Starcross

by Philip Reeve

  Reaching into Mr G.’s pocket, I drew out his hip flask and pressed it into his hand. As I had hoped, a few swigs of First Mate Navy Rum soon proved most restorative.

  ‘There isn’t time to explain everything,’ I told him briskly, ‘but the rest of the crew are under the control of those hats too. They are called Moobs, and they have dastardly designs upon the British Empire. We must free the others from their influence and stop the Sophronia!’

  Mr Grindle wiped his mouth on his cuff and stoppered the hip flask. ‘Hats, is it?’ he asked. ‘I’ll give ’em hats! Is it just you and me who have escaped their influence, Art, lad?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Grindle,’ I replied. ‘But every hat we knock from someone’s head will mean another friend restored to fight beside us!’

  ‘A good point!’ said Grindle, grinning.

  ‘But, Mr Grindle,’ I added, ‘there are a great many more hats concealed in boxes in the cargo hold. Whatever happens, we must not let them escape!’

  ‘Aye aye, Art!’ cried that honest goblin, and touched a knuckle to his forehead in salute, for all the world as if I was Jack Havock. I felt terribly proud of myself for having come this far, and then terribly afraid of the trials that yet lay ahead. But there was no time to dawdle – why, at any moment some other member of the Moobish crew might come aft to see what had befallen Mr Grindle – so we shook hands, Mr G. flung wide the door, and we scrambled together along the passageway that led into the main cabin.

  Well, I shan’t go into too much detail about the battle. Mr Wyatt’s engraving captures the flavour pretty well, and you already know that we won, for if we’d hadn’t the rest of this book would be full of nothing but little black handprints and the word Moob. I shall just mention in passing that there was a deal of shouting and hullooing and crying out of the sort of words that would have made Myrtle demand everyone wash out their mouths with soap and water, had she been there to hear them. And a deal of blows and buffetings and jostlings, too.

  He whirled about the cabin like a dervish.

  Nipper knocked me clear across the cabin almost as soon as I entered the fray with one great swipe of his pincers, which sent me tumbling through so many somersaults that I did not know where I was or even who for a few moments (but I forgive him, of course, for he was still possessed by the Moobs when he did it, and not in his right mind, poor crab).

  When I righted myself, though, Mr Grindle had already sliced Nipper’s hat in half with a swipe of his cutlass; the two halves shrivelled up like dead leeches and floated from Nipper’s shell, and the crab, who had perhaps been less deeply under Moobish control than Mr Grindle, grasped at once what was happening, and set about helping us.

  Not that Mr Grindle seemed to need much help. I suppose it was the influence of all that rum. He whirled about the cabin like a dervish, hacking a Moob from Mr Spinnaker’s head, kicking another from Squidley’s midriff. Yarg, still controlled by his Moob, lashed out with his own electric tentacles and caught Grindle a glancing blow across the bottom, which sent the poor fellow hurtling high into the air, a trail of smoke pouring from his trouser-flaps; but in another instant Squidley had pinioned his twin and wrested his hat from him, roasting it till it popped in a fierce arc of tentacle-fire.

  While all this was afoot I whistled to Nipper and indicated the big trapdoor in the cabin floor, which led down into the hold. Dragging a sheet of oiled space tarpaulin from a locker, and tools from another, we set about nailing it over that door. For I had remembered what the friendly Moob aboard the Liberty had told me of his people and their ways, and how they may spread themselves out thin if they so wish, and I was very concerned that the ones down below might tumble to what was happening and come oozing up through the cracks around the hatch to help their friends, and then where should we be?

  By the time we were done the fight was over. Our friends were themselves again, and Grindle and the Tentacle Twins had gone through into the wedding chamber to deliver Ssil from her Moob and make her stop the ship; I could hear the alembic cooling, the song of the engines dropping in pitch as the Sophronia slowed. I looked about me. Slain Moobs lay everywhere, withering and crisping underfoot like dead leaves. We could hear the others crying out, ‘Moob, moob, moob!’ beneath the deck, and sometimes a tiny black hand would reach up through a gap in the planking and Nipper would jab it with his pincers.

  ‘How did they all get in there?’ cried Colonel Quivering, querulously. ‘What is this old tub? Some smuggler’s schooner, laden to the gunwales with those wretched hats, I’ll warrant!’

