Starcross (33 page)

We Arrive in the Depths of Futurity and Find Them Chilly and a Trifle Dark.

The trouble with having a mother who is so very old and so very wise is that it is easy to start thinking that she knows everything and is always right. But like any of us, Mother can forget little details sometimes, and that was exactly what had happened. Or perhaps she was still a bit confused after her time as a mind slave of the Moobs. At any rate, it seemed she had been so busy
reconfiguring her old machine to carry us into their future age that she not spared much thought to what would actually happen when we got there.

‘We mussst put our hatss back on,’ said Ssilissa. ‘That will protect usss.’

But would it? I could see that Mother doubted it. A few Moobs might be foiled by wool and blankets and the like, but if we came under attack by many millions of them, it could not be long before their small black hands would find a way through our defences, and we would perish in Futurity as their slaves!

‘Mother, stop the machine!’ I cried.

‘I would rather not,’ she replied. ‘We are travelling through unknown reaches of Time. Who knows what civilisations now rule the worlds of the Sun, or what mischief we might cause if we suddenly appear among them? No, we must exert our minds and think of some sure way to keep ourselves safe when we reach the Moobs’ era. The journey will take another hour or so, I believe.’

I exerted my mind. And sure enough, I found a plan there! ‘Huzzah!’ I cried. ‘Mother! Why not have Mr Munkulus design an advertising spore that will convince those Moobs what a good idea it would be
not
to sit on our
heads and eat our brainwaves up?’

Mother looked thoughtfully at me, and the more she thought, the more convinced she seemed to be that my idea was a good one. ‘Well done, Art!’ she said. ‘But why stop at just dissuading the Moobs from sitting on us? That is hardly kind. What we need is a spore that will
inspire
them a little. Something to stop them moping about in their chilly future age, and start enjoying it and making the best of things.’

‘But breeding a complex ideospore like that would take months, or even years,’ Mr Munkulus protested.

‘Then we shall
make
months and years!’ said Mother. ‘I shall divert a portion of the machine’s power into a sort of time-greenhouse, where we shall be able make time pass as quickly as we like and breed whatever ideospores we need!’

And so that is what we did.

Mr Munkulus and Professor Ferny hurried into that secondary cave which opened off of the main cavern, and there busied themselves with tweezers and test tubes of dormant ideospores. Every few minutes one or other of them would emerge with an earth-filled tray in which some tweaked spore lay waiting, and Mother, having tinkered with curious silvery bits and bobs in an open panel on the side of her machine, directed a bluish ray upon it, which made
strange Ionian puffballs swell abruptly from the soil, and burst, and be replaced with more – whole generations of spores going through the cycles of life and death in about as long as it takes me to blink. And then our brainy botanists would carefully carry the results away, and seal themselves and Mother back in their laboratory to peer at the resulting spores through microscopes and magnifying glasses, and drop them into flasks of different coloured chemicals, and watch how they reacted. And after a lot of discussion and the shaking of heads (or leaves, in Ferny’s case), Mother would come out and say, ‘It is not quite ready yet, I fear,’ and the whole process would start again.

And all the while, Starcross went plummeting into the future, century after century, millennia after millennia …

It is all very clever, this spore-breeding business, but I don’t believe it will ever catch on in a big way as a spectator sport. After watching for ten minutes or so, the rest of us wandered off to find something to eat, and to check on the Moobs, who were still sleeping peacefully. A strange light hung over the pier and the dry beach, and glimmered in the
Sophronia
’s rigging. Nipper and Ssil and I went out on to the steps and looked up at the sky above the promenade. It had become a swirl of light, painted with the smeared tracks of a million stars that whirled about us. The Milky Way spun above the
Sophronia
’s upperworks like an immense wheel, endlessly circling. But as we stood watching it, too awed to speak, I began to notice that the light was dimming, and that
the shadows we cast upon the hotel steps were not so dark. We watched the whirling stars grow red and dull, and one by one, at last, go out.

‘What’s happening?’ asked Nipper.

‘We’re drawing near the end,’ said Ssil. ‘We are passsing through the autumn of the Universsse, and into winter.’

‘The end of all things,’ I whispered. ‘The end of all hope …’

‘Oh, there is always hope, Art,’ said Mother, opening the door and stepping out to join us. With her came all the others, led by Munkulus and Grindle, who carried between them a tray containing what looked like many grey-green cannonballs, moulded out of moss and dust.

‘Are dose de spores?’ I asked.

‘Of course,’ said Mother. ‘There is no need to hold your nose in that dramatic manner, Art; they will have no effect upon the human brain.’

‘Oh! But they will work on Moobs?’

