Creations (40 page)

If she’d been expecting it then maybe she would have been able to hold on. As it was, the sudden shock of having to support Oliver’s weight as well as her own, coupled with having one of her feet pulled out from under her, took away any chance she might have had of keeping her grip. It was Max who saw her falling first. He lashed out sideways to try to catch her arm as she was pulled off the structure. Ariel tried the same from the other side, but they both failed. All they could do was watch as she fell away from them, Oliver still holding onto her leg, dropping through the exhaust from the lander’s nozzles and down toward the ground below. They were now over two hundred feet above the surface and the fall took ten full seconds, their bodies
wheeling and turning the whole way, their screams blasting into the ears of everyone who was listening. They hit the top of Anchorville right on its edge, severing the canopy support and falling straight through it to the ground below. The silence from their communicators was instant.

Max couldn’t even move his head, let alone speak. Ariel however was shouting, loud.

“Go back down!” he yelled at the pilot. “Go back down and get her!”

“I can’t,” Jack said, his voice shaking.

“Do it for God’s sake!”

“I can’t! We have to carry on! We’re in a program now, this thing’s flying itself!”

Then, just to prove his point, the engines cut themselves out, putting them on the ballistic freefall trajectory which would take them the rest of the way back to base.

“They’re dead anyway,” Jack added. “You wouldn’t have been able to do anything.” Ariel didn’t answer, and nor did anyone else. Max just looked down as Anchorville receded, disappearing from sight among the dust clouds and the mist forming before his eyes.

The rest of the journey passed almost in silence. Those who did want to talk tuned themselves into private channels. All of them were from ESOS. Max, Ariel and Harris were silent. The lander was in weightlessness now as the laws of physics took it on a shallow parabolic freefall toward its final destination at the Crisium base. The engines wouldn’t be lit again until they were coming in to land.

At their highest point they were over twelve miles above the lunar surface and the view was incredible. Max, however, was incapable of taking it in. He held on loosely and watched impassively, as the barren desolation passed by beneath him, too numb even to feel the vertigo that his brain was telling him he should be experiencing. She was dead, and he hadn’t been able to save
her; and even though the knowledge of that fact was filling his mind completely, the realisation itself just kept on coming, as if he was feeling it for the first time.

It was then that he saw the Anchorville service line, miles below, and for some reason it seemed to hold his attention. For not only could he see its sharply defined shadow, standing out from the jumble of hills and craters, not only could he see the sunlight, glinting off its surface where it met the ESOS line they’d driven along the day before; there was something else there too, and when he realised what it was, it made his blood turn to ice.

He could see them — the machines — not as individuals but rather as a swarm of destruction, crowding round the two lines. It was easy to spot the parts they’d begun to strip down, and the parts they hadn’t yet got to. What was also clear was that tearing up the lines’ remaining length was only a matter of time: and that included what lay at their end.

“Ariel,” he said, his voice hoarse. “We may have a problem.”

“What?” Ariel snapped.

“The machines, the ones that followed the service line, they’re following it in both directions.”

Ariel thought for a second, realising the implications. “Oh my God,” he said. “The base.”

“The base,” Max repeated.

“Jack — call the vehicle control centre,” Ariel said. “Tell them to get all landers prepared for flight. And tell them to evacuate the base.”

“Evacuate? You mean everyone?”

“The whole thing. And it needs to happen fast.”

“But with only five landers? For two hundred people?”

“We’ll take as many as we can. It’s all we can do. Just — make the call.”

The pilot had obviously seen enough to not need any more persuasion. “Okay, I’ll do what I can. Stand by.”

Jack dropped out of the open channel to make the call. They were now on the downhill half of the flight, with less than two minutes remaining until they landed. The pilot came back onto their channel less than a minute later.

“I told them, but they took some convincing.”

“Are they getting people out of there?”

“Yes, but prepping landers takes time. They — they’re going to try. Look, we’re going to need this lander too if we’re taking everyone. I’m going to land right next to the base so we can get more people on board, but the tanks will be almost dry. I need you to organise people, get us loaded before we refuel. Can you do that?”

“I’ll do it,” Ariel said.

Even as he spoke the base came into view below them. They were descending at almost forty-five degrees, with the lunar surface visibly coming up to meet them as gravity took them down. If they didn’t slow their descent, they would hit it at the same speed they’d blasted away from Anchorville.

“Hold on everyone, we’re going for the burn,” Jack said.

The feeling of weight returned as the engines came to life. Max held on tight as the lander pitched back, burning off its
forward as well as its downward motion, before righting itself for the final approach. And as the view of the ground returned, Max looked down, seeing not the landing site beneath them but the base buildings instead, barely fifty yards away, being blasted by the dust storm that was gushing out from under their engines. He could see faces too, up against the windows of one of the viewing areas, watching on in amazement as the lander, people hanging off it on every side, came down so close to the modules. They couldn’t have had any idea what was happening.

As soon as they were down those people clinging to the outside started to climb off. Four other landers apart from their own could be seen, linked up to the docking tunnels but otherwise sitting idle. Ariel jumped down and started running, heading along the line of vehicles, giving out instructions even as he went.

“Follow me, and head for the airlock next to the last tunnel,” he said quickly. “We need to go inside, then back through into the lander again. Harris, get someone from flight control prepping these other ones, they need to work faster than this. I’m going to work the hatches from the top. Once we’re fuelled, we go. All agreed? Good. Max, you stay with me.”

“I can’t,” Max said, as they reached the ground level airlock. “There’s something I need to do. It’s important.”

