Limit

by Frank Schätzing

  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.

  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.’

  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 concen
trate 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.