Starcross Read online

  ‘Welcome to Starcross,’ he droned, and indicated a black metal carriage which waited nearby, with a pair of mechanical horses standing ready in the traces. ‘The steambrougham is available to convey you to the hotel, or …’

  ‘I think we will walk, thank you,’ replied Mother. ‘We are all decidedly stiff after our journey, aren’t we, children? I’m certain the exercise will do us good.’

  ‘But do you not think,’ asked Myrtle, as we left the station and started along a winding gravelled path towards the hotel, the porters following with our baggage, ‘that the hotel has a rather silent, almost abandoned look?’

  ‘Oh, that is easily explained,’ said Mother, opening her purse and waving a thick buff pamphlet which she extracted from it. ‘I have consulted Crevice, and I gather that here on Starcross it is the middle of the night.’9

  We walked through the starlight of that sealess sea front, looking down over the promenade rail at where the bathing machines stood drawn up in a hopeful line at the edge of that bone-dry bay. About one hundred yards from the shore lay a knoll planted with shrubs and trees, and here and there on the slopes around the hotel stood spinneys of Martian birch, and other ornamental plantings. All else was drear, dead desolation. It was a melancholic vista, and I felt quite relieved when we turned our backs upon it and considered a more cheerful prospect: the entrance of the Grand Hotel, where gas lamps were ablaze, casting a gentle amber glow down the red-carpeted steps. We climbed those steps, Mother pushed open the glass doors marked ‘Reception’ and we entered into a fairyland of gold and marble and gleaming Martian crystal.

  Do you remember that poem which goes, ‘In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a sacred pleasure dome decree’? Well, Mr Khan would have been as sick as a dog if he could have seen Starcross, because his old pleasure dome could not have held a candle to it for opulence and luxury. Fountains tinkled, chandeliers twinkled and startling works of modern art by Mr Rossetti and Mr Millais hung in gilded frames upon the walls. A herd of hoverhogs with the hotel’s coat-of-arms painted on their spotless flanks snuffled about amid the finery, the faint poot-pooting sounds of their exhalations drowned out by the gentle voices of hanging baskets full of song flowers.

  ‘Well!’ said Mother. ‘This is very grand!’

  We approached the reception desk, a block of Martian mahogany polished like a mirror. An automaton behind it lurched to life as we drew near, and I heard clockwork whirr, and a needle drop on to one of the wax cylinders inside his head. But before he could speak, a human voice quite unlike the drone of an auto-servant, cried out, ‘Mrs Mumby! And Miss Myrtle and Master Art as well!’

  A door near the reception desk had been flung open, and a large, ruddy gentleman with black side-whiskers, tinted spectacles and a bottle-green coat came hurrying out to bow low before us and kiss my mother’s hand.

  ‘Mr Titfer, I presume?’ said Mother.

  ‘The very same, dear lady,’ said the Titfer in question, straightening himself and beaming at us all, whiskers aquiver. ‘How very glad I am that you chose to accept my humble invitation. You’ve seen the promenade, I take it? As fine a stretch of sea frontage as a body could find anywhere in British Space.’

  ‘Indeed, it is most picturesque,’ said Mother. ‘Tho’ we could not help noticing the lack of –’

  ‘Oh, here at Starcross you will lack for nothing!’ boomed Mr Titfer. ‘You need only ask! My hotel has a great number of staff, all eager to do your business. Not nasty, fallible human staff, mind, who would forever be falling in love with visiting valets and stealing the cufflinks of the Duke of ——. No, every last maid and bellboy has been manufactured for me by Rain & Co. Why, even the manager is automatic! I am spending the summer here to ensure that everything is running smoothly, but once I return to London I expect the place to tick along quite nicely without any human guidance at all.’ He checked his fob watch, and said hastily, ‘But I must not detain you, for it is very late and I am sure you will wish to rest after your voyage. The auto-porters will take you to your rooms, and at breakfast you shall meet the other guests. The sea should be back by then, too.’

  ‘Why, whatever do you mean?’ asked Mother, smiling sweetly, as if she expected him to make a joke.

  But Mr Titfer was in earnest. ‘The sea, dear Mrs Mumby. I hope you do not think I had lured you here with the promise of a beach holiday only to make you look out at this dreary, desolate scene for your whole stay? No, no. My word is my bond. Starcross offers the finest sea bathing anywhere in the known worlds. It is simply that, ah, the tide is out at present.’

