by Ron Miller
“Out of his mind or not, the problem is that he’s fully capable of carrying out such a scheme. In fact, he’s doing it at this very moment. The process may already be irreversable.”
“Well, we’ve still got to try to stop him, that’s all.”
“How?”
“I’ll have to think about it.”
“I wouldn’t be terribly leisurely about it, if I were you,” suggested the professor, rising and dusting off the seat of his trousers. “It is probably only a matter of days before the fall of the moon is absolutely irrevocable and anything that we do won’t stop it.”
Think about it Bronwyn did and by the following afternoon she decided to act upon the only idea she managed to develop. She and the professor were undertaking another of their afternoon strolls along the windy clifftops. This time, once they had reached the terminus of a prominent, flinty buttress that flung itself in a soaring arch out into the deep water fifty yards from the cliffs, she horrified Wittenoom by insisting that she needed to navigate its treacherously narrow, mossy, wet spine. While the poor man waited, gnawing his fingernails, the princess, like some high-wire artist, tottered gingerly over the convex, slippery surface, her arms extended, her jacket whipping disconcertingly like a ballooning sail in the powerful, misty gusts that swept up the face of the cliff, threatening to wipe her from the slick black surface like a damp rag erasing a chalk figure drawn on a blackboard. She was immensely sorry that she had not thought of taking the coat off and knew now that it was impossible to perform any action not directly related to maintaining her precarious balance. She found herself desperately wishing that Rykkla were here rather than herself: the circus girl could have danced to the end of the arch and back with a lively step and a cheery yodel on her lips. The mental image made Bronwyn feel even dizzier.
The spine of the arch ended in a kind of low dome that sloped off in three directions in precipitous drops to the raging olivine waves. Bronwyn carefully lowered herself to one knee, bracing herself with the opposite hand. From the waistband of her trousers she removed a green glass wine bottle that she had securely corked with a heavy blob of red sealing wax. From a string tied around its long neck was a cardboard shipping tag on which was written, in grease pencil,
Grasping the bottle by the neck she threw it as far as possible into the breakers that were pounding against the monolith. She watched the tiny, glinting object for several anxious minutes, until she was assured that the current and ebbing tide were combining to take it away from the island. With even more apprehension than before, she renavigated the treacherous path back to the clifftop and her almost prostrate companion. Only now, it seemed, was she entirely aware of the jagged rocks two hundred feet below, as lashed with churning foam as the teeth of a rabid dog. Focussing her attention on the professor and desperately trying to develop a sense of tunnel vision, she crept on hands and knees until, heart pounding like a trip hammer, she fell, faint, nauseated and pale as a sheet of decent bond paper, panting like a donkey engine, into Wittenoom’s shaking arms.
Not more than two days had passed after Bronwyn’s experiment at the rim of the island before there was a knock at the door of Tudela’s house. The doctor was, according to his habitual wont, long since at his sinister labors, the professor was cocooned in the library and the princess, left to herself, had been curled in the seat of a bay window, reading, when she heard a rapping at the door. She waited a moment to see if the professor would answer, though she knew that it was a forgone conclusion that he would not. The knock was discretely repeated and with an ungracious and exasperated sigh, she rose and went to the door. Opening it revealed a person who was not only a stranger to her, but looked very much like a stranger to the human race. He was a small man, a full foot or more shorter than Bronwyn, dressed in a simple but impressively tailored uniform of blue-grey cloth that had an expensive-looking metallic sheen to it, as though it were covered with iridescent scales. It was simply decorated with silver epaulets, frogs, buttons and stripes and was accompanied by a military hat whose high crown was adorned with an elaborate silver device of seahorses and dolphins. The face that was revealed between these two bits of operetta costume was immensely more interesting. Round, with enormous yellow eyes set so far apart that the princess wondered that he didn’t have to look crosseyed to see her, short button nose, wide mouth with a disconcerting harelip splitting his philtrum, and a distinctly visible fuzzy coating of grey hair all over. His eyebrows were but a dozen long, stiff hairs sticking out at a surprised angle and he had a drooping moustache of even longer bristles that arched down past his almost nonexistent chin. He looks, thought Bronwyn, for all the world like a melancholy cat!
