Starcross

by Philip Reeve

  Then it passed. We were through the rift, we had crossed a gulf of many centuries, and all, all was changed! Instead of the simple tides which had swirled about the planet Mars I faced the churning rapids of the asteroid belt. Wherever I turned there was a gravity field or a reef of dreadful rocks, which seemed to me like hard, dark points in a great confusion of light. ‘Oh!’ and ‘Eek!’ I cried, and I felt the ship swerve this way and that as Jack, far above me, responded to the alarums of a goblin look-out and swung us narrowly past each obstacle.

  ‘I do not know which one is Starcross!’ I said, bewildered by all the different gravity fields, which seemed to want to pull the Liberty in every direction at once, but none strongly enough to actually capture her. ‘Miss Beauregard, you must find your grandpapa’s atlases and star charts and work out a course …’

  ‘There’s no need for us to call at Starcross,’ said Delphine, prowling the shuddering deck like a panther.

  ‘But Art, and Mother!’

  ‘A fig for Art and Mother,’ said Delphine. ‘Find us a path to Modesty and Decorum, so we can fill our holds with stolen fuel and vittles and burn a ship or two to let the British know they don’t have Heaven to themselves any longer!’

  ‘But I cannot tell which one is Modesty, either. Nor Decorum.’

  ‘Then follow the railway line,’ said Delphine.

  I sought through the gaudy washes of light and gravity which filled my mind with most upsetting, garish effects, like one of those disagreeable modern paintings by Mr Turner. At last, amid it all, I sensed the gaunt, gleaming straightness of a railway line, and felt the Liberty settle into a course quite near it. I relaxed a little then, and pushed myself back from the alembic, feeling quite faint from my exertions, yet filled with a sort of happy tiredness. Beyond the porthole sable space rushed by, flecked with asteroids. I was disappointed to see that the ship was not enfolded in the golden veils that I had seen sometimes trailing around the Sophronia. Ssilissa had more experience than I, and must have been able to accelerate Jack’s ship to vastly greater speeds. But we were moving fast enough, I thought, quite pleased by what I had achieved. Judging by the way the railway tracks kept sliding by outside, we should reach Modesty and Decorum within a few more hours.

  And then what? I wondered, and my complacency began to fade. How could I prevent Delphine from blasting and burning Her Majesty’s settlements there, and her goblins from looting every wool shop in the place, and unravelling all the inhabitants’ cardigans?22

  Delphine, meanwhile, had glided over to the porthole, and was peering out of it with her telescope, perhaps hoping to confirm that I really had brought her to our own time, and not ten years ago or the middle of next week. ‘There’s a train ahead,’ I heard her say. And then, ‘Why, what’s this?’

  Glad of anything which distracted her from her rebellious mission, I took the opportunity to slide a coldshelf into the alembic. This cooled the reactions within somewhat, and I felt the Liberty slow accordingly. The pipes about us gave out strange moans and creaks as the alembic’s heat faded. (One seemed to murmur ‘Moob!’, but I assured myself that it was only my overwrought imagining.)

  Delphine did not notice. She was intent upon whatever distant object had caught her attention. ‘D——d extraordinary!’ she muttered. ‘Miss Mumby, there is a train upon the track ahead. Two men in top hats are scrambling about upon its boiler, and it is pushing ahead of it a hand-car in which I can clearly see your brother Art and Mrs Spinnaker.’

  ‘Art?’ I said. ‘Oh, whatever mischief is Arthur about now? Do let me see!’

  ‘Oh!’ cried Delphine, ignoring my request. ‘They have jumped the rails! They’re done for! A wheel is off – glass breaking – what a smash! They are off the track, and falling free in space! The train will stop and help, surely? But no! It races on! It vanishes, and leaves them to die!’

  ‘Then we must rescue them!’ I cried.

  Delphine glanced round at me, and I thought for a moment that she was about to forbid the notion, and insist that I drove on towards Modesty. But even in Delphine’s unwomanly breast there still beat some semblance of a heart, and within that heart there yet survived some trace of feminine compassion! She could not fly on and leave poor Mrs Spinnaker to breathe her last in the vastness of the empty aether. (I say nothing of Art, of course; she did not know him well, and so it is quite possible she might have stopped to rescue him even if he had been quite alone.)