  Still smiling, Mother turned to look out through the crystal windows at the promenade, and at the bone-dry, bone-white sandscape stretching away towards that hard horizon. A fitful breeze was blowing dust devils between the wheels of the bathing machines which waited mournfully in the starlight at the desert’s edge. All else was as dry and still and silent as the land of Death.

  ‘How long has the tide been out?’ she asked.

  ‘About one hundred million years.’

  ‘And when does it come back in?’

  ‘Oh, every twelve hours or so.’

  ‘How very intriguing,’ said Mother.

  Chapter Four

  In Which I Have a Curious Encounter, and a Light Breakfast.

  Our suite of rooms was at the very top of one of Starcross’s airy turrets. One reached it by climbing a long spiral of stairs, a perfect cataract of blood-red carpet, barred with gilt stair-rods. You would hardly believe the view which we had from our sitting room! I flung wide the windows and stepped out on to the wrought-iron balcony outside, gazing up in wonder at a sky full of tumbling asteroids. ‘Look,’ I cried. ‘There is Vesta! And there is New Westmoreland, and Winnet, and the celebrated Ferrous Dumpling …’

  But Mother and Myrtle only yawned, and declared that they wished to take a restorative nap before we all went down to breakfast.

  There was a bedroom for each of us: the neatest, cleanest rooms you can imagine, each with a closet and a washstand and a brass bedstead. Myrtle and Mother retired to theirs, and I lay down in mine, but I could not sleep. I wanted to be up and doing, not wasting the first hours of my holiday in dull slumber! Oh, I put out the light and tried to sleep, but sleep would not come. I was aware of the distant humming of gravity generators deep in the hotel somewhere, and the gleam of asteroid light through the crack of my bedroom door. And I was aware, too, of a strange feeling that I needed to open that door and look out into our sitting room.

  After a while I lit the lamp again, and gave into temptation. I eased the door open gently, for I could tell by the quality of the silence that Myrtle and Mother had both fallen asleep. The sitting room lay in darkness, except for the faint pale oblongs of the starlit French windows, and the lace curtains, which stirred like ghosts in a gentle breeze.

  Cautious and expectant, I crossed the soft carpet and opened a closet. I had not noticed this closet earlier, yet now I somehow knew that it was there, and that I should find something intriguing inside it.

  At first there seemed to be nothing inside but a dangle of wooden coat hangers, which I took care not to rattle, as I was afraid it would wake Mother and Myrtle. Then, on a shelf above me, I noticed a large hatbox. I lifted it down. It was made of stiff white card, and printed on the lid was this legend:

  TITFER’S TOP-NOTCH TOPPERS

  Taking the box into the glow of lamplight from my halfopen bedroom door, I set it down on an occasional table, where I took off the lid. Inside, nestling in a lot of crisp crêpe paper, sat the tallest, blackest silk top hat I had ever seen. Even the lining was black, and without any label to say who had made it; but it did not need one, for I knew that Mr Titfer was the finest hatter in the Solar System, and a hat as splendid as this could only have been created by him.10 I remember wondering what previous guest had left it behind in my closet, and why he had thought fit to bring such formal headgear to a beach resort.

  And then, naturally, I felt an urge to put the hat on
. But as I pushed aside the crinkling paper and made to lift it from its box a voice behind me whispered softly, ‘Moob!’

  I looked up, startled, the hat forgotten. ‘Myrtle?’ I breathed. But Myrtle was asleep; I could hear her maidenly snores through her bedroom door, and anyway, she is not the sort of girl who goes around saying ‘Moob!’ in the middle of the night.

  ‘Moob?’ came the voice again, sounding plaintive. Perhaps it was not a voice at all, I reasoned, but only the wind moaning around our turret. I went to the window, and found that I had left it ajar – that was why the curtains had been billowing in such a ghostly manner. I made to close it, then, on a sudden impulse, opened it wider instead and stepped out to stand upon the balcony once more. The air of Starcross was thin, and smelled like string.

  ‘Moob!’ whispered the voice, or the wind, or whatever it was. A shadow moved at the far end of the balcony and I almost yelped with fright. Then, telling myself not to be so funky, I edged towards the place. That part of the balcony was deeply shaded by the space ivy growing up the turret wall. Was it my imagining, or did two pale flames burn in the darkness there, no larger than the flames of safety matches, yet steady, and set side by side, for all the world like watchful eyes?

