Pannick laughed out loud and clanked towards him in his magnetic boots, brandishing the spanner. ‘Quite a handy weapon, don’t you think? Especially when there’s no gravity. But although it has no weight, it still has mass – as you may have noticed. Ha ha ha!’
Blackwood was growing increasingly light-headed from the pain in his shattered arm.
Stay awake, damn you!
he screamed inwardly at himself.
Lose consciousness, and you lose your life!
‘I warn you, Pannick,’ he said, ‘I may not be able to take you in alive, now. I may have to kill you just to stop you from being a nuisance while we return to Earth.’
‘Return to Earth? And how, pray tell, are you going to do that?’ asked Pannick, still moving clumsily forward like a clockwork toy soldier.
Blackwood panted and blinked the sweat from his eyes. ‘I know… I know you’ve locked the flight controls…’
‘Precisely.’ Pannick tapped his trouser pocket. ‘I have the key to unlock them, but you’ll have to
get it from me first!
’ he ended the sentence in a scream as he furiously swung the spanner again. This time, however, Blackwood anticipated the trajectory of the movement and dodged the blow easily, pushing himself across to the other side of the corridor. He struck it with his left arm, however, and howled as a new wave of agony swept through him.
‘My dear Mr Blackwood, how long do you think you can keep this up? I know how long
I
can – until we reach Mars!’
Another vicious blow, which once again Blackwood was able to dodge – although this time only just. Pannick was right: he wouldn’t last much longer like this. As he drifted across the corridor, he quickly thrust his hand into his pocket and pulled out his pocket knife, unsheathing the blade with a deft movement of his thumb while he kept it behind his back, out of Pannick’s view.
Pannick swung the spanner again, and this time Blackwood felt the air stir as it missed his forehead by less than an inch. Gritting his teeth against the pain, Blackwood launched himself forward as Pannick completed the swing, which had left his upper body exposed, and buried the knife just below his collarbone.
Pannick screamed in pain and shock, and released the spanner, which whirled off along the corridor, bouncing and clattering between the girders.
With lightning-fast movements, Blackwood withdrew the knife, put its bloodied blade between his teeth, thrust his hand into Pannick’s trouser pocket, grabbed the key and put it in his own; then he took the knife and slashed the gasbag beside which he was floating. Pannick tried to grab him, but the resulting blast of helium propelled him back along the corridor towards the prow of the ship and beyond his opponent’s reach.
As he neared the end of the axial corridor and the first of the access ladders leading down to the lowest level of the balloon, Blackwood spied the dim figure of Pannick clutching at his injured chest with one hand and his face with the other, before clanking towards the third ladder.
Knowing he had mere seconds in which to act, Blackwood grabbed the topmost rung of the ladder and hauled himself down. Not even bothering to slow himself as he reached the bottom, he emerged from the shaft and slammed into the catwalk, taking the impact with his right shoulder. He pulled himself along to the maintenance hatch leading to the flight deck and hauled himself through, closing it behind him.
He turned and looked through the hatch leading to the gondola’s main compartment and saw Pannick pulling himself through a similar trapdoor to the one on the flight deck. Pannick’s cherubic face was twisted into a rictus of pain and hatred as he clanked towards the flight deck between the serried ranks of glass cylinders.
‘Blackwood!’ he screamed. ‘I’m going to
kill
you, Blackwood! You shan’t stand between me and my destiny.’
‘I regret to inform your Lordship,’ Blackwood called as he took hold of the lever by the hatch, ‘that I most certainly shall!’
He threw the lever, and the hatch hissed shut. The clanking of Pannick’s magnetic boots continued, albeit muffled now by the steel door. Blackwood went to the instrument panel and pulled the lever he had seen earlier.
The lever was marked PAYLOAD RELEASE.
There was another hiss of hydraulics, accompanied by a single high-pitched scream as the bottom of the gondola’s main compartment opened, evacuating the compartment and everything it contained: the canisters, the atmosphere, and Lord Pannick.
