Limit (184 page)

The display blurred in front of her eyes.

08.47

No, not 8. Wasn’t that two zeros? 00.47?

00.46

46 minutes? Minutes, of course, what else. Or seconds?

Not enough time. She needed thrust.

Thrust!

Before her eyes, little red spheres wobbled through space, some tiny, others as big as marbles. She reached for them, rubbed one to goo between her fingers, and suddenly she realised that the red bead curtain was coming out of her chest. There was something annoying there, eating away at her strength and restricting her movements, and she was terribly tired, but she couldn’t lapse into unconsciousness. She had to pick up speed to put some distance between herself and the OSS. Then, once she was far enough away, get rid of the bomb. Somehow. Throw it overboard. Or escape into the landing module and decouple the habitation unit with the mini-nuke. And get back.

Something like that.

Her jaws opened and closed like a fish. She painfully pumped air into her lungs and rolled around.

* * *

‘Haskin,’ yelled Julian. He’d tried to call the terminal, but there had been no answer. Now he was talking to the technical department. In fact, Haskin hadn’t been on duty that night, but in the circumstances he’d been willing to assume charge of the standby team. Unfortunately he was in Torus-5, in the roof of OSS, far from the space harbour.

‘My God, Julian, what—’

‘Comb the station! Look for Dana Lawrence, arrest the woman. Possibly she’s in the terminal!’

‘Just a moment. I don’t understand—’

‘I don’t care whether you understand it or not! Look for Dana Lawrence – the woman’s a terrorist. No one’s answering in the terminal. And stop the Charon. Stop it!’

He left Haskin’s helpless, startled face on the screen and whirled around to the cabin bulkhead.

‘Open up!’

* * *

Dana stared at the controls, with the barrel of the gun pressed against the astronaut’s temple, and listened to the radio traffic. She’d heard every word. The touching conversation between Lynn and her father, Julian’s patriarchal bellow. Lynn sounded injured, she’d managed to hit the miserable spoilsport. Small consolation, but Haskin’s men would be here soon.

‘Block access to the torus,’ she ordered.

‘I can’t,’ panted the astronaut.

‘You can! I know you can.’

‘You don’t know shit. I can close the entryways, but I can’t lock them. They’re going to get in, whether it suits you or not.’

‘What about the pod?’

‘The Charon’s too close. I swear that’s the truth!’

Then she would have to do something else. She didn’t need the external airlock. There were emergency entrances to the pods themselves, wherever they happened to be parked, she just somehow had to get to the outer ring and grab one of them. That jabbering piece of humanity there couldn’t help her, but she might still need the guy. Lawrence whacked him over the head again and left the toppling body to its own devices as she headed for the shelves of helmets.

* * *

Julian was consumed with anxiety. He bumped his shoulders and his head as he dashed through Torus-1 towards the corridor that led up to the terminal, tried to regain control of himself, and that wasn’t good. He’d never found any of the distances in the station particularly great, but now he felt as if he were floating on the spot, and he kept crashing into things.

He was terribly worried.

She had looked as if the life was flowing out of her. Her voice had been getting more and more halting and thin – she must have been injured, seriously injured.
But the worst thing was that Haskin had hardly any chance of getting the Charon back. It wasn’t a drifting astronaut this time, it was a massive spaceship, and if Lynn—

Oh, no, he thought. Please not. Don’t start the engine.

Lynn! Please don’t—

* * *

—start the engine.

Again and again she had to fight the descending darkness, while her fingers groped around, but as long as she couldn’t see anything it wasn’t much use. She knew she was still too close to the OSS. For safety’s sake she needed to get a lot further away, because otherwise there was a danger that the burning gases would damage parts of the construction. With the best will in the world she couldn’t remember the time span on the display of the mini-nuke, just that it was tight, bloody tight!

