Creations (39 page)

He could feel the pillars swaying as he, Safi, Ariel and Harris looked round. All the ESOS personnel were on the other side of the first gap, a distance of fifty feet, too far to jump but in an infinitely safer position. The only thing linking them was Anchorville’s solar canopy, the fragile structure that roofed the site and whose edge was at head height to the platform. It looked as if that was their only way across, and the only way to do it would be to traverse, hanging by their arms, over the carnage below.

Ariel seemed to have had the same thought. Max couldn’t hear what he was saying, but his intentions were clear enough. He went over to the canopy support, grabbed it to test its strength, then held on tight and lifted his feet off the platform. It looked like the effort was intense; although the lower gravity made him and his suit just one sixth as heavy, getting a good enough grip on the ledge through thick spacesuit gloves must have been almost impossible. Max kept his distance while Ariel clumsily swung away and took himself out over the gap.

He’d covered about ten feet when it looked as if couldn’t go any further. Every time he shifted his grip it looked like a struggle and he was already having to pause between each move. They saw him hang there briefly, legs kicking, while he tried to summon the strength to come back again. The return journey was even slower than the way out, but he made it eventually, his face screwed up with pain from the effort of holding on.

As soon as he was back on the platform he started looking round again, trying to come up with some other way of getting them to safety. Max couldn’t see any way out, and it didn’t look as if Ariel could either. He was looking round almost in desperation,
his eyes wide and his movements random — until suddenly he stopped. At first Max couldn’t tell what had happened. Ariel had simply frozen, his head to one side and his eyes defocused, as if something momentous had just occurred to him. In fact they had all done it — Ariel, Safi and Harris — all suddenly straightening, changing their postures as if realising the same thing at the same time. Then Max knew.

Safi even had her hand to her helmet, tilting her head to get a better signal. Something had happened on the radio channels, Max realised, and he was the only one missing it. He reached down to turn on his communicator, and a voice erupted into life in his ears.

“What the hell?” the voice was saying. It sounded American, and old too. “What the hell is this?”

“Jack! It’s Ariel!” a more familiar voice called. “Where are you? We can’t see you!” He, Harris and Safi were looking round now, scanning the whole perimeter, but only looking upward.

“I — I’m approaching from the south. I can see — Jesus, what am I seeing here? I’m gonna land, where are you guys?”

“No! Do not land! Repeat — do not land!”

“Then what do you want me to do?”

Ariel paused, and turned to the others. “We’re going to have to jump for it guys,” he said. Then he spoke again to the lander pilot. “Jack, we are on the south side of this structure, up high at the edge of the roof. Can you hover next to us?”

“I can hover for three minutes, no more,” came the reply.

“Okay, do it!”

Then for the first time Max saw the lander, coming down from high in the sky, its spidery legs tipped with flashing beacons as four jets of expanding gas, almost colourless, shot out of its downward-pointing nozzles. It descended even more, its upper structure and windows coming into view as it reached the same fifty-foot altitude that they were watching from and began to advance toward them. Clouds of dust were being swept up by its
engines, while short blasts of gas from its small control jets were also visible, keeping it balanced on the invisible columns of flame that were supporting it.

Ariel was talking Jack in the whole time, giving simple “up-down” and “left-right” commands to guide him to the right point in space. By now the lander was barely fifty feet away but Ariel called it even closer, telling Jack to fly lower as he did so, so that the top of the craft was level with the platform. It was now so close that one of the front landing legs was between the two pillars but Ariel called it in even more, until the roof of the thing looked almost close enough to jump to. That, it turned out, appeared to be the plan.

“I’m going to go first, to see if we can make it,” Ariel said, already stepping up onto the railing. He didn’t look as if he was prepared to waste any time talking about it. Instead he braced himself for the jump, then in the same move he leapt forward, arms wheeling to keep his balance as he crossed the gap.

