Starcross

by Philip Reeve

  ‘Perhaps if we wait until morning you might be able to creep down there unobserved and rescue them?’ I reasoned.

  Jack shook his head. ‘Dangerous. Titfer did for Ulla and Sir Richard, by the sound of it. He’s more than a match for us.’

  I was relieved to hear him say it. I am far too weak and feminine to take part in daring rescue missions. ‘We must fetch help!’ I declared. ‘I gather that a train is due to arrive in the morning. Perhaps if we conceal ourselves upon it we might return to Modesty and there alert the authorities. I realise that it would mean travelling without a valid ticket, but I am sure that in these calamitous circumstances …’

  Jack grinned, as if unaccountably amused by what I had said. ‘Sneak aboard a train, eh? You’re thinking like a pirate, Myrtle!’

  ‘I certainly hope I am not!’ I retorted.

  ‘Shhhh!’ said Jack. ‘What was that?’

  I listened, but heard nothing except the canvas covers of the Punch & Judy show rustling. It seemed closer than it had been before.

  Jack looked round. ‘Myrtle,’ he cried. ‘Run!’

  ‘A lady never runs.’

  ‘Then walk d—— quickly! I reckon that tent is one of Titfer’s sentinels, bent on our capture or destruction!’

  And as he spoke, the flap at the top of the booth furled itself up; a horrid crocodile puppet fixed us with its glassy eyes, and two long, many-jointed metal arms reached out to snatch at us with clacking, scissory hands!

  I am afraid I did run then, and may have screamed a little too. Despite my recent coldness towards Jack, I was glad that he was beside me as I hastened along the gravel paths towards Starcross Halt. But we had not gone far when something moved ahead of us, and we saw another of those vulgar booths wheeling itself towards us, preparing to cut us off!

  We turned towards the hotel, and there was a third, this one not a Punch & Judy show but the automated fortune-telling machine which Art and Mother had consulted earlier, its open front revealing that mannequin of a sinister gypsy woman with one all-seeing eye. As her booth creaked towards us on its spindly wheels, she rocked back and forth and a cackling voice issued from her, saying, ‘I foretell danger! ’

  ‘This way,’ cried Jack, turning us in yet another direction, but there beyond a stand of ornamental cacti a fourth of those eldritch shapes loomed up. It was a mechanised speak-your-weight machine, rolling towards us on rattling casters. I tried to evade it, but I was encumbered by my dress in its calico bag and before I could turn aside it had lunged out with a silvery arm and dragged me on to its platform.

  ‘Eight stone and two ounces,’ it announced.

  Jack punched it in the middle of its dial and pulled me free as it fell backwards.

  ‘What an unspeakable lie!’ I cried. ‘I have never weighed above seven stone and five ounces!’

  ‘Maybe it’s the great sack you’re lugging with you that confused it,’ said Jack, hurrying me past the fallen machine and up a rocky, sandy hill behind the hotel. ‘Why don’t you let it go?’

  ‘Certainly not!’ I said. ‘You may not have noticed, but I am undressed. I shall have to have some decent clothes to wear if we are to travel to Modesty and raise the alarm! If I burst into the office of the Governor in my nightdress, complaining of assault by seaside amusement engines, he may think me an eccentric!’

  But how could we hope to catch the train now? Our mechanised pursuers seemed intent on driving us away from the hotel and its station! Each time we tried to veer in the right direction those wobbling booths began to gain on us.

  Something whisked past me, and a rock exploded in a cloud of flying fragments.

  ‘An air gun!’ said Jack, and led me still further into the desert.

  ‘Have you no weapon of your own?’ I asked, feeling somewhat disappointed, for when I first knew him he had been positively bristling with swords and shooting instruments.

  ‘Got my knife,’ he grunted, ‘but that won’t be much good against automata …’

  My words had acted as a challenge or spur to his manly nature, however, and after a few more steps he stopped and gathered up a few decent-sized stones, which he flung at the approaching booths. I saw the first strike a puppet of Mr Punch, which dropped out of sight like a coconut in a shy. The booth reeled sideways and toppled over, and an instant later a flash of flame leapt up into the Martian night as some flammable substance within it exploded.

