The bulk of the EVA suits made it difficult to negotiate the partial opening to District Three. At least for everyone except Tala, she simply waited her turn and sidestepped through the gap to join the party. The interlocked doors led into a large, modernist atrium. An abandoned reception desk lay beneath cantilevered decks of offices, their closed off, dark banks of windows a startling contrast to the clean white lines of the entranceway.
Behind the desk, a large Soviet industrial mural ran the length of the bulkhead. Heroic farmers wielded sickles and factory workers, predictably, hammers, surged forth from a sunburst red backdrop. The characters were angular, statuesque and concrete coloured. A harsh bust of cosmonaut Vitaly Sevastyanov gathered dust atop a faux marble plinth nearby.
It had been Sevastyanov who’d first discovered the Iban generation ship by chance while aboard Salyut 4.
The atrium was well lit, the abandonment made all the more apparent by the stark illumination. It lent the place a newness and coldness that made the service corridor appear cosy. At the far end, beside the reception desks, lay elevator doors.
“Even if it is working, I’d rather take the stairs,” said Tor, the group nodded their agreement and listened to their footfalls on tiled floors reverberate around the atrium.
Beside the elevator was a doorway marked, ле́стница.
The stairway returned them to the ubiquitous dim dustiness of Murmansk-13. Emergency strip lighting providing further continuity. The recon party looked up, flights winding up ten or eleven floors corkscrewed above them. Some landings completely blacked out, others provided with only flickering light.
“Falmendikov didn’t trust the elevator either by the looks of it.” Mihailov focused his beam once more to the deck. Here, in the trunk of the stairwell, the dust had settled as thick and powdery as a winters first snow.
The footsteps led in a singular direction. Since entering the station, any hope that Falmendikov was alive had ebbed. There would be little retribution if Tor made an executive decision to abandon the attempt to recover Falmendikov, the loss of a billion dollars worth of unrefined exotic matter would be sufficient to finish his career. The loss of a crewmember would just lend the companies lawsuit moral credence.
Mihailov already knew it, Tor could see it in his face. So did Peralta and Tala. They were being suckered in by curiosity. The Bulgarian looked to Tor, seeking direction. Tor gestured with his head. Up.
They clattered up the drilled treadplate stairwell, losing Falmendikov’s footsteps on the metallic stairs only to recover them once again on the solid landings. Fine grains of dust drifted beneath their feet down into the gloom of the trunk, catching scattered light as they fell.
Mini dust devils eddied in the light downdraft, catching and scratching the throat and clogging the nostrils. The stairwell would have been hard work for a robust man in an EVA suit, Tor could feel his lungs rattle within his ribcage, his legs jellified. Pain washed away with enervated numbness. Every other step he seemed to stumble, knees and calves scraping against the raw edge of metal.
“I need to rest,” Tor said in ragged gasps, exhausting his machismo. The group slumped against the bulkheads and watched the lightly flapping doors of floor three move back and forth with a subdued screech. “What does that say?”
“Zhil’ye,” said Mihailov following Tor’s gesture. He’d been athletic in his youth, an avid soccer player, then a military man. Now even he looked exhausted, his knees pressed to his chest and hands rubbing his closely shaved head. “It would have been the accommodation for the residents and workers of District Three I guess.”
Wan red lights made the corridors beyond the doorway anything but hospitable. Tor watched Peralta drape an arm over the quivering Tala. “We can’t rest too long, Captain.”
They sat in the dark landing for five minutes, Tor watched Tala’s eyes glaze over. “Not so far now,” he said, lifting himself onto exhausted legs, trying to mask his weariness to buoy his party.
With each step they took forward, they took a step further away from the Riyadh. In the infinite distance of space, this journey was infinitesimal and a matter of survival. Surely now, the risks outweighed the reward.
The next five floors passed in a blur of heavy limbs and pounding metal. Blood rushed in Tor’s ears once more, but his body was weak and screamed for sustenance. Tor wondered how long Falmendikov had taken to traverse this same journey. In a peculiar way, it seemed sad that there would be no way of knowing on what exact date Falmendikov had scaled these steps.
“He went through these doors,” said Mihailov tracing the steps to another set of flimsy plastic doors, the top half translucent frosted acrylic. “Laboratories and Medical Bay.”
Pushing through warped doors, the party found an unerringly mundane medical ward reception area. Empty rows of benches led like alabaster pews to a pulpit of dust covered stationary and Rolodex. Dead CRT’s reflected squint strip lights.
Mihailov tracked a few steps forward, then stopped. His empty hand shot to the side, motioning for everyone to remain still, fingers splayed out wide as he feverishly scanned the floor with his Maglite. All breathing seemed to cease with the evident panic in Mihailov. Tor could feel his heart race as his body screamed to exhale.
“What is it, Mihailov?” Asked Tor in an urgent whisper.
For a moment, Mihailov didn’t seem to register the question. His torch hand continued to frantically trace the dust covered linoleum. Then he stopped, the beam wobbled perceptibly in his near-stilled hand. “There are more footsteps.”
The words caused a complete cessation of any movement in the rest of the group, as if they suddenly realized they’d wandered into quicksand. Tor drew alongside Mihailov, the Bulgarians shallow breaths producing fragile tendrils of condensate in the cold air. “What do you mean?”
Mihailov gestured with the flashlight. At their feet the steady record of Falmendikov’s journey disappeared into a crazed morass of footsteps that appeared to mill in all directions with no apparent destination.
Dry throated, Tor took a scratching gulp. Dust particles abraded his throat on their way down. “How old do you think these are?”
“In places they cover Falmendikov’s tracks,” replied Mihailov, hoarsely. “So newer than we should be comfortable with.”
“Maybe this is where the trail ends, Captain,” said Peralta, hopefully. They’d continued deeper into the station on his insistence, now even his resolve appeared to melt.
“I don’t think so.” Tala stalked past, her crumpled suit rustling like plastic bags. Her colleagues winced. “He continued through here, I can still see the palm trees.”
Beyond a further set of swing doors lay darkness. A single emergency light provided weak argent illumination. Motes of dust hung almost static in the frigid corridor. “My God it’s cold in here.”
“Ladies first,” Mihailov said sardonic and nervous through chittering teeth. He offered the flashlight to Tala.
“Pussy,” replied Tala as she snatched the torch from Mihailov’s hand. Freed of his burden, Tor watched the Bulgarian finger the gaffer tape scabbard strapping the rifle across his back.
The corridor curved gently away, drawing shadows along its length. Distance was no longer perceptible in the play of dancing torchlight and eddying blackness. Blots of shadow coalesced in the recesses of keypad doors while frosted glass glittered in sharp contrast. The cold, monochromatic corridor seemed to close in around the little party. Once again, Tor felt the cloying sense of claustrophobia bite like fangs into his exhausted musculature. His body lumbering to the signals of a racing mind.