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Just very differently to how Julian Orley imagined.

* * *

I’m back,’ chirped Heidrun.

‘Oh, my darling!’ Ögi’s moustache bristled with delight. ‘Safely and in one piece too, I see. How was it?’

‘Great! Locatelli threw up when he saw his solar panels.’

She floated over and gave him a kiss. The action led to repulsion. She slowly retreated again, reached out to grasp the back of a chair and made her way back, hand over hand.

‘Did Warren get space sick or something?’ asked Lynn.

‘Yes, it was great!’ Heidrun beamed. ‘Nina took him off with her, and after that it was all really nice.’

‘I’m not so sure.’ Donoghue pursed his lips. Red-cheeked and bloated, he rested grandly back against an imaginary throne like Falstaff, his hair so bouffant it looked as though an animal had died on his scalp. ‘It sounds dangerous to me, someone throwing up in their helmet.’

‘Well,
you
don’t have to go out there,’ said Aileen sharply.

‘Poppycock! I wasn’t saying that …’

‘You’re sixty-five, Chucky. You don’t have to join in on everything.’

‘I said, it
sounds
dangerous!’ blustered Donoghue. ‘I didn’t say I was scared. I’d still go out there even if I were a hundred. And on the subject of age, have you heard the one about the really old couple and the divorce judge?’

‘Divorce judge!’ Haskin was starting to laugh already. ‘Let’s hear it.’

‘So they go to the divorce judge, and he looks at the woman and says: “My dear, how old are you?” “Let’s see,” says the woman, “I’m ninety-five.” “Okay, and you?” The man thinks for a second: ninety-eight! “God almighty,” says the judge, “I don’t believe it. Why on earth would you want to get divorced at your age?” “Well, it’s like this, your honour …”’

Tim snarled. It was hardly bearable. Chucky had been relentlessly setting off comedy firecrackers, one after the other, for the past two hours.

‘“… we wanted to wait until the children had passed away.”’

Haskin did a somersault. Everyone laughed, of course. The joke wasn’t that bad, at least not bad enough for Tim to blame Donoghue alone for his apocalyptic mood. But at that moment he noticed Lynn sitting there as if she’d been turned to stone, as if she were somewhere else entirely. She was gazing straight ahead and was clearly clueless of what was going on around her. Then, all of a sudden, she laughed too.

I could be wrong, he thought. It doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s starting all over again.

‘So what did you get up to while we were gone?’ Heidrun looked around curiously. ‘Have you been to look around the model station?’

‘Yes, I could re-create it right now from memory,’ bragged Ögi. ‘Amazing building. To tell you the truth I was surprised by the safety standards.’

‘Why?’ asked Lynn.

‘Well, the privatisation of space travel adds to the fear that it’s all been cobbled together too quickly.’

‘But would you be here if you were seriously concerned about that?’

‘That’s true.’ Ögi laughed. ‘But in any case, it was quick. Extraordinarily quick. Aileen and Chuck here could certainly tell you a thing or two about building regulations, surveys and restrictions.’

‘Just one or two?’ growled Chucky. ‘I could go on for days.’

‘When we were designing the Red Planet, they thought the project would be impossible to complete,’ Aileen confirmed. ‘What a bunch of cowards! It took a decade to get from the initial design stage to the start of the construction, and even after that they never left us in peace.’

The Red Planet was Donoghue’s pièce de résistance, a luxury resort in Hanoi modelled on the landscape of Mars.

‘It’s now known as the pièce de résistance of structural engineering,’ she added triumphantly. ‘There’s never been an incident with any of our hotels! But what happens? Whenever you start planning something new, they swarm over you like zombies and try to eat you alive, your enthusiasm, your ideas, even the creative power given to you by the almighty Creator himself. You might think that building up a good record over the years would earn you some credit, but it’s like they take no notice whatsoever of what you’ve achieved so far. Their eyes are dead, their skulls stuffed with regulations.’

Oh man, thought Tim.

‘Yes, yes.’ Ögi rubbed his chin thoughtfully. ‘I know exactly what you mean. In this respect, my dear Lynn, I can’t help but water down all this adulation with a bit of scepticism. As I said, you made the station into a reality extremely quickly. You might even say suspiciously quickly compared to the ISS, which is smaller yet took a lot longer.’

‘Would you like to hear an explanation for that?’