  Delphine snatched up the speaking tube mounted on the chamber wall and shouted up it, ‘Alter course! Lay us alongside that hand-car!’

  I knew, somehow, that only the ghost of power would be required for such delicate manoeuvrings, and so, despite Delphine’s protests, I left the alembic to attend to itself. I heard Delphine shout out something as I scurried upstairs, but it seemed hardly likely that she would put a bullet through me now that I proved myself so useful. The knotted cloth which held my hair came undone and fell, yet I did not look back, but hurried up to the top deck, where I found Jack turning the wheel, while Delphine’s goblins clustered at an open hatch.

  There I joined them, and watched as they slung skeins of their precious wool out into the night and used them to reel in first Mrs Spinnaker, who seemed to have swooned, and then Art, who, not noticing me, but spying the carbines which the goblins wore on slings over their shoulders, cried out, ‘Those fish! Shoot those fish! Whatever you do, don’t let those fish come aboard!’

  The goblins all gaped at him. There were indeed a number of red whizzers flitting about outside, but whoever heard of a fish boarding an aether-ship, unless it had been hooked and reeled in by a hungry aethernaut? I was about to push my way to the front of the little crowd and make myself known to him when Delphine came up the companionway behind us and called out in a loud and strangely altered voice, ‘Do as he says! Shoot down those fish!’

  I covered my ears as the goblins raised their carbines and started firing. Really, I thought, looking at Delphine, she was a very peculiar person. Why was she speaking in that ridiculous, hollow-sounding voice, and what had made her decide to humour Art in his strange whim of massacring red whizzers?

  And whatever had possessed her to put on that enormous top hat?

  Chapter Seventeen

  In Which We Learn the History of a Moob.

  I was jolly surprised to find myself being rescued when I had been prepared for certain death in the chilly immensities of space (although I suppose I should be used to it by now, for it seems to happen to me quite regularly). But I had not noticed that ship until it came swooping in to save me and Mrs S., so it came as rather a shock when its hatch suddenly heaved open in the darkness and a parcel of goblins in red trews and blue jackets started hullooing and throwing out woolly ropes for me to clap hold of.

  It was a strange old tub, too: like a warship from Admiral Nelson’s day, all dusty and beaten up and overgrown with ivy, and from its jack-staff flew the banner of the old American rebellion. I wondered if it were a ghost ship as they hauled me in, but I would sooner face ghosts than Moobs any day, so I set aside such fancies and started hollering at the goblins to shoot those Moobified fish before they came whizzing in to make mad hatters of us all.

  While they set about the shoal with their carbines I flopped on the deck beside poor, insensible Mrs Spinnaker, gasping for breath and feeling for all the world like a landed fish myself. It was only then that I noticed (surprised) that Myrtle was present, in her swimming things. And not just Myrtle, but Jack Havock, too, manning the wheel and looking most heroic. And before I could greet either of them I saw that the person who had given the order to fire upon those fish was Delphine Beauregard, and that she was wearing upon her head a Moob!

  Mustering what strength I had left, I sprang to my feet, snatched a ramrod from a nearby rack and swung it at the malevolent hat. I thought I had a chance to knock it down and trample on it before it could betray us to its chums.

  But Delphine, to my surprise, called out, ‘Please! Do no
t strike me! Listen!’

  I was so startled to hear such politeness from a Moob that I missed it, and as I was trying to recover myself (for there was no gravity aboard that old ship, and the effort of swinging the ramrod had set me tumbling head over heels in the middle of the cabin) a thought struck me.

  Had not Delphine called out and told those soldierly types to shoot down the Moob-infested shoal of whizzers? Could it be that the hat upon her head was on our side, not theirs?

  The gunfire had ceased now, and the goblins were securing the hatch and turning to stare at Delphine, as if they were puzzled by her choice of headwear. I guessed that they had not met a Moob before, and nor had Jack and Myrtle.

