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O’Keefe saw Heidrun setting off along the other side of the gorge.

‘Yes,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Me too, as a matter of fact.’

* * *

Nina Hedegaard was freshening herself up, and freshening Julian up as well. He lay on his back as she guided him like a joystick. He didn’t have to do much more than put his arms around her buttocks and contract his own from time to time, to establish counter-pressure – at least that was normally how things worked, but at the moment her soft, tanned, golden body weighed only nine and a half kilos, and threatened to bounce away whenever he thrust too enthusiastically. On the Moon, taking possession of strategically crucial millimetres called for basic knowledge of applied mechanics: where exactly to grip, what contribution the muscles had to make – biceps, triceps, pectoralis major – holding the hip bones like a hinge, drawing them to him, pushing them away at a precisely calculated angle, then bringing them back down … It was all frustratingly complicated. They managed to crack the problem at one point, but Julian didn’t feel entirely comfortable. As Hedegaard slowly writhed her way towards a G-spot tornado measuring 5 on the Fujita scale, he was lost in idiotic thoughts, like the consequences of sex on the Moon if a few meddlesome beams in New Zealand had been enough to make little Maoris. Could they expect decuplets? Would Nina squat like a termite queen in the rocky seclusion of the Gaia Hotel, her abdomen monstrously swollen, popping out a human child every four seconds, or would she simply burst?

He stared at her glimmering, carefully trimmed, downy thicket and saw tiny trains driving through it, glittering reflections on spun gold, while his own Lunar Express valiantly stoked the engine. Hedegaard started moaning in Danish, usually a good sign, except that today it sounded somehow cryptic to his ears, as if he were to be sacrificed on the altar of her desire, to bring a Julian or a Juliana into the world as quickly as possible, a future Master or Miss Orley, and he started feeling uneasy. She was twenty-eight years younger than him. He hadn’t asked her for ages what
she
expected from all this, not least because in the few private moments that they enjoyed together he hadn’t had time to ask any questions, so quickly had they leapt out of their clothes, but eventually he would have to ask her. Above all he would have to ask
himself
. Which was much worse, because he already knew the answer, and it wasn’t that of a sixty-year-old man.

He tried to hold out, then he reached his orgasm.

The climax peaked in a brief erasure of all thoughts, swept clean the convolutions of his brain and reinforced the certainty that old was still twenty years older than he was. For a moment he felt immersed in the pure, delicious moment. Nina snuggled up to him, and his suspicion immediately welled up again. As if sex were merely the pleasurable preamble to a stack of small print, a magnificent portal leading inevitably to the nursery, the most perfidious kind of ambush. He looked helplessly at the blonde shock of hair on his chest. Not that he wanted rid of her. He actually didn’t want her to go. It would have been enough for her simply to turn back into the astronaut whose job it was to entertain his guests without that moist promise in her eyes that she would
never leave him
, that henceforth she would
always
be there for him, for a whole
lifetime
! He ran his pointed fingers through the down on the back of her neck, embarrassed by his own reaction.

‘I ought to get back to the control room,’ he murmured.

His suggestion met with harsh, muted sounds.

‘Okay, in ten minutes,’ he agreed. ‘Shall we shower?’

In the bathroom the general luxury of the equipment continued. Tropically warm rain sprang from a generously curved shower-head, droplets so light that they floated down rather than falling. Hedegaard insisted on soaping him, and concentrated an excess of foam on a small if expanding area. His concern about her excessive demands made way for fresh arousal; the shower cabin was spacious and resplendent with all kinds of handy grips, Hedegaard pressed herself against him and he into her and – bang! – another thirty minutes had passed.

‘I’ve really got to go now,’ he said into his fluffy towel.

‘Will we meet up again later?’ she asked. ‘After dinner?’

He had towel in his eyes, towel in his ears. He didn’t hear her, or at least not loudly enough, and when he was about to ask what she’d said she was on the phone to Peter Black about something technical. He slipped quickly into jeans and T-shirt, kissed her quickly on the cheek and disappeared before she could end the call.

Seconds later he stepped into the control room and found Lynn in a hushed conversation with Dana Lawrence. Ashwini Anand was planning routes for the coming day on a three-dimensional map. Half the room was dominated by a holographic wall, whose windows showed the public areas of the hotel from the perspective of
surveillance cameras. Only the suites were unobserved. In the pool, Heidrun, Finn and Miranda were having a diving competition, watched by Olympiada Rogacheva, whose husband was having a weight-lifting contest with Evelyn Chambers in the gym. The outside cameras showed Marc Edwards and Mimi Parker playing tennis, or at least Julian assumed that it was Marc and Mimi, while the golf-players on the far side of the gorge were just setting off for home.