He hit the lander on the edge of its roof, causing it to lurch forward with the force of the impact. The lander came even closer as a result, almost colliding with the upright pillars as a flurry of activity from the control jets tried to keep it level. All Ariel could do was hold on, hanging by his arms with his legs dangling over the forward-looking windows of the craft, until eventually it stabilised. Then he pulled himself up, the effort evident over his radio link, before finally getting a foothold on part of the cabin and turning to face them.

“You can do it!” he called to them, edging sideways to make room. “Just jump! Max, you go next!”

Max knew that if he hesitated now then he would never go. Instead he copied Ariel’s actions, getting one foot up first, then stepping up all the way, not pausing long enough to have to balance there but instead crouching down and leaping forward in one go. He felt himself falling forward as he crouched, but he knew that he could jump fast enough to avoid a drop. And so,
without even thinking about it, he suddenly found himself suspended in space, arms outstretched, with the dark grey ground passing by fifty feet below him. Then he looked up and saw the roof of the lander approaching and reached out to grab anything that he could get his hands around. It must have been some kind of antenna assembly that he caught. It bent alarmingly as his body crashed onto the vehicle but it was enough to support his weight. His right arm was almost dead from the repeated effort of throwing the spears but he willed the muscles to work for him again as he pulled himself up and found some support from the body of the craft. He was careful how he moved too; his lower legs were level with the front of the cabin and the pilot’s windows, either of which he could easily put his foot through.

“Is there any way we can get inside?” he asked Ariel once he’d steadied himself. He knew there was no airlock on these vehicles, just docking ports for other pressurised vehicles or buildings. If the craft had landed then the pilot would have been able to suit up and depressurise the cabin to let them in. With that option removed they would have to spend the whole journey clinging onto the outside of the thing. It wasn’t a prospect that he was looking forward to.

“No, no airlock,” Ariel said, confirming Max’s fears. “We stay like this, we have to. The accelerations are all under one-g, we’ll be okay.”

Max tried not to think about what that would be like. Instead he hung on while the lander pitched and swayed again, this time as Harris made the leap. The pilot seemed to be getting used to the jumps now, anticipating each one by a fraction of a second and reducing the effects of the impact. Harris grabbed the same antenna array that Max had, bending it almost beyond recognition as he made his grip secure. Then he moved over to make room for Safi.

She was the lightest of the four of them, and probably the fittest too. She covered the distance easily, catching hold of the
structure with both hands and barely disturbing its hover at all.

“I’m going to get these guys too,” they heard Jack saying, “but I don’t have much time left.” Just hovering near the surface of the Moon was using fuel at the same rate as ascending into orbit. Max wasn’t sure how long that gave them.

Jack took the lander sideways, toward where the ESOS men were standing. They began jumping almost at once, the ones who had stayed at the top, plus some who had returned from the ground level. There were seven of them in all, jumping two at a time and grabbing whatever parts of the lander that they could. One of them ended up on the lower section of the craft, the tubular framework that enclosed the fuel tanks and engines, while the next one grabbed one of the landing leg struts, wrapping his arms and legs round it as if he was climbing a palm tree. The next one hit the cabin, near to where Harris was hanging on. They could see even before he joined them that it was Joel. He looked at them briefly, then tightened his grip and held on in silence.

The man who jumped after Joel wasn’t so lucky. He’d jumped from further to the side, making a grab for the starboard outrigger, one of the long metal arms which held the control jets away from the craft’s centre of gravity. The lander rolled sideways with the force of the collision, the jets themselves blasting wildly to get the vehicle back under control. It managed it, but at a high price for the man. He must have been facing right into one of the jets when it fired. All that could be seen was his suddenly limp shape falling away from the outrigger, his faceplate blown inward and his body decapitated by the force of the jet.

Now, however, something else could be heard over the radio channels: a calm, female voice, almost like a recording, talking over the chaos in placid, business-like tones. “Warning, fuel setpoint thirty seconds,” was the first they heard of her, the steadiness and composure of her voice a strong contrast to the
screaming and shouting that even now was continuing. It was the lander’s flight control system, Max realised, telling the pilot how much longer they could hover and still get back to the base. Thirty seconds wasn’t long. The three men still on the platform would probably be okay, but the handful who had stayed on the ground, including Damon, would be another matter. The sounds coming over the communicators showed that some of them at least were still alive.

