Starcross Read online

  ‘They are,’ I vowed.

  ‘And yet that one showed no wish to hurt you? It did not try to leap upon your head?’

  ‘No,’ I said, frowning as I tried to recall exactly what had happened.

  ‘Perhaps it did leap upon his head!’ Mrs Spinnaker pointed out. ‘It might have mesmerised him into thinking that it hadn’t.’

  ‘I am sure it didn’t,’ I promised her. ‘Indeed, it saved me from being mesmerised, for there was a hat in the closet in our sitting room, and I would have put it on had not that creature on the balcony said “Moob” when it did.’

  ‘Moob,’ mused Mother. ‘Whatever can that mean?’

  ‘Perhaps it is their name,’ I ventured. ‘Perhaps they are Moobs.’

  The Moobs (if that is what they were) were gathering together like blobs of black mercury, combining to form a larger pool. Mother stood beneath them, frowning upward.

  ‘One of these creatures has been controlling Sir Launcelot for a long time,’ she said. ‘It caused him to bring my old engine here. But for what purpose? What do they hope to achieve? I think they mean to use the machine to open a pathway to their own time … A stable pathway, through which an invading army of Moobs will swarm!’

  The black Moob-pool on the cavern roof quivered, as if it heard and understood.

  ‘But you cannot make the machine do what you want, can you, poor Moobs?’ she went on. ‘And so you caused me to be brought here, thinking that you could make me do what you could not. But I won’t help you, you know. I like all my worlds the way they are. I do not think the various races of the Sun would be half so interesting if they all wore top hats and did what they were told.’

  From the darkness of the Moob-pool, a dozen pairs of eyes gleamed down at her. A ripple ran across it, and, all of a sudden, it came unstuck from the cavern roof and fell. Mother flung up her arms to protect her head, but the Moobs came down on her like a douche of oil, and she fell to the floor engulfed in slithering blackness.

  ‘Mother!’ I shouted, leaping forward.

  Colonel Quivering held me back. ‘Steady, Art! Your mother is more than a match for those devils. Remember what Sir Launcelot said? They have no effect on her. Too strong-willed, I reckon, to give herself up to their mesmeric powers …’

  But he was wrong. One single Moob had not been enough to enslave Mother, but she was at the mercy of a dozen now, and soon her struggles ceased. She rose upright, clad in Moobs. Moobs on her hands like long black gloves, a Moob about her throat like a black choker, a gown of Moobs covering up her nightdress, a Moob upon her head stretching itself into a hat. Twelve pairs of Moobish eyes glinted like seed pearls amid the blackness. For a moment, as she stared at me, I saw a ghost of her old self behind her eyes. Then it was gone; she looked as lifeless as her own waxwork.

  She rose upright, clad in Moobs.

  ‘Moob!’ she murmured.

  ‘Mother!’ I howled, running to her, but she swatted me aside, and knocked aside the colonel too when he ran to my aid. She strode to the old engine, and her black-gloved hands seized the controls.

  ‘Stop her, someone!’ cried Mr Munkulus. But my Moobclad mother had eyes quite literally on the back of her head; when Mr Spinnaker and the colonel ran to wrest her from the controls, she kicked them to the floor without even looking round from her work. Exultant little black hands reached out of the caul of blackness that enwrapped her, tickling and pinching Mr Grindle until he shrieked for mercy.

  The cavern was filling with a weird music as the ancient engine began to work. I saw the strange spheres and pyramids and various nameless shapes which make up its workings begin to turn and shimmy and do the other unlikely things they do when it is working. Waves of dizziness spilled through the cavern, and Sir Launcelot clutched his hands over his ears and fell grovelling on the floor with his bottom in the air. I wish I had taken the opportunity to give it the kick which it so heartily deserved, but I was distracted at that moment by a most disagreeable sight.

  In the air above the machine, without so much as a puff of smoke or any fuss or bother, a Moob appeared. It hung quivering there, as if surprised, and then, quick as a flash, dived down and settled on the head of Colonel Quivering, who was closest to the point where it had sprung into being. In its place appeared another, and another, and suddenly a black geyser of the creatures seemed to be pouring into the chamber, whirling about like black leaves in a tempest.

