulf of space.
Ulysses paused, a split second from the moment of contact – feeling Emilia’s breath evaporating the moisture from his lips – and turned.
“What’s that?” he muttered.
Emilia sighed and turned, following his gaze.
“They’re shooting stars. That would have made the moment perfect.”
“Shooting stars?” Ulysses echoed under his breath.
“Yes. They’re supposed to be romantic.”
“But shooting stars aren’t stars,” Ulysses said, his voice getting louder and more urgent by the second. “They’re meteoroids. And they’re heading this way!”
“WE HAVE MULTIPLE projectiles incoming, captain,” Mr Goodspeed announced, trying to maintain a calm, authoritative tone, but anxiety belying his words. Myriad spots of green light painted the scanner-scope in front of him.
Emergency lighting bathed everything in a ruddy glow while a wailing siren underscored every word that passed between the bridge crew.
“How many?” Captain Trevelyan demanded, his voice like steel.
“I...” Goodspeed faltered.
“Come on! Spit it out man!”
“I don’t know, captain, there are too many for the cogitator to accurately compute. And the scanner-scope keeps picking up more of them all the time.”
“Size, Mr Goodspeed?”
“Varies. Looks like we’ve got everything from pebbles to rocks the size of locomotives.”
“Saturn’s rings!” Nelson Trevelyan cursed under his breath. “If anything bigger than a grapefruit hits us we could be looking at a hull breach. Source?”
“Scanning now.”
For a moment the only sound on the bridge was the dull wailing of the proximity alarm and the chiming of the scanner-scope. Tense anticipation took the place of words.
“Trajectory of incoming objects suggests an origin point within the asteroid belt,” Goodspeed said at last.
“Bloody Separatists!” Trevelyan hissed.
And so it had come to this, the captain thought. Mars had finally declared war on Magna Britannia.
In certain circles, political analysts had been expecting something like this to happen ever since Uriah Wormwood and the Darwinian Dawn had launched their first terrorist attack on London, fourteen months before. Ever since the first Magna Britannian colony had been built on Mars, there had been those who wanted to be autonomous of the empire that spawned them and whose influence they had left some forty-eight million miles behind them.
The situation had progressively become more and more tense, with the movement rapidly gaining support on Mars and no shortage of high-profile supporters back on Earth – some even within the current government.
But now the newly christened Martians – or some underground group acting with the colony’s leaders’ clandestine support – had brought the stalemate to an end with, what was effectively, an outright act of war.
It had long been mooted by government think-tank scientists that the gravity cannon technology originally used to send the first men to the Moon could be redeployed as a form of advanced, interplanetary weaponry, and it appeared that the Martians had done precisely that.
A cannon large enough could disrupt the gravitational orbit on an asteroid and then redirect it, setting it on a collision course with Earth. Of course, there was always the risk that the Moon would pull the rock off course – which would then result in it coming down on the satellite itself – but if one got through and made it to Earth, it could do untold damage.
“Mr Wallace, send a communiqué to Earth. Relay the situation to Heathrow Flight Control and get the powers that be to activate one of their agents on the red planet. Meanwhile, Mr Goodspeed, take whatever evasive manoeuvres you consider practicable and all of us had better brace for impact and pray that nothing gets through.”
“METEOR SHOWER!” ULYSSES shouted, leaping to his feet and sending the table flying. “Run!”
Dragging Emilia out of her chair, Ulysses made for the exit as fast as his stumbling companion would allow.
Behind them, other diners were now rising from their chairs, staring out of the window or following the escaping dandy and his companion in bewildered panic.
Some were probably thinking that ships like the Apollo XIII were constructed to resist such space-borne particles, that the hull of the vessel was tough enough to resist as common an occurrence as a meteor shower. The Sol Cruises brochure had certainly said as much, but it was apparent that some of the other diners weren’t sure how far they could trust the marketing spiel anymore. Unsettled by the dandy’s dramatic response to the light show, rising from their tables, they were now hurrying towards the restaurant’s exit themselves.
Two of those who were doing just that were a young woman and a blond-haired man, who had been seated at a table not far from where Ulysses and Emilia had sat.
“That’s Quicksilver,” the young woman hissed to her companion.
“Trust you to recognise that womanising dandy,” Lars Chapter grumbled.
“Never mind that. I bet he knows what he’s talking about. He’s done this sort of thing before, I’m sure of it,” Veronica Verse went on. “I think we should follow his example.”
“Very well,” Lars Chapter agreed, pushing his chair back as Verse got to her feet. “And we stay close.”
Ulysses was almost at the door to the restaurant when he hesitated and looked back.
The slowly tumbling asteroid already filled the panoramic window, the ship’s running lights illuminating fissures, craters and cruelly jagged outcrops across its surface. It had to be as long as a rugby pitch, if not bigger. If something that big hit the space-liner they were all dead – there would be no survivors.
Emilia unadvisedly followed his gaze. “Shit,” she gasped in a most unladylike fashion.
The ship lurched. Tables overturned, crystal glasses smashed. People screamed.