‘I certainly hope so! Come, let us carry them aboard Jack’s ship; it will be so much easier to distribute them from there. I believe we have just enough time …’

How cold it had become there upon the steps of Starcross! Now only a few stars were left, and most of them were dim and red, like embers glowing in a heap of black ashes. We hurried together aboard the
Sophronia,
where I helped Mr Munkulus load a spore-ball into each of the old ship’s space cannon. I wondered if we should drop one ball into the hold, so that we could make sure it worked by observing the effects upon the captive Moobs there. But Mother said, ‘No, Art; after all, it might not work, and then think how depressed we should all feel, for there is no time to make more, and we are almost at our journey’s end.’

My dizziness returned, and I guessed that we were slowing. I went carefully to a porthole and looked out. Above us, the sky was faintly washed with the dim red glow of the last, dying suns. But clouds of utter blackness lay across that sky: great, complicated, raggedy-edged clouds bigger than worlds, which seemed to swirl and billow in an unseen wind. And in those blacknesses, as I watched, countless tiny firefly lights began appearing, bobbing and
winking as they spread over the abandoned vaults of Heaven.

‘New stars!’ said Nipper, who is a hopeful sort of crab. ‘New stars are growing!’

‘No, they ain’t,’ said Grindle.

In the infinite emptiness which lay all about us, the cold bright eyes of countless Moobs were turning hungrily on Starcross.

Mother clapped her hands. ‘Jolly good!’ she said. ‘We’re here! It
is
rather cheerless, isn’t it? No wonder those naughty Moobs are so keen to come and live upon our nice, warm Nineteenth-Century heads.’

And now those clouds of darkness swirled up like thunderheads, billowing, spreading, growing ever larger.

‘Mother!’ I cried, for I realised of a sudden that I was watching vast aetherborne flocks of Moobs swirling towards Starcross, drawn, no doubt, by the tantalising scent
of our thoughts and memories and dreams …

‘Don’t worry,’ Mother said merrily. ‘Mr Munkulus, would you take us aloft, please?’

‘All hands to the guns!’ roared Mr Munkulus, running up to the helm. We all rushed to obey him. Ports creaked open, gun carriages rumbled, tackle creaked and ramrods rattled as the cannon were run out. And nimble Ssil was already in her wedding chamber, stoking the alembic, so that the decks beneath us trembled and the flapping of the aether-wings sent drifts of the ash of dead suns whirling across the promenades of Starcross.

‘They are almost upon us!’ cried Mr Spinnaker, peeking out of a porthole. And from outside we could hear a sound like a distant storm: a mumbling, confused, many-throated roaring of ‘Mooob! Moooob! Mooob!’

The
Sophronia
rose precipitately from the promenade, giving me the feeling that my stomach had been left behind. At once, with a soft pitter-puttering, the Moobs began to rain against her hull. Tiny hands reached in through gaps in
her timbers. I saw a Moob curl in through an open gunport and settle itself on Mr Grindle’s head, only to be wrenched off again by Squidley. Other Moobs swirled through the cabin, struggling to find a way to our thoughts through tarpaulin hats and woolly turbans.

Then Grindle and the other gun captains tugged their lanyards, and the cannon went off with a crash that made the whole ship shudder.

Of course those balls, being only made of compressed ideospores, did not fly out like cannonballs in a battle. As each gun fired the shock of the explosion blasted the ball it held back into spores, which flew from its muzzle in an expanding cloud. Spores spread among the close-pressed bodies of the Moobs, who surrounded the
Sophronia
like clouds of animalculae about a whale. For a moment, a grey-green
mist enwrapped them all, and some blew back through the gunports to dim the lanterns in the cabin.

A few Moobs which had got aboard earlier and had been circling frantically, looking for a head to land upon, now ceased their movements and hung thoughtfully in mid-air, their small hands twitching faintly as the ideospores went to work upon their Moobish brains. And the gun crews reloaded with fresh spores, and ran out their guns to fire again …

I went to where Mother stood beside a porthole. Beyond the glass, strange gyres and currents were sweeping through the legions of the Moobs. Eyes shone and hands wavered, but at least they showed no more sign of wishing to overwhelm us.

‘What is happening to them, Mother?’ I asked. ‘What are the spores doing?’

Mother smiled. ‘Their heads are filling with ideas, dear.’

‘But are there really enough spores to affect them all?’

‘Oh no, but those whom the spores do not reach will eat up the thoughts of those they do, and so the ideas will spread among them.’

‘It is as if you are giving them all an education!’ I cried. ‘I say, could you not have Mr Munkulus knock up an
ideospore which would fill my head with an understanding of long division and Latin grammar?’