Starcross (16 page)

For a moment, as you may imagine, I stood quite bewildered and astray, for the last people I had expected to encounter upon this interminable beach were the gentle Miss Beauregard and her lumpen companion. Yet there they were, Miss Beauregard waving
graciously as Mrs Grinder propelled the invalid-carriage towards me o’er the shining sands. Its axles squeaked, and its wheels cut three deep grooves in the sand, which slowly filled with water and faded away once it had passed.

‘Oh, Miss Beauregard!’ I cried out as they drew near. ‘Pray do not come any closer! There is a great deal of gore here; it is no sight for a lady and may cause you to swoon …’ (I felt more than a little inclined to swoon myself whenever I looked down at the red wash of Jack’s life-blood spilling down the strand into the surf. But I was determined to show no weakness in front of Miss Beauregard, who, for all her good breeding, was still a foreigner. I took deep breaths and told myself that I should show this daughter of France how brave a British girl might be, and somehow I was able to remain upright.)

‘Ah!’ cried Miss Beauregard, when she drew near enough to see Jack’s predicament for herself. ‘A sand clam! And it is
eating the Honourable Ignatius Flint!’ And with a graceful motion she sprang from her chair, pulled out a small silver revolver which had been concealed in her bosom, and fired six shots into the creature’s maw. It spewed forth a quite horrible amount of stinking purple foam and its jaws went slack, allowing Jack to drag himself free.

‘Why, Miss Beauregard!’ I cried, staring at her through the thinning veil of pistol smoke. ‘You can walk! I had no idea that sea air would effect so rapid an improvement in your condition!’

Miss Beauregard did not reply, but, stooping, tore a length of cotton calico from her underskirts, and used it to make a sort of bandage, which she tied tightly about Jack’s leg. Glancing up at me as she worked, she snapped, ‘Water! This wound should be washed in case the creature’s fangs were envenomed.’

I hesitated a moment, thinking that it was really Mrs Grinder’s place, as a servant, to fetch water. But Mrs Grinder stood stolidly behind the wicker chair, squinting out at us from the depths of her black bonnet, but making no attempt to help. I looked at Jack, who, though pale with pain and shock, was yet managing to smile gratefully at the fair Delphine as she tended his wounds. I am not sure why,
but her attentiveness irritated me. Despite all that had come between us, I felt that it should be I who nursed Jack. So I undid the ties of my waterproof bathing bonnet and strode pointedly to the sea’s edge, where I filled it with clean water and returned to help Delphine bathe Jack’s poor, mauled limb.

Despite the blood, he had not been so badly savaged as I had feared, and soon declared that he could stand. But Delphine would not hear of it. ‘You must take the chair,’ she said. ‘I do not need it.’

‘
You
walk well enough, I see,’ said Jack, grunting with the pain as we helped him to sit down in the chair. ‘Handy with that pistol, too. I had a feeling there was more to you than met the eye.’

‘As there is to you,
Ignatius Flint,
’ said Delphine, emphasising that name in a way that showed she knew it to be false. ‘I believe you to be none other than Jack Havock, an agent of the British Secret Service. What are you doing here?’

‘We might ask you the same thing,’ said Jack. ‘And don’t
tell me you were simply out for a walk when the hotel vanished. You ain’t just some pretty invalid, are you? And you didn’t come to Starcross for the sea bathing. Who are you really?’

Delphine laughed lightly, as if she and Jack were guests at some society function, and he had made a polite joke. ‘It is supposed to be a secret,’ she said, ‘but since we are so
very
far from our own time, and you and Miss Mumby are so
entirely
at my mercy, I suppose I can tell you. I am an agent of the French Government.’

Naturally, dear reader, I was dismayed at this intelligence. The French are a most excitable race, forever having Revolutions and chopping one another’s heads off. When not busy doing that they spend their time looking covetously skyward, quite green with envy because Britain has a splendid empire stretching all through the vaults of space, and they do not. To learn that we were keeping company with one of their spies was shocking news indeed!

More shocking still was Jack’s reaction, for not only did he not appear horrified, he laughed, and continued to grin at Miss Beauregard in a most foolish and familiar manner. It occurred to me to wonder whether her considerable personal charms had got the better of his judgement, and I
suddenly felt vexed that I was not dressed in a pretty gown of fashionable cut as Delphine was, but in a grimy bathing dress smeared with sand and starfish saliva, and a pair of bathing slippers which squelched comically with every step.