  I saw one leap upon Mrs Spinnaker’s back and swarm up on to her head, transforming itself into a topper as it went. Mr Spinnaker lunged at it, but his wife caught him by both hands and held him tight while Colonel Quivering came up behind him and set a hungry hat upon his head. The two of them turned upon Sir Launcelot, who took aim at the colonel with a revolver, crying, ‘Keep away, you devil, d’you hear?’

  ‘Oh, you mustn’t shoot the colonel!’ shouted Mr Munkulus, dashing the revolver from Sir Launcelot’s hand, and a moment later a Moob had each of them; they struggled for a moment, and then turned, blank-eyed, on those of us who had not yet been possessed.

  Mr Grindle snatched up the fallen revolver, using it to put a bullet neatly through the middle of Colonel Quivering’s hypnotic hat.

  ‘Good gracious!’ said the old soldier, as the dying Moob dropped limply from his head. ‘The cheeky blighters! They had me again! I trust I did nothing regrettable while I was under their influence?’

  The pistol rang out again, again, and for a time it looked as though we might yet win, for old Grindle was a splendid shot and hats toppled from the heads of our hypnotised friends like targets in a shooting gallery. But the Moobs were too many and, one by one, each of our friends was caught again, and that sleep-walking look came back into their faces as they fell once more under the influence of those dreadful living hats, and at last poor Grindle was behatted, too.

  Through the midst of the fray came my own mother, white-faced and clad in Moobs, looking like a wicked witch in a fairy tale. She reached for me, and I saw Moob eyes glittering on the palms of her hands, but I whisked past her and dived into the shadows under the machine.

  It felt almost homely there. If I ignored the fading sounds of the battle in the cavern I could imagine myself back at Larklight in the old days. Yet I knew it would be only moments before a Moob found me.

  A half-glimpsed black shape on the floor made me cry out in horror, but it was only Sir Launcelot Sprigg’s hat, which had been knocked off the table in the fighting and rolled under the machine. A perfectly normal, respectable hat, made in dear old London …

  A sudden hope came to me. I put the hat on and squeezed my way back out into the cavern.

  ‘There is the Mumby boy,’ said Mrs Spinnaker, not in her own jolly voice but in a sort of ghostly sigh, a voice from the unimaginable future of the Moobs.

  ‘Are all accounted for?’ asked my mother, and it was horrible, horrible to hear her speaking Moobish thoughts in that flat, Moobish voice.

  ‘Not all,’ said Colonel Quivering flatly. ‘The girl, Myrtle, and the Frenchwoman and her companion, and the Honourable Mr Flint are still at large.’

  ‘They will be found and controlled.’

  ‘We must begin the next stage of the plan,’ announced Mr Munkulus.

  ‘Starcross has returned to 1851. The train will be ready. The first batch must be delivered to Modesty at once.’

  In the midst of this terrible council I stood with Sir Launcelot’s too-big hat upon my head, hoping that the others wouldn’t spot that it was not a Moob, praying that they would not see how I shook and quaked and doing my utmost to maintain a look of dull indifference. And when they began to move, when they started marching up the metal stairs to go and find Myrtle and Jack and Miss Beauregard and subject them to the same strange transformation, there was nothing I could do but go with them.

  Mother did not even glance at me; she was intent upon the machine and already unscrewing the bolts which held its inspection panels in place. I passed her by and climbed the stairs with all
the others.

  Oh, how I wanted to look back at her when I reached the top! But I knew a Moob would not look back, and if I had, and she had happened to glance up, she would have seen the tears which were running freely down my cheeks!

  So I stepped through that door and left her there, not knowing if I would ever see her again. The others spread out through the hotel, calling in their ghostly Moobish voices, ‘Myrtle! Myrtle! Miss Beauregard! Mr Flint!’ Even the hoverhogs now wore top hats and had left off their truffling after crumbs to glide about grunting, ‘Moob, moob!’ and peeking into corners for some sign of the fugitives. I hoped for a moment that Jack might spring out and save us all. But the hope was in vain; the Moobs got no answer to their calls, nor did Jack appear. And so I went out through the front door and down to the promenade, and ran.

