Starcross Page 15

  Jack stopped and turned and stared at her. I thought for a moment that he had finally seen sense and realised what a ghastly blister she was, such was the look of dawning revelation that broke across his features. But he said, ‘You’re right, Myrtle,’ and then, turning to the Threls in their disguise, ‘How much wool do you fellows have about you?’

  Mrs Grinder’s head vanished inside her poke bonnet and a great deal of muttering came from within her black bombazine bosom as her various portions debated among themselves. Then her head reappeared and said, ‘About four balls each, we reckon, plus Corporal Boke’s swiped a couple of lovely jumpers we can unpick.’

  ‘That should be enough!’ cried Jack.

  ‘Enough for what?’ asked Delphine’s Moob, and I should dearly have loved to hear Jack’s answer, but he was already haring away through the fog towards the Liberty and calling out for the rest of us not to dally.

  We parted from Mrs Spinnaker at the foot of the Liberty’s gangplank, where the dockhands, still quite overwhelmed at finding the Cockney Nightingale in their midst, vowed to take her post-haste to the Governor. Ten minutes more found us soaring into the aether once again.

  I had been afraid that even ten minutes would give the Sophronia time enough to escape, but the approaches to Modesty and Decorum are treacherous, and there is really only one channel between the various asteroidal shoals and reefs. It is marked out with buoys, whose gas lamps gleam in the dark like a road of lights, and far ahead of us along that road we could see the Sophronia’s stern-lanterns twinkling as she sped towards open space.

  Not that I had very much time to keep a lookout. Myrtle and I were forced to work hard, jumping to obey Jack’s orders whenever he needed something done. For the Threls who had helped him work the ship before were now all busy, sitting cross-legged in a circle in mid-air and knitting for all they were worth. Honestly, to see the way their needles flashed, you would think they could have finished their World Cosy long ago and knitted nice scarves and mufflers for half the other worlds as well.

  And all around us, quite drowning out the clickety-click of the speeding needles, the Liberty’s engines sang their strange song, and the old ship’s timbers creaked and grumbled as she drove swiftly onward through the aether. But not swiftly enough! Jack left me at the helm and scrambled aloft with his perspective-glass, returning a few moments later with a worried look upon his face. ‘We need more power,’ he confided. ‘The Sophronia will be out in open aether soon, and riding the Golden Roads, and if we can’t follow her there, we’re lost.’

  He shouted down the speaking tube for the Moob, and after a few moments more it popped up the wedding chamber companionway on top of Delphine’s head.

  ‘I’m sorry, Jack,’ it said, through Delphine’s mouth. ‘I cannot go faster. I have done my best, but perhaps I did not learn Alchemy as well from Will Melville’s thoughts as I believed. Perhaps there is something he kept hidden from me, or something that he himself did not know.’

  Jack pondered upon this, setting one hand against the Liberty’s timbers to gauge the vibrations from the alembic. ‘We were going faster before,’ he said, ‘when Myrtle was running things down there.’

  My sister looked thoroughly pleased with herself, and then suddenly alarmed, as she realised the meaning behind Jack’s words. ‘Oh, Jack,’ she declared, ‘you must not expect me to let that thing squat upon my head again! I have already told you that I think it most improper!’

  ‘You think everything most improper,’ Jack told her. ‘But the fact is, there was some truth in what Delphine said, wasn’t there? You’ve got a talent for Alchemy that Delphine ain’t, and the Moob used it somehow. Between you, you’ll get enough speed out of this poor old tub that we’ll catch up with the Sophronia in no time.’ He pushed himself away from the helm and flew to where Myrtle was floating, taking both her hands in his. ‘Please, Myrtle. For me.’

  I could tell that Myrtle was moved by his plaintive yet manly appeal, for she turned an entertaining colour and her spectacles grew misty. ‘Oh, Jack,’ she said. ‘Oh, oh, very well. But I must insist that the Moob turns itself into some more ladylike item of apparel.’