Through the view shield, the ship-killer rolled overhead, tumbling on through space. The screech of the trailing edge of the asteroid scraping across the top of the hull reverberated through the restaurant.
“Thank God for that,” Emilia said as she picked herself up off the floor. “That was too close for comfort.”
“We’re not out of danger yet,” Ulysses warned, extricating himself from the waiter-droid that had fallen on top of him, and which now couldn’t stop apologising. “We must get beyond the next bulkhead or we’re going the same way as the air in this compartment when those other meteors hit.”
“What other meteors?” Emilia asked, glancing back at the window. “Oh. Those meteors,” she said weakly as she saw the hail of stones that were following in the massive asteroid’s wake.
The rocks – the debris left over after some cosmic catastrophe billions of years in the past – hitting the reinforced glass of the view shield sounded like gravel hitting a window pane, provoking more screams.
And then there was a succession of pops, like bullets penetrating the glass, and the panoramic window exploded outwards as the air in the restaurant, and everything else, was sucked out by the hungry void into the cold, hard vacuum of space.
“THAT WAS A little too close for comfort,” Captain Trevelyan said, as the shuddering echoes of the asteroid’s brief contact with the Apollo died and the helmsman regained control of the half a mile-long vessel.
Suddenly another pinging sound joined the cacophony of klaxons and sirens on the bridge.
“What was that?” the captain demanded.
“We have a hull breach on deck seven,” Mr Wallace responded.
“What’s there?”<
br />
“The Restaurant Galaxia. Automatic hull breach procedures are in place. Bulkheads are sealing around the stricken section now.”
“Then God help anyone still in there,” Trevelyan said, the colour draining from his cheeks. “Not quite the dining experience they’ll have been expecting, I’ll warrant.”
“HOLD ON!” ULYSSES screamed in the face of the howling gale. “Whatever you do, don’t let go!”
This wasn’t quite how he had imagined his dinner date with Emilia ending, he had to admit. He had considered various different outcomes – from Emilia falling into bed with him back in his cabin to her slapping his face and walking out – but he had never counted being sucked out into the cold, hard vacuum of space as being one of them.
With his left hand gripping the post between the restaurant’s double doors, his right hand clamped vice-like around Emilia’s wrist, their bodies at right angles to the floor as the void tried to suck them out into space, Ulysses hauled with all his might, not once taking his eyes from the two-foot thick bulkhead door sliding shut a mere twelve inches on the other side of the restaurant entrance.
The Apollo, like all other vessels of its kind, was divided into multiple compartments by solid steel bulkheads that could be sealed off from one another independently in case of a hull breach – as was the case now – or some other system failure.
Right now, the bulkhead closing before Ulysses’ very eyes was intended to save the rest of the ship from catastrophic decompression, but at the same time it was condemning those still hanging on inside the restaurant to a premature death, as the air trapped in their lungs and the gases in their stomach expanded in the hard vacuum of space and, ultimately, their blood boiled.
And then the closing motion of the bulkhead faltered. Gears ground but the protective barrier remained open a fraction, wide enough, in fact, to let someone squeeze through.
There, silhouetted against the flashing ruddy light of the corridor beyond, on the other side of the bulkhead, was a man, arm outstretched towards Ulysses.
“No!” Ulysses shouted into the wind. “Take her first.” And he hauled Emilia higher, until she was able to use his body to allow her to clamber to safety.
And then the man had a hold of her and was pulling her through the gap between the doors.
As Emilia disappeared beyond the bulkhead doors, Ulysses turned back to see if there was anyone else within reach who he could also help escape death by vacuum. Even as he watched a portly gentleman and his ostentatiously-dressed wife lost their grip on a pillar. The two of them hurtled out through the hole where the view shield had been and into the void beyond.
The only ones there was any hope for now were the young couple who had been sitting not far from Ulysses’ and Emilia’s own table, seemingly enjoying a romantic dinner for two of their own. The young man had his partner by the hand and was pulling himself towards the doors along the wall, the two of them using anything that came to hand to help them on their way.
“Come on!” Ulysses shouted in encouragement. “Not far now! You’re almost there!”
Still clinging onto the door jamb, as the young couple came within reach Ulysses helped them past him to the waiting hands of automatons, as well as men now, that would pull them to safety as well.
It was only once the couple were through the groaning bulkhead doors that Ulysses allowed himself to be helped through.
The escaping air still battering his cheeks, as his feet crossed the threshold the bulkhead finally won its battle. Whatever override had been in operation failed and the doors slammed shut. If Ulysses had been a second slower, he would have lost both his legs at the knee.
“May I be of assistance, sir?” an automaton asked, its brass faceplate close to Ulysses’ as it helped him to his feet.
The dandy quickly scanned the faces of those gathered around him, still coming to terms with what had just happened. There was Emilia, silent tears of shock running down her cheeks, her hair in disarray around her shoulders, and there was the young couple he had saved.
“Where is he?” Ulysses asked.
“Who, sir?” the automaton asked in its pre-programmed cheery tone.
