Ark Angel

the planet was water—and Alex remembered lying on his back when he was small, staring at a perfect summer sky. If he could have turned the sky into a ball, that was what he was seeing now. But as he gazed down he began to make out the shape of the coastlines, a thin line of emerald green; and then Ark Angel turned the corner of the world and there was Africa—all of Africa ahead of him—and suddenly he was seeing intense gold, yellow and red … mountains and deserts but no cities. Nothing moving. And he wondered, if he was an alien and came upon the earth, could he pass by without being aware of the teeming life below?
    But then day became night and he found himself over the western Mediterranean seaboard, and even from three hundred miles away he could make out thousands of electric lights that had to be man-made. Spain and Gibraltar,. Turkey, Tunisia, Algeria and the Lebanon—all of them were visible at once, the tiny lights blinking like fireflies. There were storms over Europe. Alex saw the lightning shimmer through the clouds.
    It wasn’t just that there was life on earth. The whole earth was alive. Alex could feel it pulsating beneath him, and suddenly he knew that for all its technology, Ark Angel was a sterile, dead place and he didn’t care that soon it would no longer exist. He had made the right decision. At that moment, Alex felt a sense of loneliness he would remember for the rest of his life. He wanted to go home.

    He made his way back to the Soyuz module, trying to control his progress but still crashing into the walls.
    Only by holding onto the handrails did he prevent himself from going into another sickening spin. He had a raging thirst and wished he’d found himself something to drink before he left. What happened when you opened a can of Coke in space? He would never find out.
    Somehow he reached the entrance and folded himself in. He was operating on automatic. All he wanted was to get away. He reached up and closed the hatch, turning the lever to lock it before blastoff. This was the compartment he had travelled up in. But it was going to stay behind. There was a second hatch underneath him and he opened it, passing into the re-entry module below. There was more room here. Of course. The re-entry module had to be big enough for Kaspar. He strapped himself into the seat, found another headset and put it on, wondering if it would work.
    “Alex? What is your status?” It was Tamara’s voice. He had never been happier to hear anyone.
    “The bomb is still active,” he said. He looked at his watch. Twenty-five past four. “Professor Sing lied to us,” he went on. “Kaspar was here. And now I’ve only got five minutes left. Get me out of here.”
    Another burst of static. A disembodied voice was muttering half-words that made no sense. There had to be something wrong with the radio. Alex wondered what would happen next. How long would he have to sit here before he disengaged? And what would happen if he didn’t? The second hand on his watch ticked round. It seemed to be taunting him, moving faster than it should. The time now was twenty-eight minutes past four.
    Already he was sweating. Hunched up on his back with no view, he had no idea where he was, how much further he was around the world. Twenty-nine minutes past four. Had he reached the last sixty seconds of his life?
    He felt a sudden jolt. For a terrible moment, he thought that the bomb had detonated. Then he realized that was impossible. He hadn’t heard anything but he was suddenly aware that the module’s retro-rockets must have been fired. He twisted his head round and peered through the periscope. Ark Angel was already a mile away, vanishing into space like a pebble dropped into a well.
    And then it exploded.
    The bomb blew up, a burst of orange flame that ripped the entire space station apart, sending the different modules spinning in different directions. The arms with the solar panels fell away. There were two more explosions. A shower of brilliant sparks and a dazzling burst of white light that stretched out in silence.
    Alex felt a sense of euphoria. He had succeeded! He had put the bomb in exactly the right place, and instead of propelling Ark Angel towards Washington, it had simply destroyed it. There was nothing left. A few pieces were falling through space but they would quickly burn up. At last it was over.
    He fell.
    The crackle on the radio stopped abruptly. Alex found himself in the grip of a silence so