Ark Angel - Anthony Horowitz [98]
He looked at his watch. Someone had given it to him when he got dressed for the launch. Three o’clock. He had one and a half hours to find the bomb and either turn it off or move it. But there was something wrong. For a second Alex panicked. Had the oxygen supply stopped? He swallowed hard, three or four times, gasping for air. He could feel his heart hammering and he was certain he was going to die. But it wasn’t that. There was still air in the module – he just had to draw it in. Alex forced himself to calm down. What was it?
Of course. The silence. Nobody was talking to him. Either he was on the wrong side of the planet, out of range of the control centre, or the radio had broken down. The silence was total, absolute. He had never felt more empty, more alone. But it didn’t matter. He didn’t need anyone to talk to him.
He knew what he had to do.
He unstrapped himself and reached for the circular hatch just above his head. It was his first experience of zero gravity and he knew at once that he’d made a mess of it. He rose out of the seat far too quickly and his head thudded into the metal wall, knocking him back down again. He ended up where he had begun – but with a bruised forehead and the taste of blood in his mouth. A bad start.
Everything had to be done slowly. He reached up again and found the handle. He pulled it out and turned it. The hatch swung outwards.
Alex braced himself. If there was any error, if the airlock wasn’t secured, he would be exposed to the most lethal environment known to man. And he would die the most horrible death. The air would be sucked out of his lungs and his blood would boil. All his internal organs would seize up and he would be ripped apart by the total vacuum of space. He tried not to think about it. It wasn’t going to happen. In less than ninety minutes he would be on his way home.
He found himself looking into a tunnel, about eighty centimetres wide and a couple of metres long. This was the entrance – they called it the node – between his capsule and the reception area of Ark Angel. Reconditioned air, cold and dry, blew into his face. He pushed up with his feet, the lightest movement possible. Effortlessly, he rose. It was just like he had seen in countless films. He was flying.
The node led into the first module. Ark Angel had been built for tourists. It called itself a space hotel. But of course, it was in truth a space station very similar to Mir or the ISS, with very little room and every available inch crammed with cupboards, lockers and all the wires, pipes, dials, gauges, switches, circuits and other essentials needed to keep its inhabitants alive. Each section was a cylinder about the size of an ordinary caravan, lit with a harsh white light and jammed with equipment and handrails on three sides. There were more handrails and Velcro straps on the fourth. Alex understood that to stop himself floating off he would have to hook his hands or feet into the floor.
He had expected the interior to be silent. Instead he was aware of the humming of the air conditioners, the throb of pumps circulating liquid coolants through the walls, the grinding of metal against metal … tonnes of it bolted together even as it spun round in orbit. He breathed in deeply. The air was very dry. He wondered how it was produced. Did it come out of a bottle or was there a machine?
Alex floated – or tried to. Once again, he pushed too hard with his feet and the entire chamber turned upside down as he spun helplessly around, totally out of control. Despite the injection, he was suffering from what NASA called space adaptation syndrome. In other words, he was about to throw up. He tried to steady himself. One of his hands caught the wall, sending him spinning the other way. He no longer knew what was up and what was down. He couldn’t even see the capsule that had brought him here.
He reached out and managed to hook a finger into one of the straps. That slowed him. But the whole experience so far had