Starcross (17 page)

I caught them up at the mouth of the canyon, where the warm sunshine gave way to dim, chill shadow. All I could see in there were a few of those drifting ghost-jellies, but Delphine and Mrs Grinder stood staring into the gloom, and even Jack had pushed himself upright so that he might stand staring with them. I stumbled up to the abandoned invalid chair and leaned upon its handle to catch my breath, wondering what held them so transfixed. And then I looked past them, and I saw it too.

On the canyon’s floor sat an aether-ship, even older and filthier than Jack’s
Sophronia
, and from her flagpole hung a faded, ripped and shot-torn banner, striped red and white, with a blue square in one corner containing a ring of stars.

On the canyon’s floor sat an aether-ship, even older andfilthier than Jack’s
Sophronia.

‘The
Liberty
!’ cried Delphine excitably. ‘We shall fly her out of here and find our way back to the Nineteenth Century, and there she shall become the flagship of a new armada that will blast Britain’s navies from the heavens!’

As she spoke these wicked words, I noticed a silvery gleam among the tumbled blankets of the empty chair. In her haste, Delphine had cast aside her revolver! Spurred on by patriotism and a desire to show Jack that I was every bit as plucky and resourceful as this young French person, I snatched it up and aimed it at her, hoping that she would not notice how much my hands were trembling.

‘Hands up, Miss Beauregard!’ I cried. ‘You shall do no such thing! You will return with Jack and I to the year 1851, and there we shall hand you over to the proper authorities!’

I had hoped that Delphine would recognise the justice of my proposal, and would simply raise her hands and say something such as, ‘I’ll come quietly.’ Instead, she shrugged, and shook her head as if to say, ‘What is this Mumby girl doing now?’ Then she glanced at Mrs Grinder, and raised one perfect eyebrow in what I gather was a secret signal, for Mrs Grinder suddenly surprised me very greatly by exploding.

I suppose she did not actually explode. She did not fly
into pieces like the starfish and scatter parts of her insides about, for which I suppose one should be grateful. But the effect was rather similar.

Her all-enveloping gown bulged and stretched and tore asunder in a cloud of ripped black bombazine, while from beneath it emerged a number of very small goblin-like beings, who must have been standing all piled up upon each other’s shoulders like a band of circus acrobats. And every one of them clutched a tiny carbine, and every one was clad in the navy-blue caps and coats and scarlet trousers of the French Army!

Naturally I shrieked, and dropped Delphine’s pistol. The horrid goblins leered and chuckled, surrounding Jack and I with their carbines raised, and prodding us with the muzzles. Delphine just stood laughing at my discomfort.

‘Oh, Miss Mumby,’ she said, ‘your face is a perfect picture! Did you really think that the French Intelligence Service would send me here without the means to defend myself, or take Starcross by force if it seemed needful? Do please take care to keep your hands raised, and to make no sudden movements. You are a prisoner of the Legion D’Outre Espace.’

Chapter Eleven

In Which Myrtle Explores a Long-Lost Wreck and Is Not Much Encouraged by What She Finds.

Here I must ask Mr Wyatt to provide you with a sketch or etching of some sort (overleaf), for I can barely describe in words the ugly faces and squat, lumpish persons of our captors, nor the strands of multi-coloured wool which protruded, for some reason, from every flap and pocket of their knapsacks!

I had thought from the first that Mrs Grinder seemed an
odd sort of person, and I believed her odder still when I saw how many footprints she left upon the sea-sand, but I should never have guessed that she was made up of
quite
so many dwarfish legionnaires. Impertinent little beasts they were too; I suppose they were weary of being so long contained inside that black bombazine dress, and felt inclined to make the most of their new freedom to dance about making fun of people’s bathing costumes and prodding the inflatable parts thereof with their bayonets in the hope of popping them. Fortunately, the Nereid proved more than a match for French steel!
¹⁴

At last the duplicitous Delphine called them to heel, and drew our attention back to that ancient ship, which lay there in the canyon looking as silent and derelict as some ruined castle, with ghost-jellies drifting in and out of its various holes and hatches, and Martian ivy growing in dense clumps about its hull and upperworks.

‘The USSS
Liberty
!’ said Delphine, gazing in such a rapt way at it that she looked quite transfigured, like a saint in a picture. No doubt it had sentimental value for her, having once belonged to her grandfather. I remembered how touchy Jack Havock had been on the subject of his own tatty old aether-ship, so I refrained from making any comment about the
Liberty
’s condition, and followed meekly as Delphine and her goblin soldiers hurried through the knee-deep sand towards her hatch.

Even if it had been locked, we should have had no trouble gaining access, for dozens of gaping, splinter-fringed holes pierced the old ship’s planking, where broadsides had smashed into her during the Battle of the Asteroids. And yet Delphine’s soldiers hesitated before we went aboard.

‘Looks haunted,’ said one.

‘Sure to be,’ agreed another.

‘Ghosties and goblins and Tebbits,’ muttered a third.

Delphine looked vexed, as any young woman might who found her servants so reluctant to perform a simple chore. She set her hands upon her hips and scowled at them and said, ‘There are no such things as ghosts, and you are goblins yourselves, so I don’t see how
they
can frighten you. And whatever is a Tebbit?’

‘Ooh,’ muttered her soldiers all together. ‘Ooh, a terrible thing, Miss …’

‘A haunter of caves.’

‘A night-hopper!’

‘Big as an armchair!’

‘Smells like damp corduroy!’

‘Bite your head off soon as look at you!’

‘And it eats wool! Nibbles and nobbles it! Unpicks and unstitches!’

Delphine gave a cry of irritation. ‘Ach! So
that
is all that troubles you, is it? Well, if a Tebbit does lurk within this ship (which strikes me as
most unlikely) I shall more than recompense you for any wool it nibbles. Indeed, I shall offer an extra fifty yards to the first man to follow me aboard!’

At which the goblins gave her a rousing cheer, and began fighting among themselves to be the first through the hatch behind her.

In their haste they forgot Jack, and it was left to me to help him climb in after them. I suppose you will say that we should have taken the opportunity to escape, but neither of us thought of doing so. I think we both felt drawn to that ship, old and filthy and shattered as she was; in all the worlds of the Sun she was the only artefact yet built by human hands; she was as out-of-place in that era as ourselves, and we felt that we belonged aboard her.

‘But I do hope Wild Will Melville and his crew are not waiting to pounce upon us,’ I said, as we climbed inside.

‘I reckon they’re long dead,’ said Jack.

‘Oh dear,’ I exclaimed. ‘Then I hope we shall not find skeletons! I am always exceedingly alarmed by skeletons!’

‘Dead bones can’t harm us, Myrtle,’ Jack said boldly, and went limping ahead of me into a great cabin filled with the voices of Delphine’s legionnaires.

The light poking through the shot-holes in the hull filled the place with the most confusing shadows. Delphine’s goblins charged about, overturning baskets and opening lockers, searching, I suppose, for treasure. One found an old spaceman’s jersey, and held it aloft with a hoot of triumph, crying, ‘By the flashing needles of Grodqol the Mighty!’
¹⁵
Another, upon opening a trunk to find nothing but a few frayed strands of greasy wool and a papery mass of moth pupae, stamped his foot and let out dreadful curses, crying, ‘Tis like the Nibbling in there!’
¹⁶
Delphine ignored their ill-discipline, and glided serenely past them, gazing about her at the interior of her grandpa’s ship, and Jack and I went after her, up a stairway which opened on to the main gun deck.