  ‘Keep away from her!’ I warned (for I still couldn’t quite trust that hat of hers). ‘She is not herself! That thing on her head is a sort of vampire-hat. It has taken control of all her thoughts and actions.’

  ‘Well, it is high time somebody did,’ sniffed Myrtle.

  The goblins nervously raised their guns, but once again Delphine called out, ‘Don’t shoot! I am a friend!’

  Jack jumped down from the steering platform. ‘That’s for us to say,’ he said. ‘Who are you? What are you? Where do you come from?’

  ‘Moob, Moob, Moob,’ said Delphine – or rather the Moob, speaking through her mouth. ‘That is to say, my name is Moob, I am a Moob, and I come from a place called Moob. Moob is the only sound that we can make, you see. Indeed, it was the only sound I knew existed, until I met Wild Bill Melville and his men.’

  ‘And ate them,’ said Jack angrily.

  ‘No, no!’ said the Moob. ‘It was not like that! Let me explain … !’

  ‘All right,’ said Jack. ‘But make it good, or I shall be throwing you overboard before we go on our way.’

  Delphine drifted towards us, so that the light of the cabin lamps shone on her face. Her eyes were dull, her gaze indifferent; she was not Delphine at all. But still she spoke, and this is what she said.

  ‘The place we come from exists far, far in the future, at the very end of time. It is a mournful place, a realm of nothingness where nothing lives but Moobs. For we are the Last Ones. When all else is darkness and the last stars are guttering like candle stubs and the great cold is spreading out across the Heavens, we are what remains. We have none of the vim and vigour of life forms in your era. We do not love, or dream, or hope, or have adventures. We are the Last Ones, and all such passions have been washed out of us. All we ever do is eat, and what we eat are thoughts.

  ‘There are beings who live inside the stars, you see. Inside all the suns of space those golden beings swirl and sing, and their thoughts go scattering out across space like a pale sleet. It is the habit of us Moobs to stretch ourselves very thin, like nets or sieves, and catch these thoughts as they go soaring through the aether. But they are meagre fare, for all the sun-beings think the same thing; they are very sorry that their sun is going out, and so their thoughts are mournful, and rather stringy.

  ‘Then, one day (I do not mean “day” precisely, for there are no days and nights in Moob, but that is the best word I can find in Miss Beauregard’s mind) I found a sort of tear or rent in the fabric of Moob. I slipped through it, quite by accident, and found myself upon the world that you call Mars, in a period of history far removed from your own. Several other Moobs came through with me, intrigued by the scent of fresh thoughts which emanated from the place. But no sooner were we there than the rent or tear snapped shut again, leaving us marooned!

  ‘We were not worried or afraid, for Mars had much to offer us. There were the sand clams, whose slow, vicious thoughts seemed new and spicy to us. There were the starfish, whose predatory dreams tasted hot as cayenne pepper. And if too much of that rich diet disagreed with us, we simply spread ourselves out and drank up the yellow, buttery thoughts of sun-people that were blown in on the solar wind.

  ‘And then, one day, this ship appeared. It had fallen, I believe, through another of those fickle rifts. We did not know what it was. We settled on it and tried to eat its thoughts, not realising that it was not alive. The other Moobs lost interest, and drifted off, but I had scented something strange beneath the whiffs of gunpowder and Alchemy which clung to these old timbers. And my curiosity was rewarded, for at last a hatch opened, and out stepped the crew, looking about in wonderment at this strange place that they had fallen in.

  ‘That night, I slid into Will Melville’s cabin and tasted his dreams: dreams of battle, peppery and sharp; dreams of his family, like pudding and warm custard; sometimes a nightmare, sour as curdled milk. I’d never known such variety, such wonders! I hurried to find my fellow Moobs, who were spread out like pools of tar upon the beach, drinking up passing sun-thoughts. I told them of the ship and its cargo of tasty thought-food, and soon we spent all our time there. We grew tired of dreams, and found a way of eating waking thoughts. We’d noticed the objects these newcomers wore upon their heads. “Hats”, they called them. So we turned ourselves into hats …

  ‘When a man wakes in the morning and reaches for his hat and grasps a Moob instead, he often puts the Moob upon his head without realising. And once we were on, we found that we could control the man’s thoughts, and make him believe he was going about his usual business, when all the time he was just thinking thoughts for us. And it seemed a fair trade, for they were in a sad pickle, those men, marooned so far from their own time, without a hope of rescue. It seemed that we were doing them a favour by taking their thoughts away.

