‘There,’ said Punch. A wide mound up ahead like the cinder cone of a volcano. The lip of a crater.
They doubled their pace. They clambered over ice debris, slabs and boulders thrown from the impact site. They struggled upward. Jane paused to catch her breath.
‘Can you see anything?’ Punch was standing above her, looking down into the crater. ‘What can you see?’
He didn’t reply.
Jane scrambled up ice rubble and stood at his side.
‘Now what the fuck is that thing?’
The Hatch
‘Rampart to Raven, over?’
Rawlins talked through the plan.
‘You have lifeboats?’
‘Shitty inflatables. Switlik four-man coastals. No rigid hulls. Nothing with propulsion.’
‘We can’t pick you up but we can meet you part way. Take to the boats. Lash them together. Ride the current. It will funnel you west towards us. You’d be a few days at sea.’
‘Jesus. It’s a big ocean. How would you find us?’
‘The inflatables should have TACOM beacons. They’ll squawk your position soon as they hit the water. There’s a relay on our microwave tower. We can track you, once you float in range. Then tow you back to Rampart.’
‘I’ll have to persuade the men. It’ll be a hard sell.’
‘I doubt it. You folks don’t have much alternative. Either roll the dice, or sit and freeze. Talk it over, but don’t take too long.’
‘The guys will want to hold on until the very last minute. Wait until the lights go out before they climb in the boats. There’s a good chance we’ll die. Natural to postpone the moment as long as we can.’
‘I know. I understand. But it would be better if we got it done while there is still a little daylight left.’
‘Like I said, we’ll talk it through.’
‘God bless, fella. We’re all praying for you.’
Nikki clattered up the spiral steps to the observation bubble.
‘Punch and Jane are back. They want to see you right away.’
They sat in Rawlins’s office still muffled in thermal suits. Their boots dripped melting snow.
Jane plugged her camera into the PC and brought up pictures.
‘Damn,’ said Rawlins.
First picture: a round capsule, like a scorched cannon ball, sitting at the centre of a wide impact crater.
Second picture: close-up of the capsule. Punch stood next to it for scale. Twice his height, blackened heat tiles, blackened portholes. No visible insignia.
‘Looks sort of Russian to me,’ said Rawlins. ‘Sort of Soyuz. Some kind of re-entry vehicle.’
‘Human?’
‘Of course it’s bloody human.’
Third picture: long shreds of tattered, candy-stripe fabric in the snow.
‘Drogue chutes,’ said Punch. ‘Looks like they didn’t deploy. Probably ripped or tangled in the upper atmosphere.’
‘Think there’s a connection?’ asked Jane. ‘All this shit kicks off back home. Space junk falls out of the sky.’
‘Doubt it. Poor bastards were probably marooned like those guys on Raven. Sitting in their space station watching it all go down on TV. Dropping through the atmosphere without proper telemetry. Just trying to get home.’
Fourth picture: close-up of the capsule. A heavy hatch with a small, dark window. No obvious hinge or handle.
‘We have to get the hatch open,’ said Jane.
‘Nothing could survive that impact,’ said Rawlins. ‘It’s been days. If they were alive they would have climbed out by now.’
‘Come on. You’re as curious as I am. Besides, it’s screwing up our radio. Long-wave is swamped. The beacon is drowning our may day signal. No one can hear us call for help while that thing is out there. If we get inside we can switch it off’
‘All right, but you two stay home.’ ‘Fuck that.’
‘I’m going. My turn ashore. And I’m taking Ghost. I’ll need him to open the hatch. Sorry, but that’s the way it is.’
Sian called Raven and ran through a list of questions. Rawlins wanted to hear their preparations in detail.
‘There’s seven of you, yeah?’
‘Yeah. Seven.’
‘You’ll take to the rafts.’
‘We’ll lash a couple together.’
‘What kind of survival gear do you have?’
‘We are going to carpet the rafts with NB3 parkas. The rafts have rain covers but no insulation. We are going to rely on hydro-suits to keep warm. Wrap ourselves in garbage bags. Sleep in shifts. Pack a ton of Pro-Plus to keep us going. We’ve got canned food, we’ve got flares. Hopefully that should see us through.’
‘Rawlins reckons you’ll make it.’
‘Good.’
‘But if anything goes wrong, if we get picked up and you don’t, is there a message you would like to pass along?’
‘I hadn’t thought about it.’
‘That’s something you could do. Your lads could use the radio, one by one, in private. They could each dictate a message. I could write it down.’
‘I’ll mention it to the men. They might take you up on it.’
Rawlins checked through her notes.
‘I wish they had a radio they could carry with them.’
‘Not much we could do if anything went wrong,’ said Sian.
‘A few weeks from now we might be in the same position. Climbing in the lifeboats, hoping for a miracle. If these folks don’t make it, I’d like to know why. What did they do wrong? What let them down? I hate to use them as lab rats, but that’s exactly what they are. The current should bring them right to our door. If it doesn’t, if they get carried west into the
North Atlantic, they’ll be dead and we’ll know our charts are wrong.’
Jane found Ghost in the pump hall. He was checking the gauge of an oxyacetylene tank.
‘Are you busy?’ he asked.
‘No.’
‘If you’ve got a couple of minutes maybe you could give me a hand.’
He took off his turban. He stripped to the waist. Jane tried not to stare. He straddled a metal folding chair in front of a convection heater.
‘How long have you been growing it?’ asked Jane.
‘Pretty much all my life.’
‘What about your religion?’
‘Seems God isn’t answering the phone right now. Besides, I’m in the mood for a big gesture.’
Jane took scissors and hacked away hunks of hair. She gave Ghost a ragged crew cut. He filled a basin with hot water from a flask, foamed his head and shaved himself bald.
He sat in front of a hand mirror. He snipped his beard down to stubble then shaved himself clean.
‘Christ,’ he said, examining his reflection in a hand mirror. ‘A fucking boiled egg. A stranger to myself.’
‘What’s this stuff?’ asked Jane.
There were two kit-bags on the floor. One contained an air compressor. The other contained a large, steel claw.
‘Hydraulic spread-cutter. Emergency services use them to extract people from wrecked cars.’
‘Use them to open that space capsule?’
‘Yeah.’
‘After you fish those Raven guys out of the sea.’
‘Something like that.’
‘You run this rig. You realise that, right? We’d be lost without you.’
‘Is that what they say?’
‘The guys need a hero.’
‘Let me show you something.’
Ghost led Jane down a corridor to a wide storeroom. A winch bolted to girders in the vaulted ceiling. A huge trapdoor in the floor.