  ‘A hit!’ I cried, clapping my hands together. ‘A palpable hit!’ But my elation was soon extinguished, for the blazing contraption simply used its long arms to push itself upright again and came on as implacably as before, quite unconcerned by the flames which engulfed it. Indeed, Jack’s defiant stand had made our plight seem worse, not better, for the canvas which had shrouded the machine fell away in scorched rags and flaming tatters, until we were pursued not by a jolly red-and-white striped tent, but by a monstrous wheeled mass of scorched metal, which sometimes brandished aloft a blackened and half-melted puppet, crying out in a squeaking, creaking voice, ‘Where’s Mr Punch? Eh? Where’s Mr Punch?’

  We came to the hilltop, and there ahead of us, just down from the summit on the further side, lay that fence, the seaward portions of which Mother had pointed out while we were bathing the previous day – oh, it seemed a thousand years before! I nearly tumbled into its thick strands of wire, but Jack held me back.

  ‘Careful!’ he cried. ‘It is electrified!’

  Almost as he spoke, the first of our pursuers crested the hill, only a few feet behind us! I shrieked (but in a refined way). Jack said something most unsuitable, and pushed me to the ground as the air gun concealed among those blackened struts and gears spat another bullet past us. The dress bag fell from my hand and, turning back to reach for it, I saw to my horror that its hanger had caught in the exposed metal framework of the machine, which was now almost upon us! I tugged at the bag to wrench it free, but succeeded only in pulling the machine towards me …

  Yet in such apparent mishaps may Salvation lie, and sometimes even so small a thing as a coat hanger may be the instrument of Almighty GOD! For as it turned, the machine struck one wheel against a rock and lost its balance. I saw it teeter; I watched it fall past me towards the wires of that fence, through which the electrical fluid surged with a hum that was clearly audible. A vision of myself arriving at Modesty Station clad in nothing but my tattered nightclothes rose dreadfully before my eyes, and with an almost superhuman effort I unhooked the coat hanger and whisked my precious dress bag to safety as the booth, arms whirling like helpless windmills, struck against the fence.

  ‘That’s the way to do it!’ it cried.

  There was then such a crackling and sparking and hissing and shuddering as I have never heard before, and hope I never shall again! A blinding light made me shield my eyes and, when it was done and I could see again, the machine was a ruin indeed, a mere mass of half-molten scrap. The wires which had caught and fried it were blackened too, and several had parted, burned through by the force of the inferno.

  ‘Huzzah!’ I cried, sounding for all the world like Art in the momentary thrill of our victory. Then I recalled the two other machines. Sure enough they were just coming over the hilltop and advancing warily, as if they had noted the fate of their companion. From the gypsy woman’s booth extended arms equipped with sharp, whirling blades, while from the mouth of the crocodile puppet in the second Punch & Judy show emerged the gleaming black barrel of a gun.

  ‘Come on!’ shouted Jack.

  I could not imagine where he meant us to run next, with the machines behind us and the fence ahead. Personally, I had been beginning to wonder if a prayer or other small act of Christian devotion might not be our best recourse. But Jack pointed, and I saw that where the bottom wires of the electrified fence had burned away there was a space through which we might pass, but which our lumbering pursuers never could!

  Quickly, yet without sacrificing any of my feminine dignity, I crawled through, taking care not to brush
the wires above me with any portion of my anatomy. Jack followed. Shots from the air gun sent spurts of sand leaping up all around us, but the machine was no marksman, and we were able to drop down into a gully out of its sight, and rest there, listening to the crunch and squeak of its wheels as it went to and fro along the fence, searching in vain for a way to reach us.

  Rosy-fingered dawn was touching the fringes of the eastern sky with delicate shades of pink and red. Jack pulled out his watch and studied it. ‘Five o’clock.’

  ‘Jack,’ I said, remembering something which Mother had mentioned, ‘I believe that monstrous Martian wildlife may lurk without that fence. Sand clams, and … oh, I’m sure there was something else.’

  Jack looked resolute and full of vim, which is exactly how one’s gentleman companion should look when one is in a perilous predicament on an unearthly sphere.

