Starcross (35 page)

In Which We Confront an Adversary Every Bit as Beastly as the Moobs, Though Somewhat Less Like a Hat.

I shall say this for the French; they do not give up easily. When that broadside from the
Sophronia
sent the
Liberty
tumbling, Jack Havock had been stunned by a flying splinter, and Delphine had seen her chance. Leaping to the helm, she steadied the stricken ship, and helped Myrtle and the Moob to repair the damaged wedding chamber. Then
she addressed her Threls, pointing out that since there was now no hope of catching up with the
Sophronia
, and the British authorities at Modesty had been alerted to the danger, there was no more cause for them to worry about the Moobs. ‘So return with me to Starcross,’ she had told them. ‘There, I shall insist that Mrs Mumby gives me control over her machine, which I shall use to utterly undo the British Empire!’

‘But what about all that nice wool young Master Mumby promised us?’ asked one of the Threls suspiciously.

‘Master Mumby is lost in space,’ retorted Delphine, ‘and his promise perished with him. Not that the promise of an Englishman is worth much anyway.
³⁰
Join with me again and I shall see to it that you have all the wool you need. Not only will France give you
flocks of sheep – infinitely superior breeds to the threadbare British varieties, incidentally – but I shall use the Starcross machine to go back in time, and establish those flocks on pre-historic Threlfall. Think how your history will be altered then! What a fine, thick World Cosy will warm the toes of all Threls! What a fortune your woollen stuffs will make for you, and how widely your knitting skills will be praised among all the worlds of the Sun!’

Well, you can hardly blame the poor Threls, I suppose, for letting themselves be swayed by such an offer. By the time Jack regained consciousness the
Liberty
was back under Delphine’s command, and Myrtle and her Moob were driving her towards Starcross as fast as her battered engines would carry her.
³¹

‘And now we are here!’ said Delphine brightly, jumping from the
Liberty
’s hatchway and marching towards the hotel, her Threllish hirelings at her heel, herding the rest of us ahead of them like sheep. ‘I was alarmed when we first arrived, for I could see no sign of the hotel, the pier or
anything, but then it popped back into being … You have been visiting the past again, I take it?’

‘We have been in the future,’ I said, ‘where we sorted out all our difficulties with the Moobs.’

‘Excellent!’ cried Delphine. ‘I had wondered what we should do about those creatures. Now I shall not have to worry. Nothing stands between me and the machine!’

‘Mother does,’ I objected. ‘She will never let you control it, any more than she would let Sir Launcelot.’

Sir Launcelot, who had been gathered up by the Threls along with all the rest of us, snorted dismissively. ‘The Mumby woman would do anything to protect her brats,’ he told Delphine. ‘And you have both of them!’

So there I was, back to being a hostage or bargaining chip again, after all! Delphine smiled at the nefarious knight and said, ‘Thank you, Sir Sprigg. May I take it that you are on my side in this matter?’

‘I’m against the Mumby woman and that black hooligan Havock and all their unearthly pets and hangers-on, if that’s what you mean,’ huffed Sir Launcelot.

‘Not quite,’ said Delphine, ‘but I think we may be able to form a useful alliance …’ And she signalled for one of the Threls to pass the beastly fellow a gun before they herded
us all back through the hotel and down into the boiler room.

‘Good Lord!’ cried Mr Spinnaker, looking up at us all as we trooped down the iron stairs. He reached out to tug at the sleeve of Mother, who was busy at the control desk with her back to us.

‘Silence!’ shouted Delphine. ‘This hotel is now under the control of the French Empire!’ And she had her Threls thrust us all into the middle of the cavern, and stand watch over us with their carbines.

‘Hello, Delphine,’ said Mother, turning from her work. ‘Oh, Myrtle, Jack; I am so pleased to see you well!’

‘You may save your pleasantries for later,’ snapped the young
Frenchwoman. ‘I understand that you have just conveyed this hotel into the distant future, and restored her safely to the present. So I don’t imagine it will cause you too much trouble to take us on another little journey. I wish to be conveyed to the year 1801.’

‘Why?’ asked several of us, but I could guess. 1801 – the year that Wild Will Melville first launched his USSS
Liberty
to prey on innocent British shipping! I could imagine the plot that had formed itself in Delphine’s beastly brain. She meant to travel back so that she could join forces with her Yankee grandfather. Starcross would become his base; the
Sophronia
would be added to his rebel navy, and perhaps, with Mother’s time engine at his disposal, he would finally achieve what he had set out to all those years ago: the overthrow of the British Empire!