  ‘Colonel,’ I said, feeling jolly bold what with just having rescued everyone from the Moobs and everything, ‘this is the Sophronia, the best ship in British Space, and if she’s over-full of Moobs at the moment, it’s only because you brought them aboard.’

  ‘But what shall we do with them?’ asked Nipper.

  ‘That’s for Jack to say,’ I told him, and then remembered – Jack!

  I ran to the stern cabin, with most of the others at my heels. The Sophronia was drifting gently through the aether. Behind her, far astern, Modesty and Decorum and their neighbour-asteroids shone in the unending night like flakes of silver. But of the Liberty there was no sign.

  ‘He’ll catch up,’ said Ssilissa hopefully, when I had explained how I came to be parted from Jack Havock. ‘He’s out there even now, ssspeeding after usss …’

  ‘Jack wouldn’t let disaster befall any ship that he had command of,’ said Nipper loyally.

  Mr Grindle said, ‘Oh, I do hope that it weren’t a shot from my cannon that wrecked her! Even if I were under the influence of a mesmeric hat when I fired it, I should never forgive myself …’

  And all the while we watched the darkness astern, and hoped at any moment to see the Liberty appear out of it, but she never did. And although I tried to be hopeful, I could not help recalling those last few moments before I was dragged from the Liberty’s hull. If that final shot had really holed her wedding chamber, then she might easily have exploded and been reduced to nothing but a cloud of cartwheeling spars and splinters expanding slowly into the cold of space. Myrtle might be dead. Jack might be dead!

  We went back into the main cabin, and sat drinking hot chocolate around the cabin stove and deciding what was to be done.

  I had expected that Colonel Quivering would take charge of things, being such a military gent, but it was not to be; both he and Herbert Spinnaker were left feeling rather weak and dazed after their Moobs were removed. Perhaps it was because of all the hard work they had been forced to do while under Moobish influence, clambering about on speeding trains, etc. Or maybe, having stayed longer at Starcross than Nipper and Grindle, they had been exposed for longer to the Moobish munching of their brainwaves, and were on the brink of fading and withering as Wild Will Melville’s Yankee pirates had! Perhaps, if we had not seized back the Sophronia when we did, there would have been nothing left of them to rescue but their empty clothes! That was a dreadful thought, and it made me understand what our next move must be.

  ‘Jack left Mrs Spinnaker at Modesty,’ I said. ‘She will already have raised the alarm. So it seems to me that we ought to return to Starcross, where others need our help. If Mother and Mr Munkulus are under the influence of those Moobs much longer, they’ll turn thin and grey as used-up dish-cloths, and vanish away at last.’

  The Tentacle Twins twittered to each other, their crowns fluttering with auroras of pink and green light. Nipper said, ‘But what about Jack? Shouldn’t we stay here and scour the aether for some clue to what’s become of him?’

  The others all looked very solemn. We were all thinking of the vast immensities of space, and of what little chance we had of finding any fragment of the Liberty if she had been torn to pieces, and I was burdened in addition by the knowledge that I might have to break to Father and Mother the awful news of the loss of Myrtle.27

  Then Ssil said, ‘Art is right. Jack left me in charge when he went off to Starcrosss, and ssince he’s not here a
nd nor is Mr Munkulusss, I sssuppose I am sstill in charge. And what I think is, if Jack is alive, then he will pull through sssomehow and make that old Liberty fly again no matter where she is or how badly she’s been sssmashed. And if he isn’t alive …’ (Here she paused, and turned a pale violet, and her voice grew high and squeaky – poor lizard, she was very much in love with Jack.) ‘… If he isn’t alive, then he would not want usss to be wassting time combing the aether-ssseas for sscraps of flotssam. He would want usss to deal with the resst of the Moobs. And the only perssson I can think of who might know how to do that is Art’ss mother, who is as good and wise as Jack. Ssso the ssooner we rescue her, the better for all of usss.’

  ‘But how do we rescue her if Starcross is full of Moobs?’ demanded Grindle.

  ‘That is for Art to tell usss,’ replied Ssil. ‘He has fought againsst these creatures and outwitted them, while we have only been their ssslaves …’ And she brushed ruefully at her headspines, which were still bent slightly out of shape, having been so long confined inside a Moobish topper.

