Starcross (25 page)

There I joined them, and watched as they slung skeins of their precious wool out into the night and used them to reel
in first Mrs Spinnaker, who seemed to have swooned, and then Art, who, not noticing me, but spying the carbines which the goblins wore on slings over their shoulders, cried out, ‘Those fish! Shoot those fish! Whatever you do, don’t let those fish come aboard!’

The goblins all gaped at him. There were indeed a number of red whizzers flitting about outside, but whoever
heard of a fish boarding an aether-ship, unless it had been hooked and reeled in by a hungry aethernaut? I was about to push my way to the front of the little crowd and make myself known to him when Delphine came up the companionway behind us and called out in a loud and strangely altered voice, ‘Do as he says! Shoot down those fish!’

I covered my ears as the goblins raised their carbines and started firing. Really, I thought, looking at Delphine, she was a very peculiar person. Why was she speaking in that ridiculous, hollow-sounding voice, and what had made her decide to humour Art in his strange whim of massacring red whizzers?

And whatever had possessed her to put on that enormous top hat?

Chapter Seventeen

In Which We Learn the History of a Moob.

I was jolly surprised to find myself being rescued when I had been prepared for certain death in the chilly immensities of space (although I suppose I should be used to it by now, for it seems to happen to me quite regularly). But I had not noticed that ship until it came swooping in to save me and Mrs S., so it came as rather a shock when its hatch suddenly heaved open in the darkness and a parcel of goblins in red trews and blue jackets started
hullooing and throwing out woolly ropes for me to clap hold of.

It was a strange old tub, too: like a warship from Admiral Nelson’s day, all dusty and beaten up and overgrown with ivy, and from its jack-staff flew the banner of the old American rebellion. I wondered if it were a ghost ship as they hauled me in, but I would sooner face ghosts than Moobs any day, so I set aside such fancies and started hollering at the goblins to shoot those Moobified fish before they came whizzing in to make mad hatters of us all.

While they set about the shoal with their carbines I flopped on the deck beside poor, insensible Mrs Spinnaker, gasping for breath and feeling for all the world like a landed fish myself. It was only then that I noticed (surprised) that Myrtle was present, in her swimming things. And not just Myrtle, but Jack Havock, too, manning the wheel and looking most heroic. And before I could greet either of them I saw that the person who had given the order to fire upon those fish was Delphine Beauregard, and that she was wearing upon her head a Moob!

Mustering what strength I had left, I sprang to my feet, snatched a ramrod from a nearby rack and swung it at the malevolent hat. I thought I had a chance to knock it down
and trample on it before it could betray us to its chums.

But Delphine, to my surprise, called out, ‘Please! Do not strike me! Listen!’

I was so startled to hear such politeness from a Moob that I missed it, and as I was trying to recover myself (for there was no gravity aboard that old ship, and the effort of swinging the ramrod had set me tumbling head over heels in the middle of the cabin) a thought struck me.

Had not Delphine called out and told those soldierly types to shoot down the Moob-infested shoal of whizzers? Could it be that the hat upon her head was on our side, not theirs?

The gunfire had ceased now, and the goblins were securing the hatch and turning to stare at Delphine, as if they were puzzled by her choice of headwear. I guessed that they had not met a Moob before, and nor had Jack and Myrtle.

‘Keep away from her!’ I warned (for I still couldn’t quite trust that hat of hers). ‘She is not herself! That thing on her head is a sort of vampire-hat. It has taken control of all her thoughts and actions.’

‘Well, it is high time
somebody
did,’ sniffed Myrtle.

The goblins nervously raised their guns, but once again Delphine called out, ‘Don’t shoot! I am a friend!’

Jack jumped down from the steering platform. ‘That’s for us to say,’ he said. ‘Who are you?
What
are you? Where do you come from?’

‘Moob, Moob, Moob,’ said Delphine – or rather the Moob, speaking through her mouth. ‘That is to say, my
name
is Moob, I
am
a Moob, and I come from a
place
called Moob. Moob is the only sound that we can make, you see. Indeed, it was the only sound I knew existed, until I met Wild Bill Melville and his men.’

‘And
ate
them,’ said Jack angrily.

‘No, no!’ said the Moob. ‘It was
not like that! Let me explain … !’

‘All right,’ said Jack. ‘But make it good, or I shall be throwing you overboard before we go on our way.’

Delphine drifted towards us, so that the light of the cabin lamps shone on her face. Her eyes were dull, her gaze indifferent; she was not Delphine at all. But still she spoke, and this is what she said.

‘The place we come from exists far, far in the future, at the very end of time. It is a mournful place, a realm of nothingness where nothing lives but Moobs. For we are the Last Ones. When all else is darkness and the last stars are guttering like candle stubs and the great cold is spreading out across the Heavens, we are what remains. We have none of the vim and vigour of life forms in your era. We do not love, or dream, or hope, or have adventures. We are the Last Ones, and all such passions have been washed out of us. All we ever do is eat, and what we eat are thoughts.

‘There are beings who live inside the stars, you see. Inside all the suns of space those golden beings swirl and sing, and their thoughts go scattering out across space like a pale sleet. It is the habit of us Moobs to stretch ourselves very
thin, like nets or sieves, and catch these thoughts as they go soaring through the aether. But they are meagre fare, for all the sun-beings think the same thing; they are very sorry that their sun is going out, and so their thoughts are mournful, and rather stringy.

‘Then, one day (I do not mean “day” precisely, for there are no days and nights in Moob, but that is the best word I can find in Miss Beauregard’s mind) I found a sort of tear or rent in the fabric of Moob. I slipped through it, quite by accident, and found myself upon the world that you call Mars, in a period of history far removed from your own. Several other Moobs came through with me, intrigued by the scent of fresh thoughts which emanated from the place. But no sooner were we there than the rent or tear snapped shut again, leaving us marooned!

‘We were not worried or afraid, for Mars had much to offer us. There were the sand clams, whose slow, vicious thoughts seemed new and spicy to us. There were the starfish, whose predatory dreams tasted hot as cayenne pepper. And if too much of that rich diet disagreed with us, we simply spread ourselves out and drank up the yellow, buttery thoughts of sun-people that were blown in on the solar wind.

‘And then, one day, this ship appeared. It had fallen, I believe, through another of those fickle rifts. We did not know what it was. We settled on it and tried to eat its thoughts, not realising that it was not alive. The other Moobs lost interest, and drifted off, but I had scented something strange beneath the whiffs of gunpowder and Alchemy which clung to these old timbers. And my curiosity was rewarded, for at last a hatch opened, and out stepped the crew, looking about in wonderment at this strange place that they had fallen in.

‘That night, I slid into Will Melville’s cabin and tasted his dreams: dreams of battle, peppery and sharp; dreams of his family, like pudding and warm custard; sometimes a
nightmare, sour as curdled milk. I’d never known such variety, such wonders! I hurried to find my fellow Moobs, who were spread out like pools of tar upon the beach, drinking up passing sun-thoughts. I told them of the ship and its cargo of tasty thought-food, and soon we spent all our time there. We grew tired of dreams, and found a way of eating waking thoughts. We’d noticed the objects these newcomers wore upon their heads. “Hats”, they called them. So we turned ourselves into hats …