  A cat, I thought, with some relief, and said, ‘Here, puss, puss, puss …’

  Suddenly I felt an odd lurching sensation and a wave of dizziness which made me snatch at the balcony rail for support. When it passed, the balcony was bathed in light. My own startled shadow was thrown against the wall, and another shadow, a shadow cast by nothing that I could see, slid like an oiled black eel between the railings of the balustrade.

  I turned to search for it, and stopped, amazed. The inky sky with its scattering of asteroids was changed to a spotless dome of azure blue. Mid-morning sunlight filled it and shimmered on the waters of a bay which lay where, only seconds before, there had been nothing but a waterless sea of sand. The knoll was an island now, and the air was full of the invigorating scent of ozone. I could hear the crisp sigh and snore of the little waves as they curled in to break upon the shore, and see a troop of burnished automata emerging from the hotel’s side entrance to pull down the awnings of the beach cafe, rake the sand and untether the bathing machines.

  I do not know how long I stood there, dumbstruck, gawping at that sudden ocean. I did not move until I heard the cheerful clamour of a gong, announcing that it was time for breakfast.

  In the breakfast room, just as Mr Titfer had promised, we met some of our fellow guests: a large, flowery-looking lady, who beamed most cheerfully at us as we entered, and elbowed her small, meek husband so that he looked up from his scrambled egg and beamed too, and an elderly gentleman with a military air, who sat alone at a window-table, dividing his toast into neat triangles and applying butter and marmalade with brisk strokes of his knife.

  Automated waiters saw us to our table and inquired in their flat voices whether we should like tea or coffee, brown toast or white?

  ‘Why, tea, of course,’ cried Myrtle, startled and mildly scandalised. ‘We are English! And who on earth would want brown toast? White, with marmalade, if you please.’

  The waiter executed a mechanical bow and went scudding silently off on well-oiled casters to fetch our breakfasts. As he left, my mother caught the eye of the military-looking gent, who seemed amused by Myrtle’s outburst.

  ‘We must tell Titfer to see if he can’t make those clockwork men of his able to distinguish English guests from those from those of other nations, eh?’ he chuckled. ‘Pray permit me to introduce myself. I am Colonel Harry Quivering of Her Majesty’s Martian Army (Ret’d).’

  ‘Mrs Emily Mumby,’ said my mother sweetly. ‘And these are my children, Myrtle and Art.’

  The colonel said that he was pleased to meet us, and that in his opinion it would liven the place up a bit to have some kids about. (You may imagine how this went down with Myrtle.) He went on to explain that he had been several weeks at Starcross. It was, he claimed, the best-appointed billet he had ever kipped in, and he had lived in his time everywhere from London to the wilds of Mercury. ‘Titfer certainly knows his business,’ he concluded.

  ‘Indeed. I must say we are very impressed by the sea view,’ said Mother, gazing out thoughtfully at the glittering blue expanse beyond the promenade. ‘How does he do it, do you think?’

  ‘I’m afraid I couldn’t venture to say, ma’am,’ said the colonel, spearing a kipper with the practised ease of one who has spent many years cactus-sticking in the badlands of Mars. ‘Some sort of scientific miracle, I daresay. Science is advancing with such great leaps in the present age that it’s impossible for an old soldier to keep up with it. One never knows what these brainy coves like Titfer will come up with next!’

  ‘It is as if the hotel and the land about it, out as far as that small island in the bay, have been moved instantaneously through space to a warm and watery world,’ mused Mother, looking out of the window at all the little dancing diamonds of light upon the sea. ‘But short of a Shaper engine, I cannot think of a machine which could accomplish such a thing … And besides, what world has such oceans, apart from Earth, and we are not on Earth …’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry about how it comes to be here, ducks!’ called the large, beaming lady. (She was addressing the colonel, but clearly hoping to be introduced to us. I felt Myrtle give a quiver of distaste at such forward behaviour.) ‘Just ’op in an’ enjoy it, I say! There’s nothing like a nice dip for lifting the spirits, eh, Colonel?’

  ‘Quite so, quite so,’ the colonel chuckled, plainly approving of her good humour. He wolfed down a triangle of toast and introduced us. ‘Mrs Mumby, children, this extraordinary lady is Mrs Rosie Spinnaker, that celebrated practitioner of the Terpsichore muse.’