Ariel paused and looked at him briefly but didn’t ask him what he’d meant. Maybe he’d guessed, Max thought, though he himself had only just realised what he had to do. Ariel merely nodded, and headed into the airlock. Max squeezed in with the rest of them and waited for the atmosphere to return. Then, for the first time in almost four hours, he was able to tilt back his visor and get vaguely fresh air onto his face.

Once inside they quickly found their way back into the embarkation module where the articulated docking adapters led into the base. The area was deserted and the tunnels leading to the other landers were in darkness. Ariel went over to one of the
spare tunnels and waited for the automated tow truck to hook up to their own lander and bring it over. At the same time, Harris went off into the base, searching for other personnel.

Max also left the group, but in another direction. He went without saying a word, and found his way back into the main corridors of the base. As he went he passed the same viewing area that their landing had been watched from. The same people were still there, though this time it was him that they were staring at, with his dirt-stained suit and wild, sweat-soaked hair. He didn’t look back, but instead carried on down the corridor toward the habitation module where he and Safi had stayed.

An alarm started sounding as he went, but he barely heard it. All he could think about was what had happened to Safi and how little he’d really known her. Did she even have any family? She hadn’t mentioned any, apart from air force stories about her father. Max didn’t even know if the man was still alive. The only other person he’d heard her talk about was her old colleague and fiancé, Niall, and she was in the same place as him now.

But one thing of hers did remain and if he could retrieve that, then maybe he could salvage something from this journey. Because although she’d only had her omni with her the first time they’d gone out, the pictures and commentary she’d recorded might well be the only surviving evidence that those machines’ precursors were designed by human hands, by ESOS. If the base and the research sites were about to be wiped off the map, her omni might well be the only way of demonstrating what had really started this.

He was still getting the same strange glances from the people he passed, but now the alarm had added a touch of panic to the way they were looking at him. They could tell something was wrong, but the full story obviously hadn’t got round yet. He briefly thought of trying to warn them, telling them what was going to happen, but he knew even without trying that they would only look at him like a lunatic. A call over the P.A. would
be the only way to do it, the only way to get people moving quickly. For the moment, however, Max had other things to do.

He got to the room they’d shared and burst inside. It was exactly as they’d left it. He quickly started searching through her things, feeling guilty about upturning the neatly piled and folded clothes and possessions but with no time to do anything else, before finally finding what he was looking for at the bottom of her bag.

It was only when he was back in the corridor that he realised he hadn’t retrieved anything of his own. It didn’t matter though, there was nothing there that he couldn’t replace. Instead he hurried onward, back toward the landers.

There was an announcement being made at long last, a voice he didn’t recognise saying something about a chemical leak, nothing to panic over but still serious enough to call for an evacuation. Max wondered who had thought it up: Ariel, or Harris, or someone else from the base support staff. It was certainly better than telling the truth, or more believable at least. Keep calm, people were being told, but keep moving.

The people Max saw in the corridors were looking genuinely worried now however, and had started to guess that his appearance in the base had something to do with whatever was happening. Several of them tried to catch him as he went by, to ask him what was going on, but he didn’t stop to talk. “Just get to the landers!”, was all he said as he rushed past them.

Many of the inhabitants seemed to be doing that already. The corridor leading to the docking adapters was now filling up as people moved toward the embarkation area. The passageway was only wide enough for three people to walk side by side and none of them seemed to have the same sense of urgency as Max about getting out of there. He had no idea how far away the machines were but some kind of intuition was telling him there wasn’t long left. He could feel the tension building up inside him, making him want to run through the crowd, shouting at them to
move faster, but he knew that if he did then he would only cause a panic. The base was home to over two hundred people and a quick look ahead and behind showed that barely half of them were making the move.

He got to the viewing area that overlooked the landers and pushed over to the side so that he could see the progress. Their lander was now linked up and lights were visible in three of the others. He carried on, up to the embarkation area. Base personnel were there now, directing people down the docking tunnels. They seemed to be packing them into the landers tightly as well, sending as many as possible into each one. Anyone trying to take luggage with them was being told to leave it behind and a large pile of bags and other possessions was building up against one wall of the module. In Max’s case the bulky suit he was wearing would probably be more of a problem. He went over to one of the base workers and asked him to help him get out of it.

The man looked at him uncertainly for a second but didn’t seem to want to ask why he was still wearing it, or why he looked to be in such a state. Instead he went round behind Max and unlocked the backpack, then swung it away and held the suit steady while Max climbed out. The look on the man’s face, and those people around him, gave some clue as to the smell that had come out with him. Max ignored them.

He carried on down the length of the embarkation module, looking around for anyone he recognised. Only two of the landers were being boarded and the stream of people that Max had joined was being shepherded toward the nearer one. The other landers, including the one they’d escaped from Anchorville in, must have been either full already or waiting for these first ones to be filled. Max briefly thought of trying to get back into the original one, assuming that Ariel and Harris would be there too, but there was nothing to be gained by sharing the same ride away from the base. His only priority was to leave and if the
people he’d just fought alongside were in different vehicles then it made no difference. He decided to stay in line, following the crowd down into the craft.

There were twenty people in there already when he dropped into the cabin. The vehicle was only built to take eight, but with the cargo space beneath the cabin empty, the weight would not be a problem. Only seats were in short supply. Max worked his way into one of the corners and wedged himself against the wall while yet more people came down the docking tube. By now they were packed in shoulder to shoulder. Most of them seemed to be engineers and researchers, on the Moon to do a job and experienced at living with the conditions there, but despite their professionalism they were still looking scared. There was very little conversation going on in the lander but what Max did hear suggested that people knew something more serious than a chemical leak was behind the evacuation. As before however, he kept his mouth shut and silently wished for the vehicle to get underway.