‘Everything okay with you guys?’ he asked in a pointedly cheerful voice.

‘Great.’ Lynn smiled. Julian noticed that she looked somehow chalky, as if she were the only person in the room being illuminated by a different light source. ‘How was your trip?’

‘Argumentative. Mimi and Karla were discussing the copulative habits of higher beings. We need a telescope on Mons Blanc.’

‘So you can spy on them?’ Lawrence asked without a hint of amusement.

‘Hell no, just to get a better view of the hotel. God! I thought everyone would be so awestruck up here that they’d be falling into each other’s arms, and instead they’re banging on about the Holy Ghost.’ His eye wandered to the window that showed the station. ‘Has the train left again?’ he asked casually.

‘Which train?’

‘The Lunar Express. The LE-2, I mean, the one that came in last night. Has it set off again already?’

Dana stared at him as if he had thrown a pile of syllables at her feet and demanded that she cobble a sentence together.

‘The LE-2 hasn’t arrived.’

‘It hasn’t?’

Anand turned round and smiled. ‘No, that was the LE-1, the one you arrived on yesterday.’

‘I know. And where has it been? In the meantime?’

‘In the meantime?’

‘What are you actually talking about?’ Lynn asked.

‘Well, about—’ Julian hesitated. The screen really did show only one train. He felt a dark premonition creeping up on him, that it was the same Lunar Express that had brought them here. Which led to the reverse conclusion that—

‘A train did pull in this morning,’ he insisted defiantly.

His daughter and Dana exchanged a swift glance.

‘Which one?’ asked Dana, as if walking on glass.

‘That one there.’ Julian pointed impatiently at the screen.

Silence.

‘Certainly not,’ Anand tried again. ‘The LE-1 hasn’t left the station since it got here.’

‘But I’ve seen it.’

‘Julian—’ Lynn began.

‘When I was looking out of the window!’

‘Dad, you can’t have seen it!’

If she had told him she’d temporarily lent the train to a dozen aliens, he would have been less concerned. Only a few hours ago he would have put it all down to a hallucination. Not any more.

‘It’s one thing after another,’ he sighed. ‘Today I met Carl Hanna, okay? At half past five in the corridor, and then—’

‘I’m sorry, but what were you doing in the corridor at half past five?’

‘Neither here nor there! Earlier, anyway—’

Hanna? Exactly, Hanna! He would have to ask Hanna. Perhaps he had seen that ominous train. After all, he had been down there before him, exactly at the same time as—

Just a moment. Hanna had come towards him from the station.

‘No,’ he said to himself. ‘No, no.’

‘No?’ Lynn tilted her head on one side. ‘What do you mean, no?’

Mad! Completely absurd. Why would Hanna be taking secret joyrides on the Lunar Express?

‘Is it possible that you’ve been dreaming?’ she continued. ‘Hallucinating?’

‘I was wide awake.’

‘Fine, you were awake. To get back to the question of what you were doing at half past five—’

‘Simple insomnia! God almighty, I went for a walk.’

His eye scoured the monitor wall. Where was the Canadian? There, in the Mama Quilla Club. Slouching, sipping cocktails, on a sofa, with the Donoghues, Nairs and Locatellis.

‘Maybe Julian’s right,’ Dana Lawrence said thoughtfully. ‘Maybe we really did miss something.’

‘Nonsense, Dana, no way.’ Lynn shook her head. ‘We both know that no train left. Ashwini knows that too.’

‘Do we really know?’

‘Nothing was delivered, no one went anywhere.’

‘Easy to check.’ Dana walked to the monitor wall and opened a menu. ‘We just have to look at the recording.’

‘Ridiculous! Absolutely ridiculous!’ Lynn was getting tense. ‘We don’t need to look at a recording.’

‘With the best will in the world, I can’t imagine why you’re so resistant to the
idea,’ Julian said, amazed. ‘Let’s take a look at it. We should have done that straight away.’

‘Dad, we’ve got everything under control.’

