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 space at all, just hours after Gabriel 71 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 space, and the space 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 identity. 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 stitched onto the sleeve.
Straps passed 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 glasses 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,” Alex muttered. “All right.” He rolled up his sleeve.
“Not your arm, Alex. This goes in your butt…”
He wondered why they hadn’t given him a proper spacesuit, 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 spacesuit. You will be inside a sealed capsule.
If there was a leak, it’s true that you would need a spacesuit 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 space like this, without months of training. Tamara never left his side, trying to reassure him. A fourteen-year- old was more adaptable than an adult, she said. It was going to be a bumpy ride, but he would come through it comfortably because 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 space 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 space.
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…”
