by Philip Reeve
‘Oh, will this never end?’ I cried. I recalled the squid I had glimpsed as we first approached Thunderhead. I had thought at the time that they were looking out for prey, but now I guessed that it was us they had been watching. The spiders controlled them as they had the stormlets. They had used them to spy on us while we were inside the great storm, and now that we were helpless in the sky they had sent one to capture us. I shouted, ‘Will they never stop pursuing us?’
Jack said, ‘I don’t reckon this to be the spiders’ doing, Art. Sky-squid are mindless brutes, just like the whales. It’s food he’s after, not you and me …’
‘Then how do you explain that?’ I cried, and pointed as the creature swept past. For there on its knobbly brainpan, between the great discs of its eyes, a white spider was clinging, riding the sky-squid like some unholy jockey. And even as I spoke the spider must have seen us, for it began tugging viciously at the whiplike cilia which grew from the squid’s hide. The squid started to turn, its long arms lashing towards us where we cowered inside the ruined whaleboat. A clawed red tentacle wrapped itself around and around our little shelter, and with a jerk the boat was wrenched free of the old whale’s hide.
Jack flung himself at me, groping for the locket. ‘That’s what they’re after,’ he shouted. ‘Let’s give ’em what they want!’
‘No!’ I cried. ‘Thunderhead said we must keep it safe!’
‘I’d rather keep you and me safe, and Myrtle. If we give them the locket p’r’aps they’ll tell us where to find Myrtle …’
A hellish stench broke over us. The squid’s tentacle was curling, lifting our poor raggedy boat towards the vast cave of its mouth. I could see the spider on its back struggling to control it and stop it eating us, but I was not sure it would succeed. Compared to the squid the spider looked nothing; a white mite. Could it really hope to curb this giant’s instinctive urge to eat? The squid’s breath enveloped us, stinking of marsh gas.
An idea came to me, from whence I know not. I shook myself free of Jack. If I could just break the sky-squid’s hold we might tumble free in the High Tops for an hour or so, and there was a chance a whaler or another pressure-ship might happen on us before we sank into the Deeps. And even if no help came, and we perished in the wind-race, at least I should have tried to fight the spiders who had stolen away my home and family.
The old rum bottle was still trundling to and fro across the bottom boards. I picked it up and felt in my pockets for something that might burn. Not my handkerchief; I needed that to hold the locket safe. My hand found something soft and raggedy, and I pulled out the triangle of web I had cut from Myrtle’s bedroom window at Larklight. It had gone dry and crisp. I did not know if spider web was flammable, but I stuffed it into the bottle’s neck, then drew out my box of lucifers and struck one. It flared up brightly in the methanerich air, and I used it to set alight a corner of the web, which, to my joy, blazed instantly with a fierce, yellowish, roaring flame. Before Jack could ask what I was about I shoved past him to the open hatchway and flung the bottle with its little flag of fire towards the squid’s gaping maw.
‘It is full of methane, you see,’ I explained, turning back to Jack, who was staring at me as if he thought I had gone mad. ‘I read it in a book. It is the methane inside these creatures that keeps them afloat.’
Jack said, ‘So what?’
A wall of yellow flame belched from the squid’s mouth. Its tentacles convulsed, and as the whaleboat hurtled free I had just time to glimpse the white spider scrambling frantically to escape as the dying squid began to fall. Then, with a sound like a Titan breaking wind, the squid exploded, filling the sky with flame and blazing gas. The blast knocked our tumbling boat end over end, and I dropped out of the hatchway. I might have been lost for ever, but luckily I had the presence of mind to snatch at one of the harpoon cables which still trailed from the boat. Chunks of squid skin and singed internal organs whirled past me. I imagined the spider plunging to its death in the depths of the sky, and felt like St George when he killed his dragon.
But it is difficult to feel pleased with oneself for long when one is clinging to a lashing rope behind a wrecked and unskyworthy whaleboat and falling as fast as one’s foe. I could see Jack staring out at me from the hatch, his hands gripping the other end of the rope as he tried manfully to haul me back aboard, but the wind was dragging me away from him, in a tug-of-war he could not hope to win. I felt my hands start to slip on the rope. Jack was shouting something. For some reason he seemed to be laughing, though I could not for the life of me see why.
