Ark Angel Part 17

"I'm not an orang-utan."

"I know. I know. But you have to understand! What we're talking about here, it's not as complicated as you think. I mean, a rocket is a pretty simple piece of machinery. It's just like a tank. It's not as if you have to control it or anything that's all done from here." Shulsky gestured around the room. "We still have access to the flight programs for the Soyuz-Fregat. The computers marked COMMAND tell the rocket what to do. The docking, the re-entry ... everything. And those marked TELEMETRY allow us to monitor the health and well-being of the pa.s.senger. You."

"Not me."

"There is no one else," Shulsky said, and Alex could hear the desperation in his voice. "That's the whole point, Alex. We're adults. We're all too big!" He turned to Professor Sing. "Tell him!"

Sing nodded. "It's true. We planned to put Arthur the ape into s.p.a.ce. I made all the calculations personally. The launch, the approach, the docking all of it. But the first differential is the weight. The weight of the pa.s.senger. If the weight changes, then all the calculations have to change and that will take days."

"What makes you think I weigh the same?"

The professor spread his hands. "You weigh almost almost the same, and we can work within a margin. It's possible. But it's not just the weight. It's the size." the same, and we can work within a margin. It's possible. But it's not just the weight. It's the size."

"The capsule has been modified and none of us would fit inside," Shulsky explained. "There isn't enough room. You're the only one who can go, Alex. Heaven knows, I wouldn't ask you otherwise. But there is no other way. It has to be you."

Alex's head was swimming. He hadn't slept for almost thirty hours; he wondered if this whole conversation wasn't some sort of hallucination. "But how would I even find the bomb?" he asked. "And if I did find it, how would I know where to put it?"

"You put it here." Again Shulsky pointed at one of the modules in the diagram. "This is the sleeping area. You'll pa.s.s through it on your way to Gabriel 7 Gabriel 7. It's the very heart of Ark Angel. This is where the bomb has to be when it blows up. I've gone over it with the professor and he agrees. If it happens here, Washington will be safe."

"I'm just meant to carry it from one place to another?"

"It'll weigh nothing at all," Sing reminded him. "You see it's zero gravity!"

Alex felt weak. He wanted to argue but he knew that n.o.body was listening. They had all made up their minds.

Tamara reached out and took his hand. "Alex, I'd go if I could," she said. "I'm just about small enough and I guess I weigh the same as you. But I don't think I'd make it. Not with this bullet wound..."

"I thought most kids would give their right arm to go into outer s.p.a.ce," Shulsky added unhelpfully. "Haven't you ever dreamt about becoming an astronaut?"

"No," Alex said. "I always wanted to be a train driver."

"Statistically, the Soyuz has an excellent reliability record," Tamara said. Alex remembered seeing her reading about s.p.a.ce travel on Drevin's plane. "Hundreds of them have gone up, and there have been only a couple of hiccups."

"How long will it take him to get there?" Shulsky asked. As far as he was concerned, Alex had already agreed to go.

"He'll be launched along the plane of orbit," Professor Sing replied. "I can't explain it all to you now. But he'll follow a trajectory that exactly matches the inclination of Ark Angel. Eight minutes to leave the earth's atmosphere. And he will dock in less than two hours."

"And the Soyuz-Fregat is ready?"

"Yes, sir. It's ready now."

That struck Alex as odd. He knew that the second launch had been brought forward but why had Drevin been preparing to send the ape into s.p.a.ce at all, just hours after Gabriel 7 Gabriel 7? If his plan had worked, Ark Angel would have been destroyed soon after the second rocket arrived. Not for the first time, Alex was aware that there was something they didn't know, something that everyone had overlooked. But his thoughts were in such confusion that he couldn't work out what it was.

Tamara was still holding his hand. "I know it's too much to ask," she said. "I know you don't want to do it. But, believe me, we wouldn't ask you if there was another way. And you'll be safe. You'll make it back. I know you will."

