Starcross (9 page)

‘Does he?’ asked Mother, wiping the water from her eyes and smiling sweetly at me. ‘Jolly good, Art! I wondered when you would work it out!’

‘But it’s impossible!’ Myrtle cried. ‘How could Mr Titfer
do such a thing?’

‘Oh, I doubt it was
his
doing,’ Mother replied. ‘It would require a science far more advanced than his mechanical tea pots and other toys. I should imagine that some strange natural phenomena affects Time here at Starcross. Do you not recall how ruinous the hotel appeared when we first saw it? I believe we must have been looking through some crevice in the face of Time, and seeing the hotel as it was twenty years ago, soon after the mines here were abandoned. I imagine that, every twelve hours or so, a larger crevice or cranny opens, and the hotel and its environs pass through it into pre-history.’

Myrtle looked most discomfited. ‘Can it be safe? Surely there will be
Dinosauria
, and other creatures with insatiable appetites and ever so many teeth?’

Mother smiled her most reassuring smile. ‘Evolution on Mars followed a somewhat different course to that on Earth,’ she said patiently. ‘The Martian oceans of this period were almost devoid of large predators. On shore, of course, it was a different matter; this was the age of the sabre-toothed sand clam and the terrible Crown of Thorns, a sort of land starfish which reached the most enormous size. But no doubt that is why Mr Titfer has erected that
impressive-looking fence around his property.’

I think that when Mother took on human form she cheated a little, and gave herself the eyes of a hawk. I would never have noticed the fence if she had not pointed it out. It was a spindly affair of iron posts and taut wire cables, and it seemed to ring the hotel, running from the headland on the western side of the bay, up into the dusty hills behind and down to the sea again in the east.

‘It looks a flimsy sort of fence, and barely capable of stopping an ordinary starfish, let alone a giant pre-historic Martian one,’ said Myrtle, sounding fearful, and then, remembering her tragic position, ‘Not that I should
mind
being eaten up, of course. Indeed, I should positively welcome it, as an end to my many sorrows.’

‘Oh, chin up, dear,’ said Mother. ‘I should imagine that fence has a powerful electrical current running through it. It would hardly be in Mr Titfer’s interests to expose his guests to danger.’

When we had finished our ices, and washed our hands in sea water, and Myrtle had dried hers upon a small hand towel which she withdrew from a waterproof compartment in her costume, she and Mother plunged once more into the waves, vowing to swim out to that small island, where the
trees and flowering shrubs offered a pleasant shade. But I struck out for the shore, for trees and flowering shrubs don’t interest me much, and besides, I had just seen Jack, Grindle and Mr Munkulus come out of the hotel and make their way over to the seaside cafe. I had not forgotten Mother’s request, and I was determined to find out if Jack had an explanation for his actions.

When he saw me coming along the promenade, Jack looked first startled, then abashed. But Mr Munkulus and Mr Grindle did not hesitate to show how pleased they were to see me, leaping up and running to hug me and shake me warmly by the hand. And who was this emerging from the cafe with a tray of sandwiches and jugs of beer and lemonade and bowls of iced sprune clamped carefully in his powerful pincers? Why, it was none other than my dear friend Nipper, that amiable giant crab who has been Jack’s friend since childhood!

‘Art, my dear!’ he cried, setting his tray down upon the table and scuttling over to lift me up in his claws and peer intently into my face with all four eyes. ‘Why, how you’ve growed, and how glad we are to see you! Mrs Spinnaker told us there were Mumbys here, but Jack said that it could not be you, that it was a common enough name and that doubtless some other Mumbys had come to stay.’

‘It is not
that
common a name,’ I said, as Nipper let me down. I could not help thinking that Jack had
hoped
we were some different Mumbys, after the way he had been behaving with Miss Beauregard.

I turned to him and we shook hands, and he said awkwardly, ‘I’m pleased to see you, Art. But please don’t call me Jack. While I’m here I’m the Honourable Ignatius Flint.’

‘But why?’ I asked. ‘Jack Havock is so much better a name …’ And then the penny dropped. I glanced about to make sure no one had overheard me call him ‘Jack’. ‘You are here in disguise!’ I said excitedly. ‘Upon Her Majesty’s service! I
knew
that there was something odd about Mr Titfer! No doubt he is a black-hearted villain, this hotel is but a front for his criminal activities and you have come to bring him to justice!’

