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Lynn fell silent. She looked away. O’Keefe noticed how awful she looked, just a Lynn-like shell with something staring out from it. Something he had no desire to get to know.

‘They’re fine,’ she said tonelessly.

Funaki nodded in self-reproach. ‘Then we’ll open up the eastern shaft now.’

‘See you in the lobby, Michio. You know the way out.’

* * *

As it happened, there was nothing left that could be burned.

The second oxygen tank had been drained to the last dregs, and all that remained of the three corpses was caked ashes. Whatever could have gone up in flames was already consumed, but it still continued to flicker and glow. After the partial fall of E2, the smoke in the shaft of the staff elevator had risen and become trapped, prevented from circulating by the shutdown of the ventilators, which would have distributed it everywhere. The temperature difference had created its own circulation system, however, and more and more clouds of smoke were emerging from the deformed materials. This meant that the elevator shaft which Eva and the others had crossed through barely fifteen minutes before now didn’t even offer a breath of air or a centimetre of vision. At the height of the cabin’s smouldering remains, the sealed trapdoors had melted to the west ventilation shaft, and this too was now full of smoke, although the shields of the east shaft were holding out for the time being. In the neck of Gaia, the temperature still resembled that of a solar furnace, dramatically increasing the viscosity of the steel beam which was supporting the head of the figure. Once again, Gaia’s chin tilted a little, and this time—

* * *

—it was noticeable.

‘The floor just moved,’ whispered Olympiada Rogacheva, grabbing on to Miranda, whose flood of tears ran dry at that very moment.

‘I’m sure it’s built to be elastic,’ she sniffed, patting Olympiada’s hand. ‘Don’t worry, sweetheart. Skyscrapers on Earth shake too, you know, when there’s an earthquake.’

‘
You
may well be built elastically.’ O’Keefe stared outside, his mouth dry. ‘But Gaia certainly isn’t.’

‘How would you know? Hey, Michio, what—’

‘There’s no time!’ Funaki stood on the landing, waving wildly with both arms. ‘Come on. Quickly!’

‘Maybe we’re just suffering from mass hysteria,’ said Miranda to the distraught Olympiada as she followed Funaki into the Luna Bar and from there down into Selene. Again, the floor gave way beneath them.

‘
Chikusho!
’ hissed Funaki.

O’Keefe’s knowledge of Japanese was practically nonexistent, but after several days in the company of Momoka Omura he had become sufficiently familiar with swearwords.

‘That bad?’ he asked.

‘Very. We can’t afford to lose a single second.’ Funaki opened a cabinet, took out four oxygen masks and hurried to one of the two free-standing columns, which O’Keefe had until now assumed to be decorative, clad with holographs of constellations. Now, as the Japanese man pushed one of their surfaces to the side, a man-size bulkhead came into view behind it.

‘The ventilation shaft!’

‘Yes.’ Funaki nodded. ‘It starts up here. Let’s all cross our fingers. The control centre said it’s smoke-free inside, no loss of pressure.’ He handed out the masks. ‘But regardless. Let’s put them on until we know for sure. Just slip them on so they’re snug and the eyes are protected behind the visor. No, the other way around, Miss Olympiada, the other way around!’ His hands flapped. ‘Miss Miranda, could you help her? Thank you. Mr O’Keefe, may I see? Yes, just like that. Very good.’

In no time at all, he had pulled his own mask on, checked it and carried on talking, his voice muffled now. ‘As soon as the bulkhead is open, I’ll go in. Wait until I give you the signal, then follow me one after the other, first Miss Olympiada, then Miss Miranda, then Mr O’Keefe bringing up the rear. The ladder leads directly into the lobby. Stay close to me. Any questions?’

The women shook their heads.

‘No,’ said Finn.

Funaki tapped the sensor, stepped back and waited. The bulkhead swung open and warm air came out. O’Keefe stepped next to the Japanese man and looked down. They peered into a dimly lit shaft which dropped down into the depths.

‘Visibility seems clear.’

Funaki nodded. ‘Wait until I give the green light.’

He climbed in, put both feet on the rungs, put his hands on the side struts and began to clamber down. His chest, shoulders and head disappeared beneath the ledge. O’Keefe peered in after him. Funaki looked around and gazed appraisingly down below. After about five metres, he stopped his descent and tipped his face up towards them.