Suddenly everyone was silent. They were all looking at him. Alex thought of the bomb that was closing in on Ark Angel even now. He thought of an explosion in outer s.p.a.ce, and the s.p.a.ce station plunging towards Washington. What had Drevin said? Four hundred tonnes of it would survive. The shock wave would destroy most of the city.

He thought of Jack Starbright, who was somewhere in the middle of it all, visiting her parents. And he knew that just like Arthur he didn't have any choice.

He nodded.

"Let's get you suited up," Ed Shulsky said.

After that, things moved very quickly. For Alex, it was as if his world had disintegrated. He was aware of bits and pieces but nothing flowed. From the day he'd managed to get himself caught up with MI6, he had often found it hard to believe what was happening to him. But this was something else again. He seemed to have lost any sense of his own ident.i.ty. He was being swept along, out of control, edging closer and closer to something that filled him with more horror than he had ever known.

He was made to shower and dress in the clothes that he had seen in the building where he and Tamara had been imprisoned: a white T-shirt and a blue tracksuit with the Ark Angel logo st.i.tched onto the sleeve. Straps pa.s.sed under his feet to hold the trousers in place and there were six pockets fastened with zips. Suddenly he was surrounded by people he had never met, all of them giving him advice, preparing him for the terrible journey he was about to make.

"You need to watch out for what we call the breakaway phenomenon!" This from a man in gla.s.ses with hair on his neck. Some sort of psychologist. "It's a feeling of euphoria. You may like it so much up there that you won't want to come back."

"I somehow doubt it," Alex growled.

"We'll be attaching EKG and biosensor leads..."

"We're going to give you an injection." This was a blonde-haired woman in a white coat. She was holding a large hypodermic syringe. "This is phenergan. It'll make you feel better."

"I feel fine."

"You'll almost certainly throw up when you reach zero gravity. Most astronauts do."

"Well, that's something you never see on Star Trek Star Trek," Alex muttered. "All right." He rolled up his sleeve.

"Not your arm, Alex. This goes in your b.u.t.t..."

He wondered why they hadn't given him a proper s.p.a.cesuit, the sort of thing he'd seen in old films of the moon landings. Professor Sing explained.

"You don't need it, Alex. Arthur, also, wouldn't have worn a s.p.a.cesuit. You will be inside a sealed capsule. If there was a leak, it's true that you would need a s.p.a.cesuit to protect you; but that's not going to happen, I promise you. Trust me!"

Alex looked at the dark, blinking eyes behind the spectacles. He knew that Sing was ingratiating himself with the CIA, trying to persuade them that he had been innocent from the start. He was sure that Ed Shulsky and Tamara would be watching him throughout the entire launch. But he still didn't trust the professor. He was certain there was something he wasn't being told.

They gave him a headset and radio and wired up his heart. It seemed impossible to Alex that anyone could go into s.p.a.ce like this, without months of training. Tamara never left his side, trying to rea.s.sure him. A fourteen-year-old was more adaptable than an adult, she said. It was going to be a b.u.mpy ride, but he would come through it comfortably because because he was young. And maybe Ed Shulsky was right. It would be something to talk about. An experience he would never forget. he was young. And maybe Ed Shulsky was right. It would be something to talk about. An experience he would never forget.

And then he was in an electric buggy with Tamara and Professor Sing, feeling strange in his tracksuit, the material soft against his skin. The rocket was ahead of him. He looked at it but didn't see it. It was as if the connection had been severed between his eyes and his brain. It was huge. The capsule that would carry him into s.p.a.ce was at the very top of a silver tank as tall as an office block, suspended between two gantries. Water was cascading down. Was it raining? No, the water seemed to be coming from the rocket. He could hear the metal creaking as if it needed a huge effort just to keep it in place. There were clouds of white steam pouring out boil-off from the propellant. Alex saw a deep trench running from the launch pad towards the sea; he guessed it would carry the flames from the solid rocket boosters. It seemed impossible to him that this oversized firework could actually rise up and carry him into s.p.a.ce.

