Starcross (27 page)

‘You have my word as a Briton and a Gentleman,’ I said.

The Threls all looked at one another, and then, as one man (or one Threl, I suppose), they threw their kepis in the air and cried out, ‘Three cheers for Queen Victoria and Confusion to the Moobs!’
²⁴

After that, things seemed to go swimmingly. Delphine’s hat marched her down to the wedding chamber, and soon the ship was singing through the aether again.
Jack kept to the wheel (his injured leg made it awkward for him to move about the cabin) and I relayed his orders to the Threls, who busied themselves nailing more oiled tarpaulin over the old shot-holes in the
Liberty
’s sides, cleaning their carbines, sharpening their cutlasses and generally preparing for whatever lay ahead. Mrs Spinnaker, who had been revived with a few sips of brandy, became a great favourite with them, for once she had had the situation explained to her she became as peppery as any of us in her desire to smite the Moobs, and urged the Threls on in their labours by leading us in such rousing old aether-shanties as ‘Yo Ho Ho and a Bottle of Qrg’ and ‘My Grandfather’s Sqallaxian Bogusoid Was Too Tall for the Shelf ’, etc.

Only Myrtle failed to rise to the spirit of the expedition. She spent her time instead peering at passing space through the leaded windows of the captain’s cabin, and occasionally letting out a heartfelt sigh.

‘You and Jack have not settled your disagreement, then?’ I said when I looked in on her to let her know that Modesty was in sight.

‘It is not a disagreement, exactly,’ said Myrtle dolefully. ‘It is simply that he is a piratical adventurer and I am a young lady and we have nothing whatever in common. I was
foolish ever to think that we had.’

‘Still,’ I said brightly, ‘at least you aren’t an alchemist.’

She threw a candlestick at my head. She is a most peculiar creature.

Chapter Eighteen

We Arrive at Modesty but Find Ourselves Both Out-Paced and Out-Witted by the Dreaded Moobs.

Try as we might, we could not catch up with that train. I have spoken before, I think, about the many floating rocks and reefs which make sailing an aether-ship among the asteroids so trying. Well, not only did we have to creep around those, but we had to be wary of the
Liberty
herself, for long neglect had left her fragile, and whenever we came close to full speed her old timbers would
begin to groan, and her metal bindings squealed like scalded cats, and all sorts of bits and pieces dropped off and were left bobbing in her wake. So we were never able to reach top speed and soar along Sir Isaac Newton’s Golden Roads, and as a result, we could not catch the train.

But we kept on following that shining rail, and at last we reached a hub where a dozen other rails joined it, coming in at all angles from other stations in the asteroid belt, and soon after that we came down to Modesty docks through a blanket of drifting fog.

‘Fog in space?’ I hear you cry. Why, yes. You see Modesty was too small a world to hold on to its own atmosphere until we colonised it and set up patent gravity generators in its centre. Even now, there is a certain amount of seepage, and so the oxygen must be replenished every seven months or so by a delivery of comet ice. And when this fresh, cold
oxygen is first unleashed into the Modestine atmosphere, it causes a billowy, swirly, blindfolding fog as dense as any London pea-souper.

Out of that fog we watched the gantries and mooring-pergolas of the aether-dock appear, and the bright pin-point of a swinging lantern guided the
Liberty
towards a berth. I found a telescope and peered warily at the dockhands as they caught the ropes the Threls threw them and made us fast to the pergola’s bollards. And the dockhands peered back, looking amazed, as well they might, for the
Liberty
must have been a most curious spectacle. But none of them wore hats, or any other
garment which might be a Moob in disguise – at least, none which I could see. And Delphine, propelled by the Moob upon her head, came to my side and said, ‘There are no Moobs there.’

‘Then where?’ asked Myrtle. ‘If there were as many on that train as Art says, what has become of them? What are they planning?’

‘We’ll find out soon enough, I’ll warrant,’ Jack declared, arming himself with some old American’s cutlass and kicking open the
Liberty
’s hatch. ‘First thing to do is get to the
Sophronia
and warn Ssil of the danger. Then the Tentacle Twins can help us find those Moobs.’

