The Martian Ambassador

by Alan K Baker

  ‘The honour is mine,’ said Voronezh. Blackwood gave him a nonplussed look.

  ‘As I said to you before, sir,’ said Shanahan, ‘just say my name aloud, and I shall come to offer whatever assistance I may. Now… what can I do for you?’

  ‘The interplanetary cylinder carrying the Martian Ambassador’s body has just been destroyed. We believe that the Venusian Indrid Cold is responsible and may still be here in the wood. We are going to try to apprehend him, but we fear he may destroy us first. Can you see your way clear to pinning down his location?’

  Shanahan nodded. ‘I’m aware of all these things, sir. The power required to bring down a craft of such size is considerable. It’s more than likely that the weapon used will need to be recharged before it can be fired again…’

  ‘That’s all very well, little chap,’ said de Chardin peremptorily. ‘But he probably has other weapons at his disposal.’

  Voronezh turned to the Templar Knight, and this time Blackwood had no doubt about his expression: it was one of great anger. ‘Do not speak to him so!’

  They all looked at him in surprise, except for Shanahan, who merely smiled. ‘See what I mean? So much more polite than humans.’

  De Chardin said, ‘I apologise for my tone. I merely meant to…’

  ‘No matter,’ said the Helper. ‘I will scout out the area and report back to you.’ And with that, he vanished in a puff of lilac smoke.

  Voronezh looked at de Chardin and shook his head. ‘You do not know to whom you speak,’ he said.

  ‘If you please, Mr Voronezh, I know very well,’ the detective retorted. He was about to say more, but Blackwood held up his hand.

  ‘Who is he?’ he asked.

  The Martian regarded him in silence.

  Blackwood continued, ‘He claims to be the Helper from my cogitator, and he was certainly there when the contraption went wrong. Do you know something that we don’t?’

  Voronezh turned away from them. ‘If you do not know, it means that he does not want you to know, and I will not go against his wishes. Come… the weapon was fired from this direction.’ And with that, the Martian walked away into the depths of the wood.

  ‘What the deuce was that all about?’ muttered de Chardin as they followed him.

  ‘I don’t know,’ replied Blackwood, taking out his revolver. ‘But it seems that there is more to Mr Shanahan than meets the eye.’

  *

  Voronezh was true to his word, for presently they came upon a small clearing, hardly more than twenty yards wide, at the centre of which stood a low mound covered with branches, leaves and clods of humus.

  ‘That doesn’t look natural,’ said Blackwood. ‘Let’s take a closer look.’

  De Chardin glanced at the clearing and the surrounding trees with a penetrating eye. ‘I don’t like it. We’ll be terribly exposed.’

  ‘Shanahan will warn us of any danger,’ Blackwood assured him. He turned to Sophia. ‘All the same, I think it’s best if you remain here.’

  ‘Thomas, I–’

  ‘Just until we make sure that it’s safe,’ he interrupted her gently. ‘I’m sorry, but I’ll hear no arguments. Mr Voronezh, will you remain here also?’

  ‘I will,’ the Martian replied. ‘Just until you make sure it’s safe. Then her Ladyship and I will join you.’

  Sophia folded her arms and gave Blackwood a stern look, her brow furrowed over her deep brown eyes. He found the expression delightful but forced himself not to smile. ‘Come on, de Chardin,’ he said.

  With their revolvers at the ready, the Special Investigator and the Templar Knight stepped into the clearing, moving slowly and carefully. Although he tried to focus his attention entirely on his surroundings, Blackwood couldn’t help thinking about Voronezh’s reaction to the appearance of Shanahan. He knew him, or at least knew of him, and had displayed a deference Blackwood had never seen a Martian display before – not even to Her Majesty. It was really quite extraordinary.

  This, however, was a puzzle for another time, he told himself, and returned his attention exclusively to the matter at hand. He listened intently for any unusual sound, and watched for any furtive movement in the trees surrounding the clearing, ready to drop to the ground and take aim at a moment’s notice. But he was aware of nothing but trees and silence…

  Silence, he thought. No sounds at all… That struck him as odd, for there should have been the rustlings of woodland animals, the occasional chirrup of a bird. It was as if they had fled…

  De Chardin gave voice to Blackwood’s thoughts. ‘The animals have been frightened away,’ he whispered. ‘The villain is still here… somewhere.’

