Ark Angel

to panic. Nobody had warned him about this. He was stuck in zero gravity and he began to wonder if he wasn’t doomed to remain like this until Ark Angel blew itself apart. He couldn’t move!

    It took him what seemed like an eternity to work it out. It was amazing really that a physics lesson on a damp Wednesday at Brookland School, should suddenly come to mind and save his life. He took off his shoes and threw them with all his strength. The forward motion produced an opposite reaction, a bit like the recoil from a gun. Alex was thrown back and managed to grab hold of a handrail. He clung there for a moment, breathing heavily. It had been a nasty moment and he would have to be very careful it didn’t happen again.
    He had to get moving. He hadn’t been able to see the observation module and the remaining stages of Gabriel 7 on the far side of the space station, but he knew they were there. The rocket had docked automatically almost an hour ago and had brought with it an activated bomb. He looked at his watch again. Twenty-five minutes had passed! There was barely an hour left. If the bomb exploded at the right time and in the right place, he would be vaporized, and a four hundred tonne missile would begin its deadly journey back to earth. Alex thought back to the map of Ark Angel he had been shown and knew that he had to navigate his way through an interlocking series of modules to reach his destination. He remembered what Ed Shulsky had told him.
    “Don’t try to defuse it unless you’re sure you know what you’re doing, Alex. You press the wrong button, you’ll be doing Drevin’s work for him. Just move it into the sleeping area. That’s all you have to do. Move it and then get the hell out. Fast.”
    It was ticking right now. Alex could imagine it. Just the two of them. Him and a bomb on a space station orbiting the earth.
    He was about to set off when he heard something. The clang of a hatch closing. It was quite unmistakable.
    He stopped and listened. Nothing. What next? Martians? He must have imagined it. Alex pushed off with his feet, as gently as possible, trying to steer himself towards the next module. Once again he had pushed too hard. His shoulder hit the roof—or the floor—of the node and for a second time he found himself spinning out of control.
    He reached out with his hands to steady himself and found himself holding onto a lever that jutted out of the wall. It was a shutter release. Unable to contain his curiosity, he opened it, wondering if it would give him a view of the earth. But the space station was facing the wrong way. Alex reeled back, almost blinded, as brilliant light burst into the module. Professor Sing had warned him not to look directly into the sun.
    Even in that brief instant, Alex had almost blinded himself.
    He closed the shutter again and waited for his sight to return, then continued, gently flying into the sleeping area, the bunks attached vertically to the wall with straps to keep the crew members or guests from drifting off. In space you could sleep sideways, standing or upside down; it made no difference.
    There was a long, brightly lit corridor straight ahead—four or five modules bolted together. Everything was white. This was the very heart of Ark Angel, with the dining room, the exercise room, the showers and lavatories, a living room and two laboratories all laid out next to one another. Gabriel 7 would have docked at the far end.
    Alex tensed himself, preparing to make the next leap. He reached out with the palms of his hands. And froze.
    A man had appeared in front of him, dressed in an identical suit to his own. The man was wearing a skullcap but, seeing Alex, he tore it off, revealing a mirror image of the world three hundred miles below.
    Kaspar. Of course.
    Alex had forgotten about him. So had everyone else. But Professor Sing must have known that Kaspar had been on board Gabriel 7—that was the one piece of information he had been keeping to himself. Why? Had he been so scared of Kaspar that he couldn’t bring himself to reveal the whole truth?

    It looked as if Alex would never know. Kaspar had seen him. He was only twenty metres away, at the other end of the corridor. He hadn’t spoken a word but now—expertly, as if he had been trained—he pushed forward, floating through the air towards him. He was confident, in perfect control.
    And he was holding a knife.

RE-ENTRY

    It was something straight out of a nightmare. It was every nightmare