Then the clouds above me parted. A huge, dark body loomed through the vapours. Oh no, I thought, not another devilish predator! And I squeezed my eyes shut, praying that the end might be swift and fairly painless.
‘It’s the ship!’ Jack was shouting. ‘It’s Sophronia! Good old Ssil! Good old Munkulus!’
I looked again, and had just long enough to recognise the Sophronia’s figurehead before I hit it.
There was a bang, a flash of blueish stars, and that was the last I knew till I woke up, floating in zero BSG in the Sophronia’s main cabin with Nipper wiping a wet cloth over my face. Above him, a herd of young hoverhogs snuffled to and fro, exploring their new home. Turning my head, I saw the amber curve of Jupiter in a nearby porthole, and realised that our ordeal was over and that we were pulling away from the planet of storms.
‘How did you find us?’ I asked.
‘Ssil didn’t trust that Gruel fellow,’ said the land-crab. ‘And then Mr Munkulus heard some stories at the hog market of white spiders being seen on Io and Callisto and a few of the other moons, and a pressure-ship called the Oenone gone missing on its way back from Jupiter.’
‘The spiders must have taken it so they could follow us into the wind-race,’ guessed Jack.
‘So we hurried the repairs and went to stand off Jupiter, waiting for a sign of you,’ explained Nipper. ‘And bless my carapace, it weren’t long before Grindle (who was on watch above) sighted Gruel’s pressure-ship –’
‘The Uncrushable,’ growled Grindle, who was standing nearby.
‘– a-bursting out of the cloud-tops,’ Nipper concluded.
‘All beat up and sssscorched, it looked,’ said Ssillissa, gazing soulfully at Jack, who was sitting on the deck, getting his breath back after his adventures in the High Tops. ‘We went in clossse, to see if they needed help, and they fled from usss.’
‘So we boarded them,’ grinned Grindle, ‘and trained our guns upon those hairy Flummocks.’
‘They were Dweebs,’ said Mr Munkulus. ‘Flummocks are entirely different. They have antennae, and no sense of humour.’
‘Flummocks or Dweebs, they told us how Gruel had tried to double-cross you, and how old Thunderbonce had dealt with him,’ chuckled Grindle. ‘Flash! Crash! Ha, ha!’
The others all laughed, but I did not join in. I could still remember the smell of scorched meat that had wafted past me after Captain Gruel was struck down.13
‘We thought you were both dead,’ said Ssil, very softly. ‘Even if you lived, we could not have reached you without crussshing the Sssophronia to sssplinterings …’
‘That didn’t stop missy here making us cruise us back and forth across the cloud-tops hour after bloomin’ hour!’ said Grindle. ‘“Oh, Jack!”’ he mimicked. ‘“Oh, poor Jack! What sssshall we do without him?” It was better than a play.’
Ssillissa belted him with her tail-club and said kindly, ‘It was a good idea of yours, Art, to set that squid ablaze. The flash lit up the clouds for miles around. Something told me it was not just a lightning bolt. I turned the ship towards the place where the light had been –’
‘There was a black stain on the clouds,’ interjected Mr Munkulus helpfully.
‘– and we found you,’ Ssil concluded, smiling her broadest, scariest smile.
‘They found us,’ Grindle corrected her.
‘Art found us with his head!’ said Nipper, laughing his deep, bubbling laugh
, and the Tentacle Twins laughed too, which they did by hopping up and down and shaking their tentacles like multicoloured mops.
‘You’ve all done well,’ said Jack, standing up, but he sounded impatient. ‘Now we must be leaving. Have we fuel aplenty? Provisions enough for a long journey?’
‘We’re well stocked,’ said Mr Munkulus. ‘Not too well, but this is the Jovian aether, Captain; plenty of ships and plenty of worlds to go a-raiding and a-trading in …’
‘We’re not staying,’ said Jack. He sounded almost angry.
‘Where are we bound, Jack?’ asked Ssil loyally, ignoring the groans and twitterings of the others, who had been looking forward to a cruise among the moons of Jove.
