Authors: Keith Mansfield
A crowd of tourists, most of them Japanese, were looking up at the building they all knew as “the London Gherkin.” With their cameras and cell phones they were busily snapping the impressive curved glass and steel structure, and its bands of diamond-shaped windows, all set against a clear summer sky. Strangely, although the people who owned the skyscraper were very proud of it, they weren't keen on just anyone coming here to view it, let alone take photographs. A couple of blue-uniformed security guards were doing their best to shoo the sightseers away. They were already worried they'd be in trouble for allowing a pair of blond teenagers and their Old English sheepdog in through the main doors, and weren't about to make the same mistake again.
One hundred and eighty meters above, Bentley (that very sheepdog) lay curled on a comfortable padded chair, snoring rather loudly. The teenage boy and girl were watching the scenes below from what the tourists might have thought was the very top floor of the building. The boy's name was Johnny Mackintosh and, contrary to appearances, he wasn't standing in the Gherkin at all. Through his dark green eyes, speckled with silver flecks, he was gazing out from the bridge of his very own spaceship.
Called the
Spirit of London
, she was a lookalike for the real Gherkin and had, at this particular moment, replaced it,
standing proudly at the address 30 St. Mary Axe in the heart of the City, London's financial district. Johnny's sister, Clara, had a rare and very special ability to manipulate the structure of space itself. She was so good at doing this that she was able to take the entire skyscraper and “fold” it out of the wayâinto its very own pocket of hyperspaceâallowing the spacecraft to take its place unnoticed. Her ability was shared by an unusual alien creature called a Plican, also on the bridge. Looking rather like a squashed octopus, this was currently scrunched up inside a cramped compartment at the top of a clear cylindrical tank beside Bentley.
There were three other living beings on the bridge. One of these, Sol, was the mind of the spaceship herself and was so clever that she was able to project the view of whatever was happening outside onto the windows of the original London Gherkin, now standing in hyperspace, with only a two nanosecond delay. This meant that any workers unknowingly passing in and out of the hyperspatial gateway to the actual building would be very hard-pushed to spot the difference.
A couple of police vans had drawn up in the little square below. Their rear doors were open and the tourists were being ushered inside. One or two looked to be making a fuss, but were forcibly bundled in before the doors slammed shut. At ground level, the security guards were becoming used to this sight and barely shrugged, knowing it made their lives simpler. Up above, Johnny couldn't help feeling a little uneasy. It struck him as odd that the vehicles had no identifying markings on their roofs.
“Finished,” came a voice from behind a copy of
The Times
newspaper which was lowered to reveal a figure in a dark pinstriped suit, topped by a bowler hat. Alf, an artificial life form, had a broad smile etched across his slightly metallic face and was keen to show off his completed crossword. Although
extremely knowledgeable and fiendishly intelligent, the android sometimes struggled to complete the puzzleâespecially when the clues veered away from the pure logic he loved best.
Johnny and Clara had been planning their first ever visit to Mars, with Johnny telling his sister about all the probes scientists had sent to the red planet, but which had mysteriously failed to arrive. Alf had been itching to join in the conversation, but was struggling with the final clue: “Her King is a pickled vegetable (7).” His crossword now finished, the android hurried over but, just then, it was the final member of the crew who spoke.
Kovac was a computer, but so unlike any other computer on Earth it would be akin to comparing a pocket calculator with the entire Internet (or so Kovac, at least, would have you believe). “I have intercepted communications between the security services about supposed extraterrestrial activity in central London,” said the machine, his transparent casing lighting up in time to the words. “Apparently a street entertainerâI believe the description was âjuggler'âwitnessed a green, bug-eyed alien coming out of the River Thames. Quite why you have me monitor all these ridiculous goings-on is beyond me. My time would be far better spent searching for structure within the number pi. I believe that, in base 11 at several trillion decimal placesâ”
“Kovac,” said Clara, “exactly where in central London?”
“Does anyone listen to a word I say?” asked the computer. “If you must know, it was Trafalgar Square. Why you even bothered having this annoying spaceship fit me with a quantum processor ⦔
The computer's grumblings were lost as Johnny, Clara and Alf stepped through an archway that had appeared out of thin air in front of them, wide enough for three people at its base but curving outward so that twice that number might have
fitted higher up. In the same way that Clara could relocate the real London Gherkin, she could take a corner of space in one place (for example, the
Spirit of London's
bridge) and fold it so it was touching a portion of space in another (say, near Trafalgar Square), making it possible to step instantaneously from one to the other.
They found themselves in a little alleyway they'd hoped would be deserted. As it happened, a tramp was sitting on a sleeping bag drinking from a bottle and Alf, whose complex circuitry was unable to cope with the manipulation of space, collapsed right in front of him. Johnny, himself feeling a little sick after unfolding, bent down, pulled out the android's left ear and turned it all the way around, before letting it snap back into position. Successfully rebooted, Alf sat upright and said an enthusiastic hello to the tramp who, having seen three people apparently just walk through the wall in front of him, looked approvingly at the bottle in his hand and took several hearty glugs. Johnny, his sister and the android ran past, out into the late afternoon sunshine and up a busy side street toward the square.
The view looked reassuringly normal, with no aliens or spaceships to be seen. People were gathered around the lions at the base of Nelson's Column while, closer at hand along the southern edge of the square, red double-decker buses and black London taxis wound their way slowly between traffic lights. From the far side, a car-free zone, sunlight reflected off the sparkling windows of imposing stone buildings. Beneath, people streamed one way or the other, heading home after work.
“Over there,” said Clara, pointing in front of the fountains in the center of the square. A small crowd had formed a semicircle around a suntanned, bare-chested man wearing scruffy pants and a silly, striped jester's hat. He was juggling three large red skittle pins.
