Mothstorm

by Philip Reeve

  It is hard to explain the Tin Moon in words alone. It is a featureless sphere of metal, and that sounds somewhat dull. But when you see it hanging there in the orbit of that long-dead world, its surface rippling with the reflections of the nearby Sun, it is enough to make the breath catch in your throat. ‘What is it?’ you ask yourself. ‘Who put it there? What is its purpose?’ And you know that for a hundred years explorers have been asking those questions.

  I could only hope, as we soared towards it, that we might shortly be provided with an answer!

  Jack climbed out on to the star deck then, with Grindle, Nipper and the twins. It was Jack’s intention that Myrtle and Mr Munkulus should stay aboard the Sophronia and keep her in orbit about the Tin Moon while we explored its surface and sought for some clue as to why Mother had sent us there. Nipper had hooked a great many lanterns over his claws and went about handing them out to us, for we were to land upon the moon’s dark side.

  We were close enough by then to feel its mild gravity tugging at us. The dim band of twilight between its day and night sides filled the sky to starboard now, and we could see that its dully shining surface was not really featureless at all, but was pock-marked with the imprints of meteors and minor comets. I believe we all felt the same doubt creep into our minds then, though none of us spoke it …

  How could we hope to find anything in that dimpled metal wilderness?

  But while we all stood staring at it and wondering, we had quite failed to notice that the empty stretches of aether behind us were suddenly empty no more.

  Charity was the first to sense a movement. She turned to look. I saw her eyes widen in surprise and heard her say, ‘Is that a Sun Dog, do you think? Good Gracious, I had no idea they would be quite so large … ’

  And then it struck us. The silly creature must have sensed the ripples which the Sophronia had made when she first entered the Mercurial aether, and had tracked us ever since. But in its brutish ignorance it seemed to think that the ship was a living creature—and I suppose that with her aether-wings flapping like fins she did somewhat resemble a gigantic icthyomorph. At any rate, the Sun Dog came swooping down upon her, driving itself forward with great lashing movements of its vile transparent tail, and before we could do anything about it there was an almighty wrenching and a crashing of torn timbers, and those of us who stood ready on the star deck, waiting to go ashore, found ourselves thrown unceremoniously into space instead!31

  ‘Is that a Sun Dog, do you think? Good Gracious, I had no idea they would be quite so large … ’

  Well, it was not the first time I had been flung into space, and I don’t suppose that it shall be the last, so I did not worry overmuch at first. But then, as I turned a slow somersault and was able to look back whence I had come, I beheld a Very Dreadful Thing.

  The poor Sophronia, which had borne us all so faithfully across so many leagues of space, had been torn quite in half! Weakened as she was by her recent hurtling to and fro about the aether, her aged timbers had not been able to withstand the dreadful impact of the Sun Dog. A spreading cloud of splinters and smashed timber was all that remained of her mid-section. A torn-off aether-wing flapped feebly as it whirled away into the dark. Mr Munkulus, looking most surprised, still clung to the dismounted wheel. The bows were caught in the jaws of the wretched Sun Dog, which was worrying and savaging them like a terrier with a rat. The stern section, responding to the gentle pull of the Tin Moon’s gravity, was tumbling down to the surface. Alchemical fire billowed in bluish veils from the ruptured ducts and pipework of the wedding chamber, and Myrtle was scrambling desperately across the wreckage, trying to escape the flames!

  ‘Au secours!’ she wailed.32

  The Sun Dog saw her too. It tossed aside the splintery remnant of the bows and flicked its tail, speeding towards the drifting stern. I saw Myrtle snatch up a floating jar of alchemical potion and heave it at the oncoming monster’s face, and saw the creature flinch aside as the contents burst upon its nasty nose in a flare of green vapours. But it was not defeated; it merely swerved around the stern section and came at Myrtle from the other direction, and this time she had no weapons to hand, nor any way to escape or defend herself …

  So I realised, with a horrible sinking feeling, that I was going to have to defend her.