The entire vessel shuddered horribly as the evacuating air shunted it upwards. Girders creaked and moaned in protest, while the deck plates tried to shake themselves loose from their rivets. Blackwood thrust the key into the instrument panel and twisted it. Instantly, the joystick began to jerk chaotically forwards and backwards, left and right. Wincing at the pain in his left arm, Blackwood grabbed the joystick in his right fist and managed to steady it; then he brought the craft around until the blue-green orb of Earth was squarely in the front windows.
As he did so, something glittered off to starboard, and he peered through the side windows. In the far distance, drifting against the vast starscape, Blackwood saw hundreds of tiny flecks of glass, and among them the unmoving figure of Lord Pannick.
‘The canisters are yours,’ Blackwood whispered. ‘You keep them.’
Sophia stood at the edge of Hyde Park and cast a fearful gaze at the vast edifice of the New Crystal Palace, which glittered in the bright morning sunlight. The building was utterly magnificent, half as big again as the original, which had played host to the monumentally successful Great Exhibition of 1851, and which had been moved to Sydenham Hill three years later. Although there had been a number of World’s Fairs in the intervening decades, the Greater Exhibition of the Works of Industry of all Nations was the first to include contributions from the civilisation of Mars. It was therefore a unique event, and the number of attendees was expected to surpass the six million who had come during the five-and-a-half months of the 1851 Exhibition.
Beside Sophia, Detective Gerhard de Chardin of New Scotland Temple stood with his hands clasped behind his back, watching the thousands of people milling about in the distance, wandering into and out of the great building, strolling through the park or sitting in large groups upon the grass. Somewhere within the New Crystal Palace, Queen Victoria and the Prime Minister were being shown around the exhibits, and this, more than anything else, gave de Chardin pause for concern.
‘Did Her Majesty agree to see you, Lady Sophia?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ she replied, her eyes still fixed upon the gargantuan steel and glass building. ‘As soon as I returned from Faerie, I requested, and was granted, an audience. I informed Her Majesty of Lord Pannick’s plans and begged her to order the postponement of the Grand Opening – or if she were unable to do so, at least to postpone her own attendance.’
‘Her reaction is evident,’ de Chardin muttered.
Sophia gave a brief, grim smile. ‘Indeed, Detective. She told me that she could not countenance hiding from the danger and assured me that she had full confidence in Mr Blackwood and me.’
‘I’m sure that confidence is well-placed… but Mr Blackwood is not here.’
At this, Sophia caught her breath, and the frown of concern which had clouded her brow turned briefly into a grimace of dread. ‘No, he is not here. He is at present in the depths of space – precisely where, I have no idea – nor even if he is alive or dead.’
De Chardin placed a comforting hand upon her shoulder. ‘I am sure he is alive. He is a capable man. Lord Pannick will be no match for him.’
Sophia forced a weak smile and nodded her thanks.
‘Nevertheless, I must maintain that the decision to attend was a serious mistake on the part of Her Majesty.’
‘I have to agree, although I can understand her resolve. She reminded me that she and the Royal Family left London prior to the mass demonstration of the Chartists in 1848, and sought refuge at Osborne on the Isle of Wight. She confided to me that she had vowed never to flee the city again after that.’
‘She is indeed courageous.’
‘How have you fared with your own preparations, Detective?’
De Chardin gave a frustrated sigh. ‘Very well, although I’m ashamed to say that my men have been reduced to the status of ushers, such is the nature of the threat. If and when Indrid Cold makes his move, there will be little we can do, save to coordinate an immediate evacuation of the site. The real battle will be between the fighting machine and the Army.’ He proceeded to point out the locations around the New Crystal Palace where artillery had been set up. ‘In all,’ he said, ‘there are fifty cannons, with gunners standing by.’
‘Will they be enough, I wonder, against such a fearsome weapon of war?’
De Chardin chose not to answer.
‘The Exhibition should have been postponed – or cancelled altogether!’ Sophia said bitterly.
‘I understand your anger,’ said the Templar Knight in a gentle tone. ‘But to do so would have shown weakness on the part of the Empire. We cannot turn tail and run in the face of danger, and certainly not in the heart of our own capital. And we cannot allow a threat from outside to force us to abandon the best of our civilisation, to change the way we live.’
