For a moment, the man wondered whether the knock might activate the detonator but there was no accompanying series of detonations. And then his attention was fully back on the dog.
There was a ripping sound as the mastiff landed, much of the sleeve of the man’s jacket trapped between its teeth. The automaton spun round, snarling, and leapt for the man again.
This time he was ready for it.
The crowbar, swung with both hands, caught the creature round the side of the head. The resulting clang was accompanied by a snapping metal sound and sparks burst from the rent in the robot’s neck joint.
The dog howled – its synthesised yowling buzzing with static – and dropped to the ground at the man’s feet. He swung again, this time bringing the crowbar down on top of its steel skull. The light in the mastiff’s baleful red eyes faded.
The saboteur immediately began scrabbling around on the ground as he desperately searched for the detonator. The sounds made by the approaching security guards and yet more automaton attack dogs was getting louder. And then his fingers closed on something small and metallic. Without hesitation he found the trigger and pressed the activation switch.
Rising slowly, he turned to face the approaching security contingent, a smug smile on his lips and a manic glint in his eye.
The first explosion took out a series of skylights in the factory roof, sending sheets of flames roiling into the sky. The second was followed by a groaning crash as the great ore bucket hit the factory floor, molten metal pouring from it in a torrent that melted or set fire to much of the smeltery.
Men and dogs were sent reeling as the rest of the magnet mines touched off in quick succession. The initial detonations were soon followed by secondary booming explosions, as the processing plant began to tear itself apart.
As the initial phase of destruction came to an end, the chaos evolved in new and incredible ways.
Pieces of the factory began to rise into the air. It was only small pieces at first – shattered pipework, wall panels, chunks of rubble – but then larger sections of the factory began to ascend– roof struts, one of the massive crucibles, even some of the sheets of metal that had formed the factory floor.
In the initial explosions, liquid cavorite had been blasted all across the interior of the vaulted storage chamber. Now, as it began to cool against the surface of everything it had touched, so its anti-gravitic properties came into effect. Vast pieces of the manufactory – some of them ablaze – disappeared as they hurtled skyward, enveloped by the Smog that lay over the city like a tramp’s blanket.
In a stunned state of disbelieving shock, those pursuing the saboteur focused on the one thing that still made sense to them; that the felon responsible for the attack was getting away!
The gate was only fifty yards away now. The man sprinted towards it, pursued by the security guards. A shot rang out, but the shooter’s aim was off and the bullet threw a chip from one of the stone gateposts.
The attack dog that had intercepted him on his arrival at the plant was waiting just where he had left it. It turned, aural receptors detecting his approach. Seeing him, the automaton began to wag its tail.
The others were close on his heels now. The scrape of the dogs’ steel claws on the cobbles sounded uncomfortably close now.
He sprinted past the squatting automaton.
“Good dog,” he said. “Drop.”
The mechanical mastiff obediently opened its mouth and the hemispherical metal device that had been clamped between its jaws fell to the ground, as the man threw himself at the gates and began to climb.
The detonation lifted the approaching security guards off their feet, hurling them backwards in a cloud of smoke and oily flames. The attack dogs were caught at the epicentre of the blast. What was left of the automatons clattered down around the security guards moments later.
As the smoke cleared and the men climbed painfully to their feet, the factory continuing to burn and break apart behind them – the Royal Observatory itself atop its distant hill lit up by the growing conflagration – they looked to the gates of the cavorite works. But the saboteur was gone.
CHAPTER TWO
A Trip to the Moon
T MINUS 5 DAYS, 6 HOURS, 7 MINUTES, 40 SECONDS
UP CLOSE, THE vessel was even more impressive than it had appeared on the kinema news reels. It was truly immense, travelling between worlds like some vast leviathan whale navigating the ether currents of space. In form it appeared to be part ocean liner and part gothic cathedral.
Ulysses Quicksilver gazed up at the flank of the vessel, its control turrets towering above him like skyscrapers. The name of the craft was spelled out in letters of hammered iron thirty feet high:
As its name suggested, there had been twelve previous vessels in the Apollo line – all operated by Sol Cruises (which was itself owned by Syzygy Industries), and all still in operation – but there had never been a spaceship quite like this one before.
Three years in the making, costing millions of pounds, it was the pride of the Earth-Moon spaceways, and had been in operation for two years already, with an expected working lifespan of more than fifty. It was the luxury space-liner of its day but then, as Ulysses Quicksilver reasoned, if you’re going to travel, you might as well travel in style.
Looking at this prime example of the opulence the Neo-Victorian age had to offer, it was easy to put the troubles still facing London from his mind.
The capital lay ten miles and more to the east, still shrouded by the Smog, despite the former Prime Minister Valentine’s best efforts to improve things for those living under its permanent pall.
But of course, the Smog wasn’t the only thing Londinium Maximum had to worry about. As Ulysses knew from painful firsthand experience, there was another blight upon the city now as well.
