Starcross (30 page)
Authors: Philip Reeve
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.
Reaching into Mr G.’s pocket, I drew out his hip flask and pressed it into his hand. As I had hoped, a few swigs of First Mate Navy Rum soon proved most restorative.
‘There isn’t time to explain everything,’ I told him briskly, ‘but the rest of the crew are under the control of those hats too. They are called Moobs, and they have dastardly designs upon the British Empire. We must free the others from their influence and stop the
Sophronia
!’
Mr Grindle wiped his mouth on his cuff and stoppered the hip flask. ‘Hats, is it?’ he asked. ‘I’ll give ’em hats! Is it just you and me who have escaped their influence, Art, lad?’
‘Yes, Mr Grindle,’ I replied. ‘But every hat we knock
from someone’s head will mean another friend restored to fight beside us!’
‘A good point!’ said Grindle, grinning.
‘But, Mr Grindle,’ I added, ‘there are a great many more hats concealed in boxes in the cargo hold. Whatever happens, we must not let them escape!’
‘Aye aye, Art!’ cried that honest goblin, and touched a knuckle to his forehead in salute, for all the world as if I was Jack Havock. I felt terribly proud of myself for having come this far, and then terribly afraid of the trials that yet lay ahead. But there was no time to dawdle – why, at any moment some other member of the Moobish crew might come aft to see what had befallen Mr Grindle – so we shook hands, Mr G. flung wide the door, and we scrambled together along the passageway that led into the main cabin.
Well, I shan’t go into too much detail about the battle. Mr Wyatt’s engraving captures the flavour pretty well, and you already know that we won, for if we’d hadn’t the rest of this book would be full of nothing but little black handprints and the word
Moob
. I shall just mention in passing that there was a deal of shouting and hullooing and crying out of the sort of words that would have made Myrtle demand everyone wash out their mouths with soap and water, had she been there to hear them. And a deal of blows and buffetings and jostlings, too.
He whirled about the cabin like a dervish.
Nipper knocked me clear across the cabin almost as soon as I entered the fray with one great swipe of his pincers, which sent me tumbling through so many somersaults that I did not know where I was or even who for a few moments (but I forgive him, of course, for he was still possessed by the Moobs when he did it, and not in his right mind, poor crab).
When I righted myself, though, Mr Grindle had already sliced Nipper’s hat in half with a swipe of his cutlass; the two halves shrivelled up like dead leeches and floated from Nipper’s shell, and the crab, who had perhaps been less deeply under Moobish control than Mr Grindle, grasped at once what was happening, and set about helping us.
Not that Mr Grindle seemed to need much help. I suppose it was the influence of all that rum. He whirled about the cabin like a dervish, hacking a Moob from Mr Spinnaker’s head, kicking another from Squidley’s midriff. Yarg, still controlled by his Moob, lashed out with his own electric tentacles and caught Grindle a glancing blow across the bottom, which sent the poor fellow hurtling high into the air, a trail of smoke pouring from his trouser-flaps; but
in another instant Squidley had pinioned his twin and wrested his hat from him, roasting it till it popped in a fierce arc of tentacle-fire.
While all this was afoot I whistled to Nipper and indicated the big trapdoor in the cabin floor, which led down into the hold. Dragging a sheet of oiled space tarpaulin from a locker, and tools from another, we set about nailing it over that door. For I had remembered what the friendly Moob aboard the
Liberty
had told me of his people and their ways, and how they may spread themselves out thin if they so wish, and I was very concerned that the ones down below might tumble to what was happening and come oozing up through the cracks around the hatch to help their friends, and then where should we be?
By the time we were done the fight was over. Our friends were themselves again, and Grindle and the Tentacle Twins had gone through into the wedding chamber to deliver Ssil from her Moob and make her stop the ship; I could hear the alembic cooling, the song of the engines dropping in pitch as the
Sophronia
slowed. I looked about me. Slain Moobs lay everywhere, withering and crisping underfoot like dead leaves. We could hear the others crying out, ‘Moob, moob, moob!’ beneath the deck, and sometimes a tiny black hand
would reach up through a gap in the planking and Nipper would jab it with his pincers.
‘How did they all get in there?’ cried Colonel Quivering, querulously. ‘What is this old tub? Some smuggler’s schooner, laden to the gunwales with those wretched hats, I’ll warrant!’