‘No… I suppose not.’ Sophia sighed. ‘In any event, Detective, I’m sure you are anxious to join your men. Shall we?’
De Chardin nodded, and he and Sophia began to walk across the park towards the New Crystal Palace.
*
The Earth was growing larger and larger in the forward windows of the Æther zeppelin’s flight deck. Already, Blackwood could make out the shape of the British Isles, and he would have allowed himself a certain satisfaction were it not for the infernal pain that was coursing through his left forearm, as if the very blood in his veins had been transformed into molten metal. He wished he had a bottle of laudanum to take the edge off it and briefly considered locking the flight controls and looking for a first aid locker. Reluctantly, however, he decided against it: the drug would have too deleterious an effect upon his senses, which he needed to maintain at razor-sharpness, and so he gritted his teeth and held fast to the joystick as the huge, fronded propellers of the Æther engines continued to thrust him homewards.
*
Indrid Cold sat at the controls of the Martian fighting machine and looked out through the forward observation blister at the pitch-dark murk that surrounded him. In some respects, the bottom of the Thames was like night on Venus, where the hot, thick atmosphere reduced visibility to a minimum. The similarity elicited no feelings of homesickness or nostalgia, however, for Cold hated his world and was glad to be away from it.
Following the destruction of Furfield and the subsequent vanquishing of the djinn by means unknown to Cold, he had laid waste to the woodland on the estate with the machine’s Heat Ray. In spite of his thoroughness, however, he could not be absolutely certain that he had despatched the meddlesome pair of Blackwood and Harrington, and furthermore, he knew that he had to get the machine to a safe and secure location. And so he had left Furfield behind and headed north, tripping like a colossal insect across the landscape from Hampshire across Berkshire and into Oxfordshire, where he had entered the river between Henley and Marlow.
If Blackwood and Harrington had indeed managed to escape, they would have alerted the authorities to Lord Pannick’s plans, and they would in turn have arranged for defensive measures to be taken in Hyde Park, so Cold spent the next few hours preparing the machine for battle, recharging the Heat Ray and making certain that all of the vehicle’s systems of locomotion were in perfect working order.
Once he was satisfied, he had restarted the machine’s engines and begun the solitary march along the riverbed towards the capital.
*
As she walked through the central exhibition hall with de Chardin, Sophia was so impressed with the contents of the New Crystal Palace that she almost forgot the fear and anxiety that had gripped her heart ever since her return from Faerie. When Oberon had suggested opening a portal directly to the interior of Lord Pannick’s Æther zeppelin, she had felt a dark flowering of terror for Blackwood’s sake, but he had agreed immediately, and she had had only the briefest of moments to say goodbye to him and to wish him luck before he was gone, into the night of space and an uncertain destiny.
The central hall was a truly colossal space, some 3,000 feet long and 400 wide. From her vantage point at the centre of the hall, Sophia looked up at the four tiers of secondary exhibition spaces and observation galleries, at the elm trees reaching towards the elegant arched ceiling of steel and glass, and at the gigantic Grand Orrery, which formed the centrepiece of the entire exhibition.
The Orrery followed the design of a device originally conceived in 1780 by the Scottish astronomer and instrument maker James Ferguson; however, whereas the original had been a few inches in diameter, the contrivance before which Sophia and de Chardin now stood was fully sixty feet across, an astonishing masterpiece of both large-scale and precision engineering. The base, which came up to Sophia’s shoulders, was of highly-polished yew, and was surmounted by a collection of vertically mounted cog wheels attached to the motor mechanism, which was contained within a large brass box engraved with intricate intaglios. Next to the motor was a clock face, nearly six feet in diameter, with elegant Roman numerals inlaid in ivory. Above the clock were three huge, concentric brass rings, which were supported by six radial spurs extending from the centre of the Orrery.
Looking up through this arrangement, Sophia tried to make sense of the fabulous and exquisite complexity of the horizontal cog wheel assembly which surmounted it, and which formed the mechanism by which the planets, mounted atop sturdy brass spars, revolved around the golden orb of the Sun. It was impossible, however, and she smiled in spite of herself at the incredible profusion of steel and brass components, all of which worked together in perfect synchronisation to make the gigantic model of the Solar System turn about itself.