“May I help you?” she asked.
“I thertainly hope tho,” he replied in a fruity voice that, oddly, was not at all unpleasant. “My name ith Captain Wow and I’m looking for, um, “ he consulted a card in his hand “, Printheth Bronwyn Tedethchiy?”
“You’ve succeeded.”
“Pardon?”
“I am Princess Bronwyn. How may I help you?”
He looked surreptitiously from side to side before leaning forward slightly to reply, “I don’t think that I thould tell you that out here. May I come in?”
Bronwyn could see no reason why not and stood aside. Captain Wow entered with a curiously graceful movement. He really does look just like a cat! Bronwyn realized. As she shut the door behind her visitor and turned to face him, Captain Wow held out his hand and she took it. like his face, it was covered with a soft grey down. The fingers were unnaturally short, half the length of her own.
“I apologize for dithturbing you and for the nethethity of acting tho thecretively. I am,” and he lowered his hushed, sibilant voice even further, “an agent for Lord Thithcundman.”
“Sithcundman!” the princess cried, and the captain winced, glancing furtively from side to side. “It’s all right,” she said, noticing her visitor’s anxiety, “there’s no one here but Professor Wittenoom and myself.”
“Profethor . . . ?”
“He’s a very good friend and in just as much trouble as I am.”
“I thee. Well, then. Ah. Lord Thithcundman hath thent me in reponth to your methage.”
“He got the bottle!”
“Of courth. You addrethed it to him, did you not?”
“Look, Captain, would you care to come in and sit down? I don’t know how you got here, but it couldn’t have been an easy journey, as I know from experience. Can I get you anything? Something to eat? Something to drink?”
“You’re very kind. What do you have?”
“We’ll see,” she replied, and, indicating that he should follow her, led him to the kitchen. She gestured to a chair and turned to open the mechanical icebox. When she turned again, laden with cold cuts, beer and cheese, the captain was bent over the sink, where Tudela’s servant had just placed the breakfast dishes, making snuffling sounds.
“Captain?”
“Thith ith very nice,” he said, raising his head from the porcelain basin and licking his lips.
“May I ask a personal question, one that I hope will not be too impertinent?”
“Of courth; I am your thervant.”
“How is it that Sithcundman has a human being at his service? I mean, exactly where did you come from?”
“Ah! That’th not impertinent at all; it’th a very reathonable and underthtandable curiothity. I’d athk the thame thing mythelf, were I in your plathe. May I thit?”
“Yes, yes, of course,” and she sat as well, facing her odd visitor from across the small wooden table. She absently chewed on a piece of cheese as he spoke, thinking that she liked this odd little person very much.
“If I’m not mithtaken, Lord Thithcundman wath oneth inthtrumental in tranthforming you into a merperthon.”
“You’re perfectly correct; he did, saving my life thereby.”
“It wath thomething that had not occured for a very long time and wath the talk from one thide of
the Great Thea to the other. You were quite a thenthation, if I may thay tho!”
“Uh, thank you.”
“Your, um, abdication wath equally thenthational. Few have ever athked to be returned to the earth. Your requetht wath, to put it baldly, both unprethedented and incomprehenthible.”
“Well, I thought that my reasons were sound.”
“Oh! of courth! I have no doubt that they were, no doubt at all. In fact, it hath made you thomething of a thelebrity.”
“I hope that no one took offense!”
“No! No! Not at all! Not at all!”
“Does that have something to do with why you are here? Do you want my autograph, or something?”
“No, thank you. Well, yeth I would, of courth. But what I meant wath, no, that’th not the thpecific reathon that brought me here. Lord Thithcundman wath very dithturbed by your letter. The eventh that you predict would be devathtating to the Triton’th empire, ath you evidently realized: there would obviouthly be very little left of the Great Thea with the moon occupying motht of it. To do anything about it at all obviouthly requireth drathtic thtepth.”