Despite Ulysses having helped to eradicate the hive that had taken up residence in the shell of St Paul’s Cathedral, there were still pockets of Locust infestation throughout the city, sealed off from those areas that had escaped the Wormwood Catastrophe by hastily-erected barricades and concrete walls thirty feet high. And it now looked as if it was going to remain that way for some time to come, as the authorities continued to struggle to clear up the mess that had been left after the Jupiter Station’s launch.
Considering all that he had been through since the disaster, despite being dubbed ‘Hero of the Empire’, by the popular press, Ulysses Quicksilver was quite happy to let somebody else deal with the nation’s problems for a change. Besides, he had been given the distinct impression that he was persona non grata in certain political circles, despite having saved the life of the crowned head of Russia – even if he had put a gun to the Tsarina’s head in order to do so.
“You know what?” he said, gazing at the vessel resting on the tarmac of the Heathrow spaceport in front of him.
“No, sir. What?”
“I’m ready for a holiday.”
“Yes, sir. I’m not surprised,” Nimrod replied. “It’s been quite a few weeks.”
“I was thinking more along the lines of quite a few months. In fact I’d go so far as to say it’s been quite a year.”
“Ah, I see, sir. Yes, of course, what with Her Majesty’s 161st jubilee fast approaching.”
“Precisely.”
“And it will be good to see Master Bartholomew again, I suppose,” Nimrod added, his aquiline expression unreadable.
Ulysses looked at him askance. “Will it?”
“I thought it the appropriate thing to say, sir, given the situation.”
“Ah, of course.”
It had been several months since Barty had made this self-same journey, fleeing to the Moon to escape the troubles that had built up for him here on Earth. Ulysses and Barty might have had their differences in the past, as brothers are wont to do – particularly when Barty tried to have his older brother declared dead so that he might inherit their late father’s entire estate – but they were brothers nonetheless, bound by b
lood and the tragic deaths of their parents when the two men had been little more than children.
But it had taken Lord Octavius De Wynter – Ulysses’ employer, for want of a better description – to suggest that he might like to visit Barty at his new domicile on the Moon.
Barty hadn’t left a forwarding address but Ulysses enjoyed enough contacts in sufficiently high up places to make the discovery of such a thing a mere afternoon’s intellectual exercise.
Accompanied by wailing klaxons, the Apollo XIII’s boarding ramps began to descend, apertures opening in the hull of the craft in order to admit those waiting to board. Those who had made the journey from the Moon to the Earth had already disembarked earlier that day.
Automaton porters poured from the ship, ready to help those coming aboard with their luggage, as the barriers that had kept Ulysses and his fellow travellers penned in until the captain and crew were ready for them to board, cantilevered upwards.
Many cheered in excitement, it being their first time on board a space-liner. Others – in general, those used to travelling in such style already – maintained a more sober facade as they walked up the gangplanks and into the belly of the beast.
Considering what London and its populace had undergone in recent months, there were still plenty able to afford a trip to the Moon. But then the realm of Magna Britannia was vast in its compass, containing an approximated three billion souls.
The Wormwood Catastrophe had been the final straw for many, prompting some to up sticks and make a permanent move to one of the lunar colonies. So it was that alongside the businessmen and the well-do-to gentry now boarding the Apollo XIII, were whole families, who had scrimped and saved every penny they could, selling their very homes to pay for their berths aboard the great liner, intending to start again – as Ulysses’ brother had done – a quarter of a million miles away on an airless lump of rock.
Things must have been bad for them here on Earth, if moving to the Moon was the preferred choice.
Ulysses surveyed the press of people struggling with suitcases, bird cages and hat boxes. He looked at his own luggage – a few meagre packing trunks, containing only a couple of dozen changes of clothes, stacked on a trolley behind which Nimrod was labouring.
Putting two fingers to his lips, he whistled. Almost instantly one of the clockwork porters appeared at his side.
“How may I be of service, sir?” the brass and teak construct asked chirpily. The running lights of the vast liner reflected brightly from the polished dome of its cranium plate.
“Deal with these, would you? Cabin number...” Ulysses checked the number on the gold embossed tickets in his hand before glancing at the name engraved on the shield crest welded to the automaton drudge’s chest plate. “Number 32A, if you would be so kind, Reg?”
“Certainly, sir,” the droid chirruped. “It would be a pleasure.”
As the automaton took charge of their luggage, Ulysses and Nimrod joined the press of people excitedly setting foot on the boarding ramp of the spaceship. Making their way forwards, they were funnelled towards the nearest airlock, and found themselves rubbing shoulders with all manner of individuals, from almost every strata of society – or so it seemed.
Despite his best efforts to the contrary, Ulysses found himself jostled from all sides, bumping into a young woman to his right.
“Excuse me, madam,” he apologised, acknowledging the woman with a curt nod and stepping back to allow her to go first.
“Ulysses?”
Ulysses’ gaze snapped back to regard the young lady. “Emilia?”
And there she was, as lovely as the day he had last seen her. Yet she looked different, somehow.
It took Ulysses a moment to realise that she wasn’t wearing a mourning dress as she had been the last time he had seen her. And she was wearing her golden hair loose about her shoulders, and not tied up in a severe bun anymore. In fact the dress, waistcoat and top hat she was wearing were the height of fashion and a startling cyan, with turquoise detailing.