  ‘Raaargh!’ I shouted (or something very similar—trying to sound fierce, you see). The Sun Dog, which I believe had no more brains than Myrtle herself, was distracted by the sound. It twitched its glassy head in my direction and flexed various barbels and feelers. ‘Boo!’ I told it. ‘If you want to eat something, shrimp, come and eat me!’

  Well, I was wrong to say it had no brain, for it appeared to understand that perfectly. What’s more, as it whooshed at me, I saw its brain quite clearly, hanging in its transparent head like a pickled walnut trapped in a block of ice.

  Luckily, that sight gave me an idea of how I might see off this nuisance. Kicking myself frantically out of its path, I drew my cutlass and drove it with all my might through the taut jelly of the Sun Dog’s skull and clean through the middle of its brain.

  Screeching in pain and fury, the creature lashed violently about and flung itself back towards the light of the Sophronia’s blazing stern section. ‘Myrtle, jump!’ I shouted, and she did and came swimming gracelessly through the aether. In another instant the Sun Dog had crashed headlong into the wrecked wedding chamber, to be consumed in a colossal blast of multi-coloured fire. For a moment I saw all my companions clearly, scattered across a mile of open space. In the light of that conflagration, I could read shock and distress upon the faces of those nearest to me and guessed that mine must wear a similar expression.33 Then the light died, and in the dark that followed we all fell gently, gently towards the surface of that strange satellite.

  We had survived the onslaught of the Sun Dog. I heard Jack calling out the names of the others as we fell, and there was none that did not answer. But what good had our survival done us? For we were shipwrecked and quite alone, marooned without hope of rescue upon the barren surface of the Tin Moon!

  Chapter Nineteen

  In Which We Contemplate Our Sad Predicament, but Are Saved from Despair by a Discovery Quite Strange and Wonderful.

  It took several hours for us all to be reunited, for the shipwreck scattered us across a broad portion of the Tin Moon’s face, and most of us had lost or broken our lanterns. Very strange and eerie it was to hear that ancient metal world echoing with familiar voices as we sought each other through the inky dark. Luckily I had fallen close to Mr Munkulus, and with his help I soon found Charity, and then Father, who, despite a few nasty bumps and bruises from his fall, was still enthused by our encounter with the Sun Dog. ‘Magnificent!’ he kept saying. ‘A remarkable new species. The reports of earlier voyagers were all inaccurate and quite failed to do it justice! How does it hunt? What does it live on in this sparse, almost azoic aether? I can hardly wait to report on it to the RXI!’

  ‘I am afraid you shall have to, sir,’ said Mr Munkulus. ‘Wait, I mean. For the dear old Sophronia is no more, and I can see no other way of getting off this nasty moon.’

  That dampened everybody’s spirits somewhat, and we went on in silence, finding our way by the sparks which Mr Munkulus’s hobnailed space boots struck from the tin surface underfoot. After a while we saw two crackling lights away to our left and realised that they were the electric crowns of Yarg and Squidley. We hastened towards them and found that others of the ship’s company had already homed in upon those amiable living beacons. Myrtle and Mr Grindle were there, and so was Nipper (he had lost a leg in the wreck, but he said it did not matter, dear brave crab, ‘for it will soon grow back, and in the meantime I still have seven others’).

  We all went on together, and it was not long before we came upon Jack, who sat on a shard of wreckage with his chin upon his fist, looking a perfect figure of melancholy and gazing out across a tin plain littered with the fragments of his beloved old ship. He looked up at us as t
hough he was not sure that we would be glad to see him there, and I saw the tracks of tears shining quite clearly on his cheeks. He had lost first Ssilissa and now his ship, poor fellow, and he was feeling very low.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he muttered. ‘I should have seen that creature coming. I should have kept a lookout.’

  ‘It’s no fault of yours, Jack,’ Mr Munkulus told him.

  ‘How was you to know they grew so big?’ agreed Mr Grindle.

  ‘You and your crew had the tides of the Sun and Mercury and this Tin Moon to steer us through,’ said Father. ‘It was useless passengers like I who should have kept a better lookout.’