She coughed. All around her, weird and beautiful, drifted the sparkling red beads of her blood. Weightlessness had the advantage that you couldn’t really collapse, you didn’t need any energy to stay on your feet, so that her physical systems were able to mobilise one last, impossible reserve of energy. Her vision cleared. Her fingers, determined, albeit hesitant and straying, went travelling: stretched and bent. Indicators lit up, a soft, automatic voice began to speak. She forced her body into the pilot’s seat, but she hadn’t the strength to buckle herself in. Just to start the acceleration process.

Lynn stretched out her right arm. The tip of her index finger landed gently on the smooth surface of the touchscreen, and the jets ignited, developing maximum thrust. She was pressed into the padding and lost consciousness.

The Charon fired away.

* * *

Leave the torus. Via one of the internal gangways. Get to one of the massive lattice masts that formed the spine of the OSS, climb along the struts to the space harbour, prepare one of the pods, decouple, set course for Earth. The things worked a bit like old-fashioned space shuttles, which they also superficially resembled, except that unlike their predecessors they had generous fuel supplies, so that once the stolen vehicle had entered the Earth’s atmosphere she could land anywhere in the world, where no one would find her.

That was the plan.

Lawrence floated to one of the two gangways, as her suit checked the life-support systems and made sure her helmet was on correctly. Behind the closed bulkhead lay a short tunnel, a mobile airlock whose segments were still telescoped together. When the space-lift reached the inside of the torus, they would stretch out to their full length and connect the torus with the cabin, so that the guests could transfer
from there to the station, just as they had done on her arrival. She quickly opened the bulkhead. The opposite end of the airlock was sealed, with a porthole in the middle through which the external lights of the lift cables shimmered.

She had been faster than Haskin. She no longer needed the unconscious astronaut. Just to pump the air out of the lock, open it and get out, without any of those idiots stopping her. With her gun ready in its holster, she slipped into the tunnel.

* * *

Julian flew out of the corridor, bumped against the ceiling, ignored the pain, looked wildly in all directions. Someone drifted below him. Open eyes staring vacantly, liquid pearling from a small hole in his forehead. Where the bagel-shaped body of the torus curved away, a second body circulated slowly, impossible to say whether it was dead or unconscious. Julian pushed himself off, slid along just below the ceiling and saw that a bulkhead was open on the inward-facing side, immediately below him.

One of the gangways branched off from it.

Dana?

Fury, hatred, fear, they all came together. He did a handstand, darted into the airlock, bumped against a person in a spacesuit who was about to operate the closing mechanism, pulled them away from the controls and deeper inside the airlock. He clearly recognised Dana Lawrence’s surprised Madonna face, as her UV visor was still raised, then their bodies struck the outer portal, rebounded and spun somersaulting back towards the torus. Dana fumbled for purchase, collided with the wall of the tunnel, pushed away and threw herself against him. Julian saw her fist flying at him, tried in vain to dodge it. A galaxy exploded in his head. He was slung around, flailed with his arms, fought for control. Dana came flying after him. The second blow broke his nose. He should have put on a helmet, bloody idiot, too late. Red and black mist floated in front of his eyes. He just managed to grab on to one of the hand-grips along the walls and kicked at random, hit Dana’s helmet and sent her flying round in circles.

‘What have you done with Lynn?’ he shouted. ‘What have you done with my daughter?’

His hatred exploded. Again he kicked, his hand gripping the butt of his gun. Dana was whirled around, turned upside down, caught herself, launched at him and grabbed him by the shoulders. A moment later he flew off. Like a pinball he touched one side of the tunnel, then the other, and was carried out of the airlock.

Where was Haskin? Where was the dozy standby crew?

Lawrence was reaching for the control panel. She wanted to seal the airlock, to lock him out. What was her plan? Did she want to get out? What for? What did she want to do out there?

Clear off?

The blood was clotting in his nose, his head was swinging like a bell when he dashed back into the airlock at the last minute and managed to grab her arm. Lawrence’s fingers couldn’t reach the closing mechanism. Without letting go of her, and with blows drumming down on him from her free hand, he pushed her back. They started spinning and collided against the outside portal. For a moment, through the porthole, Julian saw the brightly lit opposite side of the enormous ring module, the cables ending in the middle, only minutes to go till the cabin arrived – and then Lawrence rammed her knee into his stomach.