  For, you see, I did not think I had any hope of saving Myrtle from those Moobs. I could but pray that she was hiding somewhere they would not find her, and that, if they should, they would not make her do anything unladylike which might cause her embarrassment when she found out about it later.

  As for myself, the only thing that I could do was to find my way to Modesty, and trust that I might alert the authorities there to the coming storm.

  Chapter Fifteen

  In Which I Make Good My Escape and Gain an Unexpected Ally, Only to Find Myself Pursued across the Gulfs of Space!

  I ran through the night, feeling very fearful that Starcross might return to ancient Mars at any moment and leave me with no means of escape. But it did not; the sky remained the sky of 1851, jet black and polkadotted with asteroids, and I reached the railway station without incident. The train from Modesty had come in, and had already been unloaded and refuelled and turned about, ready to make its long return trip. The railway automata who had done all the work were nowhere to be seen, having presumably beetled off to refuel themselves. I crossed the rails in front of the idling locomotive, and saw ahead of me, on a siding, the hand-car which I had noticed on the night we arrived.

  I wonder if you have ever seen a hand-car? They are used by railwaymen who have to go out to check the line, or search for lost trains. They generally resemble a flat railway wagon, with a sort of see-saw arrangement in the middle that has a handle on each end in place of seats. Two men may stand on either side of this contraption and, by pumping it up and down, propel the vehicle along the rails at a fair speed. Naturally, being adapted for use in the open aether, the hand-car I was preparing to steal had a glass cabin with its own air supply and a small gravity generator, but in all other respects it was the image of an earthly one.

  I doubled back to pull the lever which changed the points, so that the hand-car would be able to leave its siding. I had just succeeded in shifting it when sounds from behind made me look round, and then seek concealment in a handy pool of shadow beneath the water-tower.

  On the road from the hotel lights were showing, and in another moment a mechanised wagon came clattering and steaming into the station. My poor Moob-hatted friends piled out, intent on some fresh errand for their masters. I cursed my ill luck, for if they had arrived five minutes later I should have been safe on my way, but as it was I had no choice but to crouch there and watch as they began unloading stacks of round white objects from the wagon and carrying them in teetering piles to the waiting train.

  I could not understand at first what those white things were. Giant pills? Wheels of cheese? No! A chill of pure terror run through me. They were hatboxes! And every single one, no doubt, held a Moob, waiting to spring upon the head of some unsuspecting person when the train reached Modesty and Decorum, and bend them to the Moobish will!

  If I had not been so alarmed, it might have been quite comical to spy upon my friends as they stumbled to and fro with those heaps of boxes. Hypnosis seemed to have made them clumsy, and they were forever dropping boxes, which drew indignant cries of ‘Moob!’ from those inside.

  Nipper, even clumsier than the rest, at last tripped over his own feet and measured his length upon the station platform, and the hat rolled off his head and dropped with a cry of annoyance on to the rails beneath the train.20 At once the dull light of mesmerism vanished from his eyes; they rose up on their stalks and peered about in great fear and confusion. Then, as understanding dawned, he sprang up and started to run, shouting out, ‘Help! Help! The Moobs! The Moobs are upon us!’

  It was horrible to see the cold way in which the poor crab’s friends and fellow guests pursued him, and, producing a Moob from one of the boxes, forced it down upon his shell and made him meek and obedient once again. More horrible still, from my point of view, was the fact that this pursuit brought them close to where I was hiding. I tried not to breathe or even move as the Moob-slaves turned to resume their task. But I must have made some small noise – or else Moobs can detect the thoughts of their prey – for the Moob that sat upon the head of Mrs Spinnaker, who was the last to go, suddenly swivelled around like one of the gun turrets on those new ironclad aether-dreadnoughts, and I knew that it had sensed me.

  Mrs Spinnaker turned and walked towards the water-tower, closer and closer to the shadows where I was crouched. I felt about upon the ground for some weapon I might use to defend myself, but found none. Then I saw the dangling chain which operated the tower. As Mrs Spinnaker saw me, and turned to call out to the others, I leapt up and pulled it. The tower’s hose swung out like the trunk of a helpful iron elephant, and a white cataract of chilly water engulfed Mrs Spinnaker and myself, quite blinding us both for a moment and knocking us to the ground. As I had hoped, it startled Mrs Spinnaker’s Moobish hat, which fell from her head, losing its hat-shape, coughing and spluttering and choking and waving its tiny hands about.