  ‘Never mind whose fault it was,’ said Myrtle, with that faint wobble in her voice which tells those of us who know her well that it is time to run to the bathroom cabinet and fetch the smelling salts. ‘The question is, what shall become of us now? Who shall rescue us? Or are we to perish as castaways upon this metal moon?’

  ‘First things first,’ said Father, seeing that Jack was not yet ready to take charge of us. ‘We must salvage whatever we can from the wreck and make a camp. Then we can begin exploring. Remember why we came here. This moon has some secret, otherwise Emily would never have sent us here. Maybe if we can discover what it is, it will help us to find a way off.’

  He was being terribly brave, and all our spirits lifted a little at his words. Nipper portioned out the surviving lanterns, and we set off at once, in groups of two and three, to scour the surface of the metal moon for fragments of the Sophronia. I went with Charity, and we had not walked far before we came to a crater where lay several spars, a puncheon of water and a barrel of ship’s biscuits. In the moon’s low gravity it was an easy matter to lift them up and carry them to where Yarg and Squidley waited, marking with their electric glow the place where Jack intended to make camp. By the time we reached it we found that Father and Nipper had brought in a great section of the larboard aether-wing, the very thing to make an awning from, and that many other useful fragments had been collected. We started to feel a great deal brighter and set out again with high hopes of finding even more.

  On that second trip, however, we let our enthusiasm carry us away. It was not long before Yarg and Squidley were lost behind us, and we found ourselves in a darkness broken only by Charity’s small lantern and the glow of starlight reflecting from the metal ground. But we could still hear the distant voices of our friends all calling out to one another as they searched, so we saw no reason not to press on, especially when we made out a shape lying a little way ahead. Imagining that it must be some large section of the wreck, we hurried towards it, making great strides in the low gravity.

  You may imagine our alarm when we drew close enough to the object to let the light of Charity’s lantern shine upon it, and saw that it was not part of the ship at all, but the carcass of the Sun Dog, draped in ruin across the brim of a deep crater. And if that was alarming, it was nothing to what happened next. For as we stood there, gazing upon the remains, two sparks of light flashed high above us, where the Tin Moon’s shadow did not reach, and the aether was filled with sunlight.

  ‘What are those?’ asked Charity excitedly. ‘Oh, they are ships! Some far-wandering explorers or prospectors must have seen our accident and are coming down to rescue us!’ And she began to swing her lantern in circles, which made the huge glassy corpse beside us flash and flicker with reflected light.

  Larger and larger grew those two sparks, and at last they blinked out as they plunged into the Tin Moon’s shadow, but we could still see them descending as blobs of deeper darkness against the dark of space. How odd, I thought. Those ships carry no lights. And then I understood what should have been plain to me in the first instant that I set eyes upon them: they were not ships at all, but more Sun Dogs!

  ‘Charity, put out the lantern!’ I cried, thinking that its light was certain to bring the creatures down upon us.

  ‘What?’ asked she, quite indignant, still thinking that they must be rescue ships.

  There was not time to explain. I snatched the lantern from her and hurled it away. It spun slowly from my hand and smashed against the hulk of the dead Sun Dog, where its flame went out, and I heard a tinkle as its glass chimney shattered. For a moment there was blessed darkness. Then, to my horror, a great glow burst up from the body of the Sun Dog.

  It is surprising how many of the alien monstrosities one comes across are highly flammable. I may have mentioned before how I managed to explode an impertinent squid in the wind-race of Jupiter, and how well he blazed. But you would think a creature like the Sun Dog, which lives all its days in the hot skies around our parent star, would want to be made of something fairly impervious to fire. Not so. A little spilled lamp oil, a stray spark and the carcass went up with a woof like a bundle of dry straw and lit the tin about it bright as day. A mile above us, those other Sun Dogs must have seen me and Charity standing there astonished, with our trembling shadows stretching out behind us as if drawn in charcoal. And they must have thought, Dinner!

  Down they came. I could hear them whiffling as they lashed their tails to and fro. I saw the fire of their burning friend glimmer in their glassy hides and their mouthfuls of icicle teeth.

  ‘Do you suppose there would be any point in running?’ I asked Charity.