‘We’re off to find those spiders,’ Jack said. ‘Thunderhead told us where they hide, more or less. Among the rings of ice and stone. There’s only one world I’ve ever heard of that has rings of ice and stone.’
Ssillissa turned very pale. I probably turned very pale as well, although I hadn’t a looking-glass and so cannot say for sure. We all knew that Jack meant we should go to Saturn, but nobody goes to Saturn. It is beyond the borders of the known aether, explored by no one but astronomers. None of the ships which have tried to reach it has ever returned.
Jack touched Ssil’s shoulder. ‘Can you calculate a course to Saturn, Ssilissa?’
She gulped, and blinked her sideways-lidded eyes a couple of times. ‘Reckon I can, Jack,’ she said. ‘But why? What about the ssspidersss?’
‘Don’t worry about the spiders,’ said Jack. ‘When they see what I’ve got for them, I reckon they’ll be ready to trade nice and polite.’
He took something from his pocket as he spoke, tossed it up shining into the lamplight, and plucked it from the air again. A long chain of golden links twirled from his closed fist. I gasped, and checked my own pocket, where I had stowed Myrtle’s locket. It was gone.
‘You picked my pocket!’ I cried angrily, and burst into angry tears.
Jack would not look at me. ‘I’m a pirate,’ he said, pushing past me and floating up towards the helm, where Mr Munkulus was making ready for our voyage to the spiders’ world. ‘I steal things, Art. I do deals with folk who no one else will deal with. That’s what I am.’
Chapter Fourteen
Another Dip into My Sister’s Diaries, Which May Be Welcomed by Readers of a Sensitive Disposition as a Sort of Break or Breathing Space from My Own Almost Unbearably Exciting Adventures.
April 26th (continued)
When I awakened this morning I felt, for a short time, quite content. I was laid upon a soft bed in some sort of papery tent, whose walls and roof glowed with sunshine. There was a gentle sense of movement, most restful after the alarums of the night past. And then I recalled all that I had seen: how my host Sir Waverley had been unmasked as nothing more than an automaton or clockwork man, and how I had escaped with Ulla, and been rescued by those improperly clad worm-riders.
Quailing inwardly, yet determined not to let my captors see that I was afraid of them, I sat up and found that I was (thank God) still fully dressed beneath the coarse linen sheets which some kind hand had cast over me as I lay insensate. I saw that the cactus creatures’ spilled sap had dried upon my skirts and bodice in stiff, shiny patches like Gum Arabic, and wondered whether there was any place upon this savage world where I might find a new dress, or at least a laundry.
When I crawled out through the low entry tunnel of the papery tent, I found that I was upon a sort of boat or barge, made entirely from thick sheets of oiled and folded paper, in the native style. Several Martians were standing at what I believe J. H. would call the stern. They were propelling the vessel with poles along a seemingly endless, ruler-straight canal, whose waters shone and danced, swirling slowly under the pale Martian sun. I was very relieved to see that the bargemen were, at least, properly clothed in loincloths and long paper tunics. (I have since learned that it is only when they ride into battle that the Martians go naked, believing in their savage way that it is cowardly to wear armour or anything else that might deflect a blow.)
‘Miss Mumby!’ called a voice, and I turned to discover that I was being observed by a person who sat on a heap of cushions at the pointy end of the boat. I approached him somewhat apprehensively, recognising the leader of the war party which had destroyed the cactus-men. He was attired like the other Martians, but had a thin, hawk-like face and a peculiar beard. Upon his head he wore a broad raffia hat to keep off the sun. His paper tunic was, I am sorry to relate, hanging open. He wore no shirt beneath, and across his bare chest hung a barbaric necklace of bronze tiles or scales. Yet as I drew close, and he sprang up to greet me, I saw to my astonishment that he was not a Martian at all, but an Englishman, tho’ one tanned quite brown by the desert sun.
‘I am most pleased to meet you, Miss Mumby,’ he said. His eyes, I must say, were most arresting: large and dark and filled with light. He regarded me with an intense gaze which aroused in me the most peculiar sensations. I was quite relieved when Ulla stepped forwards to hug me and said, ‘Myrtle, this is my husband, Richard Burton of the Secret Service.’