‘How utterly marvellous!’ she said.
‘Indeed,’ de Chardin replied.
‘Do you think the Universe really does work with such precision as this?’
The detective chuckled. ‘Would that it did, my dear Lady Sophia.’ He indicated a large wrought iron staircase which ascended to the first tier. ‘Would you care to see it from a higher vantage point?’
‘Thank you, I would.’
They climbed the staircase and joined the crowd, which was at present observing the operation of the Orrery. In recognition of the epoch-making events of recent years, the globes representing Earth and Mars had been mounted higher than the other planets of the Solar System, so that the twin worlds circled in apparent solitude through the air. The smile which brightened Sophia’s expression as she watched their slow, graceful movements faded when she looked down upon the pale yellow sphere representing Venus. She thought again of Blackwood, out there somewhere in the Æther, perhaps alive and victorious, perhaps dead, his mission failed, while the zeppelin sailed on towards Mars to deliver its hideous cargo.
She glanced to her left and saw, away in the distance, the Queen and her entourage making their way along the exhibition hall towards the area devoted to the Martian exhibits. She turned away from the Orrery and said, ‘Perhaps we should make a tour of the exits. I’d like to know their exact locations and the whereabouts of your men.’
*
The sickening pain in Blackwood’s shattered forearm had diminished somewhat, until it was now merely an intense and distracting ache. As he moved the joystick a little this way and that, making minor course corrections to keep southeast England squarely in the centre of the forward windows, he allowed his left arm to float outstretched. He knew that the lessening of the pain was only a brief respite: the forearm was beginning to swell with the internal bleeding, and once he was back within the gravity field of Earth, he’d be in for a rough time once more – especially with what he was planning to do.
In spite of his intense discomfort, he watched in fascination as the green and ochre mottling of the landscape was gradually transformed by his approach into a fantastically complex patchwork of fields, partially obscured by drifting mats of cotton-white cloud. He felt a strange ache in his heart when he recalled seeing the Earth in its entirety from the depths of the Æther: how small and fragile it had seemed – unreal, somehow, as if it were merely a subtle and delicate representation of the world rather than the world itself. The idea that it was home to vast mountains and plains, wide oceans and sprawling cities, that it contained millions upon millions of human souls, was strange beyond countenance, and he felt a sudden rush of existential anxiety when he considered the brute fact that this tiny orb represented the entirety of the human presence in the Universe.
Whatever the trials and hardships that awaited him, Blackwood was immensely relieved and thankful to be returning, even after so brief a sojourn in the outer darkness.
The world, however, has a peculiar habit of responding to such feelings by hurling an unexpected obstacle into one’s path. Suddenly, the joystick began to buck and twist in Blackwood’s hand, so that he was forced to brace himself by thrusting his knees underneath the lower edge of the instrument panel to maintain his grip on it.
‘What the devil…?’ he muttered as he struggled with the joystick, which appeared to have taken on a life of its own. The Æther zeppelin began to pitch and roll wildly, so that Blackwood wondered fleetingly whether Lord Pannick had somehow sabotaged the craft through Magickal means, his final act of mischief.
A glance at the instrument panel quickly told him otherwise. The needles on several gauges were fluctuating chaotically, as the various systems of the vessel began to fail. The lights on the flight deck flickered dangerously, while from somewhere above him, Blackwood heard the sharp crack and hiss of bursting pipes.
He groaned as he realised what was happening. The sudden decompression of the gondola’s main compartment must have damaged the structure of the vessel. The electrical lines connecting the flight controls with the engines and manoeuvring surfaces had been compromised, perhaps sundered altogether – and if that were the case, he would be unable to control the zeppelin’s speed or rate of descent.
As the rapidly approaching landscape beyond the forward windows continued to whirl and gyre dizzyingly, Blackwood tightened his grip on the joystick, cursing loudly as he struggled to get it under control. As he twisted and writhed, the agony in his left arm returned with full force… and he began to wonder whether the last the world would see of Thomas Blackwood would be a fiery meteor hurtling into the ground somewhere in the south of England…