  The Moob on Delphine’s head bowed, and then seemed to melt and spread, becoming a sort of wide-brimmed sunhat, then a smoking cap, and at last turning itself into a very passable bonnet, decorated with black flowers. It left Delphine (who tottered sideways with a most comical expression of perplexity as her thoughts became her own once more) and sailed through the air to settle upon Myrtle’s head. ‘Oh!’ said Myrtle, and then Moobishness overcame her and her eyes turned blank and glassy.25

  ‘Do her no harm, you hear me?’ Jack told the Moob-bonnet.

  ‘I will not,’ it replied through Myrtle’s lips, and she turned about and swam deftly to the companionway, and down it into the wedding chamber.

  ‘Whatever is going on?’ asked Delphine, one hand to her brow, staring about in confusion. ‘Where are we? What is Myrtle doing? Why are you all knitting?’

  ‘Part of the plan, Miss Beauregard,’ replied Sergeant Tartuffe, not even troubling to glance at her. ‘Now keep quiet, if you would; you’ll make us drop a stitch.’

  ‘What plan?’ demanded Delphine angrily. ‘Whose plan? Sergeant, put down those knitting needles and take up your gun! You are a soldier of France!’

  ‘My plan,’ said Jack Havock, fixing her with his coldest stare. ‘I’m captain of this ship now, and the Threls have agreed to take my orders till the menace of the Moobs is dealt with. And you’ll do as I say, too, or be confined.’

  I clutched the cutlass Jack had issued me back on Modesty and tried to look as though I wouldn’t mind using it should Delphine prove argumentative. But Delphine seemed to know when she was beaten, and she asked for nothing more than a quick account of what had happened. I told her about the goings-on at Starcross, and the Shaper engine which Sir Launcelot had caused to be set up beneath his hotel, and I am pleased to say that she looked quite green as she realised that there had been a far greater prize than her wormy old Liberty, and that it had been right under her nose all this time!

  Then, while Jack recounted the things which had just occurred at Modesty, I crept down the companionway and peeked into the wedding chamber. I was rewarded with the surprising sight of Myrtle mixing powders and potions and stuffing them inside the alembic as confidently as any alchemist.

  Hearing me, she looked up from her work, and said, ‘Your friend Jack was right. Myrtle’s mind is so much more attuned to the currents of the aether and the laws of Alchemy than the other young lady’s. Finding the right proportions and ingredients is as easy as pie when I am sat upon her head.’

  I was not sure quite how to respond. I am well-used to hearing Myrtle talk through her hat, but it was somewhat unsettling to hear a hat talking through her. I mumbled some pleasantry, and went back above, where the Threls’ knitting flapped like woolly flags all across the cabin.

  ‘How’s it coming?’ Jack demanded.

  ‘Nearly out of wool,’ said Sergeant Tartuffe regretfully, holding up the loose scarf-like garment he had knitted. ‘The colours ain’t very nice, and I should have liked to put in a spot of cable-stitch, or some pom-poms to liven it up …’

  ‘It will serve its purpose something admirable,’ said Jack, and, without waiting for the Threl to ‘cast-off ’, he took the item and wrapped it around and around his own head to form a huge woolly turban, which he used the knitting needles to pin in place. A decorative flap or panel hung from the back of the garment, and tied about his neck.

  ‘I should like to see the Moob that can control my mind through all this,’ he vowed, and the rest of us began to fashion turbans of our own.

  Chapter Nineteen

  In Which Battle Is Joined and Daring Rescues Attempted!

  Myrtle does have her uses. No sooner had the Sophronia began to make that speckled golden bow-wave that signifies she has slipped into the alchemical realm and is travelling faster than light, than
golden curlicues and fronds began to trail past the Liberty’s portholes too, and we all cheered, realising that my sister and the Moob had taken us on to the Golden Roads.

  The Sophronia, indeed, was travelling slower than she might have. Either the Moob that crouched on Ssilissa’s head was newer to the arts of Alchemy than ours, or else the lizard-girl was struggling weakly against its influence, or maybe her spines just got in its way, but our old ship was easily able to draw near. The Threls, who all looked like woolly mushrooms with those knitted turbans wound about their heads, started to heave open gunports and poke their carbines out, but Jack stopped them.

  ‘No shooting yet,’ he ordered. ‘That will just alert the Moobs to us. I doubt they’ve even seen us, the dull-witted hats. We’ll take ’em by surprise.’