As Johnny and the others waited to cross the road, two men in dark suits approached the juggler who caught his pins and took off his hat, bowing to his little audience in one sweeping movement. It looked as though he was about to pass the hat around for a collection, but the men flashed some identification, causing the street performer to drop his pins and throw his arms up in frustration. Hat firmly planted back on his head, he was led away toward a waiting police van.
“We're too late,” said Johnny.
“I am not so sure, Master Johnny,” said Alf, who was staring into the sky. “My eyesight covers a broader spectrum than humans' and, if I am not mistaken, something has joined Admiral Lord Nelson atop his column.”
Johnny and his sister followed where the android was pointing. At first all Johnny could see was the statue of the great man with a hand inside his jacket and a sword by his side, wearing a bicorn hat to ward off the pigeons. The sight reminded him of a particularly vivid dream he'd once had of being aboard Nelson's flagship, HMS
Victory
, at the Battle of Trafalgar. A blur of movement brought him back to reality. It was as though someone or something had indeed been standing right beside the admiral. Johnny stared as hard as he could, screwing his eyes right up, but whatever he'd spotted, Nelson now appeared alone.
Clara gasped and put her hand to her mouth. “There is someone up there ⦠I think,” she said, weakly. “Right at the top.”
Johnny had never understood his sister's absolute terror of heights. If anything, Clara's vertigo had worsened over the past few months and she'd completely stopped using the antigravity elevators on board the
Spirit of London
, instead folding herself between decks. Now she'd turned even whiter than normal as she peered upward toward the granite admiral.
Johnny squinted, trying to focus on the very top of the fifty-meter-high pillar. He still couldn't make anything out. He looked down and, to his horror, saw Alf holding what could only be a little gun.
“Alf!” he hissed as the android squeezed the trigger. There was no sound at all.
“Direct hit,” said Alf, tucking the weapon inside his suit pocket. None of the passers-by looked to have noticed.
“What on Earth are you doing?” asked Clara.
“Do not be alarmed,” said the android. “It was merely a tracking device. Now we shall be able to follow the creature.”
Able to breathe again, Johnny looked upâthis time he was certain he saw something and it wasn't good. For a split second the air behind Nelson shimmered and a black sphere, about ten meters across, appeared from nowhere. Adjusting its cloak, it vanished just as quickly. There
was
a spaceship in Trafalgar Square after all and there was no mistaking it belonged to the evil Krun. Whatever creature was standing on top of the column, it appeared to hate the insect-like aliens every bit as much as Johnny did. It scarpered, scrambling down the vertical pillar at breakneck speed, somehow able to hold on.
“Oh my,” said Clara, grabbing Johnny's arm as though she might faint at the very thought of the descent.
Now it was on the move, the creature was much easier to spot and other people started pointing toward the column. As it reached the base it sprang over the lions and into the Trafalgar Square fountains. A crowd on the far side began taking photographs, barring the thing's escape. It doubled back and fled from them, crossed the road oblivious to the oncoming traffic and ran straight toward, then past, Johnny, Clara and Alf. Up close, hidden behind green slimy skin, strange flaps on its neck and very large webbed hands and feet, it looked oddly like a boy. It set off down a busy street leading away from the
square. From behind there was a shallow fin protruding out of its back.
Alf, who could run
very
fast, took off in pursuit, a blur of arms and legs, leaving Johnny and his sister behind as the odd figures streaked away down the pavement.
“Come on,” said Clara as a new archway opened in front of them. She pulled him through and Johnny found himself standing beside the entrance to Downing Street, staring up Whitehall all the way back to Trafalgar Square. There was no sign. For a second he thought they'd lost the alien, until he turned as Clara shouted, “There!” pointing to a truck heading further along the road. Using its webbed hands and feet the creature had fixed itself onto the back, hitching a ride, while Alf was jogging effortlessly just a little behind it. Again Clara took charge, pushing Johnny through another archway and following behind. They were at one end of Westminster Bridge beneath Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament. Sirens wailed from north and south of the river as police converged from opposite directions.
Clara was off again, this time sprinting across the bridge at full pelt toward the halfway point where Alf, not even out of breath, had the little alien cornered. Johnny followed, overtaking his sister, then slowing down so as not to startle the thing. Clara soon caught up. The green creature stared wide-eyed at them both, its head tilted to one side. It reached out a webbed hand, but when Johnny moved forward the scaly arm was swiftly withdrawn. Johnny again saw the air shimmer overhead. He couldn't be certain, but suspected the same partially cloaked black Krun sphere. At street level, two police vans arrived from either end of the bridge. Their doors opened and more than a dozen armed officers fanned out in a semicircle, pointing their rifles at the unlikely foursome.
A black car with tinted windows drew alongside. Out of the
rear door stepped a dark-haired woman in a smart suit, wearing very high heels. “Well, this is a surprise,” she said in a drawling American accent. “Long time no see, Johnny.”
The alien was shaking, clearly terrified as it looked from rifle to rifle. It backed away until it reached the railings lining the bridgeâthere was nowhere left to go and only a huge drop to the murky waters of the River Thames beneath. Cornered, it turned to Johnny's sister, arms out pleading and, in perfect English and quite a posh accent, said, “Help me, Clara.”
Before anyone could react, something peculiar began happening to the pavement beneath them, as if it were made of rubber and warping. The next moment, Johnny, his sister and Alf fell through the very ground under their feet. The last thing Johnny saw was the police open fire as the strange creature leapt over the side and into the river far below. Next thing he knew, he was lying beside Clara and an immobile android on deck 18, the garden area of the
Spirit of London
.