  ‘Ooh, ’ark at ’im!’ cried Mrs Spinnaker, spraying toast crumbs over her companion. ‘Don’t you listen to his blandishments, my dearies. I’m just a simple songbird. “The Cockney Nightingale” they calls me, back ’ome in dear ol’ London. Maybe you’ve ’eard that little ditty of mine …’ and, beating time upon the table with a jam spoon, she launched into a chorus of ‘My Flat Cat’.

  Myrtle turned pale, and might have fainted had I not supported her. ‘Can we never escape that abominable jingle?’ she groaned.

  ‘Eh?’ asked the Cockney Nightingale, cupping a be-ringed hand to her ear. ‘What’s that? Speak up, dear! I’m quite deaf, you know!’

  ‘Myrtle is something of a musician herself,’ said Mother, to cover Myrtle’s embarrassment. ‘She is learning to play the pianoforte.’

  ‘Ooh, so you tickle the ivories yourself, do you, ducks?’ chortled Mrs Spinnaker. ‘We’ll have to have a recital, won’t we, ’Erbert? My hubby, ’Erbert, is my usual accompanist, you see, but he’s under the weather at the moment; sprained both wrists during my third encore at the Farpoo Apollo.’ (’Erbert opened his mouth as if to add some explanation, but closed it again as his wife’s stream of words went rushing on.) ‘That’s why we came here, see, for a rest cure. But if your Myrtle can play the old Joanna we’ll be able to ’ave a lovely ol’ sing-song, won’t we? We’ll do all the old favourites – “My Flat Cat”, “Were’t Not for the Linnet”, “Nobby Knocker’s Noggin” … Lord, what larks we’ll ’ave!’

  Myrtle glared at me as if it was all my idea, which I thought most unfair. But everyone else in the breakfast room seemed delighted by Mrs Spinnaker’s proposal. Colonel Quivering raised his tea cup in a toast, and something which I had taken till then to be a large potted plant suddenly clapped its fronds together and said in a leafy sort of way, ‘What an agreeable notion, Mrs S.!’

  ‘Ah, Ferny!’ called the colonel. ‘Come and meet Mrs Mumby. Mrs Mumby, Art, Myrtle, this is Professor Ferny, the Educated Shrub.’

  The professor, whom I saw had been standing with his roots in a large bowl of breakfast mulch, removed them, wiped them carefully upon a napkin and came rustling across the floor to our table. He bowed low and extended a broad leaf, which Moth
er, Myrtle and myself took turns to shake.

  ‘Charmed, I’m sure,’ he announced. ‘I trust you will enjoy Starcross. Sea bathing is not to my taste, but perhaps you will do me the honour of visiting the gardens? Mr Titfer has asked me to help him with the planting there. Speaking of which, I fear I must leave you, ladies and gentlemen. I have some Screaming Lupin seedlings which will run quite wild if they are not potted up at once …’

  ‘From Venus,’ explained Colonel Quivering, as the sentient shrub departed. ‘Grew from a seed brought back by Captain Cook. Turned out to be uncommonly intelligent. Director of Xenobotany at Kew Gardens now, I gather.’

  Our toast and marmalade arrived, along with tea in a gleaming silver pot on clockwork legs, which poured itself. We ate, and drank, and Mother said, ‘The hotel seems pleasantly quiet. Tell me, are we the only guests?’

  ‘No, indeed, not quite,’ said Colonel Quivering. ‘There is a young French person, Miss Delphine Beauregard …’

  ‘Such a sweet, beautiful young lady, poor thing!’ cried Mrs Spinnaker.

  ‘She suffers from an Ailment or Malady,’ confided the colonel.

  ‘She is confined to a wicker bath chair,’ said Mrs Spinnaker. ‘And can go nowhere unless she is pushed about by her nurse …’

  ‘The nurse is neither sweet, nor beautiful, I am afraid,’ sighed Colonel Quivering.

  ‘You shall see ’er for yourself quite soon, no doubt,’ Mrs Spinnaker promised. ‘She breakfasts early, and has ’er nurse push ’er along the promenade to take the morning air.’

  ‘Perhaps you and Miss Beauregard may be friends,’ said Mother to Myrtle. ‘It would be an opportunity for you to practise your French conversation …’