  In one of the ship’s lockers we had found ropes and grappling hooks, and we carried them out on to the star deck as the Liberty soared closer and closer to the Sophronia. The Moobs aboard the Sophronia had noticed what we were about by then. Gunports opened all along her flank, and her space cannon spat smoke and flame and sent balls singing through the aether to smash through the Liberty’s hull. Huge jagged splinters, twice as tall as me, went flip-fluttering into space. A few of the Threls fired back, but the popping of their carbines sounded awfully tinny and toy-like compared with the full-throated roar of the Sophronia’s guns. Jack stopped them, anyway.

  ‘Hold your fire! That is my ship, and those are my friends. I want none of them harmed! It is their hats we must defeat, and we shall fight them hand-to-hand!’

  At his command we whirled the grappling hooks about our heads and let them fly. Mine missed on the first attempt, but I retrieved it and tried again, and the second time it lodged tight between two of the Sophronia’s exhaust-trumpets. I gave a whoop of triumph, and looked round to see whether any of the Threls had managed to do as I had. But at that instant a ball from one of the Sophronia’s stern chasers ploughed into the Liberty’s flank just below where I was standing. The decking beneath my feet erupted into a storm of tumbling planks and shards, and I found myself soaring upward, clinging for dear to life to that rope, with the power of the Sophronia’s engines dragging me through the void. And looking down at the Liberty, to see whether my friends were all right, I found that she had fallen far behind, and as I watched she seemed to blink out of existence altogether!

  I guessed what had happened. That last shot must have done some damage to the alembic – and perhaps, I feared, to Myrtle too – and the Liberty’s chemical wedding had failed. She had fallen from the Golden Roads, and left me alone, a helpless drogue, trailing after the speeding Sophronia!

  Of all the sticky situations I had ever found myself in, this, I thought, was the stickiest. But there was no use in moping. Exerting all my strength, and praying that the Moobs aboard the Sophronia might not have noticed me, I began to haul myself hand over hand along that rope. Closer and closer I drew to the space-barnacled hull of the old ship, and to the spray of brass trumpets in which my grappling hook had lodged. Once, web-bound among the reefs of Saturn, I had crept down one of those trumpets to hide from the white spiders, and I wondered hopefully if I might climb up one now and enter the Sophronia that way. But Ssil had the alembic going at full blast, and from every trumpet-mouth waste gases and spent particles streamed out into the aether. I doubted that I could swim against such tides, and even if I could, I should certainly be poisoned or roasted before I reached the safety of the wedding chamber.

  I reached the grappling hook, firmly wedged where the trumpets’ roots vanished through the Sophronia’s planking. I looked to left and right, I looked both up and down, but never a sign did I see of any useful hatch or tumblehome through which a space-wrecked mariner might force entry. The only openings in that cliff face of unfriendly timber were the mullioned windows of the stern gallery, which stretched high above me, surrounded by carved angels and gilt-painted gingerbread work. Could I reach it? I wondered. My sense of caution told me I could not. But every other sense that I possessed screamed at me to try, or be whirled off the Sophronia’s side by the wind of her passage, to burn in her exhaust-stream or be lost in the emptiness of space!

  Tying the rope about my waist, I started to climb, my chilled fingers finding what handholds they could in the gaps between the timbers. I shut my eyes and told myself that this was no worse than bird’s-nesting on the rooftops of Larklight, but it was. For if I had fallen off Larklight’s roof I should have had nothing worse than a telling-off from Father and Mother, and a chilly wait for them to come and retrieve me in the solar punt. Whereas, if I were to fall from the Sophronia, not only would I be doomed, but the last hope of saving the British Empire from the dominion of the Moobs would perish with me …

  Well, gentle reader, to cut a long story short, I made it. Scrambling up over the carved scroll that bore Sophronia’s name, I peered in through Jack’s cabin window. And, having assured myself that no Moob lurked inside, I tugged and tugged upon my rope until the grappling hook came free, whereon I drew it up and used it to smash one of the panes, and to clear the daggers of broken glass from the frame, until I was able to squeeze through. Naturally, every object in the cabin – as well as all the air – felt a strong and sincere desire to fly out the same way I’d come in, but I seized a book which tumbled past me and used it to plug the hole I’d made.26

  That done, I let myself float limply in mid-air, uttering a sigh of relief that my perils were over. But I could not escape the nagging sensation that, in fact, they were only beginning. For when I looked out of the windows I could see no sign of the Liberty resuming her pursuit, and it seemed to me that I was trapped, quite alone, aboard a vessel packed with hostile Moobs, and with my former friends whom they’d enslaved. How could I hope to take back the Sophronia single-handed, armed as I was with nothing but a grappling hook and a woolly hat?