She blushed under Ulysses’ sudden scrutiny and he felt his own cheeks redden in response. How was it that she could still have this effect on him, three years after the two of them had broken off their engagement?
It took another to break the silence that had descended between the erstwhile lovers caught within their own private universe of calm as passengers milled past them.
“Hello, Quicksilver.”
The sound of the old man’s voice jerked Ulysses out of his reverie and he turned to see the diminutive Alexander Oddfellow. Despite being in his seventies he looked a lot better than he had the last time Ulysses had seen him, pale and wasted, smothered beneath bed-sheets, having been missing, presumed dead, for three months.
The colour was back in his cheeks. His white hair was swept back from his forehead and alive with a lustrous sheen. The sparkle in the old man’s eyes had returned as well. In fact, he looked much more like the Alexander Oddfellow Ulysses had known when he had been prospective son-in-law material.
“Fancy meeting you here.”
“Fancy indeed,” Ulysses replied, blinking as if coming round from a session of hypnosis. “Yes, in fact, what are you doing here?”
“We only went and won a competition, didn’t we?”
“Really?”
“Yes! An all expenses paid luxury trip to the Moon.” Oddfellow beamed.
“I can see.” Ulysses smiled back at the old man. “Travelling in style, aren’t you?”
“No expense spared. Travelling first class, don’t you know?”
“Right. Well. That all sounds very nice,” Ulysses stumbled. The jostling of those trying to barge past him to get onto the ship was getting worse.
“This way, please sir,” Reg the Porter called back from the airlock, having already taken Ulysses’ luggage on board.
“Right. Yes. Well, best be off.”
“It’s been lovely bumping into you like this, Ulysses,” Emilia said.
“Yes. And you too. Well, maybe we’ll bump into each other again on board,” he said, his usual cool suddenly completely collapsed.
“I expect we will. Good day to you. Nimrod.”
“Ma’am.” Ulysses’ manservant replied stiffly.
And with that, Emilia Oddfellow and her father joined the throng making their way on board. Ulysses watched her go, stunned into silence.
“Cabin 32A’s this way, if you please sir,” the droid called.
“What? Oh, yes, of course.”
And so Ulysses Quicksilver, accompanied by his manservant Nimrod, boarded the vessel, although his mind was a million miles away already.
FURTHER BACK DOWN the line of businessmen, tourists and emigrants, another helpful droid-porter approached a young couple who were weighed down with all manner of heavy-looking packing trunks and travelling cases. Not unlike Miss Emilia Oddfellow and Mr Ulysses Quicksilver, Esquire, they too were dressed in the latest fashions – a high-buttoned full-length maroon dress and matching bonnet for her, and a three piece tweed suit, yellow crushed silk waistcoat and top hat for him. But unlike the dandy and his former fiancée they didn’t appear to be comfortable asking for assistance.
“May I help you there, sir?” the porter asked, seeing the gentleman struggling to balance the trolley on which most of the black packing cases had been stacked. Meanwhile, his companion was struggling with another trunk that moved on castors of its own.
“No, I’m fine,” Mr Lars Chapter snapped back.
At that moment one of the trolley’s wheels decided that it wanted to go in the opposite direction to the other three and the contraption slewed sideways. As he struggled to regain control of the erratic trolley, the man’s top hat tumbled from his head, a shock of blond hair escaping from beneath it. By contrast, his partner’s tresses were almost blue-black in hue, and were contained within a hair-net beneath her own bonnet.
“Are you sure, sir?” the droid asked, moving to help the man. “It’s no trouble.”
/> “I’ve told you already, I don’t need your help.”
“Madame,” the automaton persisted, turning to the smartly-dressed young woman instead, “may I be of assistance?”
“Bugger off and leave us alone!” Miss Veronica Verse hissed in response, her choice of words at odds with the cut-glass tone of her upper class accent. “We’ll manage.”
And so the pair continued to make their way up the boarding ramp.
UNSEEN BY ALL, at an adjacent boarding ramp, one jacket sleeve hanging by a thread, a roughly dressed vagabond hid himself in the press of people making for Steerage. Pulling his cap down hard, almost over his eyes, he shot furtive glances at Ulysses Quicksilver and his manservant as they boarded, as well as Mr Lars Chapter and Miss Veronica Verse, with his one good eye.
He shuffled forwards at the centre of the throng made up of the great unwashed, those hoping to find work and homes on the Moon, such things having been denied them here on Earth.
As he waved his cardboard ticket at the automaton on the gate, the man scratched at the thickening stubble on his chin. It was almost a beard now.
Start a new life on the Moon, the campaign posters had said.
Or change the course of an existing one, he considered, rubbing at the hole behind his eye-patch. Or, even better, prevent one from ever having existed.
CHAPTER THREE
Fantastic Voyage
T MINUS 5 DAYS, 39 MINUTES, 2 SECONDS
ALL PASSENGERS HAVING boarded, the crew manifest double-checked, the embarkation ramps raised and stowed, the airlocks sealed and final checks completed, with the airspace over Heathrow cleared of dirigible traffic, Apollo XIII rose gracefully heavenward.
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