Starcross (34 page)

‘No, Art, dear; that would be cheating.’

The Moobs formed fancy knots and twirls and mandalas. Some, who had not yet tasted of the new spores, came zooming in as if to steal our thoughts from us, but were distracted by those who had, and became docile, too.

‘They have no more need to eat up other people’s thoughts and dreams,’ said Mother. ‘They are having thoughts and dreams of their own now, thanks to Art’s topping plan.’

You may imagine how I swelled with pride at such praise! I should have liked to hear her say more upon the subject, but she was still delightedly watching those happy Moobs and, after a moment, she went on, ‘Some of them are dreaming up stories, or pieces of music. Some are beginning to ponder upon ways of making the dying stars last longer. A few are planning journeys of discovery and exploration, far out among the cinders of the island galaxies. One or two are wondering whether there might be other universes into which they may find their way …’

It all seemed rather a lot for a simple advertising spore to have achieved. I could not help wondering whether Mother
had perhaps used this method before, during her colourful past, as a way to light the flame of consciousness among the brute ancestors of other races. Had she, long ago, alighted beside some hairy primitive on the pre-historic Earth and blown into his face a few spores of similar design? But no; surely
that
would have been cheating … wouldn’t it?

Before I could ask her, she pushed herself away from the porthole and sailed through the cabin, seizing a marlinspike on her way. Landing beside the hatchway which Nipper and I had earlier nailed shut, she quickly prised it open with the spike, bent nails pirouetting into the air all around her as she worked. And as the hatch came open, out came sliding all the Moobs we’d trapped there – changed Moobs now, amiable Moobs, their small heads stuffed with wonderful ideas by the spores which had showered down upon them through gaps in the
Sophronia
’s planking. To see the
way they rolled and tumbled and somersaulted in mid-air almost made me wish that Mr Munkulus’s spores
did
affect the human brain, so that I could understand the wild thoughts they’d seeded in those happy Moobs.

The cannon fire had ceased. My shipmates all stood by their silent guns, watching that black rainbow of Moobs arch up from the opened hold and out of a handy porthole which Yarg and Squidley threw open for them near the prow. And as they swept from the ship to join the Moobtides which swirled all about us, Mr Munkulus turned the ship, and Ssilissa cooked up some element in her alembic that made a rosy glow come from her exhaust-trumpets and steered her slow enough among those dancing garlands of Moobs that she did no harm to them. Five minutes more and we were settling safely on to the promenade at Starcross.

‘And now,’ said Mother, ‘we must find Myrtle, and dear Jack.’

Back in the hotel, she asked the kitchen automata to toast us some muffins and scramble us some eggs, for it is hungry work, all this plunging through the Veils of Time. Professor
Ferny excused himself, and went to stand a while in a pot of fortifying compost in the greenhouse. Colonel Quivering and Mr Munkulus hurried off to see if the larders of Starcross contained any First Mate Navy Rum, and the rest of us returned to the cavern, where Sir Launcelot was still bound to his chair. (I noticed that Yarg and Squidley each gave him a surreptitious kick as they passed, but I felt a little sorry for him. After all, he had missed all the fun.)

‘Should we untie him, Mother?’ I asked. ‘He must be getting most awfully stiff.’

‘Just leave him a little longer, dear,’ said Mother, going to her machine, pulling levers, turning switches. ‘As soon as we are back in our own time …’

That dizzy, spinning sensation that I had come to know so well swept over me again as Starcross commenced its voyage back across the centuries. I knew that outside, the sky would be starting to fill with stars again, the great Catherine Wheel of the Milky Way turning once more above the rooftops of the hotel. Deciding to take a look, I turned towards the stairs – and saw that Sir Launcelot was gone!

‘But he was there a moment ago!’ said Mother, vexed, when I drew this to her attention.

‘Well, he is not there now,’ was all that I could say. Nor
was he. His chair was there, and the cords which had bound him lay draped about it like cold spaghetti, but the man himself had slipped away while we were busy watching Mother work her miracles at the control bench. At the top of the iron stairs, the door into the hotel hung half open.

Nipper’s eye-stalks drooped in shame. ‘It is my fault,’ he confessed. ‘I did not like to see him bound up so tightly, so I just loosened the knots a tad to preserve him from the pins-and-needles …’

‘And he has repaid your kindness by sneaking off,’ said Mother, patting the good crab’s shell.