  Chapter Twenty

  In Which I Endeavour to Devise a Cunning Stratagem, We Learn an Unexpected Fact about an Absent Friend and Some Large, Sophronia-Shaped Dents Are Almost Made upon Several of the Lesser-Known Asteroids.

  While Ssil busied herself in the wedding chamber, and Mr S. and Colonel Quivering were helped weakly into hammocks by the kindly Nipper, I wondered what to do with our cargo of boxed Moobs. Mr Grindle was all for opening the hold’s outer hatches and venting them all into space, but that would hardly have been sporting. Anyway, I was pretty certain that mere exposure to the aether would do no harm to Moobs; they seemed as happy in that element as any icthyomorph, and, since they were virtually immortal, they would sooner or later find their way to an inhabited world, there to begin causing mischief again. At least in the Sophronia’s hold we knew where they were, for it was well constructed, and now that we had sealed the inner hatch I felt confident the Moobs could not escape. So I decided to keep them under guard, and carry them back with us to Starcross. ‘Once we have rescued Mother,’ I explained, ‘she can tell us what we must do with them.’

  Grindle looked doubtfully at me. He still nursed a headache, poor fellow, and it was making it hard for him to look on the bright side of things. ‘So how exactly is this rescue to be accomplished, young Art?’ he enquired.

  ‘I am working on that,’ I assured him, and went up on to the star deck for a good, hard think.

  We soared back through the asteroid belt as fast as ever we dared (although you may be sure that was still not very fast, with so many reefs and rocks and sharp, uncharted worldlets to beware of). We had little sleep, for Ssil kept us busy running up to the star deck and out along the bowsprit to keep a lookout, and ever and again the cry went up, ‘World ho!’ or ‘Reef! Reef on the starboard bow!’, and we would all have to hold on tight as the helmsmen swung the ship this way or that to avoid collision. Even then, there was many a treacherous shoal which went unnoticed in the dark, and sometimes a jagged rock would come scraping along the outside of the Sophronia’s hull. Once, when I did find time to catch some sleep, I was rudely awoken by the sound of saws and hammers and sat up thinking I was back at Larklight, with Chippy Spry and his carpenters at work all round me – but no, it was just Grindle and the Tentacle Twins busy repairing a gash which some passing asteroid had opened in our bows.

  Meanwhile I kept trying to devise a plan which would Frustrate and Confound the Moobs back at Starcross. I have read ever so many accounts in the Boys’ Own Journal of famous battles where clever chaps like Caesar, Wellington and Qrrmstruqx of Poo triumphed against overwhelming odds, and I racked my brains for some way in which I might follow their example, but the only answer I could come to was, ‘I wish Jack were here; he would know what to do!’

  Still, I refused to be downhearted. Do you remember what I was saying earlier about how tiresome it is being used as a hostage and bargaining counter all the time? Well, it seemed to me that I now had a chance to show my shipmates that I was far more than just a helpless child. I was determined that I, Arthur Mumby, would lead them to victory, with a plan as cunning as any Jack Havock had ever dreamed up.

  Yet I could not help running over and over in my mind a sort of dismal arithmetic problem, to wit, that my army consisted of me, two elderly gentlemen who were not feeling quite the ticket, a grumpy goblin, two anemones, a large crab and a blue lizard of the gentler sex. Whereas the forces ranged against us might be infinite in number, for I had no notion of how many Moobs might have poured through the time-hole at Starcross since I left. Nor did I know where they would be keeping the prisoners we sought to free.

  ‘Why did they keep Mr Munkulus there?’ I wondered, as I stood with Grindle on the star deck, keeping watch for unexpected worlds. ‘If only they could have hung on to the colonel or Mr Spinnaker instead. Old Munkulus would have been much more use to us!’

  ‘Well, I’ve been thinking about that, Art,’ replied the old aethernaut. ‘Oh, watch out below!’ he bellowed, interrupting himself, and the Sophronia yawed to starboard to let an unknown blue planetoid slide past, on whose surface small mouse-like beings were leaning out of lidded craters to shake their woolly fists at us, demanding to know if we were blind, and whether we thought we owned the aether. As their indignant whistlings and hootings faded astern Grindle returned to the matter of Mr Munkulus.

