Starcross (20 page)

In Which Mother Decides.

Mother tipped her head on one side to think over Sir Launcelot’s ultimatum. It was a girlish gesture that she often made, but it looked awful and grotesque, masked as she was in that ugly respirator.

It’s really an awful bore being held hostage by mad geniuses and threatened with this or that in order to make one’s mother do their evil bidding. It sometimes seems as if never a week goes by without some reprobate or other
pointing a revolving pistol or a Changeling-spore disseminator at me and insisting that Mother share with him some ancient secret or other. It makes a chap feel a little hard-done-by, and inclined to ask, ‘Am I a boy, or a mere bargaining counter?’ And then there’s always the worry that one day, when asked to choose between the safety of her Art and the future of the Solar System, she might plump for the Solar System for a change …

But this time, she chose neither, for that few seconds of thinking time had been enough for her to see a way out of our predicament. She tore off her mask and declared, ‘Gentlemen, you forget yourselves! You are in the presence of a lady! Be so good as to
remove your hats
!’

Her voice was so loud and sudden and commanding that I would have obeyed her myself had I had a hat to remove, and had not my hands been tied. My fellow guests all jumped to do as she asked, and as Sir Launcelot looked round at her in momentary surprise she sprang at him. Somehow she had managed to undo the cords with which he’d bound her! One hand lashed out to strike him on the chin – she has a very creditable uppercut, my mother – while the other snatched the dreadful spores from him.

Sir Launcelot crashed to the floor and lay there, dazed and groaning. Mother placed a foot upon his shirt front to stop him getting up, and reached out to tear the hat from off the head of Mrs Spinnaker.

The gentlemen all stood looking about them, and down at the strange hats in their hands, and blinking, and wondering how in the worlds they came to be there instead of safe in their beds. The hats, for their part, seemed to sense that they’d been rumbled; they wrenched themselves from their former wearers’ hands and flapped off to cluster in a high corner of the cavern like so many bats.

‘Great Scott!’ cried Colonel Quivering, who was the first to recover. ‘Whatever’s afoot, Mrs Mumby? What place is this? What are those beasts? And who is that gentleman
upon whose chest you are standing?’

‘This is the author of our misfortunes,’ said Mother. ‘At least, he
thinks
he is.’

‘It’s Mr Titfer!’ cried Mrs Spinnaker.

‘But what has become of his whiskers?’ asked her husband.

‘He’s not a Titfer at all! He’s
Sir Launcelot Sprigg
!’ gasped Nipper, looking most confused, and not a little ashamed, at letting his old enemy deceive him so successfully.

‘The very same,’ Mother said. ‘Now, if you would help me to secure him, I have to ask him something rather important.’

Sir Launcelot struggled indignantly as the others set about him, but before long they had him pinioned between them. ‘This is an outrage!’ he shouted angrily.

‘No, it isn’t,’ said Mother patiently. ‘The only thing that is outrageous is the way that you are planning to spread your hats across the Solar System.’

‘Nonsense! I have no such plan!’

‘Oh, how can you deny it?’ cried Mother. ‘I saw for myself that vast great advertisement at Modesty Station –’

‘I know of no such advertisement! It is not
my
doing!’

‘And ever since I arrived here,’ Mother continued, ‘I have been distracted by thoughts of Titfer’s Toppers and their shiny blackness, and resolving to buy one for Edward and for everyone I know.’

‘Well, they
are
simply
splendid
hats,’ said Colonel Quivering.

‘I’m sure we all think so,’ agreed Mr Grindle.

‘Exactly,’ said Mother. ‘And yet I guarantee none of us had even
heard
of a Titfer’s Topper before they came here. There is only one explanation. You have had Professor Ferny devise an advertisement spore which will persuade people to buy your horrible hypnotic hats. No doubt you should like to see half the gentlemen in British Space wearing one, and wandering about in trances as a consequence, obeying your every command.’

‘No!’ cried Sir Launcelot quite plaintively. ‘The thought had never crossed my mind! There are only a dozen of the hats in existence. They were handy for persuading these fools to do my bidding, but I could hardly set out to hypnotise the whole Empire!’

Mother frowned and looked thoughtful. ‘No … no, of course. And yet
someone
is hoping to persuade people to invest in Mr Titfer’s hats.’

‘What are you suggesting, madam?’ asked Colonel Quivering.

‘I am not sure,’ replied Mother. ‘But it seems to me that there is something going on here far more serious than Sir Launcelot’s attempts to make himself powerful. Indeed, his whole approach seems rather curious. Why bring the Larklight engine here, and set it up upon an asteroid known for its time-slips and other curious phenomena?’

