Starcross
Authors: Philip Reeve
Contents
Chapter One
In Which We Deplore the Din of Decorators and Receive a Most Intriguing Invitation.
Chapter Two
A Brief Description of the Asteroid Belt. By the Good Offices of the A.B. & M.P. Rail Traction Co. Ltd We Are Conveyed to Starcross, and Are Surprised at What We Find There.
Chapter Three
We Arrive at the Grand Hotel and Are Made Welcome by Its Mysterious Proprietor.
Chapter Four
In Which I Have a Curious Encounter, and a Light Breakfast.
Chapter Five
In Which We Disport Ourselves upon the Playful Bosom of the Ocean, and Jack’s Explanations Are Interrupted by a Distressing Discovery.
Chapter Six
In Which One of Our Number Discerns the Hand of an Enemy at Work, and Is Struck Down by It!
Chapter Seven
In Which the Mystery Deepens Yet Further!
Chapter Eight
In Which the Narrative Is Continued by Another Hand.
Chapter Nine
In Which Various Horrors Beset Myrtle in the Depths of Time, and Who Can Blame Them?
Chapter Ten
Myrtle’s Account Continues: Strange Meetings upon an Ancient Shore, Miss Beauregard’s Motives Made Plain and Mrs Grinder Revealed as a Woman of Many Parts.
Chapter Eleven
In Which Myrtle Explores a Long-Lost Wreck and Is Not Much Encouraged by What She Finds.
Chapter Twelve
In Which Mother and I, All Unaware of the Perils Which Face Poor Myrtle in Pre-History, Pay a Visit to the Boiler Room, There to Meet with the Author of Our Misfortunes!
Chapter Thirteen
In Which Mother Decides.
Chapter Fourteen
The Battle of the Boiler Room.
Chapter Fifteen
In Which I Make Good My Escape and Gain an Unexpected Ally, Only to Find Myself Pursued across the Gulfs of Space!
Chapter Sixteen
In Which Our Narrative Returns to Ancient Mars, and We Learn of the Surprising Things Which Had Befallen Myrtle in the Meanwhile.
Chapter Seventeen
In Which We Learn the History of a Moob.
Chapter Eighteen
We Arrive at Modesty but Find Ourselves Both Out-Paced and Out-Witted by the Dreaded Moobs.
Chapter Nineteen
In Which Battle Is Joined and Daring Rescues Attempted!
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.
Chapter Twenty-One
We Arrive in the Depths of Futurity and Find Them Chilly and a Trifle Dark.
Chapter Twenty-Two
In Which We Confront an Adversary Every Bit as Beastly as the Moobs, Though Somewhat Less Like a Hat.
For Sarah & Sam — P.R.
For Natalie — D.W.
The grand hotel at Starcross sleeps peacefully tonight beneath a sky dusty with stars.
The grand hotel at Starcross sleeps peacefully tonight beneath a sky dusty with stars. Starlight slants down upon the sandstone bluffs which rise behind it, and silvers its ornate roofs and myriad windows. Starlight glitters upon the sea which fills the broad bay before it, a velvet blackness flecked with shimmering scales. And starlight falls upon the wary faces of the pair who suddenly fling wide the glass doors marked ‘Reception’ and come running down the steps on to the promenade. A handsome, bearded gentleman and a young lady of elfin beauty. We must forgive the gentleman if he lets the door slam behind him. And if his fair companion mutters something not
quite
ladylike beneath her breath as she descends, perhaps it may be excused. For they are Sir Richard and Mrs Ulla Burton, agents of Her Majesty’s Secret Service, and they are running for their lives.
They reach the balustrade at the promenade’s edge together, and vault over it. The gravity is suddenly gentler here, away from the influence of the hotel’s generators, and Sir Richard and his pretty wife drift down in a dreamlike way and land with two soft scrunches in the sand. Ahead of them the white waves curl and crisp upon the shore, and a row of candy-striped bathing machines stands silent and dark along the strand. Sir Richard runs to the closest, but Ulla hisses, ‘No, dearest – that is the first place they will look!’ She points instead to where a little rowing boat has been drawn up on the sand, and together they hasten over and start to shove it forward into the white foam of the breaking waves.
And then, without warning, they feel a falling sensation, a sense of dizziness that makes Sir Richard clutch a hand to his brow, and Ulla reach out and hold him to steady herself. It is quickly past. But when they look up, the sea is gone.
The rowing boat sits beached on the sands of a bone-dry desert which stretches away to a hard horizon, not ten miles distant. Beyond that, the sky is cluttered with small, lumpish, unwelcoming, stony worlds.
Behind him, Sir Richard hears the sand crunch. Sunbleached canvas flaps softly in the night wind as something emerges from the shadow of the bathing machines. It is a red-and-white striped booth – an automated Punch & Judy show of the type that you may have seen upon the promenades of Bognor or Brighton. Inside the opening a fearsome, hook-nosed puppet suddenly rears up, seeming to focus on Ulla and Sir Richard with its painted eyes.
‘
Hello, boys and girls!
’ it squawks.
Sir Richard pulls out his service revolver and empties all six chambers through the front of the booth. Black holes spot the striped canvas like ink blots, and the impact of the bullets sends the whole contraption shuddering backwards. But as the echoes of the shots fade and the cloud of powder smoke thins, the booth begins to creep implacably towards him again.