“I take it that you’re the first of these drastic steps?”
“Yeth. Lord Thithcundman reprethenth the power to tranthform earthly creatureth into thea creatureth, ath you are well aware. To a lether and limited degree, thith power can tranthform a thea creature to a land creature. In your cathe, for you to become a merperthon it was nethethary for you to retain thome of your humaneth.”
“My what?”
“Humaneth. Ah, your quality of being human.”
“My humaness?”
“Yeth! Exactly. Becauth of thith remnant, it wath thimple to rethtore you when you requethted it. If a thea creature ith tranthformed, then it mutht altho retain thome of ith original characterithticth, though tranthliterated, ath it were, into terrethtrial termth.”
“If you’ll pardon me, I’ve been wondering about that. But what I don’t understand is, well, I hope that I’m not being overly personal, but, you look very much like a cat.”
“I do?”
“I like cats very much, you understand.”
“Well, that’th exactly what I wath trying to explain. You were quite correct in athuming that Lord Thithcundman hath no humanth at hith thervith and in order to contact you he had to create one, which, of courth, meant tranthforming one of hith thea creatureth. Tho he chothe me.”
“And you were originally . . . ?”
“A catfish.”
“But wouldn’t it have been simpler to have transformed one of the merpeople? Aren’t they practically human to start with?”
“One of thothe idioth? They can thcarcely remember to breathe.”
“I see. But what can a cat man do?”
“I’m not thure. I wath hoping that you would have thome idea. At leatht one of my mithionth ith to find out more about thith Doctor Tudela and hith planth, and then to report back to Lord Thithcundman. Pardon me, do you have any more of that deliciouth thnack I found over there?”
“In the sink? Those were scraps from breakfast!”
“Ith that what it’th called? Thcraps? Very nithe. What’th that over there, then: that container that hath thuch a tantalizing thmell?”
“Good heavens, Captain, that’s the garbage!”
“Oh. Pardon me. A thpecial treat, I take it?”
“Look, Captain. You must tell Sithcundman that the situation is very, very serious. Almost all of the Great Sea will be obliterated, and probably most of the life in all of the seas and oceans everywhere. And this is going to happen in just a matter of days! There is no time at all to waste. If we wait too long, then there will be nothing that anyone can do to stop the moon from falling.”
“I thee. If thomething were to be done now, what, in your opinion, would the motht effective thomething be?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I suppose destroying the transmitter, the device that he’s been using to move the moon. Professor Wittenoom said that only a few more nudges are needed to send it into its final spiral toward the earth. I suppose that if it didn’t get those last nudges, it wouldn’t fall.”
“What ith thith tranthmitter?”
“Come with me, I’ll show you.”
She led the cat captain to the front of the house and, parting the curtains, pointed to the black dome that protruded like a toadstool above the roof of the stone generator building.
“That round thing is the transmitter,” she explained. “It sends electrical waves up to the moon that disturb its orbit. That big building in front is where the power is generated by huge machines driven by volcanic steam.”
“Hmm. Tho if either the tranthmitter were dethtroyed or the generatorth thtopped, that would be thufficient?”
“Sounds like it. But both places are very well-guarded, besides being very strongly built. They are the one place on the island where I can’t go unescorted. And the only escort that I’ve ever been permitted is Tudela himself. You would never be able to get near it.”
“And what’th that mountain?” he asked, pointing to the smoldering cone beyond the rim of the caldera.
“That? I don’t think that it has a name. It’s just a volcano, though it wouldn’t surprise me in the least to discover that it has been named Mount Tudela.”
“Hmm. I have jutht one more quethtion.”
“And that is?”
“Well, exactly where doth Doctor Tudela plan to be when the collithion taketh plathe?”
The princess was absolutely taken aback: this had never occured to her. Where, indeed, would the doctor be? Even more to the point, where would she and the professor be? This is something that she would need to discuss with Wittenoom at the first opportunity.