  As I drifted there, contemplating this knotty problem, I became aware of an alarming sound. Surely those could not be footsteps approaching without the cabin door? But they could, and they were; an instant later the door was wrenched open and my old friend Grindle peered in, blankeyed and top-hatted. The Moob which controlled him must have heard me breaking in, and had brought him aft to investigate. I had no time to hide, and Grindle saw me at once.

  ‘Moob!’ he growled, and drew his cutlass, which is a particularly vicious-looking weapon, as sharp as a razor and as heavy as a cleaver.

  ‘Mr Grindle!’ I cried, hoping against hope that he might recognise me. But he did not, of course, and only some very hasty aerial gymnastics saved me from being sliced in two as the cutlass slammed down, making a quite horrid gash in Jack’s chart-table.

  ‘Avast, ye ——!’ muttered Grindle, and many other dreadful curses. I do not know whether the Moob he wore had found those naughty words in his own brain, or had picked them up from Wild Will Melville’s crew.

  I swiped at his Moob with my grappling hook, but Mr G. ducked and the barbs whistled past an inch or more above its black crown. The effort of the blow carried me clear across the cabin and I crashed against the bulkhead, the grappling hook tumbling from my hand. I thought that my last moment had come, for I was cornered, winded and weaponless, and there was nothing to stop Grindle from spiking me with his cutlass. But the Moob which governed him seemed to have changed its mind. He sheathed the weapon, and, reaching into a pouch on his belt where usually he kept his tobacco, drew out a glistening, staring Moob!

  ‘Help!’ I cried, as the new Moob flared into hat-shape and flew at me. The Moob ignored my flailing hands and settled on my head … and yet nothing happened. I remained myself, and realised that Jack’s plan was working and that the Moob’s influence could not reach through the many layers of Threl-knit wool I wore about my brain!

  Grindle, convinced that I was already a slave of the Moobs like himself, had turned away from me, swimming towards the cabin door. I pushed myself quickly away from the bulkhead, caught up with him as his hand reached for the
door-knob, and punched him as hard as I could, right in the middle of his top hat. The Moob, taken by surprise, flew from his head, losing its hattishness as it flailed about with its little black hands, trying to arrest its careering flight across the cabin. Grindle stood staring at me.

  ‘Art?’ he cried. ‘How did you come here? And whatever is happening? By ——! We’re aboard the Sophronia! I remember nothing since we all settled down to sleep last night … Only some dream about a hat ...’

  As he spoke, his Moob recovered itself and came whirling back towards him, but I was ready for it. Plunging past him, I snatched it from the air, wrenched How to Write Love Letters – A Guide for the Perplexed away from the window and stuffed the writhing Moob out into space. All the while I could feel the Moob that sat upon my own head wriggling and fidgeting, as if it could not quite understand why I had not come under its control. Before it could work out the secret of the woolly hat I grabbed it and forced it out after its friend. For a moment the two Moobs turned over and over in the Sophronia’s wake, just like a pair of lost hats bowling along a windy promenade. Then they dropped into the fiery plume from the exhaust-trumpets, and were consumed with two brief, coppery-green flashes of fire.

  I set Jack’s book back over the shattered window, and offered up a grateful prayer of thanks. My Threl-bonnet had worked, I had triumphed over the Moobs, and most important, I was no longer alone. True, Mr Grindle was curled up in mid-air with his head in his hands, going, ‘What … ? But … ? Ooh, my aching noddle!’ but I knew what a chipper old space dog he was, and felt sure that, even if he were not feeling quite the thing, I could still ask for no better ally in the battle that lay before me.