‘We must find him!’ I said. ‘Who knows what mischief he may be planning?’

Mother looked doubtful. ‘Very well, Art,’ she said, ‘but do be careful …’

I ran back upstairs with Nipper and Ssil and the Twins. Mother stayed behind, for she dared not leave the Shaper machine unattended when it was operating. Mr Spinnaker stayed with her in case Sir Launcelot should return.

I suppose Sir Launcelot had had plenty of time to think while we were busy dealing with the Moobs, and he had realised that as soon as we returned to the year 1851 he would be handed over to the authorities, who would probably hang
him for a traitor. At any rate, he must have decided to make a dash for the railway station, in the hope that he might leave Starcross as soon as Mother restored it to our own time. He was haring across the lobby when we sighted him, blundering into potted palms and side-tables as he struggled against the giddying sensations of our Chronic journey.

‘Stop!’ I shouted, stumbling a little myself.

Sir Launcelot glanced back at me, and threw himself at the glass front doors, which opened before him so that he went tumbling down the steps.

‘What’s afoot?’ cried Colonel Quivering, appearing from the direction of the wine cellars clutching several bottles of
fine vintage port.

‘It’s Sir Launcelot!’ I explained.

‘He’s essscaping!’ added Ssil.

All together we rushed out on to the steps. Sir Launcelot’s tumble had done him no harm, and he sat on the promenade with the contents of his coat pockets scattered all about him, looking up at the stars. I looked up, too. The whirl of the Milky Way was slowing, and I realised with a start that our journey was ending – though why the return trip was so much faster than the outward one, I cannot say. The familiar stars and asteroids hung above Starcross’s bone-dry beaches again, and with one last wave of dizziness we were back in 1851.

‘Now then, Sprigg,’ said Colonel Quivering, taking charge. ‘You come with us!’

Sir Launcelot stood up shakily, looking jolly cross that his escape attempt had failed. But as he was about to start back up the steps to us, we all became aware of a strange sound coming from the sky above the railway terminus. A star moved there, and grew bigger, and was not a star at all, but a glitter of starlight on space-frosted planking and ancient iron. With a whoosh, a rush, a rising rumble the ship soared over us, circling the hotel once before crashing down upon
the promenade not far from where the
Sophronia
lay. She landed with such a wallop that whole sections of her battered hull were burst asunder, and all of us who stood watching ducked and shielded our faces from a shower of splintered planks and rusty nails which came raining down upon the steps and on the striped canopy above the hotel entrance.

When the sound of falling debris had faded and we dared to look again, the ancient ship lay still, careened over on her larboard gunports in a pall of alchemical steams. Shattered though she was, there was no mistaking her.

‘It’s the
Liberty
!’ I shouted. ‘It’s Jack! Huzzah!’

We all went running down the steps, as from holes and hatches in the
Liberty
’s hull her crew came scrambling. Sir Launcelot stood looking most pitifully perplexed as
we dashed past him to greet our friends. For there was Jack, limping on his injured leg, but looking otherwise unharmed, and reaching back to lend a hand to Myrtle, who looked perfectly appalling, of course, in the ruins of her patent Nereid, but whom I felt jolly pleased to see anyway. Can you imagine the relief we felt as we realised that the
Liberty
had not been destroyed after all by that shot from Grindle’s gun, and that far from being lost upon the aether Jack and Myrtle had managed somehow to steer her here to find us?

And yet, as we drew close, I could not help noticing that Jack and Myrtle wore worried and preoccupied expressions, and that even our friendly Moob, which fluttered in the air above my sister like a black banner, seemed ill at ease and kept writhing its little hands together in a most troubled way. And as we came closer still, and Myrtle called out my name and ran to embrace me, I saw the reason for their unhappiness. For those Threls, whose services I had purchased for Britain with the promise of wool, had clearly switched sides again after I was dragged from the
Liberty
’s hull, and now had their toy-like carbines pointed at Jack and Myrtle, and at the rest of us!

And last to emerge from the old ship, looking quite radiant in the moment of her triumph, and armed with two revolvers, was Delphine Beauregard!

Chapter Twenty-Two