He felt a wave of nausea, he couldn’t breathe. He let go of her arm and she hurled him against the wall, where he managed to grab onto a strut. Lawrence was floating upright by the outer portal, turned round and faced him. Her right hand wandered to her thigh and took something out of a sheath, a flat thing that looked like a pistol.

He had lost.

As in a stupor, Julian leaned his head to one side. It couldn’t, mustn’t end like this! His glance fell on a flap in the wall beside him. It took him a second to remember what it did, or more precisely what lay behind it, and then it came to him.

OSS handbook, Letter B:

Bulkhead emergency detonation.

He wasn’t securely fastened. He was just holding on with sheer muscle power, and the bulkhead to the torus was open. He wasn’t even wearing a helmet.

To hell with it!

Holding tightly on to the bar, he pulled up the flap. A bright red handle became visible. Dana’s eyes behind the visor widened as she worked out what he was planning. The barrel of her gun came flying up, but not fast enough. He pulled hard on the handle and brought it straight down.

Held his breath.

With a deafening crash the charges in the fixing pins went up and blew the bulkhead from its mooring. Tumbling over and over it whirled into open space, and at
the same moment the suction began, a wailing, murderous storm, as the air flowed out, pulling Dana out of the airlock with it. Julian clung to the metal pole with both hands. More air streamed out of the torus, a hurricane now. That moment he realised all passageways to the adjacent corridors would close automatically, and he was unprotected, not even wearing a helmet. If he didn’t make it out of the tunnel in the next few seconds and close the internal bulkhead, he would die in the vacuum, so he gritted his teeth, tensed his muscles and tried to crawl his way back inside.

His fingers started sliding from the rail.

He panicked. He couldn’t let go, but the hurricane was pulling at him, and most particularly it was pulling his leg. He turned his head and saw Dana Lawrence gripping onto one of his boots. The suction intensified, but she wouldn’t let go, she hung horizontal in the roaring inferno, tried to aim her gun.

She pointed it at him.

Tiny muzzle, black.

Death.

And suddenly he’d just had enough of the bloody woman. His rage, his fear, everything turned into pure strength.

‘This is
my
space station,’ he yelled. ‘Now get
out
!’

And he kicked.

His boot crashed against her helmet. Lawrence’s fingers slipped away. In a split second she had been swept outside, into the centre of the torus, and even then she kept her gun pointed at him, took aim, and Julian waited for the end.

Her body passed the cable.

For a moment he didn’t understand what he was seeing. Lawrence was flying in two directions at once. More precisely, her shoulder, part of her torso and the right arm holding the gun had separated themselves from the rest.

Because direct contact with the cable can cost you a body-part in a fraction of a second. You must bear in mind that it’s thinner than a razor-blade, but incredibly hard.

His own words, down on the Isla de las Estrellas.

The storm raged around him. With an extreme effort of strength he pulled his way further along the rail, without any illusions of his own survival. He wasn’t going to make it. He
couldn’t
make it. His lungs hurt, his eyes watered, his head thumped like a jackhammer.

Lynn, he thought. My God, Lynn.

A figure appeared in his field of vision, wearing a helmet, secured with a safety-line. Someone else. Hands grabbed him and pulled him back into the shelter of the torus. Gripped him tightly. The interior bulkhead slid shut.

Haskin.

* * *

Stars. Like dust.

Lynn is far away, far, far away. The spaceship silently ploughs the timeless, glittering night, an enclave of peace and refuge. When she briefly regains consciousness, she merely wonders why the bomb hasn’t gone off, but perhaps she just hasn’t been travelling for long enough. She vaguely remembers a plan she had to leave the mini-nuke in the habitation module and return to the OSS in the landing unit, to save herself.