Kaspar had gone up in Gabriel 7. And Alex knew why. His own experience of the launch should have made him see that it would have been completely insane to try sending an armed bomb into space. The terrible vibrations would have set it off before it had even left the atmosphere. Only when it was in space could it be armed, and that had meant sending someone up with it. Kaspar. But now he needed to get back again. That was the point of the second rocket. Professor Sing must have known all along. The Soyuz had been sent up to collect him. And Kaspar would surely have left instructions behind. If anything went wrong, if the rocket didn’t arrive, the professor would have been killed. No wonder he had looked so nervous! In the end, he had made a choice. Send the rocket and let the two of them fight it out.
That was something else Alex understood. There were now two of them in the space station. But there was only one seat home.
Kaspar passed through the first node, where he was bathed momentarily in soft, pink light before he emerged into the glare of the next module. He seemed to be adept at manipulating himself in zero gravity.
He had aimed carefully and pushed off lightly. One hand touched a wall to correct himself; the other still clasped the knife. He was taking his time—but then he knew Alex had nowhere to hide. Just seconds remained before they would come face to face in a module barely large enough for them both.
Alex searched around him for a weapon, anything he could use to defend himself. But everything was packed down too neatly. The cupboards and lockers were closed. He was still feeling sick and disorientated and every movement he made threatened to propel him in the wrong direction. If he lost control and went into another spin he would be finished. Kaspar would cut him to pieces.
Kaspar passed through the next node. In a few moments he would arrive in the same module as Alex. The sleeping area. This was the place Professor Sing and Ed Shulsky had shown him on the map. The heart of Ark Angel. It seemed an appropriate meeting point. Maybe he could reason with Kaspar. The mission was pointless now—surely he would see sense?
But Alex doubted it. Kaspar’s eyes looked empty, mad. There was a twisted smile on his lips. The knife he was holding was a Sabatier, the blade a single piece of high carbon stainless steel, hand-honed and about ten centimetres long. Where had he got it from? He couldn’t possibly have brought it with him. Then Alex remembered. Ark Angel was a hotel. One day it might have a chef cutting sirloin steak for some American multimillionaire, and someone had made sure he was properly equipped. Kaspar must have picked up the knife as he passed through the kitchen.
As Kaspar entered the sleeping area, Alex did the only thing he could. He crouched low, then kicked out, propelling himself along, a few inches above the floor, as if he were swimming underwater in a pool. His movement caught Kaspar unawares, and the man sailed past above him. Alex realized that there was one thing you couldn’t do in zero gravity: change direction. Kaspar continued to the far wall, but as he passed him he slashed down with the knife. Alex felt the tip cut into the suit between his shoulder blades. He was lucky. Another few millimetres and it would have drawn blood. It had sliced the suit’s material but hadn’t pierced his skin.
Kaspar reached the far wall and clung onto one of the handholds. Alex continued through into the next module and managed to stop himself. He found himself surrounded by gym equipment: a treadmill, a pair of chest expanders, a rowing machine—but nothing he could throw at Kaspar. Where were the weights? Of course, there was no point having weights in a weightless environment. Alex scrabbled for one of the lockers and the door fell open. There were tools inside. A hammer, a curiously shaped ratchet, some sort of bolt tightener. He grabbed the hammer, pulled it free and held it in front of him.
Alex turned and saw Kaspar preparing to launch a second attack. The man seemed crazed, as if he were on drugs. Perhaps he was. Or perhaps he found the experience of being in space as terrifying as Alex did.
“Kaspar!” Alex wasn’t sure what to call him. What was his real name? Magnus Payne? But that wasn’t how the two knew each other. “It’s over,” he went on. “There’s no point in this. Drevin is dead. The CIA’s in control on Flamingo Bay.”
“You’re lying!”
“How do you think I got here? There’s nothing for you to do. Dropping Ark Angel on Washington—there’s no point. Drevin’s dead.”
“No!”
Two continents twisted in anger and disbelief as Kaspar kicked off, this time travelling diagonally down.
Alex knew there was no point trying to reason with him. Whatever had happened on Flamingo Bay, Kaspar needed the Soyuz. Alex stood in his way. So Alex had to die.
Kaspar flew towards him. Alex brought the hammer round and threw it with all his strength. For a moment he thought it would travel in slow motion. Wasn’t that what happened in films? But it didn’t. The hammer spun at full speed through the air and hit Kaspar on the shoulder. But would the hammer do any damage if it weighed nothing? Once again Alex thought back to his physics class, starting work on his GCSEs. The hammer picked up energy because of motion; the energy was dispersed when it came to rest.
In this instance, it came to rest because it had hit Kaspar square on. Kaspar howled and dropped the knife.
Energy dispersed equalled pain!
But the forward motion was enough to send Alex stumbling back, and for a moment he lost control. His shoulders crashed into a wall. Or perhaps it was the ceiling or the floor. It made no difference. Kaspar had leapt forward. He plunged down as if he had been fired from a gun, and a second later he was on top of Alex.
The blue and green skin of the man’s face was just inches away. Eyes full of hatred glared at him. Kaspar’s hands closed around his throat and began to tighten. The man was strangling him. And there was nothing Alex could do. He had no gadgets, no weapons. He couldn’t even move. He could feel metal plates against his shoulders, one of the lockers pressing into his back. Kaspar was floating horizontally above him, connected to Alex only by his hands. The breath was no longer reaching Alex’s lungs; the grip was too tight. He felt dizzy. In a few seconds he would pass out.
Barely knowing what he was doing, he scrabbled behind him. His knuckles brushed against some sort of lever. What was it? Even as his consciousness began to leave him, Alex remembered. He knew what the lever did. But now he couldn’t find it. Desperately he lashed out and his flailing hand caught hold of it. He pulled down.
The shutter opened and the light that had almost blinded him before exploded into the module a second time, shafting in over his shoulder. The window was facing directly into the sun and the light had a physical force as it burst in. Alex could feel it burning his neck and shoulders. The whole capsule seemed to disintegrate into a brilliant chaos of white and silver, all other colours sucked out.
Kaspar screamed as the light seared his eyes. It was as if he had been punched in the face by the sun itself,