  ‘Never fear,’ he said kindly. ‘As soon as those machines give up we’ll get back through the fence. I mean to make that train.’

  There was a smudge of soot or ash upon his nose, which made him look like a naughty but loveable schoolboy. I longed to reach out and wipe it away, and began to wonder if I might not find it within myself to forgive him after all for his neglectfulness and his flirtation with Mademoiselle Beauregard.12 But something about our close proximity reminded me that I was still in my nightwear, so I said firmly, ‘Turn your back, please, Mr Havock,’ and he saw my intention and promptly did so. He does have some gentlemanly instincts, you see, (unlike certain people I might mention).

  But, Oh! what a shock I was to receive when I unbuttoned my mothproof bag! And how I railed inwardly against my own folly and clumsiness! For in my haste to escape from our suite at the hotel I had taken from the closet not one of my day dresses, but my bathing costume!

  ‘Jack,’ I said, ‘we must return at once to the hotel!’

  ‘Shhh,’ he told me, cocking his head to one side and listening intently. I listened with him. I could not hear anything, but I quickly realised that that was what intrigued him. The sound of the waiting machines had died away!

  ‘Have they gone?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t know. It could be a trick.’ Motioning for me to remain hidden, Jack stood up. I watched his face change as he scanned the hilltop beyond the fence.

  ‘Are they gone?’ I asked again.

  ‘What? Oh, yes.’

  ‘Excellent,’ I declared. ‘But, Jack, it is most important that I call in at the hotel on our way to the station. I have brought entirely the wrong outfit.’

  ‘Can’t do it,’ he said. ‘Look.’

  I stood up. The machines were gone, as he had promised. But so too was the fence. Where its metal posts had stretched along the skyline there now lay nothing but the desert rocks and a few whispery clumps of Martian knotweed.

  We walked together up the hill and looked over its crest, down to the darkness of the dawn sea. The fence, and all that had been contained within it, had vanished. The spot where Starcross had stood was empty. Along the curve of the bay, where the Starcross promenade had stretched so elegantly, and the flags of all nations had fluttered in the breeze, the waves now rolled in emptiness, making dainty lace doilies of foam upon the untouched sands of that ancient beach.

  The hotel had returned without us to the Nineteenth Century, and I was marooned with Jack Havock on Pre-Historic Mars!

  Chapter Nine

  In Which Various Horrors Beset Myrtle in the Depths of Time, and Who Can Blame Them?

  Gentle reader, you may imagine my distress! Even if you are not gentle, but are merely a housemaid or labourer who has borrowed this volume from a lending library (in which case do try not to get BEER all over it), you may, I hope, grasp some faint inkling of the despair which threatened then to overwhelm me. My mother and brother had been kidnapped, Jack Havock and I were marooned on the planet Mars in the year 100,000,000 BC, we were without a chaperone and I had nothing to wear but my patent Nereid bathing dress!

  Trying to make the best of our plight, I changed forthwith, for I reasoned that even bathing attire would be an improvement on the ripped, soot-speckled nightdress which was the only other garment I had brought with me into that remote era. And there was one small glimmer of good fortune, for in the bottom of the mothproof bag were my bathing slippers, so at least I would not have to walk any further barefoot across the sands of Mars.

  ‘That’s a pretty dress,’ said Jack gallantly, when I had finished changing and he was allowed to look.

  ‘You do not have to be kind,’ I replied. ‘I have learned not to expect kindness from you.’

  He looked surprised, and then said, ‘Ah, you mean all those letters you sent, and I never replied to. I’m sorry for it. I’m not much of a one for letters, see, and … But anyway, it is a pretty dress.’

  ‘It is a bathing costume,’ I replied, refusing to be cheered.

  ‘Are you sure? It has a bustle.’

  ‘That is a safety feature. I believe it unfolds into a small life raft if you pull this tassel.’

  ‘Good G-d!’

  ‘Please do not blaspheme, Jack. This may be the year 100,000,000 BC but He Who Watches Over Us All is doubtless listening, and will be stung by the thoughtless way you take His name in vain. Who knows, at any moment a rampaging sand clam, or one of those other brutes which Mother spoke of, may charge us, and we shall have to call upon Him in earnest. And do you think He will be likely to notice our prayers if you go about saying His name just because you have seen an inflatable bustle?’