  ‘Keep your eye out, de Chardin,’ said Blackwood. ‘I’m going to have a look at that mound.’

  De Chardin nodded and swept the barrel of his revolver back and forth, covering the line of trees on the far side of the clearing, while Blackwood edged towards the mound.

  There was something under there, that much was evident – but what? Blackwood recalled Voronezh’s suggestion that Indrid Cold had come to Earth in a small vessel, which he had probably concealed somewhere near London.

  Blackwood peered closely at the pile of branches and leaves. Something glinted faintly beneath them. He reached out and pulled away some of the vegetation.

  ‘Good God,’ he said.

  ‘What is it?’ asked de Chardin, his eyes still firmly fixed upon the surrounding trees.

  ‘Voronezh was right. It’s Indrid Cold’s Æther ship!’

  ‘The devil you say!’

  ‘Come and see for yourself,’ said Blackwood as he flung aside the clods of humus and cleared away the rest of the branches and leaves.

  De Chardin took a quick glance at the object thus revealed. ‘Saints preserve us, what an odd-looking device!’

  The Templar Knight was right: never in his life had Blackwood seen such a strange contrivance. The Æther ship was perhaps fifteen feet long, and shaped like a teardrop. From the stern (or what Blackwood supposed was the stern) extended a complex agglomeration of pipes and funnels, entirely enclosed within an elongated dome of some material akin to glass or crystal. The main body of the craft was fashioned from an iridescent metal which reminded Blackwood of the fragment which Sophia had retrieved from the Alsop family’s front door.

  Blackwood moved around to the blunt nose of the ship and peered into the interior through the single round porthole.

  ‘What do you see?’ asked de Chardin.

  ‘Nothing. Looks like it’s empty.’ Blackwood began to inspect the vessel’s flanks, searching for some means of gaining entry. Before long, his eye fell upon a lever set flush with the metal, and he pulled it gingerly.

  With a hiss of hidden hydraulics, a small hatch opened.

  ‘Good man,’ said de Chardin. ‘Now, if we can–’

  He was interrupted by the appearance of Shanahan in the air before them. The tiny man flew back and forth in extreme agitation. ‘Mr Blackwood! Mr de Chardin! Have a care, sirs, for he is returned! In fact, he was here all the time – he has led you into a trap!’

  At that moment, the silence was pierced by a scream from the edge of the clearing. Both men span around and looked in the direction from which they’d come. The sight which greeted them made their blood run cold.

  Petrox Voronezh was on his knees, an ugly black rent in his chest. He pitched forward onto his face and lay still, while Sophia cried, ‘Thomas! De Chardin!’

  ‘Sophia!’ Blackwood bolted towards the line of trees, brandishing his revolver.

  The fiend appeared from amongst the trees, bounding along with unnaturally long strides towards Sophia. Blackwood fired once, twice. He felt de Chardin’s bullets whizzing past his head as the Templar Knight let fly with his own weapon, but if the bullets found their target, there was no sign of it.

  With a final leap, Indrid Cold fell upon Sophia. She screamed again, struggling frantically to free herself from his loathsome grip, but he was far too strong, and her desperate eff
orts were in vain.

  ‘Sophia!’ Blackwood cried again, still running at full tilt towards the dreadful scene. He had emptied his revolver’s cylinder, but even had the weapon been fully loaded, he would not have been able to fire it again without risk of hitting her.

  ‘Let her go, you blackguard!’ shouted de Chardin.

  Blackwood had nearly reached them. He caught a glimpse of narrow, hate-filled eyes – eyes that were as hostile and implacable as the unplumbed depths of the Æther – before Indrid Cold, still clutching his captive firmly by the waist, leaped up into the branches of a tree. He paused for a moment, gazing down at Blackwood and de Chardin. Then, with a contemptuous sneer he said, ‘My ship for her Ladyship. A fair exchange, don’t you think? Ha ha!’

  And with that, he was gone, swinging through the trees like some hideous monkey. Blackwood was about to give chase, but he saw immediately that it would be useless, for the villain’s passage through the wood was far too swift. ‘Shanahan!’ he cried. ‘Shanahan!’

  ‘Here, sir!’

