‘They used this room for hauling equipment aboard. The supply ship sails between the legs of the refinery. The floor opens and you can winch stuff aboard. Cargo containers full of food, fuel, stuff like that.’
There were three rows of oil drums welded to scaffolding poles. Ghost pulled a roll of paper from behind a locker and spread it on a table. Plans for a boat.
‘A sloop, like a round-the-world yacht. It’s a reliable design.’
‘Why oil drums?’
‘Ballasted keel. Stable. Unlikely to capsize.’
‘It’s going to be huge.’
‘Even for a two-man vessel you have to build big. You need to carry supplies to last weeks. Fresh water alone could weigh half a tonne.’
‘Two-man?’
‘I enjoy your company. Is that a problem?’
Nikki went looking for Nail.
‘Dive room,’ grunted Ivan. ‘Man get his head together.’
C deck. Dark, frozen passageways. Nikki was spooked. She paused, now and again, to shine her torch down the passageway behind her. She felt stalked.
She entered the dive store. The walls were hung with tanks, regulators, wetsuits and fins. A Tilley lamp sat on a table.
A knife blurred past her face and slammed into a locker. The titanium blade punched hilt-deep into the door. The door was peppered with slit-holes. Target practice.
‘What the fuck do you want?’ asked Nail. Metal shrieked as he jerked the serrated blade from the locker door.
‘Ghost is building a boat.’
‘What kind of boat?’
‘Some kind of crude yacht. He’s making it out of oil drums. He’s making it in secret.’
‘Why are you telling me?’
‘Everyone on this rig is going to die. They’re passive. Cattle. You and I are different. Survivors.’
‘One scumbag to another.’
‘You know what I’m saying. I’m not going to pretend I like you. But together we can make it home.’
‘Want to shake on it?’
‘Fuck yourself.’
‘How far has he got with his boat?’
‘Haven’t seen it. At a guess, early stages.’
‘I can’t picture him sailing away on his own. He’s not the type.’
‘He’s taking a holiday from virtue. He’s flirting with the idea of bailing out but, when the moment comes, he’ll pull back.’
‘Find the boat. Monitor his progress. When the job is done, we’ll take it.’
‘You and me?’
‘They’ve got you cooking in the kitchen, yeah?’
‘When Punch isn’t around. Rawlins’s last effort was a disaster.’ ‘Meal bars,’ said Nail. ‘Punch gives them to shore teams. He has a few boxes at the back of the storeroom. They give you the keys, right? Get a box. Shove the other boxes around so it looks like none are missing.’
‘Okay.’
‘Now fuck off. I’m busy.’
Nikki headed down an unlit passageway to the stairs. She heard the knife slam into metal.
Ghost and Rawlins got ready to leave. They met at the boat-house. Ghost loaded the spread-cutter into the zodiac.
Jane and Punch came to wave farewell.
Boxes piled on deck.
Rawlins pulled a tarpaulin aside.
‘Is this the gear?’
‘Yeah,’ said Punch. He opened crates. ‘Enough plastic explosive to put us on the moon. Blasting caps, det cord, initiators. And these babies.’
He handed Rawlins a red canister.
‘Ml4 thermite grenades. A couple of dozen. Seemed too good to leave behind.’
‘These guys were seriously tooled up.’
‘Reflection seismology. Make a big bang, then listen to the ground-echo on geophones.’
‘I want this shit off the rig, all right? Ghost. Soon as we get back, I want you to take this stuff to the bunker and hide it deep.’
‘Okay.’
‘Our little secret, yeah? Nobody else need know.’
Sian prepared dinner. She boiled two kilos of pasta in a saucepan. Nikki grated cheese.
‘I hope you don’t mind me asking,’ said Sian. ‘Alan and Simon. Your friends from the island. How well did you know them?’ ‘We were postgrads from Brighton.’ ‘So are you doing okay? Everyone making you welcome?’ ‘I’ve been keeping to myself.’
Nikki didn’t want to talk. She didn’t care to know anyone on the rig. She didn’t want to hear their life story. She didn’t want to hear their hopes and dreams.
‘We need more sauce. Pass me the storeroom keys.’
Ghost steered the zodiac. The boat rode low in the water, weighed down by equipment. Rawlins sat in the prow.
They dragged the boat ashore, drove stakes into the ground and lashed it down. They shouldered their gear and set off. A rose twilight turned the snow pink as blossom.
It took them twenty minutes to reach the crater. They stood at the lip of the impact site and looked down at the capsule.
‘What do you think it is?’ asked Rawlins.
‘I read somewhere that low-orbit installations are equipped with escape pods. If anything goes wrong the astronauts can eject. Maybe that’s what happened. This thing was meant to land in the Russian Steppes and send out a distress signal but the chutes fucked up.’
They descended to the bottom of the crater. Rawlins erected a dome tent. Ghost ringed the capsule with tripod lamps.
The sun set. They worked in the brilliant white illumination of halogen lights. A tight circle of white brilliance surrounded by endless night.
Ghost tried the radio.
‘Shore team to Rampart.’
Every waveband swamped by alien pops and whistles.
‘We need to shut this thing down. It’s killing every channel.’
Ghost hacked at silica heat tiles with the spike end of a fire axe. The tiles were hexagonal. He chipped away tiles and examined the steel skin beneath.
‘Take a look at this.’
Rawlins joined him by the capsule. Ghost had exposed a red, T-shaped handle. An inscription in Cyrillic:
A translation beneath:
‘How do you want to do this?’ asked Rawlins.
‘You take cover. I’ll crank the lever.’
Rawlins sheltered behind the capsule.
Ghost stood to the side of the hatch. He shielded his face, twisted the lever and snatched his hand away quick as he could. The rectangular hatch blew like a champagne cork. It flew twenty feet and landed in the snow.
Ghost shone his flashlight into the capsule. Three seats, one occupant. The body of an astronaut strapped in front of winking instrumentation.
‘You think that’s the transponder?’ asked Rawlins, pointing to a bank of switches.
Ghost held out the radio. A shrill feedback shriek.
‘I’m not going to fuck around,’ said Ghost. ‘We’ll toss a thermite grenade. Fry the whole thing.’
Rawlins hauled himself into the cramped cabin. He held a metal seat frame for support.
The cosmonaut wore a bulky pressure suit. Grey canvas webbing. The gloves, boots and helmet were attached to the suit by heavy lock rings. Russian insignia on his chest and sleeve. The suit was connected to a wall-mounted oxygen supply by a hose.
‘Wait. I want to check him out.’
‘Why?’
‘Aren’t you curious? СССР. Old Soviet mission badge. Red fist. I’m guessing military. How long has this guy been floating around up there? Decades? You weren’t even born when this guy got launched into space. I want to know who he was. I want to know how he died.’
Rawlins fumbled at the five-point harness. He took off his gloves but couldn’t release the buckle.