Outpost

Simon was swaddled in sheets. He lay on a stretcher. Ghost lifted the stretcher and the body slid into the water.

‘As they came from their mother’s womb, so they shall go again, naked as they came. We brought nothing into the world, and we take nothing out. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.’

The shrouded body floated just beneath the surface. Ghost pushed the corpse away from the ice with a golf club. It drifted away, drawn by the current, a white phantom shape beneath the water.

‘Support us, O Lord, all the long day of this troubled life, until the shadows lengthen and the evening comes, the busy world is hushed, the fever of life is over and our work is done. Then, Lord, in your mercy grant us a safe lodging, a holy rest, and peace at the last; through Christ our Lord. Amen.’

The crew walked back to the rig. Nobody spoke.

Jane stood with Punch and looked out to sea.

‘I feel like I’m doing more harm than good,’ she said.

‘Shall we go and find your asteroid?’

‘Yeah. Let’s get away from this misery for a while.’

The Crater

Jane steered the zodiac. Counter-intuitive: turn the outboard left to steer right.

‘Keep us about three hundred metres from shore,’ instructed Punch. ‘We don’t want to rip the bottom out of the boat.’

They followed the coastline. They hugged a ridge of lunar rock and black shingle.

A milky film in the water. Grease ice. The ocean starting to freeze.

Jane looked back. A rare chance to see the totality of the rig.

The refinery was constructed around three great distillation tanks, each the size of a cathedral. The structure was spiked by radio masts and cranes. The platform floated on four buoyant legs. It was tethered to the seabed by cables as thick as a redwood tree trunk. It looked like something out of a nightmare: a squat spider big enough to crush cities. A million tons of steel. Product of twenty different slipways. Assembled in a deep-water fjord and towed north.

‘Terrifying,’ said Jane.

‘What is?’

‘It’s one thing to sit with our feet up in the canteen, dreaming up plans to sail home. It’s another thing to see it for real. The ocean. The ice. We wouldn’t last a day.’

‘We have time to prepare,’ said Punch. ‘Plenty of survival gear aboard Rampart. And you wouldn’t be out here alone. We would have each other. Ghost is a solid guy. Kind of man you can rely upon in a crisis.’ ‘Yeah.’

‘And we have you.’

‘Sure. When we run out of food I’ll be first in the pot.’

‘I saw a kid on TV a few years back,’ said Punch. ‘He went hiking in the Rockies. He got hit by a landslide. He woke up with his arm pinned by a boulder. He lay there for a couple of days hoping for rescue. Nobody came, so he used his belt as a tourniquet, then sawed off his arm with a penknife.’

‘Good God.’

‘Picked up his canteen and walked back to civilisation minus an arm.’

‘Damn.’

‘This is your moment. You know that, right? I’ve seen you, since this shit kicked off. It’s like watching someone wake from a long sleep.’

‘But what good is it?’ asked Jane, looking out to sea. ‘In the face of this. All our heroism. All our will to live. It’s a bad joke.’

Sian cleared Simon’s room in Medical. She gathered up his dogtags, his signet ring, his watch. She found a heavily annotated copy of Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations in his coat pocket. She put it all in a plastic box and gave it to Nikki.

Nikki was in the observation bubble staring out to sea.

‘Thanks,’ she said, as Sian handed her the box. She tossed it aside without looking at it.

Nikki spent the afternoon scanning wavebands.

She turned up the volume and put her ear to the speaker.

‘Are you sure you heard it?’ asked Sian.

‘There was a voice. Male. English. It faded in and out. Has done for days.’

She turned the dial.

‘There. You hear it?’

‘… elp… ear us?..urgent assis..!

‘Get your coat. We have to boost the range on this thing.’

Nikki found a coil of steel cable in the boathouse. She carried it to the upper deck.

‘What do you have in mind?’ asked Sian.

‘When I was at university I had a crappy transistor radio on my desk. It had a broken aerial. If I let the stub of the aerial touch my anglepoise lamp I got a signal. Maybe we can lengthen the antenna and pull the same trick.’

‘Perhaps we should talk to Ghost. He might be able to help.’

‘Girl, you’ve got to shake off that passive mindset. We’re in deep shit. You can’t constantly rely on Ghost to kiss it all better. You’ve got to start taking care of yourself.’

The short-wave antenna was a scaffold spike four metres tall. Nikki climbed the spike and lashed the cable to the top. She climbed down. She tied the other end of the cable to a balloon pod.

‘Okay. Stand back.’

She pulled the red rip cord. The plastic case split open. Silver balloon fabric spilled, unravelled and began to inflate. An explosive roar as the helium canister discharged. The foil swelled and rose. The balloon lifted skyward taking the cable with it. A silver teardrop shimmering like a globule of mercury. The cable extended the antenna ten metres.