  ‘Sat on Will Melville’s head, I came to know and cherish him. He was a brave, good man, an enthusiast and an adventurer … None of those words would have any meaning to most Moobs, and I am grateful to Will Melville for teaching them to me.

  ‘But alas, the rest of the Liberty’s crew were not such paragons. They were rough, angry, thoughtless rogues, who’d signed aboard for deviltry and plunder, with never a care for Will’s republic. And just as, by drinking Will’s thoughts I grew thoughtful, so by drinking theirs my fellow Moobs grew churlish, rough and sullen. And, worse, I began to realise that we were harming our hosts. To take a sip of their dreams from time to time had caused them no ill effect, but to drink up all their thoughts, day in, day out, was horribly harmful. The men turned pale and dusty-coloured; they grew thin and their thoughts took on the taste of porridge made with dirty water. One by one, they started to crumble into dust.

  ‘I tried to persuade my fellow Moobs to give up their feasting. I quit Will’s head. I hadn’t yet learned how to talk through someone else and so explain to him, as I am doing now to you, but Will could see what was happening. He was strong enough still to act, and tore the Moobs from the heads of his surviving men.

  ‘But the Moobs had grown wily, as Moobs will who feast too well upon the thoughts of pirates. They crept back and seized the ship, and when I tried to stop them they had their slaves stuff me in a locker and batten it down. Miserable and alone, I lay trapped in that locker like a forgotten sock. I heard them climb the stairs to Will’s cabin, and the final struggle as they pinioned him and crammed a Moob upon his head. Then nothing more.

  ‘At last I escaped my captivity and went in search of the other Moobs. I thought to find them on the shore, supping upon the thoughts of starfish or the small dreams of barnacles. But I had underestimated them. They had a taste for human thoughts now, and they had gone whirling off like dust-devils across the sands of Mars to search for more. They found none there, of course, for intelligent life had not yet appeared upon that sphere. But they found something better: another of those rifts in time. It carried them forward to the year seventeen hundred and something, when the part of Mars where Will Melville had landed had been blasted far into space, and had a new name: Starcross.

  ‘I followed them there, and found them haunting its deep mines like ghosts, leaping down upon the heads of unsuspecting miners to drink their thoughts. The miners grew fearful, and the mine was abandoned, but not before its owner came to examine it, no doubt to see whethe
r he might make any other sort of profit from that lonely rock. My fellow Moobs, who had grown particularly cunning and crafty, allowed themselves to be discovered and carried away by him. I was left alone.

  ‘For many years I crept about the crags and glens of Starcross, subsisting on the thoughts of passing icthyomorphs. Then, at last, Sir Launcelot Sprigg returned, with a crew of workmen, and began renovating the old mine manager’s house, extending it, turning it into a hotel. And to my surprise I found that he had brought my fellow Moobs with him, that he was using them to control the actions of other men and that, although he did not know it, one was wrapped about his own neck in the guise of a cravat, controlling him!

  ‘What their scheme is, I do not know, for they no longer trusted me and would not share their plans with me. All I know is that Sir Launcelot has been installing some manner of ancient machinery in one of the caverns beneath the hotel, and that when a gentleman from Earth came to investigate, along with a young Martian lady whose dreams taste like nougat, he and those wicked Moobs transformed them into trees!

  ‘I stayed at the hotel, sick with anxiety as I waited to see what would happen. And what happened was young Art arrived with his family. I could not bear to see them transformed into trees, too, so I crept on to their balcony and tried to warn them of the danger, but of course I was still in Moobish form, and all that I could say was “Moob”.