Well, I declare I was most discomfited to learn that Richard Burton, the great British explorer and secret agent, should have taken a Martian native as his wife. I must have gone quite pale, for Ulla at once asked if I was all right, and Mr Burton advised me to sit down. ‘The air of Mars is thinner than that of Earth,’ he reminded me, ‘and newcomers to our planet sometimes take a little time to grow accustomed to it. When I first came here with the Army I was laid up for several days.’
While Ulla went into the paper cabin to fetch food and water for me, I tried to recall all that I knew of R. B. (I wish now that I had paid a little more attention when Art was droning about famous explorers, back at Larklight!) But I do recall that he began his career as an officer of the British Mars Survey and was quite celebrated as an explorer, having disguised himself as a native and travelled deep into the deserts, and led the Martian tribes there in their battles to overthrow the dreadful mole-people who were oppressing them. For this reason the natives, who have never shown Britain the gratitude she deserves for bringing civilisation to their dusty world, have taken a great liking to Mr Burton, and have given him the title ‘Warlord of Mars’.
Ulla returned, bringing water, and a palatable breakfast of baked root vegetables called sprune. While I ate, I watched my host and hostess, and saw many signs of tenderness and regard pass between them. I recalled Jack Havock’s tale of how his family’s prejudice had driven his mother and father to their strange fate on Venus, and wondered if it were love for his rusty-coloured bride which had persuaded R. B. to turn his back on the comforts of his own home and seek adventure here upon the high frontier. In my weakened state this seemed to me, for a moment, quite romantic and even admirable.
When I had eaten, R. B. said, ‘Please tell me all that you know about the spiders.’
I had to think for a moment. While I was at The Beeches I had grown used to telling myself that my memories of the white spiders were just dreams. Amid the horror of last night I had not had the time to stop and think, and come to terms with the prospect that not only were the spiders real, but all my memories too. I began to weep a little as I told R. B. of Larklight, and what had befallen poor Papa. I told him of Jack Havock too, afraid at first that he would think ill of me for associating with such a character, but he listened quite, quite calmly, and only interjected once, to ask what had become of Art.
‘I do not know,’ I said sorrowfully. ‘I pray that Jack and his friends were able to keep him safe, and that he is still with them aboard their aether-ship.’
Mr Burton nodded. Then he said, ‘For some weeks now I have made it my business to keep watch upon The Beeches. Dear Ulla has sent me many valuable reports about the comings and goings there. We knew that Sir Waverley Rain was “up to something”, but we knew not what, until last night.’
‘He is an automaton!’ I cried. ‘At least, he was
. I believe I broke him when I fell on him. There was one of those dreadful spiders inside him – a little one. And another bigger one.’
Mr Burton said, ‘There was a whole ship full of the creatures, we believe. A black, spiny ship, which landed in the desert near The Beeches a few days ago. It took off last night, soon after we found you. Those spiders undoubtedly removed the real Sir Waverley some time ago. I dread to think for how long his manufactories may have been controlled by that mechanical facsimile.’
‘But why?’ I gasped. ‘To what end?’
R. B. drew his dark brows together, and his eyes glittered. ‘I cannot say, Miss Mumby, but it occurs to me that Sir Waverley’s company has been constructing the new Crystal Palace in Hyde Park. What if the false Sir Waverley and his many-legged masters have tinkered with the plans somehow? Or installed an explosive device within the structure?’
I declare I almost fainted away again as I contemplated the full horror of what he had said. Even now, my hand shakes as I try to write this. Can it be true? Our own dear Queen in mortal peril? Oh, it is too horrible! I said at once, ‘We must raise the alarm! We must travel at once to Port-of-Mars and demand an audience with the Governor himself!’
‘Regrettably the Governor is a major shareholder in Sir Waverley’s company,’ said R. B. with a sardonic smile. ‘So are all the rest of the Colonial Government. Without clear proof, I doubt they would wish to take any action which might affect the reputation of Rain & Co.’
‘Good Heavens!’ I cried, unwilling to believe him. ‘Surely no British gentleman would put commercial interests above those of his country, and humanity at large?’