Captain Wow requested that Bronwyn carefully write out everything that she knew about the doctor’s laboratory on sheets of waxed paper, using the same waterproof greasepencil as before. Carefully folding this and inserting it into his breast pocket, the little captain bowed formally, saluted and promised that he would bear her message to Sithcundman with the greatest dispatch. She offered to accompany him back to the cliffs, but he declined, explaining tactfully that he could much more easily evade detection alone.
“I’ll return immediately with Lord Thithcundman’th tholution to thith problem,” he promised.
“I look forward to it,” she replied, but with little of Captain Wow’s self-assurance. The gods, for all their powers, seemed to her to be anachronistic, certainly impotent against science. Good enough for what amounted to parlor tricks, but against the cosmic forces that Tudela could wield? Well! She watched from a window as the lithe figure melted into a shadow.
She went up to the library, which was situated in a large room on the second floor, and reported to an astonished professor what had just occured not more than ten feet vertically beneath his feet.
“Do you think that this Captain Wow will be able to do anything?”
“It’s not him that I’m expecting to do anything, it’s Sithcundman.”
“Ah, yes. An entity whose existence I would have doubted had I not been an eyewitness to his handiwork. That’s an experience of yours that I would very much like to discuss with you sometime. First-hand knowledge at being a fish may have some peripheral bearing upon my field of research.”
“I’d be glad to help. In the meantime, I think that it would be not unwise to prepare for the worst.”
“The collision taking place unimpeded?”
“Yes. And do you have any idea just exactly how Tudela plans to avoid his own annihilation?”
“Interesting question. I have no idea. I hadn’t thought about it, to tell you the truth. I suppose that all we need to do is ask him.” Which Wittenoom did, that evening, over dinner.
“I thought that you’d never get around to considering that problem,” smirked Tudela.
“Yes, yes,” replied Bronwyn testily, “I know that we’re but ignorant tubers. Just tell us what you have in mind and save the
condescension for those with inferiority complexes, if you don’t mind.”
Tudela glared at her, his steel-colored eyes seeming to spit sparks like a pair of overcharged cathodes.
“It’s simple enough,” he said, stiffly, “and, if you will consider this the absolute truth rather than condescension, I am suprised that neither of you thought of it yourselves.”
“Go on.”
“We’ll avoid the brunt of the collision’s effects on the earth by not being on the earth when it happens.”
“Not another spaceship!” cried Bronwyn.
“No, no. That is hardly neccessary. I have caused an aerostat to be constructed, an enormous device of unique design, that will bear us to the highest strata of the atmosphere where we shall remain safe and sound during the impact, ultimately descending when all danger is past.”
“A balloon, you mean?”
“A balloon, if you will. A floating village in reality. Come with me and I’ll show you what I’ve done.”
He rose peremptorily, leaving the others to follow, abandoning their half-eaten dinners. He led them from the house to the generator building, past its guards, up a narrow flight of stairs to the second floor and into a padlocked room. An electric light was switched on, illuminating a broad, low-ceilinged chamber whose most outstanding furnishing was a pair of large drafting tables. Going to a cabinet, Tudela pulled from one of its pigeonholes a long tube of paper, which he unrolled across the top of one of the tables. The professor and Bronwyn looked over his shoulders.
The drawing on the paper showed several views of a device that the princess certainly would never have immediately recognized as a balloon. It consisted mainly of a large, rectangular platform, perhaps twice as long as it was wide, supported by fourteen globes: four at the corners, three each along the long sides and two apiece on the short sides. Bronwyn did not fully grasp the scale of the machine until she realized that the little cubes arranged in neat rows on the upper surface of the platform were not cases of cargo, as she had first supposed, but were in fact buildings. It was a regular, miniature village of perhaps a dozen small houses or huts with two or three larger, windowless buildings among them. Each of the houses, Tudela explained, had room for a score of the workers and their families while the larger structures contained equipment and supplies. “Everything,” he said, “necessary for reconstructing a civilization.