  ‘I certainly mean to try,’ she replied. ‘Otherwise we shall end up stuck in their tummies like those poor creatures I saw earlier, being slowly digested. And that must be a perfectly horrid experience.’

  So we set off running, and I must say we did pretty well, covering about a mile every thirty seconds or so. You can run jolly fast on low-gravity worlds, and faster still when you are being chased by airborne greenhouses which want to gobble you up and digest you in full view of the public within their see-through tums. Yet, fast as we were, those Sun Dogs were faster. And then it dawned on me why it was they were called dogs, for even when we were far from the flames of their fallen comrade and plunging blindly through the pitchy dark, they stayed on our trail. I began to think the whiffling sound that I could hear close behind me was the sound of the creatures sniffing. Whether or not that was the case, the fact was those monstrosities stuck to our trail like a couple of scent hounds, and we should both have been dogs’ dinners had the ground not suddenly vanished from beneath our feet.

  ‘Aaah!’ we cried, falling through the blackness. And there was irritation as well as fear in those cries. Had we not been told, time and again, that the Tin Moon of Mercury was wholly featureless? And what was this pit or hollow that we were plummeting into if not a feature?

  Luckily, it was not too deep. A mere ten or fifteen feet, I should say, although in the low gravity we fell slowly, which made it feel as if we were plunging for miles. We landed with soft thuds upon a floor of dented tin, and, looking up, saw the smooth walls of the crater stretching up to a circle of starlit sky above. Almost instantly it was blotted out by the dim shape of a Sun Dog. The vile whiffling noises sounded even louder as they echoed in the shaft, but the creature was too large to squeeze down after us, and so, for the moment, we were saved.

  ‘Art,’ said Charity at last, ‘what would you say this place is?’

  ‘I suppose it must be a sort of crater,’ I replied.

  ‘Yet it is perfectly round and smooth. Like a well.’

  Charity is jolly observant, for a girl. I had to admit that she was right. It was difficult to believe that this shaft was a natural feature.

  ‘And do you notice something strange about these depressions in the floor beneath us?’ she asked then. ‘They feel too regular to be mere dents. Each is a shallow dip, with five grooves leading off it … ’

  I struggled to see in the darkness. Luckily those Sun Dogs were still gruffling about above, and the reflections of starlight bouncing from their hides cast shifting gleams upon the floor of the shaft. Soon I was able to make out the marks to which Charity had alluded. She was right again: it was clear at a glance that they were not just natural dents, acqu
ired during the Tin Moon’s long and uneventful history …

  They were the prints of human hands!

  There were two of them: one large, one slightly smaller, yet neither big enough to be the handprint of an adult. And they reminded me instantly of a day at Larklight, long ago, when Mother amused Myrtle and I by making us press our hands into damp sand and taking plaster casts of the resulting prints. Just so did these prints look. It was as if two children, millions of years before, had pressed their hands into the still-soft surface of this metal world and left their prints there for eternity.

  ‘Whatever can it mean?’ said Charity.

  ‘I cannot guess,’ I replied.

  ‘Do you think it is what your mother sent us here to find?’

  ‘It is rather a coincidence if it is,’ I said doubtfully. ‘Just stumbling on it like this, I mean.’

  ‘But what if it is not a coincidence?’ Charity suggested. ‘You are her son. Perhaps some inner knowledge guided you to this well, or whatever it is.’

  Carefully, I reached out and set my hand upon the smaller of the two prints.

  A deafening clang filled the well shaft. The hungry Sun Dogs up above drew back with wary whisperings. I looked at Charity and realised that I could see her clearly, for the shaft was filling with light!

  Around the edge of the circular floor, where it joined the wall, a crack of blue-white light had appeared—and was steadily widening.

  ‘What is happening?’ I gasped.

  ‘You’ve broken it!’ wailed Charity.

  We felt ourselves beginning to descend. It was as if the floor we crouched on had broken free of the shaft and was sinking slowly into a sea of light. Fresh air surrounded us, and we took deep, grateful breaths, realising how thin and unsustaining the air of the Tin Moon had been. And then the light faded, and something slid shut above our heads, sealing us off from the indignant Sun Dogs.