  ‘Thing is, young master Art,’ he said, ‘Mr Munkulus and me go a long way back, and I know things about him that maybe others don’t. And when you told us about how those fiendish Moobs were breeding advertising spores to make people think of them as desirable items of headgear, well, I thought to myself, that’s why they’ve kept poor old Munk penned up.’

  ‘Why?’ I asked. ‘You mean that, because Mr Munkulus was an Ionian and Io is the centre of the Jovian ideospore business, those Moobs think he can help them with their devilish plans?’

  ‘They don’t have to think, do they?’ said Grindle darkly. ‘They have eaten of his thoughts and dreams, and know all about him. So they must know that when he was a young Ionian, fresh out of the chrysalis and still dizzy from his metamorphosis and easily led, our Mr Munkulus had a job with …’ (and here the honest old aether dog lowered his voice, as if his friend’s secret were too dreadful to speak aloud even in that great emptiness) ‘… with an Advertising Agency! He was chief spore-tweaker for Spondule and Quirm, one of the biggest firms on Io. But after a few years of it, breeding spores to persuade females that they were too fat or too thin, and that only Whilkin’s Efficacious Liniment could make them beautiful, or convincing gentlemen that life without a set of Trumpeter’s Steam-Powered Golf Clubs isn’t worth living, well, he came to his senses and saw that any life would be more honourable than the life of an advertiser. So he ran away aboard an aether-ship, resolving never to breed another spore.’

  ‘Oh dear Lord!’ I cried.

  ‘I thought you’d be shocked!’ said Grindle, with the air of one whose tale of horror has gone down just as he hoped. But what had made me cry out so intemperately was actually a small world which had popped out of the darkness ahead with no warning at all. Rather a crumbly place it looked, but its inhabitants had livened it up by constructing a very pretty system of rings for it out of papier mâché and bits of silver paper. I’m afraid the Sophronia chipped a couple of the outer ones rather badly as she swerved to avoid the place, and soon afterwards Nipper came aloft with a rather sarcastic message from Ssilissa, who said she had thought we were keeping watch and she was so sorry for having interrupted our naps by nearly colliding with an asteroid.

  After that we took our job of lookouts far more seriously, and I did not have time to quiz Mr Grindle any more about our friend’s surprising past. But I kept thinking about Mr Munkulus’s skill with ideospores and wondering if that might somehow be made a part of the plan of battle which I was trying to construct …

  And then, that afternoon, while I was in Jack’s cabin
sketching vague maps of Starcross on bits of paper and drawing arrows on them and rubbing them out, and sucking the end of my pencil, and arranging old mugs and jars of bloater paste to represent the forces at my command, and having them drift off and get lost as I was hunting for something to represent the Moobs, and actually feeling jolly glad I had all those things to think about because they left me hardly any room for thinking about how much I missed Mother and Jack and even Myrtle, well, it was then that Nipper scuttled in to announce that our journey was done and that he’d just sighted Starcross, clear and true upon the larboard quarter!

  ‘I’ve gathered everyone in the main cabin, Art,’ he said excitedly. ‘And they are all as keen as English mustard to learn your cunning plan!’

  Moments later, I stood before my valiant little army, and Starcross hung outside the portholes. The asteroid looked just as we had left it. I had half expected to see it crawling with Moobs, but from space the hotel and its promenade seemed unchanged, with the colourful flags fluttering on the pier and the elegant bright curve of the railway bridge sweeping down to Starcross Halt.

  ‘Tell usss the plan, Art,’ said Ssilissa, watching me with great respect. Nipper and the Tentacle Twins and even Mr Grindle looked just as eager to hear what cunning strategy I had devised. All of them had shielded their heads in readiness for our coming battle with the Moobs, and out of the shadows of the tarpaulin hats and blanket turbans they had fashioned their eyes gleamed expectantly at me. Even the Tentacle Twins, who had wrapped their stalks in makeshift metal cummerbunds, looked all agog. Of course; they were used to being led by a human boy! Jack Havock had been no older than I when he first led them all to freedom aboard this ship! Only Colonel Quivering and Mr Spinnaker looked sceptical as they waited for my instructions, but perhaps they were still simply feeling poorly.