‘Everything’s okay so far. Come on.’

‘Olympiada, darling!’ Miranda took the Russian woman in her arms, held her close and kissed her on the forehead. ‘We’re almost there, my sweet.’ She sank her voice to a whisper: ‘And after that you leave him. Do you hear me? You have to. Leave him. No woman has to put up with that.’

* * *

The molecular bonds were starting to break.

It would have taken higher temperatures to melt the steel like butter, but the heat
was still enough to transform some of the braces into a kind of glutinous rubber, which slowly deformed under the pressure of the tonnes of weight they bore. Gaia’s head visibly compacted the weakened materials together and, in the process, created tensions which the stressed glass façade and mooncrete plates weren’t able to withstand. The water between the panes of the double glazing, evaporating, forced the structures apart – and, suddenly, one of the concrete modules simply broke right across, the full width of it.

Gaia’s lower jaw dropped heavily onto the glass façade.

One after another, the inner and outer panes shattered. Splinters and water vapour swirled into the vacuum; rendered unstable, structural elements, tattered components of the life-support systems and ashes were carried away in a chain reaction. The artificial atmosphere spread out around Gaia’s neck like a cloud and evaporated in the heat of the sun’s rays. But the major part was in the shade, with the result that the air crystallised as the coldness of outer space forced its way inside, extinguishing all flames in a second and cooling down the glowing steel so quickly that it wasn’t able to solidify slowly, but instead froze in brittle fragility.

The support beams held out for a few more seconds.

Then they gave way.

This time, Gaia’s head sank forward much more, held only by the main cord of the massive steel spine, which so far had not been so badly affected. The last remains of the neck front splintered, the chin tilted further, the layers of insulation above the shoulders cracked, the concrete modules ruptured and a gaping hole opened up in the ventilation shaft.

* * *

O’Keefe stumbled backwards over a table. Olympiada, who was just about to clamber into the shaft, was hurled against Miranda, knocking her down to the floor.

We’re falling, he thought. The head is falling!

Filled with horror, he pulled himself up, trying to get a grip on something. His right hand grasped hold of the edge of the airlock.

‘Into the shaft,’ he cried out. ‘Quickly!’

He looked inside.

Into the shaft?

Maybe not! Funaki was staring up at him with his eyes wide, trying to climb back up again, but something was stopping him, pulling at him with all its might. He screamed something and stretched out his arm. O’Keefe leaned over to grasp his outstretched hand, when he suddenly had the eerie sensation that he was looking into the gullet of a living thing. His hair, his clothes, everything began to flap wildly. A powerful suction seized him, and in a flash he realised what was happening.

The air was being sucked out of Gaia’s head. There must be a leak somewhere in the shaft.

The vacuum was threatening to swallow them up.

He braced himself against the frame, trying to reach Funaki’s hand. The Japanese man tried with all his might to reach the next rung of the ladder. Out of the corner of his eye, O’Keefe saw the bulkhead starting to move, making its way up, the goddamn automatic mechanism, but it was just doing its job; the shaft had to close so they wouldn’t all be sucked into it, but Funaki, he couldn’t leave Funaki! Hands clung to his clothing; Miranda and Olympiada were screaming, preventing him from being sucked in. The bulkhead came closer. He stretched out his arm as far as he could, felt his fingertips touch the other man’s for a second – then Funaki was torn from the rungs and disappeared into the abyss with a shrill scream.

The women pulled Finn away. The bulkhead slammed shut in front of his eyes. Breathless, they helped one another up, struggling to balance on the uneven floor of the restaurant. Eerie creaks and groans forced their way up to them from Gaia’s depths, harbingers of even worse disaster.

* * *

Dana heard the same noises directly above her. A powerful blow had ripped her off her feet, followed by an immense roar, which had died away as abruptly as it came. But the gallery still seemed to be echoing from the explosion-like crash which had come before the roar. The entire building had swung like a tuning fork, then finally settled, and all at once there was deathly silence. Apart from the wails and squeaks in the roof, which sounded like cats roaming through the night in search of mates.

She ran to the bulkhead and hit her hands against the mechanism. It stayed shut.

‘Lynn,’ she screamed.

‘No answer.

‘Lynn! What’s going on? Lynn!’

No one in the control centre responded.