Suddenly I felt very weary of this adventure, and I am afraid my usual good humour quite deserted me. I lagged behind the others as Mrs Grinder pushed Jack on along the beach, towards a place where the cliffs rose steep and dour, haunted by small, see-through flying creatures with fat airsacs and nasty dangling tentacles, which I believe are known as Martian Ghost-Jellies. Delphine strolled beside him, talking. I hung my head, and watched the long wheel marks unspooling from the chair’s three tyres, and Mrs Grinder’s deep footprints emerging from beneath her dragging skirts. I could not help noticing from the marks she made that Mrs Grinder seemed to have at least six feet, and I wondered if I should draw this odd fact to Jack’s attention.

But Jack was busy listening to Delphine as she explained to him something of her history. I shall set down what she told him here, so that you may see what a nasty, vexing, deceitful, foreign young person she really was.

‘My grandfather,’ said Delphine, ‘was Mr William Melville of Charlestown, Virginia. An American and an alchemist. Despite being a friend of freedom, and utterly opposed to Britain’s empire, he underwent all the years of training that the Royal College of Alchemists insists upon. He lied about his own beliefs in order that he might pass the tests and checks and pitfalls which the College sets in order to keep the chemical wedding a secret known only to British gentlemen. For ten years he studied under the damp and dismal skies of England! But when he had learned every part of the process he fled home to Virginia, and there, with a few fellow patriots, he constructed the United States’ first aether-ship: the
Liberty
.
¹³

‘My grandfather hoped that he might capture a British
warship or two, and set up a free American settlement upon one of the outer worlds, from where he might disseminate the knowledge of the chemical wedding to all men. He dreamed of founding a Rebel Alliance which would strike at your empire from a hidden base …’

‘It didn’t come true, though, did it?’ said Jack Havock. ‘The British were better than your grandad. Better alchemists, better aethernauts and better fighters. Their
Admiral Nelson beat him hands down.’

Delphine’s eyes flashed fiercely, and she said, ‘
Liberty
’s wreck was never found.’

‘Of course it wasn’t,’ Jack goaded her. ‘She was blown to bits.’

Delphine laughed. ‘That is what the British thought. That is what my grandfather
wanted
them to think. His ship was badly damaged, but somehow he managed to limp away
into the reefs between the asteroids, where none dared follow him.’

Jack shook his head. ‘That’s just wishful thinking, Miss. You’ve no way of proving it.’

Delphine shot him a haughty look and went on with her tale. ‘After my grandfather vanished,’ she said, ‘his wife and her young daughter, my mother, were forced to flee to France, and seek the protection of the Revolutionary Government there. My mother married a Frenchman, and settled down to live respectably near Paris. We had plenty to live on, for the Government of France awarded us a pension in honour of Grandpapa’s great deeds. They would gladly love an aether-ship of their own, and they thought that Grandpapa’s
Liberty
would suit them very well. They sent many secret agents out among the asteroids over the years, looking for the
Liberty
’s last resting place. But they found nothing at all.

‘Then, a few months ago, they had word of Mr Titfer’s new venture, and of the way that his hotel seemed able to fling itself into the past. They told me of it, and suddenly I understood. My grandfather’s ship lies on Starcross, but hidden where no prying British eye would ever see it! He must have taken advantage of this asteroid’s curious time-holes
to sail the
Liberty
back into the depths of pre-history, and there some calamity befell him, or else I am sure he would have reappeared to light
Liberty
’s flame among the Heavens …

‘Well, I spoke of my theory to my friends in the Government, and they furnished me with Mrs Grinder, and with my fare to the asteroid belt. As soon as I arrived at Starcross I began searching for a way into the past. That invalid chair which serves as my disguise also contains a number of concealed instruments with which I was able to cut a way through Mr Titfer’s electrical fence, and Mrs Grinder has a powerful sense of smell, which I hope will lead us to the place where the
Liberty
lies moored. We were searching for it when we saw your distress flare, and heard Miss Mumby’s pathetic cries. Naturally we hastened to investigate.’

‘Very good of you,’ said Jack. ‘But hold hard; what about the goings-on at Starcross? Was it you who kidnapped Mrs Mumby and young Art? And poisoned Ferny? And turned Sir Richard and Ulla into trees?’

Delphine frowned. ‘Certainly not. Something strange is happening in that hotel, but it is not my doing.’

Throughout this latter part of the conversation I had
been repeatedly distracted by Mrs Grinder, who had taken to sniffing loudly every few seconds. Suddenly she stopped, and pointed to a dark cleft in the cliffs which rose behind the beach. ‘There!’ she said, in a gruff and oddly accented voice. ‘The smell is strong there!’

‘We have found it!’ cried Delphine. ‘The hiding place of the
Liberty
!’ And she started to run over the dunes of dry, piled sand while Mrs Grinder shoved Jack’s chair along behind her, and I struggled in my squelching shoes to keep pace with them all.