  ‘Oh lawks!’ exclaimed Mrs Spinnaker. ‘Now where am I?’

  ‘Run, Mrs Spinnaker!’ I shouted, for already the Moobs’ other slaves were hastening to where we sat. ‘That hand-car is our only hope!’

  A lady as large as Mrs S. does not rise easily, especially when her clothes are sodden with water, and Colonel Quivering and Nipper were almost upon us by the time I had her upright. But she felled Nipper with a firm punch upon the carapace, a technique she had no doubt picked up in the East End pubs where she had started her career, and, taking my hand, let me lead her across the confusion of starlit rails and sleepers to the waiting car.

  It was unlocked, thank Heaven! We leapt aboard – I seized a handle and Mrs Spinnaker seized the other – and together we began to heave for dear life. With painful sloth at first, but swiftly gathering speed, the hand-car started to move. It wiggled its way over the points I had set for it, and started up the long slope of the bridge, which was not as hard a climb as I had feared, for Starcross’s gravity soon released its grip upon us, and we were in space, where there is neither up nor down and precious little friction, so that an object once set in motion may carry almost for ever. We continued working the car’s handle regardless, until it was singing along the rails at a speed of several hundred miles per hour.

  Then, breathless, we paused in our labours and, avoiding the handles, which continued to pump up and down on their own, looked out through the back of the car’s glass canopy. Starcross was a speck astern, dwindling into the asteroid-freckled sky.

  ‘My poor ’Erbert!’ sighed Mrs Spinnaker, wringing out the wet hems of her skirts. ‘He never did ’ave much brain, and now what ’e ’ad’s been stolen.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Mrs Spinnaker,’ I said bravely – for it is the duty of a British boy to keep up the spirits of those about him at times like that – ‘we shall return, and save him. We’ll get to Modesty and Decorum, and let the authorities there know what’s what.’

  ‘We’ll have to hurry, then,’ said Mrs S. ‘Look!’

  She pointed out through the glass. Far behind us, where the bright rails narrowed towards distant Starcross like a diagram of perspective in a drawing class, I saw a white cauliflower-shape bloom against the dark.

  ‘Steam!’ I cried.


  ‘The train!’ said Mrs Spinnaker. ‘They’re coming after us!’

  ‘We’re done for!’ I said despondently. ‘Now I shall never save Mother, nor find out what has become of poor Myrtle …’

  Then it was time for Mrs Spinnaker to raise my spirits, which she did by directing me to take my place again at the handle. ‘How fast can we make this contraption go?’ she wondered. ‘Pretty fast, I reckon. Faster than that train? Well, maybe. And let’s ’ave a song to cheer us on our way; those Moobs won’t be singing, and perhaps that’s how we’ll best ’em, eh, Art?’

  And so we sang. We sang ‘My Flat Cat’ and ‘Nobby Knocker’s Noggin’. We sang ‘Tom O’Bedlam’ and ‘Ganymede Fair’. We sang and pumped, and pumped and sang, and our wet clothes steamed, filling the cabin with a smell of damp serge, while the asteroids and spatial reefs turned to the merest blur beyond our windows.

  What a race that was! The hand-car had no speedometer, so I cannot be sure, but I am willing to wager that it was moving faster than any hand-car has in the whole history of the Solar Realms, or ever shall!

  And yet, for all our songs and striving, the Moobs’ train moved faster. Mrs Spinnaker had her back to it, but when I looked past her through the hand-car’s canopy I could see it drawing ever nearer. At first it was a mere cloud of steam, then steam and lights. For a while, on a long bend, it must have slowed, for it fell back and I felt sure that we were winning. But then it began to gain on us steadily, until I could see the brass handle gleaming on the front of its boiler and the grid-like catcher it carried to shove luckless aetheric wildlife from its path.

  ‘Mrs Spinnaker?’ I ventured.

  ‘What’s that, dearie?’ The good woman’s face was quite glowing with the effort of her exertions. ‘Sing up!’ she advised.