‘You absolute …’ I started to say, but I could not think of any term of abuse one may properly hurl at a young lady, so I stopped.
³²

‘I imagine there may be all sorts of complications and paradoxes involved in meeting one’s own grandfather,’ said
Mother cautiously.

Delphine paused a moment to consider this. Jack saw his chance. He knew those Threls well enough to understand that, for all their talk of favouring France, they were good fellows really and would hesitate to shoot him. So he flung himself at Delphine, reaching out to wrest the pistol from her hand. And he would have done it, too, except that his injured leg slowed him, and that he had forgotten Sir Launcelot.

Maybe it was by some strange influence of Mother’s time engine, or maybe it was just my own impression, but everything seemed to happen with an awful slowness. I saw Delphine turn as Jack hurtled towards her; I saw Sir Launcelot grin as he swung his pistol at Jack, and the way that it jumped in his fat fist when he pulled the trigger. I saw the muzzle spew smoke and sparks and smouldery lumps of wadding. And I saw Jack arrested in mid-leap, bowled backwards head over heels like a woeful acrobat, with a red buttonhole of blood blooming on his jacket!

He crashed to the floor. Myrtle swooned. Ssilissa ran to him, crying, ‘Jack! Jack!’ Delphine shouted for Sir Launcelot to hold his fire, and stood trembling, with her own pistol still in her hand and her Threls all scowling and tut-tutting
and pointing their carbines from one to another of us, as if to assure their mistress that they would certainly have shot Jack down themselves had not Sir Launcelot Sprigg beaten them to it.

‘Ow,’ said Jack Havock, lying helpless on the floor while Ssil tore his shirt open and tried to staunch the blood that flowed so redly from the wound beneath his collar bone. Poor Jack – he had already been a snack for a pre-historic sand clam, and now he had been shot as well! I suppose that type of thing is all in a day’s work for a bold young adventurer, but it still seemed awfully bad luck.

‘Silence!’ cried Delphine again. ‘Now do as I say, Mrs Mumby, or I shall destroy a few more of your pets!’

Mother, with a look of infinite sadness, turned back to her machine, made a few last adjustments, then stepped away. ‘The time engine is set to return to 1801,’ she said. ‘But I will not be the one who takes you there. It can only lead you into danger and disaster, and if you wish that upon
yourself, Delphine, then it must be by your own hand.’ She pointed to one of the levers on the machine.

‘What sort of danger?’ asked Sir Launcelot warily. ‘What sort of disaster, eh? It’s a trick, Miss Beauregard! You can’t trust her, you know! She ain’t human!’

‘It’s a trick, all right,’ said Delphine, with a sneer. ‘She hopes to scare us with these prophecies of doom, and stop me from doing what I came here for!’

She ran to the machine, and Sir Launcelot went with her, probably hoping that he might trick her himself and gain control of it at last. Delphine smiled as her slender hand grasped the lever which would launch her on to the Seas of Time again. ‘Into Posterity!’ she cried.

She pulled the lever, and once more that awful dizziness swept over us. And yet it felt different somehow. There was no sense this time of motion, nothing but a fan or cone of bluish light which spilled from some high nubbin of the old machine and illuminated Delphine and Sir Launcelot where they stood at the controls. I saw them exchange surprised glances, and make as if to step out of that shaft of brightness, but the light was changing, hardening, growing silvery and opaque, until it hid them from us, like a cone of mercury, or the bell of some enormous trumpet placed
mouth downwards on the floor.

‘Mother! What is happening to them?’ Myrtle cried.

Mother was helping Ssil to bandage Jack’s wound. In the light of that silvery apparition her face looked old and chilly as some ancient statue’s. She said, ‘I made a minor alteration to the machine. I believe it is what vulgar people would call “a booby trap”. It is working splendidly, don’t you think?’

‘But what is it
doing
to them?’ cried Colonel Quivering.

The surface of the
silver cone swirled with stormy patterns, and began to grow transparent again. It took on a reddish tinge, then, no longer a cone, just a shaft of light, fading quickly, withdrawing into whatever secret projector had created it. Where Delphine and Sir Launcelot had stood, only their clothes remained: Delphine’s dress, blue-black as space, with the necklace of amber beads about its collar, and Sir Launcelot’s evening suit, with yellowish sweat stains visible inside the stiff round of his empty collar. The villains’ weapons clattered to the floor, and the clothes crumpled on top of them with crisp, starchy, settling sounds.

‘Oh Lord!’ murmured Mr Spinnaker.

‘Sssss!’ exclaimed Ssil.

‘Long live the Queen!’ declared the Threls, sensing which way the wind was blowing and hastily changing sides again.

‘Moob!’ said the Moob.