‘At the risk of annoying you …’

‘You’re not annoying me in the slightest, Walo. Pressure from competition has always encouraged sloppiness in the race to be first. But Orley Space doesn’t have any competitors. So we never needed to be quicker than anyone else.’

‘Hmm.’

‘The reason we were quick was perfect planning, which ultimately meant the OSS built itself. We didn’t need to accommodate dozens of notoriously hard-up space authorities, nor wade through bureaucratic quicksand. We only had one partner, the United States of America, and they would even have sold the Lincoln Memorial to break out of the commodity trap. Our agreement fitted on the back of a petrol receipt. America builds up its moon base and supplies technology for mining helium-3, while we bring in marketable reactors, an inexpensive, quick transport system to the Moon and, last but not least, a great deal of money! Getting authorisation from Congress was a walk in the park! It was a win-win situation! One gets to monopolise the reactor trade, the other returns to the peak of space-travelling nations and gets the solution to all their energy problems. Believe me, Walo, with prospects like those on the table, any other option but
quickly
is completely out of the question.’

‘Well, she’s certainly right about that!’ said Donoghue, his voice like thunder. ‘When has it ever been about whether someone
can
build something or not? Nowadays it’s always about the damn money.’

‘And the zombies,’ nodded Aileen vigorously. ‘The zombies are everywhere.’

‘Sorry.’ Evelyn Chambers raised her hand. ‘I’m sure you’re right, but on the other hand we’re not here to inflate each other’s egos. This is about investment. And my investment in you is very much linked to trust, so we should put all our cards on the table, don’t you think?’

Tim looked at his sister. She looked open and interested, clearly unaware of what Evelyn Chambers was alluding to.

‘Of course. What’s on your mind?’

‘Slip-ups.’

‘Such as?’

‘Vic Thorn.’

‘Of course. That’s on the agenda.’ Lynn winced, but without batting an eyelid. ‘I was planning to talk about him later, but we can bring it forward.’

‘Thorn?’ Donoghue wrinkled his forehead. ‘Who’s he?’

‘No idea.’ Ögi shrugged. ‘But I’m happy to hear about slip-ups. Even if only to make my peace with my own.’

‘We don’t have any secrets,’ said Haskin. ‘It was all over the news last year. Thorn was part of the first long-term crew on the American moon station. He did an excellent job, so he was recommended for a further six months, as well as being offered a leadership position. He agreed and travelled to the OSS to fly on to the base from there.’

‘That’s right, it rings a bell,’ said Heidrun.

‘Same here.’ Walo nodded. ‘Wasn’t there some kind of problem with an EVA?’

‘With one of the manipulators to be precise. It was blocking the hatch of the shuttle which was supposed to take Thorn’s people to the Moon. It was paralysed mid-movement after being hit by a piece of space debris. So we sent a Huros up …’

‘A what?’ asked Aileen.

‘A humanoid robot. It discovered a splinter in one of the joints, which had apparently caused the manipulator to shut itself down.’

‘Well, that sounds sensible.’

‘Machines don’t concern themselves with concepts of reason.’ Haskin gave her a look as if she’d just suggested never sending robots outside without warm socks on. ‘We agreed to have the joint cleaned, which the Huros wasn’t able to do, so that’s why we sent Thorn and an astronaut up. Except that the manipulator hadn’t turned itself off after all. It had just temporarily fallen into a kind of electro-coma. Suddenly, it woke up and hurled Thorn into space, and it seems his life-support systems were damaged in the process. We lost contact with him.’

‘How awful,’ whispered Aileen, ashen.

‘Well.’ Haskin went silent for a moment. ‘He probably wouldn’t have suffered for long. It’s possible that his visor took a lot of the damage.’

‘Probably? So you didn’t manage to … ?’

‘Unfortunately not.’

‘I always thought you could just dash out after them.’ Aileen spread out the thumb and fingers on her right hand to make the shape of aeroplane wings and glided it through the air. ‘Like in the movies.’

‘Well sure, in the movies,’ said Haskin deprecatingly.

‘But we should also mention that the new generation of the Huros series would probably have been able to save him,’ said Lynn. ‘And the spacesuits’ remote control has been developed further too. With that, we could at least have got Thorn back.’

‘If I remember rightly,’ said Evelyn, ‘there was an investigation.’