‘As you wish,’ said Lawrence. ‘As a matter of fact it’s
my
job to keep everything here under control, isn’t it, Lynn? That’s why you employed me in the first place. I’m ultimately responsible for the security of your hotel and the wellbeing of your guests, and monorails that operate all by themselves are at odds with that.’

Lynn shrugged. Dana waited for a moment, then issued instructions with darting fingers. Another window opened, showed the interior of the station hall. The time-code said 27 May 2025, 05.00.

Should we go further back?’

‘No.’ Julian shook his head. ‘It was between five fifteen and five thirty.’

Dana nodded and ran quickly through the recording.

Nothing happened. The LE-1 didn’t leave the station, and the LE-2 didn’t pull in either. God in heaven, Julian thought, Lynn’s right. I’m hallucinating. He tried to catch her eye and she avoided his, visibly upset that he hadn’t simply believed her.

‘Hmm,’ he murmured. ‘Hmm, okay. Sorry.’

‘Nothing to be sorry about,’ Dana said seriously. ‘It was entirely possible.’

‘It wasn’t,’ Lynn snarled. When she looked at him at last, her pupils were flickering with fury. ‘Are you actually sure that you didn’t dream that stupid walk of yours? Maybe you weren’t in the corridor at all. Maybe you were just
in bed
.’

‘As I said, I’m sorry.’ Taken aback, he wondered why she was so furious with him. He’d just wanted to be doubly sure. ‘Let’s just forget it, I made a mistake.’

Instead of answering she stepped up to the monitor wall, tapped in a series of orders and opened another set of recordings. Dana watched, arms folded, while Ashwini Anand pretended she wasn’t even there. Julian recognised the underground corridor, 05.20.

‘That really isn’t necessary,’ he hissed.

‘It isn’t?’ Lynn raised her eyebrows. ‘Why not? You wanted to be doubly sure, after all.’

She launched the sequence before he could start protesting again. After a few seconds Carl Hanna appeared and climbed on one of the moving walkways. He approached the end of the corridor, looked through the window into the station concourse and disappeared into one of the gangways that led to the train, only to reappear, seconds later, and be carried back again. Almost simultaneously, Julian stepped out of the lift.

‘Congratulations,’ Lynn said frostily. ‘You were telling the truth.’

‘Lynn—’

She brushed the ash-blonde hair off her forehead and turned to face him. Behind the fury in her eyes he thought he recognised something else. Fear, Julian thought. My God, she’s frightened! Then, all of a sudden, his daughter smiled, and her smile seemed to erase her fury as completely as if she knew nothing in life but benevolence and forgiveness. With a swing of her hips she came over to him, gave him a smacking kiss on the cheek and boxed him in the ribs.

‘Let me know when a UFO lands,’ she grinned, and left headquarters.

Julian stared after her. ‘I will,’ he murmured.

And suddenly the ghostly thought came to him that his daughter was an actress.

* * *

And yet!

In an act of childish perseverance he went to the Mama Quilla Club, whose dance floor was mysteriously illuminated under the eternal light show of the starry sky. Michio Funaki was mixing cocktails behind the bar. When he saw him, Warren Locatelli shot to his feet and raised his glass to him, waving his other hand wildly.

‘Julian! That was the most brilliant day of any holiday I’ve ever had!’

‘Impressive, really.’ Aileen Donoghue laughed in her tinkling soprano. ‘Even if we’ve had to learn golf all over again.’

‘Golf, bullshit!’ Locatelli pressed Julian to his chest and pulled him over to the seated group. ‘Carl and I went charging around in those moon buggies, it was absolutely crazy! You’ve got to build a racetrack up here, a real fucking Le Mans de la Lune!’

‘And he didn’t even win,’ giggled Momoka Omura. ‘He almost flattened his buggy.’

‘More to the point, he nearly flattened
me
,’ said Rebecca Hsu, placing a single peanut between her lips. ‘Warren’s company is inspiring, particularly when you think about moon burials.’

‘We had a wonderful day,’ smiled Sushma Nair. ‘Do come and join us.’

‘Right away.’ Julian smiled. ‘Just for a little while. Carl, have you got a minute?’

‘Of course.’ Hanna swung his legs off his sofa.

‘Just don’t go missing on me,’ Locatelli laughed. Recently he and Hanna had been spending a lot of time together. One chatty, the other taciturn, somehow strange, but plainly a friendship was developing there. They went to the bar, where Julian ordered the most complicated cocktail on the menu, an Alpha Centauri.