Before we set off, the Threls disguised themselves once more as Mrs Grinder, for it would hardly do to have a whole band of armed hobgoblins in the uniforms of the Legion D’Outre Espace charging about a British port. Like circus tumblers they jumped and scrambled and somersaulted up on to one another’s shoulders until they had formed a teetering pyramid, whereupon the topmost Threl took from his pack a spare black bombazine dress and, fitting it over his own head, shook the skirts down to cover all his comrades. There was a certain amount of struggling to get arms through sleeve-holes and the like, but it was all
accomplished jolly quickly, and once the fellow on the top had put on his black poke bonnet again nobody would have believed that the large, respectable-looking lady who followed us out into the fogs of Modesty was really ten cutthroat Threls.

We explained ourselves as best we could to the puzzled dockhands – luckily I’d thought to send a Threl aloft to haul down that stars-and-bars banner before we docked, or I think they would have taken us for Yankee rebels and roused out the marines. Even so, they eyed us most suspiciously, until they recognised Mrs Spinnaker, at which they quite forgot the rest of us and began asking for autographs and demanding that she give them a chorus or two of ‘My Flat Cat’. Honestly, it was a stroke of luck that we had reached Modesty in the middle of their night, for otherwise I do not doubt but that the whole harbour should soon have been filled with sightseers and admirers of the Cockney Nightingale.

As it was, there seemed almost nobody about. As soon as she could fit a word in edgewise Mrs Spinnaker asked the adoring dockhands whether they had seen ‘some “mates” of ours, what were due in aboard a train from Starcross a few minutes back’?

The honest fellows looked quite blank, until Jack explained that these ‘mates’ would have been travelling with a large number of hatboxes.

‘Hatboxes?’ cried the foreman, hearing that. ‘Why, some folks are loading hatboxes aboard an old aether-ship called
Sophronia,
over at pergola number nine …’

You may imagine what dismay that caused us! It had been one thing to imagine an abstract threat to the Empire as a whole, quite another to realise that the Moobs might be menacing our own dear friends aboard the
Sophronia
! Breaking free of the dockworkers as politely as we could, we hastened through the labyrinths of the docks behind Jack Havock, who knew his way between those wooden warehouses and stacks of tarry rope and sap-smelling timber as well as the back of his own hand. It was not long before the familiar, comforting outline of the
Sophronia
emerged from the fog ahead, looking as colourless and insubstantial as if she had been sketched in watercolours. And, sure enough, a hatch was standing open under the
Sophronia
’s stern, a wagon was waiting at the foot of her loading ramp – and going up and down that ramp, dimly discernable in the light that spilled from the old ship’s cargo hold, were our beMoobed friends from Starcross, carrying
their piles of hatboxes aboard!

‘’Ere! There’s my ’Erbert!’ exclaimed Mrs Spinnaker, but Jack hushed her, bundling her into an empty shed. We all went after her, and peered out through the smeary windows at the work going on in the shadow of the
Sophronia
’s exhaust-trumpets.

‘They are here already!’ whispered Myrtle. ‘They have enMoobed poor Ssilissa and the others!’

She was right. We could not see Ssilissa, but we could hear the low warbling song of the
Sophronia
’s alembic, which told us she was busy in the wedding chamber, no doubt at the bidding of a Moob. And on the boarding ramp, helping the others with their hatboxes, we could discern Yarg and Squidley, each with a shining topper clinging to the middle of his stalk (which is where those anemone-folk of Ganymede keep their brains).

‘I see everyone but
Munkulus,’ said Jack, watching grimly as his captive crew went about the Moobs’ work. ‘Where is Munkulus?’

‘He was not at Starcross Halt when they were loading the train,’ I remembered. ‘I believe they have kept him behind at the hotel for some reason …’

‘But what are they doing?’ asked Mrs Spinnaker, as her husband and the others went to and fro, carting those heaps of boxes into the
Sophronia
’s hold.

‘Taking that first batch of hats to England, I’ll be bound!’ Jack said grimly. ‘I’d lay a bet those Moobs’re bound for London, to set themselves upon the head of the Prime Minister and the Chief Alchemist and the First Lord of the Admiralty and a hundred other high-up men in Government. Then their friends can set about snacking on the brains of us lowly types out here in the black, and no ships will ever be dispatched to stop ’em, for the reins of Empire will already be in their little hands!’