‘Come on, talk to me! Something huge has broken up there. I don’t want to die in here.’

She looked around. By now, visibility in the gallery was pretty much clear again; the ventilators had done a good job. The pressure would soon be restored, but if what had happened up there was what she feared, then this area was in danger of being buried under the weight of the head sooner or later too.

She had to get out of here! She had to take control again.

‘Lynn!’

‘Dana.’ Lynn sounded like a robot. ‘There have been a number of incidents. Wait your turn.’

Dana sank down with her back to the wall, exhausted. That damn bitch! She couldn’t blame her of course, she had every reason to be angry, but pure hatred for Julian’s daughter was burning up within Dana. In a way that was completely contrary to her nature, she began to take it personally. Lynn had brought this disaster on her. Just you wait, she thought.

At about eleven o’clock, Momoka suddenly stopped.

‘If he fell anywhere, then it would have been here,’ she said.

Julian, who was driving ahead of her, stopped too. They parked behind one another on the sunlit expanse of the Mare Imbrium. To their left, Cape Heraclides and the southern foothills of the Montes Jura towered out from the basalt sea, the steep outposts of the Sinus Iridum, the Rainbow Bay. It wasn’t difficult to imagine that, instead of sitting in rovers, they were in expedition boats, looking at the land across the calm sea; the only thing missing was perhaps a little colour and a picturesque lighthouse on the rocky cliffs. As if to complete the illusion, satellite images were displaying the widely dispersed, flat waves in which the frozen flood of the mare fell into the Rainbow Bay. They were, however, old images, as the weather conditions over Sinus Iridum had changed since the beginning of helium-3 mining. A broad bank of fog had now swallowed the waves and seemed to be drawing in landwards. From where they had stopped, they could just make out the clouds in the distance, a shapeless grey weighing down on the stony sea.

‘Could he have flown another route?’ asked Evelyn.

‘It’s possible.’ Julian looked up at the sky, as if Locatelli had left some sign behind for them in it.

‘Probable even,’ said Rogachev. ‘He had problems regaining control of the shuttle. If he succeeded, he could have drifted off course a fair bit.’

‘Where exactly is the mining station again?’ asked Amber.

‘In the mining zone.’ Julian pointed his outstretched arm towards the dust barrier. ‘Just a hundred kilometres from here on the axis between Cape Heraclides and Cape Laplace in the north.’

‘By the way, how’s our oxygen looking?’

‘Good, considering the circumstances. The problem is that we can’t rely on the maps any more.’

Amber lowered her map. Until now, she had had the advantage of clear visibility. Every crater, every hill marked on the lunar maps had reliably appeared on the horizon at some point, clarifying their position precisely, but in the sea of dust their sense of orientation would be incredibly reduced.

‘So we should try our best not to get lost,’ Evelyn put in with matter-of-fact firmness.

‘And Warren?’ asked Momoka insistently. ‘What about Warren?’

‘Well …’ Julian hesitated. ‘If only we knew that.’

‘What a helpful response, thank you!’ She snorted. ‘Why don’t we look for him?’

‘We can’t risk that, Momoka.’

‘Why not? We have to go to the foot of the Cape anyway.’

‘And from there directly on to the station.’

‘We don’t even know if he really fell,’ Evelyn reflected. ‘Maybe—’

‘Of course he did!’ exploded Momoka. ‘Don’t kid yourself! Do you really want to drive happily on while he’s stuck in a wreck together with that arsehole Carl?’

‘There’s no question of us doing it happily,’ protested Evelyn. ‘But the zone is huge. He could be anywhere.’

‘But—’

‘We’re not looking for him,’ said Julian decisively. ‘I can’t be responsible for that.’

‘You really are unbelievable!’

‘No, but it would be unbelievable to not get to the mining station because of you,’ said Evelyn, her tone audibly cooler. ‘It’s not that we don’t care about Warren, but we can’t search the entire Mare Imbrium until we run out of oxygen.’

‘I have a suggestion.’ Oleg cleared his throat. ‘In a way, Momoka is right. We have to go over to the Cape anyway, so why don’t we just drive along a little and keep our eyes open? Not an organised search, just three, four kilometres and then on towards the mining station.’

‘Sounds sensible,’ said Evelyn.

Julian pondered the suggestion for a moment. So far they hadn’t needed to touch the oxygen reserves.