‘That’s right.’ Lynn nodded. ‘Which resulted in a case being brought against a Japanese robotics company. They built the manipulator. Clearly it was a case of third-party negligence. Thorn’s death was a tragedy, but the operators of the OSS, that is to say, we, were cleared of any responsibility.’

‘Thanks, Lynn.’ Evelyn looked around at the others. ‘That’s enough of an explanation for me. Don’t you think?’

‘Pioneers have to make sacrifices,’ grumbled Donoghue. ‘The early bird catches the worm, but sometimes he gets eaten by it.’

‘Let’s look around a little more though,’ said Ögi.

‘You’re not convinced?’ asked Lynn.

He hesitated.

‘Yes, I think I am.’

And that was it! A barely noticeable twitch in the corner of her mouth, the meltdown of panic in Lynn’s gaze as …

* * *

… she feels the pull, just as she had when she was being dragged down into the abyss, and she wonders with horror what she’s let herself in for. It started weeks ago: she keeps thinking she saw weaknesses in her work where there definitely weren’t any. She’s willing to swear an oath that Julian’s space station will survive longer than all of foolish mankind put together, but she can’t help herself picturing something exploding or falling apart, and only in the lower section. And why?

Because this section is the only one that
she
, not Julian, designed, the only one that was
her
responsibility!

And yet the same designers have been working there; the same architects, engineers, construction teams. There are barely any differences between the modules in her station and the others: identical life-support systems, the same method of construction. And yet Lynn is relentlessly tormented by the idea that they might be faulty. The more Julian praises her work, the more the self-doubt eats into her thoughts. She imagines the worst incessantly. Her otherwise commendable caution has been growing into a paranoia of constant mistrust; she searches obsessively for evidence of her failure, and the less she finds, the more nervous she becomes. The OSS Grand has ballooned into a monster of her arrogance, one that will burst like a bubble, condemning dozens of people to their deaths. Cold riveting, strutting, insulation, electrolysis devices, circulation pumps, airlocks, corridors: in all of it, all she sees is the reflection of her own failings. Just the mere
thought
of the hotel in space and the one on the Moon causes her overwrought brain to erode under the onslaught of adrenalin and cortisol. If, according to theological understanding, fear is the opposite of faith, the separation from the sacred, then Lynn has become the very definition of a heathen. The fear of destroying. The fear of being destroyed. They’re one and the same.

At some point in the depths of her despair, the devil has infiltrated her thoughts and whispered to her that the fear of the abyss can only be overcome by entering it there and then. How do you escape the cycle of fear that something horrific
could
happen? How can you find a way out before you completely lose your mind? How can you free yourself?

By it
happening
!

The question, of course, remains what will become of her if her work proves to be transitory. Is she just one of Julian’s inventions, a character in a film? What if Julian stops
thinking
her, because she proved herself unworthy of being thought? Will
she be condemned to perpetual suffering? Eternal damnation? Disappear without a whimper? Or will she have to disappear to be born again, more vividly than ever? If everything by which she defines herself and by which others define her comes to an end, will she, the real Lynn, finally resurface? If she even exists, that is?

* * *

‘Miss Orley? Are you unwell?’

‘What’s wrong, dear?’ Aileen’s maternal falsetto tones. ‘You’re as white as a sheet.’

‘Lynn?’ Tim was next to her. The gentle pressure of his fingers on her shoulder. They slowly began to spin, a twofold sibling star.

Lynn, oh, Lynn. What have you let yourself in for?

‘Hey. Lynn!’ White, slender fingers stroked her forehead, violet eyes peering at her. ‘Is everything okay? Have you smoked something funny?’

‘I’m sorry.’ She blinked. ‘You caught me.’

‘Caught you doing what, sweetheart?’

The smile returned to her lips. A horse that knows the way. Tim looked at her searchingly. He wanted to tell her that he knows, but he can’t let himself say anything, can’t ask her! Lynn pulled herself up straight, freeing herself from the suction. She’s won, for now at least.

‘Space sickness,’ she says. ‘Crazy, isn’t it? I never thought it would happen to me, but I guess I was wrong. The lights just seemed to go out.’

‘Then it’s okay for me to admit it.’ Ögi grinned. ‘I’m feeling a bit queasy too.’

‘You?’ Heidrun stared at him. ‘You’re space sick?’