  ‘Follow them. Find out where he takes her, but don’t let him see you.’

  ‘That I will,’ said the faerie, and hurtled off into the depths of the wood.

  Blackwood turned and saw de Chardin kneeling beside the prone body of Petrox Voronezh. ‘How is he?’

  The Templar Knight looked up and slowly shook his head. He had turned the Martian over onto his back, and a single glance told Blackwood the horrible truth. The gaping wound smoked in the cold air, its edges ragged and cauterised. The great barrel chest rose and fell fitfully, and Voronezh’s body twitched with intermittent spasms as the last of life’s breath prepared to leave it.

  Blackwood leaned over and looked into Voronezh’s eyes. Even in the shadow of death, they remained inscrutable, guarding their mysteries. ‘I’m sorry,’ he murmured.

  ‘Do not… blame… yourself,’ said Voronezh. ‘Find… Cold. Save… your friend. Save… Earth… and Mars.’

  And with those words, Petrox Voronezh breathed his last, and the glinting lustre of his great dark eyes gradually faded to a thin, dry crust.

  CHAPTER THREE:

  Station X

  They carried Voronezh’s body back through the wood to the electric carriage. So light was he that by the time they had done so, they had barely broken a sweat. Even so, it was the longest journey Thomas Blackwood had ever made, for the heaviness of his heart more than made up for the lightness of his physical burden. Countless times he cursed himself for having allowed Sophia to accompany them: he should never have brought her into Leason’s Wood; he should have made her wait on the edge of the Cosmodrome while he and the others faced the danger.

  Sophia had saved his life, but when she stood in dire need of his protection, he had been unable to save her. Now, she was in the clutches of the Venusian fiend, who was taking her God knew where, to do to her God knew what.

  And now, Petrox Voronezh was dead, the second Martian to be murdered on Earth in less than a week. Blackwood could imagine the look on Grandfather’s face when he told him, and as for the Queen…

  As he and de Chardin spied the carriage amongst the trees, some intuition told Blackwood that there was another tragedy yet to be revealed. Ghell’ed should have hurried out to meet them when he saw that they were carrying Voronezh’s body… but there was no movement in the vehicle’s front windows as they approached.

  ‘Something’s wrong,’ he said.

  They laid the body down beside the open door, then took out their revolvers once again and entered the vehicle.

  Ghell’ed was slumped over his controls, dead, the charred hole in his back still smoking slightly.

  ‘Great God,’ said de Chardin with bitter sadness. ‘How easily this fiend takes life.’

  Without a word, Blackwood went to the telegraph machine which was set into the dashboard and began to send a message in Morse code.

  De Chardin came and stood beside him. ‘The Bureau?’ he said.

  Blackwood nodded. ‘I’m sending a request for the Unearthly Phenomenon Unit to come out here and retrieve the Æther ship. They’ll take it to one of our Research and Development laboratories for study…’

  ‘Blackwood… I’m sorry about Lady Sophia.’

  The Special Investigator stopped what he was doing. ‘It’s my fault, de Chardin. I shouldn’t have allowed her to come.’

  ‘She has a rather forceful personality. She insisted.’

  ‘That’s no excuse.’

  ‘No… I suppose it isn’t.’

  ‘But I’ll get her back. So help me God, I’ll get her back, and make Indrid Cold pay for all the evil he’s done.’

  *

  Within an hour, the Unearthly Phenomenon Unit arrived in Leason’s Wood. Blackwood and de Chardin watched impatiently as two four-wheel carriages, each drawn by two horses, came into view, followed by a large, steam-driven lorry with a wide flatbed. Mounted directly behind the driver’s cab was a crane with block and tackle and a folded tarpaulin.

  The vehicles came to a halt beside the Martian carriage, and a tall, imposing figure stepped down from one of the four-wheelers. Blackwood shook hands with him and introduced him to de Chardin as Colonel Caxton-Roper, Chief Operations Manager of the UPU.

  Caxton-Roper took one look at Petrox Voronezh’s body, and signalled to the other four-wheeler. Three black-suited men emerged with a stretcher. They carefully lifted the Martian onto it, carried it back to their carriage and placed it inside.

  ‘Where are you taking him?’ asked de Chardin.