“The man who saved us. The man who stopped the bulkhead from closing and who risked his own life to pull us free.”
The automaton’s head swivelled a full three hundred and sixty degrees about its neck joint.
“He appears to have gone, sir.”
What sort of a man risked his own life to save three others and then didn’t even hang around to take the credit, Ulysses wondered.
“A bally hero,” he muttered under his breath. “That’s who.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Moonstruck
T MINUS 3 DAYS, 14 HOURS, 21 MINUTES, 6 SECONDS
A DAY LATER, the Apollo XIII made orbit and limped into high dock above Luna Prime. Assisted by tugs, the half a mile-long stricken space-liner was guided down to the surface to make moonfall at the Luna Prime spaceport.
The landing pad had been cleared of all other ships, while bulbous emergency vehicles – fire engines and ambulances with spherical body units bolted to chasses with multiple large-tyred wheels – waited beside the air-tight dome of the spaceport complex itself, ready to speed into action as soon as they were needed.
Unlike embarkation on the ground at Heathrow, here on the airless surface of Earth’s satellite, the concertinaed hoses of extendable boarding tubes extended from the side of the terminal building, coupling with the airlocks low down on the hull of the meteor-scarred vessel.
After all, the natural environment on the Moon was totally inimical to Man. The only place where any human being could hope to survive, without a fully-functioned, self-contained spacesuit, was within one of the bubble-like geodesic domes that housed the lunar cities, spaceports and isotope mining outposts.
Slowly, the Apollo XIII’s passengers – many still badly shaken after the ship’s encounter with the directed asteroid strike – began to disembark. Some shuffled along the exit umbilicals like zombies, barely even aware of their luggage. Others almost left the space-liner at a run, desperate to get clear of the craft as quickly as possible, while a few didn’t leave at all – having already left via the shattered shield window of the Restaurant Galaxia.
Once the ship had discharged its cargo, it would be taken to one of Syzygy Industries’ vast dry-dock hangers for repairs. Alternative arrangements had already been made for those agitated and disgruntled individuals who had been intending to join the Apollo XIII for the return trip to Earth.
Meanwhile, Captain Nelson Trevelyan would doubtless have to face a disciplinary panel, made up of the great and the good of Syzygy Industries, and answer questions concerning his handling of what would doubtless turn into a public relations disaster for Sol Cruises.
“IT’S AMAZING!” EMILIA gasped, putting a hand to her chest as she caught her breath. Ulysses followed her gaze through the glass tube of the umbilical to the monochrome lunar landscape beyond the spaceport.
“Yes. And it’s good to be back on terra firma, isn’t it?” he said with a heartfelt sigh as he stepped off the disembarkation ramp and into the terminal umbilical.
“After a fashion,” Emilia said, offering her hand to Ulysses that he might assist her in stepping down from the ramp.
“Indeed,” he said, giving her hand a squeeze. Ulysses turned to Emilia’s father. “Where was it you said you were staying again?”
“The Nebuchadnezzar,” old man Oddfellow said, his cheery demeanour seemingly unquenchable. It seemed that having died once already – or at least faced death, or whatever it was that had happened to him during the three months in which he was trapped between worlds by the Sphere, a device of his own making – nothing beyond death a second time could diminish his indefatigable good humour.
“It really is no expense spared, this trip of yours, isn’t it?” Ulysses flashed the old man a rakish grin.
“I know. Wonderful, isn’t it?” Oddfellow return
ed the smile with an expression of child-like delight all of his own. “So where are you staying?”
“Well, now you mention it, the Nebuchadnezzar sounds like a suitably fine establishment. I think I’ll drop by there myself; see if they’ve got any rooms.”
Emilia looked at him through narrowed eyes. “I thought you were here to see your brother.”
“Indeed I am. But I still need a place to stay. I mean, I wouldn’t want to presume. Might cramp the young chap’s style, if you know what I mean.”
“You haven’t told him you’re coming, have you?” Emilia raised a knowing eyebrow.
“What, and give him the chance to run away again? Not on your nelly. Besides, after what we’ve been through recently, I feel that a hot bath, a hot toddy and a good night’s sleep are what’s in order before I even think about dropping in on my errant younger brother.”
They were interrupted by a kerfuffle erupting behind them.
“I told you, bugger off! I don’t need any help.”
Abruptly aware of the altercation behind them, and hearing the woman’s uncomely expletive, Ulysses’ party turned as one. Behind them, disembarking from the liner, with what looked like a not insubstantial amount of luggage between them, were the only other survivors from the Restaurant Galaxia.
For some reason, the young woman was refusing the help of a spaceport automaton porter that was nonetheless doing its best to meet the requirements of its Lovelace algorithms by trying to assist her with her luggage. Behind her, his face set in a stony grimace, her companion appeared determined to manhandle the trolley he had procured himself without assistance of any kind either.
Veronica Verse suddenly caught Ulysses’ eye and, taking in his good-humoured expression, forced her own features into a smile.
“Ah, Mr Quicksilver, we meet again.”
“But under thankfully more agreeable circumstances.”
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