‘Colonel,’ I said, feeling jolly bold what with just having rescued everyone from the Moobs and everything, ‘this is the
Sophronia,
the best ship in British Space, and if she’s over-full of Moobs at the moment, it’s only because you brought them aboard.’
‘But what shall we do with them?’ asked Nipper.
‘That’s for Jack to say,’ I told him, and then remembered – Jack!
I ran to the stern cabin, with most of the others at my heels. The
Sophronia
was drifting gently through the aether. Behind her, far astern, Modesty and Decorum and their neighbour-asteroids shone in the unending night like flakes of silver. But of the
Liberty
there was no sign.
‘He’ll catch up,’ said Ssilissa hopefully, when I had explained how I came to be parted from Jack Havock. ‘He’s out there even now, ssspeeding after usss …’
‘Jack wouldn’t let disaster befall any ship that he had command of,’ said Nipper loyally.
Mr Grindle said, ‘Oh, I do hope that it weren’t a shot from my cannon that wrecked her! Even if I were under the influence of a mesmeric hat when I fired it, I should never forgive myself …’
And all the while we watched the darkness astern, and hoped at any moment to see the
Liberty
appear out of it, but she never did. And although I tried to be hopeful, I could not help recalling those last few moments before I was dragged from the
Liberty
’s hull. If that final shot had really holed her wedding chamber, then she might easily have exploded and been reduced to nothing but a cloud of cartwheeling spars and splinters expanding slowly into the cold of space. Myrtle might be dead. Jack might be dead!
We went back into the main cabin, and sat drinking hot chocolate around the cabin stove and deciding what was to be done.
I had expected that Colonel Quivering would take charge of things, being such a military gent, but it was not to be; both he and Herbert Spinnaker were left feeling rather weak and dazed after their Moobs were removed. Perhaps it was because of all the hard work they had been forced to do while under Moobish influence, clambering about on speeding trains, etc. Or maybe, having stayed longer at Starcross than Nipper and Grindle, they had been exposed for longer to the Moobish munching of their brainwaves, and were on the brink of fading and withering as Wild Will Melville’s Yankee pirates had! Perhaps, if we had not seized back the
Sophronia
when we did, there would have been nothing left of them to rescue but their empty clothes! That was a dreadful thought, and it made me understand what our next move must be.
‘Jack left Mrs Spinnaker at Modesty,’ I said. ‘She will already have raised the alarm. So it seems to me that we ought to return to Starcross, where others need our help. If Mother and Mr Munkulus are under the influence of those Moobs much longer, they’ll turn thin and grey as used-up dish-cloths, and vanish away at last.’
The Tentacle Twins twittered to each other, their crowns fluttering with auroras of pink and green light. Nipper said, ‘But what about Jack? Shouldn’t we stay here and scour the
aether for some clue to what’s become of him?’
The others all looked very solemn. We were all thinking of the vast immensities of space, and of what little chance we had of finding any fragment of the
Liberty
if she had been torn to pieces, and I was burdened in addition by the knowledge that I might have to break to Father and Mother the awful news of the loss of Myrtle.
27
Then Ssil said, ‘Art is right. Jack left me in charge when he went off to Starcrosss, and ssince he’s not here and nor is Mr Munkulusss, I sssuppose I am sstill in charge. And what I think is, if Jack is alive, then he will pull through sssomehow and make that old
Liberty
fly again no matter where she is or how badly she’s been sssmashed. And if he isn’t alive …’ (Here she paused, and turned a pale violet, and
her voice grew high and squeaky – poor lizard, she was very much in love with Jack.) ‘… If he
isn’t
alive, then he would not want usss to be wassting time combing the aether-ssseas for sscraps of flotssam. He would want usss to deal with the resst of the Moobs. And the only perssson I can think of who might know how to do that is Art’ss mother, who is as good and wise as Jack. Ssso the ssooner we rescue her, the better for all of usss.’
‘But how do we rescue her if Starcross is full of Moobs?’ demanded Grindle.
‘That is for Art to tell usss,’ replied Ssil. ‘He has fought againsst these creatures and outwitted them, while we have only been their ssslaves …’ And she brushed ruefully at her headspines, which were still bent slightly out of shape, having been so long confined inside a Moobish topper.
