‘Dead?’ Orley snapped.
‘Miss Lawrence killed him. She’s with me, along with your daughter and your guests. They’re all right.’
‘And the bomb? What are Palmer and his crew doing?’
‘They’re looking for it.’
‘We can’t just leave them to—’
‘Yes, we can. Turn around. We’re flying back to the Chinese.’
DeLucas
Had only seconds passed? Or hours? DeLucas couldn’t have said, but when she saw the timecode ticking backwards on the bomb, she knew that the worst experience of her life had not even taken a minute. Kicking and screaming, she had finally managed to break free. After a few metres, the bomb wedged against the rock. She had had enough of being afraid, so this time she simply yelled at the mini-nuke as though it were a snot-nosed kid who only heeded harsh words. Wonder of wonders, it actually listened to her, and the low box came free of the wall. A surge of adrenalin carried her along the corridor and past Tommy Wachowski’s body into the airlock, where she hopped from one leg to the other as though the floor were electrified. As the air pumped slowly in, she saw through the viewport Palmer and Jagellovsk coming into the Great Hall, and she slammed her fists against the pane. Palmer spotted her and stopped dead in his tracks. The door glided open. DeLucas stumbled over the threshold and fell full-length on the floor, and the bomb skittered across to stop at the commander’s feet.
‘Six o’clock,’ she panted. ‘We have thirty-five minutes.’
Palmer grabbed the box with both hands and stared at it.
‘Let’s get it out of here,’ he said.
They went up with the lift, left the igloo and ran outside onto the bulldozed plain, out amongst the hangars. The Io was just disappearing off past the crater wall.
‘What do we do with it now?’
‘Disarm it!’
‘Thanks, wise guy! Do you know how to do that?’
‘Oh, man, I must have seen it a thousand times in the movies. We just have to—’
‘Red wire or green wire? Movies are movies. Are you out of your mind?’
‘Twenty-nine minutes!’
The mini-nuke lay there between them on the asphalt, a squat, malevolent box. The timecode ticked down mercilessly, a countdown to the end of creation, bringing a new Big Bang.
‘Stop!’ Palmer shouted, holding up both hands. ‘Everybody just shut up! Nobody’s disarming a damn thing round here. Get it over to the landing field. We have to get rid of it.’
‘We’ll never manage it,’ DeLucas said. ‘How do you intend to—’
Palmer switched over to the shuttle frequency.
‘Io? Callisto? Leland Palmer here, can you hear me?’
‘Kyra here. What’s up, Leland?’
‘We found the darn thing! It’s going to blow in twenty-eight minutes, excuse me, twenty-seven. I need one of you back here, right now!’
‘All right,’ Gore said. ‘We’re turning round.’
‘We’re nearer,’ Nina said.
‘What? But you have to—’
‘There!’ called Jagellovsk.
DeLucas held her breath. Callisto broke free against the backdrop of the stars, curved about and dropped down towards the base.
‘I’m coming in to land,’ said Nina.
‘Over to Igloo 1!’ Palmer shouted. He leapt and danced like a dervish, waving his arms. ‘Igloo 1, you hear me? We’re outside! Get the bomb on board and then dump it as far away as you can, in some goddam crater!’
Callisto
‘I see them,’ Nina said.
Julian bent down. ‘Once we’ve got the thing on board—’
‘Once I’ve got the thing on board.’ She turned her head and looked at him. ‘You’re getting out.’
‘What? Out of the question!’
‘You are.’
‘We’re flying together—’
‘You’re all getting out,’ she said, with an air of quiet command. ‘You too, Julian.’
And then there it was.
For one deeply satisfying moment she saw fear in Julian’s eyes. For just an instant, but an instant that would be with her for ever, she saw at last what she knew she had earned, knew that she deserved from him, that she’d never asked for, in all the time by his side. He wasn’t afraid for his guests, or his precious daughter, or for his hotel. He was afraid only for her, afraid that she might be hurt. Fearful of the hole she would leave in his life if she died, the hole in his heart.
She slowed, and let the shuttle sink down.
Down below, the astronauts were scurrying about and waving to her. She choked back on the thrust. The bulldozed patch down here was relatively small, full of vehicles and machinery. Carefully, she guided Callisto over to a spot near the igloo that offered just enough room for her to land, then settled with a bump, extended the airlock and turned around to her passengers.
‘Everybody out!’ she shouted, clapping her hands. ‘Then bring the damn bomb in here. Quick!’
She looked at Julian. He hesitated. The storm-clouds cleared on his face and she saw a beam of honest-to-goodness affection break through like the sun, and all of a sudden he was hugging her to himself, and gave her a scratchy kiss.
‘Take care of yourself,’ he whispered.
‘You won’t get rid of me that easily.’ She smiled. ‘Watch out for the engines when you get out. Don’t let them wander about under the thrusters.’
He nodded, slid from his chair and hurried to catch up with the others. Nina turned back to the controls. The lift control showed her that the group was going down to the ground. She watched through the cockpit window as an astronaut hurried across carrying something about the size of a suitcase in both hands. The figure disappeared under Callisto’s belly, and then she heard Palmer’s voice.
‘It’s in!’
‘Got you.’
‘Get going then! Twenty minutes to go! Get the thing away from us!’
‘You can say that again,’ she murmured, revving. She brought the shuttle up a few metres even as the airlock was retracting, and turned. A shudder ran through Callisto.
‘What happened?’ she called.
‘You struck the lock against one of the hangars here,’ Julian said. ‘Just brushed the roof.’
Nina cursed, and lifted higher. She glanced around for any error message.
‘Is it still retracting?’
‘Yes! Seems fine.’
The controls showed that the lock was fully inside Callisto. Nina climbed to three hundred metres, then accelerated faster than she would ever have dared with passengers on board. The thrust pushed her back into her seat as Callisto shot off at more than twelve hundred kilometres per hour. The base dropped away out of sight. Cliffs, chasms and plateaux flew past below like a time-lapse landscape. She would have to make for lower ground as soon as she could, but the stark mountains below seemed to climb and climb for ever where the edges of Peary Crater fused into Hermite to the west. Range reared up after range, ridges and plateaux marched on endlessly, but then at last she saw a ragged abyss yawn wide.
The bowl of Hermite Crater.
Still too close.
Even if the mountain ranges protected the base from the blast itself, there was no telling where the debris would rain down. Nina called up a polar map on her holographic display and looked for a suitable spot. The question was how far she could make the time left to her stretch out. If she waited too long to chuck the mini-nuke overboard, she was in danger of being caught in the nuclear furnace herself, but she didn’t want to dump it out of the airlock too soon. The shadows of a sunlit plain rushed past below her, sown with impact craters from smaller meteorites. Flying as low as she was, she had lost radio contact with everyone. According to the dashboard clock she had been flying for eight minutes, and she still wasn’t past the whole of Hermite. She could see the crater’s western wall looming in the distance, a vast, curving cliff, growing fast, growing closer.