‘Well, that is quite simple,’ declared Sir Launcelot. ‘I … I … I …’

‘And why go to all the trouble of starting up a hotel?’

‘Ah, I have a reason for that, a very good and cunning one … But I have forgotten what it is …’

‘Surely,’ Mother went on, ‘you would wish to keep visitors
away
from the scene of your crimes, not to encourage them? It makes no sense.’

‘Yes, it does …’ protested Sir Launcelot, but he seemed unable to put his finger on quite
how
.

Mother turned to the rest of us. ‘My dears, this foolish man is nothing but a pawn in some far greater scheme, devised by … Well, by whom? In whose interest would it be to meddle with time, and open a hotel here, and lure all sorts of guests to it so that they might travel home wearing one
of these strange hats?’

We all looked at one another, wondering, and then raised our eyes towards the cavern roof, where the defeated hats had stopped bothering to even try and look like hats, but had melted into sinuous smoky shapes like the one I had glimpsed upon the balcony that first night at Starcross: tadpoles of black smoke with white stars for eyes.

‘Sir Launcelot,’ said Mother thoughtfully, never taking her eyes from the creatures, ‘do
you
own a top hat?’

‘What? You think I’d let myself be hypnotised like these weak-minded dupes?’ Sir Launcelot laughed, flecking poor Mother’s face with spittle. ‘I
do
own a top hat, madam. There it sits, upon that table. Examine it if you wish. You shall find that it was made for me like all my other hats by
Lock & Co.’

‘An excellent establishment,’ said Mother, ‘utterly above suspicion. And yet, if it is not your
hat
which controls you, then what?’

She paused a moment, pondering, then, lightning quick, reached out and snatched the black satin cravat from around Sir Launcelot’s throat. There was a tearing sound as the pin which had held it in place ripped his shirt linen, and then another noise – a fierce, animal hiss. The cravat writhed like a serpent in Mother’s hand. She tried to hold it, but it slid through her grasp and, changing shape, flapped off to join the other creatures which hung rustling in their high corner.

‘Great G-d!’ Sir Launcelot wailed, clasping both hands to his throat
where the creature had nestled. ‘What is it?’

‘It is one of those hat-creatures in another form,’ said Mother. ‘It may only have been wrapped about your neck, but clearly it was still close enough to your brain-stem to influence your thoughts and deeds. I wonder how long it has been controlling you.’

‘It was not controlling me!’ insisted Sir Launcelot. ‘I control the hats! I used them to make these other fools do my bidding!’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Mother. ‘The hat-creatures have made you believe that you are a criminal mastermind, but you are really just a buffoon. Poor Professor Ferny has been down here creating spores all right, but not just for you; we know now why he found time to create only a few of your nasty Changeling spores. His real work has been on an advertisement spore which infects unwary minds with the desire to wear a Titfer’s Top-Notch Topper!’

‘But, Mrs Mumby,’ protested Colonel Quivering, ‘what does all this mean?’

Mother rounded on him, pale and beautiful and looking far more worried than I had ever seen her.

‘Elementary, my dear Colonel,’ she said. ‘When every sensible explanation has been disproved, then whatever
remains, however silly, must be the truth. And the truth is that the British Empire stands on the brink of an invasion by highly intelligent hats from the future!’

Chapter Fourteen

The Battle of the Boiler Room.

They were not really hats, of course. When you looked up at them, clustered in their lofty corner, it was easy to see that. Ink-black and pale-eyed, they shifted shape like blobs of oil, extending small black hands to clutch the cavern roof, slithering like lizards through the passages between the stalactites. ‘Moob, mooooob, mooooob,’ we heard them whisper. It was really jolly unsettling to look up at them, and to think that, given half a
chance, they’d form themselves back into hat-shapes and leap upon our heads.

‘Keep an eye on them!’ ordered Colonel Quivering. ‘I’m going to fetch my shotgun!’

‘Now, Colonel, dear,’ said Mother, ‘violence may not be the only answer!’

‘Well, I hope you can tell us another, then,’ said Sir Launcelot Sprigg rather rudely, from the corner where Mr Munkulus and Mr Spinnaker were restraining him.

Mother did not heed him, but turned to me. ‘Art,’ she said, ‘now that we see those creatures in their true form, would you say they are the same as the one which you encountered on our first night here?’

‘They are,’ I vowed.

‘And yet that one showed no wish to hurt you? It did not try to leap upon your head?’

‘No,’ I said, frowning as I tried to recall exactly what had happened.

‘Perhaps it
did
leap upon his head!’ Mrs Spinnaker pointed out. ‘It might have mesmerised him into
thinking
that it hadn’t.’