  ‘To the Home Office pathologist,’ replied the colonel in a clipped voice. ‘Protocol must be observed, even in extraordinary circumstances – especially in such circumstances.’

  ‘Has Her Majesty been informed?’ asked Blackwood.

  Caxton-Roper nodded. ‘Indeed she has.’ He gave Blackwood a brief smile which was partly sardonic, partly sympathetic. ‘I daresay you have some explaining to do, sir.’

  Blackwood sighed. ‘I daresay I have.’

  ‘Hmm. Now then, to the business at hand. Where is the vessel?’

  Blackwood and de Chardin guided the steam lorry towards the clearing containing the Æther ship. Colonel Caxton-Roper walked beside them, looking around all the time, as if he expected Indrid Cold to come bounding through the trees once again, eager to have another crack at them.

  The lorry was less bulky than the baroque Martian carriage and was able to reach the clearing with little trouble. The driver parked it beside the alien vessel, climbed down from his cab and immediately set to work untying the crane. The other four-wheeler followed behind but only made it to the edge of the clearing before the horses became agitated, whinnying and stamping their hooves upon the ground.

  ‘Curious,’ said Caxton-Roper. ‘They don’t seem to like this gadget.’

  While the carriage driver climbed down and tried to placate the horses, murmuring comfortingly to them and stroking their necks, four more men emerged from the vehicle and joined the others in the clearing. They examined the Æther ship without hesitation, their faces expressionless, their manner utterly professional and lacking in anything which might remotely be called surprise. Blackwood wouldn’t have expected anything else, for the Bureau’s Unearthly Phenomenon Unit was used to dealing with such sudden departures from the normal run of things.

  In short order, the Æther ship was secured with heavy canvas straps and hooked up to the block and tackle, which was a threefold purchase designed for heavy lifting. The men pulled on the hauling line and lifted the vessel from its nest of earth and branches, then the lorry driver pulled the crane’s boom around so that it was directly above the flatbed.

  ‘That was straightforward enough,’ said de Chardin as the lorry’s strange new cargo was tied down with more canvas straps. Finally, the men unfolded the tarpaulin, threw it over the Æther ship and secured it to the steel rings bolted along the sides of the flatbed.

  ‘Where are you taking it?’ asked de Chardin.
<
br />   Caxton-Roper flashed his ephemeral smile once again and replied, ‘I’m afraid that’s classified information, Detective.’

  De Chardin cast a glance at Blackwood, who shrugged apologetically. ‘Sorry, old chap. Need-to-know only, I’m afraid.’

  The detective looked at the black-suited men, who met his gaze with expressionless faces, and nodded. ‘I quite understand, gentlemen. Well, I’d better get back to the Cosmodrome. There’s a great deal to be done there.’

  Blackwood smiled and offered him his hand. ‘I appreciate your help, sir.’

  ‘Not at all. Will you let me know of any further developments?’

  ‘Without a doubt.’

  De Chardin nodded. ‘Then I shall bid you all good day.’

  With that, he walked, a little stiffly, out of the clearing and disappeared amongst the trees.

  ‘Shame,’ muttered Blackwood. ‘I didn’t enjoy rebuffing him like that.’

  ‘I understand,’ said Caxton-Roper. ‘He’s clearly a good man… but he’s not Bureau.’

  ‘So,’ Blackwood sighed. ‘Were are you taking it?’

  ‘To Station X, Bletchley Park.’

  *

  Bletchley Park was situated fifty miles northwest of London and consisted of three hundred acres of Buckinghamshire countryside next to the London and North-Western Railway line. It had been acquired in 1883 by Her Majesty’s Government from Herbert Samuel Leon, a wealthy London financier and Liberal MP, who had developed sixty of those acres into his personal estate. Now it was home to the newest and best-equipped of the Bureau’s research and development laboratories.

  Blackwood rode in Caxton-Roper’s carriage. He was silent during the entire journey from Leason’s Wood and was grateful that the colonel was a man of few words, who did not attempt to engage him in conversation. He kept thinking of Indrid Cold’s words as he made off with Sophia: My ship for her Ladyship. A fair exchange, don’t you think? It was quite clear that the Æther ship was no longer of any use to him, which meant that Cold had come on a one-way trip to Earth, and had no intention of escaping and returning to his own world. This in turn implied that the Venusian plot was nearing its completion.