  Jack shrugged.

  ‘And don’t shrug!’ I added snappishly. (I fear adventures always leave me feeling somewhat irritable.)

  We walked together down the hill, towards the shore, where that white line of breaking surf shone in the halflight like a supercilious grin. As we reached the hill’s foot Jack noticed something in the sand nearby, and motioned for me to stop. I did so, and waited, with my heart beating swiftly beneath my bodice. Jack plucked a dead stalk from a nearby stand of Martian knotweed and poked the place which had caught his attention. Almost at once the ground heaved and something like a fanged trapdoor yawned open. Thin white teeth and strands of drool glistened in the twilight, and a horrible stench of decay came from it, much like the smell which assails anyone rash enough to open Art’s sock drawer.

  ‘I suppose that must be a sand clam,’ said Jack, as the thing slowly closed itself up and sank back into the sand. ‘I don’t think they’ll be much trouble to us. Just look out for the little ridges where their shells break the surface, and stay clear of them.’

  ‘Thank you, Jack,’ I said, quite regretting my earlier harshness.

  He smiled at me most kindly. ‘I still say that’s a pretty dress,’ he said. ‘What does the other tassel do?’

  ‘I believe that releases a distress flare, in case one finds oneself adrift at sea,’ I replied, and I looked down, blushing, for I suddenly found myself all adrift upon a sea of the most confusing emotions. And after a moment, I felt a light touch upon my hand, and guessed that Jack had sensed how I was feeling, and was standing close behind me. I could feel his breath against my neck, and I confess it made me tremble.

  ‘Oh, Jack,’ I said softly, ‘why did you not reply to any of my letters?’

  ‘What’s that?’ called Jack, and I raised my eyes and saw that he had walked on without me, and was already far down the beach towards the sea.

  So whose was the breath I felt upon my neck?

  I grew cold, despite the sturdy wool serge of my costume. Whose fingers were those, tracing aimless patterns on my palm? My trembling increased. With a great effort of will I made myself turn and look.

  For yards around me the surface of the desert seemed to be undulating and crumbling and breaking open, and from beneath it was rising a fat, bag-like body, from which sprouted a myriad snaky, jointless limbs, one of which had come groping blindly through the air and found my hand. These limbs, of which there were far more than I could count, were studded all
along their length with fearsome barbs, and as I stood there, staring in utter horror, the name that Mother had mentioned when she spoke about the predators of ancient Mars came back to me.

  ‘Jack!’ I screamed. ‘The Crown of Thorns! A giant land starfish is upon us!’

  And at my cry the monstrosity swung a broad, tubular trunk towards me, and a gale of wind seemed to grip me, fluttering the skirts of my bathing costume. I was dragged, still crying out plaintively, towards the ghastly opening. The horrid creature was endeavouring to suck me up, just as a hoverhog might suck up a drifting muffin crumb! A storm of sand flew all about me, and small pebbles and knotweed leaves went racing past and whirled up that trunk into the wet bag of the creature’s body, which was palely translucent, and inside which I could dimly make out the forms of other luckless creatures like myself, churning and swirling in the acids of its stomach!

  Suddenly Jack was by my side, helping me fight against the wind. As we were dragged closer to the feeding tube, he struck at it once, twice, thrice with his knife. Some glutinous liquid broke from it, and the trunk left off its sucking and withdrew, shrinking back into the creature’s body like the eye-stalk of a snail.

  Thorny limbs writhed over us, black against the pale sky as the Sun came up above the sea. One wrapped itself around Jack’s arm. He severed it with his knife, then helped me up. A tentacle found my shoulder, but at its thorny touch one of my life-preserving leg-of-mutton sleeves burst and the hiss of expelled air made it flinch back, allowing me time to escape.

  We ran towards the sea’s edge, hoping that the Crown of Thorns would be too slow-moving to catch up with us. And for a few moments it seemed our hopes would be fulfilled, for the beast dragged itself cumbrously down the slope of the beach, and its tentacles and feeding tube wove about in a way which made me sure it was blind, and could not track us unless we made sounds that it could follow.