“Everyone on the ground, get up here!” Max called out. “Damon! We don’t have long!” He heard some shouting in German, but he couldn’t tell who it had come from. Damon’s voice couldn’t be heard at all.

Almost immediately the next warning message came, identical to the first one but this time giving them just twenty seconds to go. The men on the platform had obviously heard and understood it as well. Two of them got up onto the railing, their efforts to scramble up even more frantic than those who had gone before, and launched themselves at the lander. The lower structure was now the only place with room to take them, and this was where they aimed themselves. They hit the bulky framework together, pushing the lander back away from Anchorville, hanging on by their hands and desperately trying to pull themselves up. Now only one person remained on the platform.

Max looked up, expecting the man to already be jumping, and saw to his dismay that it was Oliver Rudd.

Oliver stood there, gripping the railing in terror. Max could see his face clearly, his watery eyes as wide as saucers and his cheeks shaking with fear. The ten second warning came and went as he stood, rooted to the spot. It looked as if he wasn’t going to move at all. Then, with what must have been less than five seconds to go, some kind of inner resolve seemed to come over him. With sudden determination he started to clamber up the railings, struggling to get to the top one even though it was only
at waist height. There he paused, still trembling with fear, with one foot on the top rail and the other on the next one down. Pausing was a mistake, however, as he suddenly found himself having to balance at the top, arms swinging wildly as he tried to remain upright, somehow not willing to step the rest of the way up but not wanting to step down either. It was then that they ran out of time.

“Warning, fuel setpoint zero, fuel setpoint zero,” the same calm voice informed them.

“I’ve got to go!” Jack called from the pilot’s seat.

“Can’t you wait? Just ten more seconds?” Joel said, breaking his silence. The radio channel as a whole had become unusually quiet in the last few seconds, but now people were shouting again, this time at Oliver, trying to get him to jump. Some sounded like they were encouraging him; others were just shouting at him.

“No can do,” Jack said. “We go now, or none of us make it.”

Then he increased the thrust of the engines, evident to Max from the vibrations coming through the lander’s structure. The dust clouds beneath them became thicker too, and he felt a firm but steady downward pull as they began to accelerate upward. It looked as if Oliver was going to be left behind. Oliver however seemed to have different ideas.

Max watched in amazement as Oliver finally got the last shreds of resolve together. He stepped up to the top of the railing, still looking unsteady, and threw himself upward and outward toward the departing craft. The lander had risen by about five feet since Jack had opened up the throttles, but Oliver was still trying to jump for the top of the thing. As a result, he missed.

The craft heaved and swung yet again as Oliver crashed into the lower structure, immediately below where Safi was hanging on. The remains of Anchorville were now directly below them, and framed against them was Oliver Rudd, clinging on with all
his strength as the lander’s acceleration became more and more intense. Max could see Oliver’s face even more clearly now, his eyes still wide and his face still white with shock as his legs kicked uselessly in the empty space below him. It looked as if all he could do was hang on by his arms and stare up at the others. Then, suddenly, a change came over him. If it was possible for his face to show any more terror, then that was what it did, but this time it was mixed with something else: pain. His face screwed up as he hung there, his head arching back in his helmet as some indescribable agony took hold of him. At first Max thought he’d broken his arm in the jump, but as Oliver’s left hand let go of the structure and clutched at his chest it became obvious what was happening. He was having a heart attack.

He was hanging by just one hand now, sounds of anguish coming from between his gritted teeth, and it was clear he wouldn’t be able to stay like that for long. They all watched, horrified, as the fingers of his right hand began to slip off the strut that he‘d been holding onto. His hand was level with their ankles, but there was no way they could let go and reach down to him against the upward acceleration of the lander. Then, just as Oliver lost his grip altogether, his left hand swung out and made a grab for the only other thing he could get hold of: Safi’s leg.