In a lift, climbing higher and higher, still with Tamara and the professor. He could see the whole island, the sea stretching out an amazing blue and there was Barbados in the distance. He was still being given advice. So many words. But they didn't actually penetrate. They just flitted around him like moths.

"...do everything lightly, do everything slowly. Don't look directly at the sun. It'll blind you. Don't even look at the clouds around the earth. The sun reflects... Some parts of Ark Angel will be hot; some will be cold. There have been problems with the air-conditioning... You're going to feel strange. Don't worry if your face becomes puffy or swells up. If your spine stretches. If you need to go to the toilet. It's the same for all astronauts. Your body has to adapt to zero gravity..."

Who was talking? Were they really being serious? How could anybody expect him to do this?

"You'll need to access the observation module of Gabriel 7 Gabriel 7 to get to the bomb. There's a hatch. You saw it on the diagram. You move it to where Ed showed you and then you get back into the Soyuz's re-entry module. Don't waste any time. We'll control everything from here. You'll feel it disengage..." to get to the bomb. There's a hatch. You saw it on the diagram. You move it to where Ed showed you and then you get back into the Soyuz's re-entry module. Don't waste any time. We'll control everything from here. You'll feel it disengage..."

And then he was inside. They had certainly been right about the amount of s.p.a.ce. No adult would have been able to fit into it. He was lying on his back in a metal box that could have been some kind of complicated washing machine or water tank, his feet in the air and his legs so tightly packed in that his knees were touching his chin. There were tiny windows on either side but they were covered with some sort of material and he couldn't see out of them. There were no controls. Of course not. Arthur the orang-utan wouldn't have needed controls. Professor Sing was wiring him up. More monitors. Now Alex was the one who was sweating. They had told him he would sweat even more when he was in outer s.p.a.ce. Because of fluids moving up, the body's salt concentration being upset. Alex tried to put it out of his mind. He didn't even believe he would get there. He didn't think he would survive the journey.

Tamara Knight leant over him. He was strapped into his seat. His stomach was clenched tight and he had difficulty drawing the air into his lungs. He could move his arms but nothing else. He was already cramped and he hadn't even started. Her face was very close to his, filling his field of vision.

"Good luck, Alex," she whispered. Nothing more. She waved a hand with fingers crossed.

"You will hear the countdown," Professor Sing said. He was somewhere behind her. "You have nothing to worry about, Alex. We will guide you through it all. You'll hear us over the radio. We'll look after you."

They sealed the door. Alex felt the air inside the capsule compress. He swallowed, trying to clear his ears. Apart from the sound of his own breathing, everything was silent.

He was alone.

"T-minus thirty." A crackle and a hiss of static. The disembodied words had come through the headset. What did they mean? Thirty minutes until blast-off. In thirty minutes' time he would be leaving the planet! Alex tried to make himself more comfortable but he couldn't move.

"How are you doing, Alex?" It could have been Ed Shulsky talking. Alex didn't know. The voices echoed inside his head and they all sounded the same.

"T-minus twenty-five... T-minus twenty..."

He could only sit there, doubled up on himself, as the countdown continued. The strange thing was, it felt that time had gone wrong too. A minute seemed like half an hour. Yet half an hour was pa.s.sing in only minutes. He concentrated on his breathing.

"T-minus fifteen."

Inside the control room Ed Shulsky was watching Sing and his team of thirty as they went through the final preparations. He walked over to the professor. He was wearing a gun in a holster slung over his shirt.

"I don't mean to worry you right now, Professor," he muttered. "But I want you to know that if Alex Rider doesn't come out of this in one piece, I will personally rip your guts out."

"Of course!" Sing smiled nervously. "There's nothing to worry about. He'll be fine!"