‘Mr Titfer?’ asked Jack, looking quite amazed. ‘Why, no;
he’s a good fellow, and makes the most wonderful hats. But there is something amiss here, you’re right.’ He sat down, and indicated that I should do likewise, and called out to a passing automaton for another glass, which he filled with lemonade for me. Then, leaning closer, he confided, ‘Sir Richard Burton and Ulla thought there was something strange about this place, and came to take a look at it. That was several weeks ago. Since then, nothing has been heard or seen of them. So I have left the
Sophronia
at Modesty docks, with Ssilissa and the Tentacle Twins to watch her, and come to search for clues.’

‘And is that why you were making yourself so friendly towards the French young lady in the invalid-chair?’ I wondered. ‘Myrtle is in a most terrible taking about it.’

‘Ah, Myrtle …’ Jack looked, for a moment, a great deal younger,
and somewhat alarmed. He had fought space battles against government gunships and gigantic spiders, but even he quailed at the thought of my sister in a bad mood.

‘I think she would have liked a reply to her letters, too,’ I told him.

‘Yes, those … I certainly meant to …’ Jack shook his head, setting aside for a moment the Myrtle problem. ‘As for Delphine – I mean, Miss Beauregard – there does seem more to her and that nurse of hers than meets the eye.’

‘Though what meets the eye is very agreeable,’ said Mr Grindle, leering.

‘Please, Grindle,’ rumbled Mr Munkulus. ‘Miss Beauregard’s a lady, and it won’t do to talk of her in that unmannerly way.’

‘Who was talking of Miss Beauregard?’ protested Grindle. ‘It was her nurse I meant, that Mrs Grinder. A fine figure of a woman.’

‘I think they’re up to something,’ said Jack darkly. ‘I don’t know what, but they’ve come here for more than the sea air. She is forever having Mrs Grinder wheel her off on constitutionals among the rocks and scrub, and I have seen her measuring the air, or the temperature or some such, with all manner of curious instruments when she
thinks no one is watching. That is why I befriended her, in the hope that I might find out why she has come here, and what she hopes to accomplish, and whether she had anything to do with the disappearance of Ulla and Sir Richard. If Myrtle chooses to take that amiss, then that is her lookout.’

‘I’m sure Myrtle will understand once Art explains it,’ said Nipper, that ever-hopeful crustacean. ‘Myrtle is not one to cause a scene.’

But no sooner had the words emerged from his shell than we all heard my sister’s voice, raised in a most piercing and unsettling shriek. We looked about – Jack sprung to his feet and put a hand to his hip, where, in his piratical days, his revolving pistol had been wont to hang – and out upon that island in the sea we saw Myrtle and Mother. As we watched, they both plunged in and struck out for the beach.

We hurried down on to the sand, and were joined there by the Spinnakers, Prof. Ferny and Colonel Quivering, and even by Mr Titfer, who came running from some study or office in the upper regions of his hotel, in his shirt sleeves, with a clerical automaton hurrying behind him, making notes of everything he said.

‘What the deuce is going on here?’ he demanded.

Mother rose from the waves, looking like Aphrodite,
¹¹
only better dressed, with Myrtle coughing and spluttering behind her.

‘Myrtle?’ cried Jack, running to her.

‘I have nothing to say to you,’ retorted Myrtle, folding her arms, turning her face away from him and elevating her chin to a steep angle. ‘What was that dreadful scream?’ asked Mrs Spinnaker, looking very flustered and tying nervous knots in her bonnet ribbons.

Myrtle forgot her anger at Jack and remembered what had caused her alarm. ‘Oh, those trees!’ she cried.

‘What trees?’ demanded Mr Titfer.

‘On the island there,’ said Mother, her brow creased by a worried frown. ‘On that island, among the flowering shrubs, there are two trees growing …’

‘Yes, I’ve noticed them several times,’ said Colonel Quivering, squinting into the dazzle of the sunlit waves. ‘They look rather like two people standing there.’

‘Colonel,’ said my mother, ‘they
are
two people standing there. I am certain that those are Venusian Changeling Trees, and that until quite recently they were human beings.’

Chapter Six

In Which One of Our Number Discerns the Hand of an Enemy at Work, and Is Struck Down by It!

There were gasps and cries of alarm from all about me, and I believe I gave a yelp, too. If you’ve been following my adventures you will recall the dreaded Venusian Changeling Trees, whose invisible spores wiped out our colonies on Venus by transforming the colonists into more Changeling Trees. Mother’s words made me remember my own meeting with Jack Havock’s family, who
stood in a little spinney upon a headland there, with the sea wind sighing through their leaves, and when I looked at Jack I saw Horror etched on his face. The thought that Changeling spores might be drifting even now in the balmy airs of Starcross, and that Mother, Myrtle and the rest of us might soon be trees as well, was almost indescribably dreadful!

‘Changeling Trees?’ cried Professor Ferny, rustling his fronds in agitation. ‘Impossible!’