Tamara Knight sat motionless in front of the observation window. Smoke was still rising from the rainforest where the Cessna had crashed. There were no birds to be seen. The whole island seemed to be tensing itself for the moment of launch.

"T-minus five."

What had happened to T-minus ten? Alex was feeling sick. The injection he'd been given hadn't worked. He could hear something in the distance. Was it his imagination or was something rumbling far below him?

"T-minus four ... three ... two ... one."

It began.

At first it was slow. Alex felt a shuddering, vague to start with, but soon it was all-consuming. The entire capsule was shaking. He wasn't sure if he was moving or not. There was a thud as the clamps holding down the rocket were automatically released. The shuddering got worse. Now the whole capsule was vibrating so crazily that Alex could feel the teeth being shaken in his skull. The noise level had risen too; it was now a roar that pounded at him with invisible fists and, lying on his back with his legs bent in front of him, there was nothing he could do. He was defenceless.

And still it got worse.

He was definitely rising; he could feel the force of the rocket's thrust. He was being pushed into the seat not pushed, crushed! His vision had almost gone. His eyeb.a.l.l.s were being mercilessly squeezed. He tried to open his mouth to scream but all his muscles had locked. He felt as if his face was being pulled off.

And then there was a deafening explosion and he was slammed forward in his seat, his neck straining, the belts cutting into his chest. Alex panicked, thinking it had all gone wrong, that part of the rocket had blown up and any moment now he would be either incinerated or sent plummeting back to earth. But then he remembered what he had been told. The first stage of the rocket had burnt out and been ejected. That was what he had heard and felt. G.o.d help him, he really was on the way. From nought to seventeen and a half thousand miles an hour in eight minutes.

Everything had been calculated. There should have been an ape inside the orbital module instead there was a boy. To the computers it made no difference. At exactly the right second, the next stage ignited and once again he was thrown forward, the g-forces pulverizing him. How long had pa.s.sed since the countdown had ended? Was he in outer s.p.a.ce yet? It seemed to him that the shaking was more violent than ever. The whole capsule had become a distorted ma.s.s of jagged, flickering lines, like the image on a broken TV screen. He was at max Q, sitting on four hundred and fifty tonnes of explosive, being rocketed through the sky at twenty-five times the speed of sound. The main engine was burning fuel at over one thousand gallons a second. If the Soyuz was going to blow up, it would happen now. He was on fire! Blinding light suddenly crashed into the capsule. A nuclear explosion. No. The fairings on the windows had come free. They weren't needed any more. He was looking at the sun, which was streaming in, dazzling him. Was that blue sky or the sea? How much longer could his body stand the battering it was receiving? It occurred to Alex that nothing in the world, no amount of training, could have prepared him for an experience like this.

The rocket stopped. That was what it felt like. The noise fell away and Alex felt a quite different sensation: a sick, light-headed floating that told him he had, in an instant, become weightless. He was about to test it but then the third stage kicked in and once again he was propelled forward on this impossible fairground ride. This time he closed his eyes, unable to take any more, and so didn't see the moment when he broke through the onion peel of the earth's atmosphere and went from blue to black.

At last he opened his eyes. He wanted to stretch but that was impossible. Alex looked out of the window and saw stars ... thousands of them. Millions. Once again, he had no sense of movement. Was he really weightless? He fumbled a hand into one of the pockets in his trousers and brought out a pencil a few centimetres long. He let it go. The pencil floated in front of him. Alex stared at it. Before he knew what he was doing, he was laughing. He couldn't stop himself. It really was like one of those cheap special effects in a Hollywood film. But there were no hidden wires. No computer trickery. It was happening right before his eyes.

"Alex? How are you? Are you receiving me?" Ed Shulsky's voice crackled in his ear, and the strange thing was that it sounded no different, no further away even though Alex was already almost a hundred miles from the earth's surface.

"I'm fine," Alex replied, and there was a tone of wonderment in his voice. He had survived the launch. He was on his way.

"Congratulations. You've just broken a world record. You're the youngest person in s.p.a.ce..."

He was in s.p.a.ce! With the shock of the launch behind him, Alex tried to relax and enjoy the view. But the windows were too small and in the wrong place. The earth was behind him and out of sight, but there were the stars and the infinite blackness all around. How strange it was, this sense that he was going nowhere. The pencil was still in front of him. He touched it with his finger and watched it spin. Round and round it went. Alex was hypnotized by it. Nothing else seemed to be moving. This wasn't a ride at all. He felt as if everything, his entire life, had stopped.

And then he saw Ark Angel.

At first he was aware of something shaped like a spider appearing in the periscope attached to the window inside the capsule. It looked like a star, but much brighter than the others. Gradually it drew closer. And suddenly it became clear, an awesome construction of silver modules and corridors, interlocking, criss-crossing, hanging from what looked like the tower of a crane, with ma.s.sive panels stretching out in every direction, absorbing the energy of the sun. It was huge; it weighed almost seven hundred tonnes. But it was floating effortlessly in the great emptiness of s.p.a.ce, and Alex had to remind himself that every piece of it had been laboriously constructed on earth and then carried up separately and a.s.sembled. It was an engineering feat beyond anything he had ever imagined.

Slowly Ark Angel filled his vision. Both he and the s.p.a.ce station were travelling at seventeen and a half thousand miles per hour, so fast that to Alex it made no sense at all. But he seemed to be going very slowly. Then a booster rocket fired and the Soyuz accelerated, moving in on the central docking port. It was the only way Alex could measure his progress through outer s.p.a.ce ... a few metres at a time, getting closer and closer. The rockets were controlled from Flamingo Bay but they were accurate to a fraction of a millimetre. Alex saw the curving metal plates, the intricate panel work that made up the s.p.a.ce station. He saw a painted Union Jack and the words ARK ANGEL printed in grey.

The last part of the journey seemed to take for ever. The s.p.a.ce station was swallowing him up and he had to remind himself that if something went wrong now it would have the impact of a bus smashing into a wall.

There was a slight jolt nothing compared to what he had felt earlier. That was it. A voice crackled in his headset and he thought he heard applause unless it was radio static. Whatever his misgivings about Professor Sing, it seemed that the flight director had been true to his word. Alex had arrived.

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. n.o.body 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 s.p.a.ce. 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 s.p.a.ce hotel. But of course, it was in truth a s.p.a.ce 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 s.p.a.ce 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 been horrible. Alex had seen Star Wars Star Wars. He'd watched Harrison Ford blast his way across the universe, and like millions of others he'd bought into the dream. The reality was nothing like it. His body was sending his brain weird signals. He was sweating. The balance of his inner ear had gone. His bones, no longer needed, were leaking calcium. His back was aching because of the elongation of his spine. Inside his stomach, his guts were floating helplessly, and because of the shift in his fluid level, he felt a desperate need to go to the toilet. None of this had ever happened to Harrison Ford.

And it got worse. Alex stopped spinning and found himself floating in the very centre of the module. Either he was moving very slowly or he wasn't moving at all. The rails and Velcro straps were now uselessly high above his head. He stretched out his arms and discovered that the walls were a couple of centimetres out of reach. It was like some terrible nightmare. Every time he strained forward, his body moved back. He was quite literally stranded, floating helplessly, going nowhere.

What now? How did he make himself go up or down? He jerked his body and pedalled with his legs. It didn't help. He tried waving his arms like a bird in a bad cartoon. Nothing.

Alex started to panic. n.o.body 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 Gabriel 7 on the far side of the s.p.a.ce 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 pa.s.sed! 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. on the far side of the s.p.a.ce 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 pa.s.sed! 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 b.u.t.ton, 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 h.e.l.l out. Fast."

It was ticking right now. Alex could imagine it. Just the two of them. Him and a bomb on a s.p.a.ce 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.