Starcross (29 page)

Chapter Nineteen

In Which Battle Is Joined and Daring Rescues Attempted!

Myrtle does have her uses. No sooner had the
Sophronia
began to make that speckled golden bow-wave that signifies she has slipped into the alchemical realm and is travelling faster than light, than golden curlicues and fronds began to trail past the
Liberty
’s portholes too, and we all cheered, realising that my sister and the Moob had taken us on to the Golden Roads.

The
Sophronia,
indeed, was travelling slower than she might have. Either the Moob that crouched on Ssilissa’s head was newer to the arts of Alchemy than ours, or else the lizard-girl was struggling weakly against its influence, or maybe her spines just got in its way, but our old ship was easily able to draw near. The Threls, who all looked like woolly mushrooms with those knitted turbans wound about their heads, started to heave open gunports and poke their carbines out, but Jack stopped them.

‘No shooting yet,’ he ordered. ‘That will just alert the Moobs to us. I doubt they’ve even seen us, the dull-witted hats. We’ll take ’em by surprise.’

In one of the ship’s lockers we had found ropes and grappling hooks, and we carried them out on to the star deck as the
Liberty
soared closer and closer to the
Sophronia.
The Moobs aboard the
Sophronia
had noticed what we were about by then. Gunports opened all along her flank, and her space cannon spat smoke and flame and sent balls singing through the aether to smash through the
Liberty
’s hull. Huge jagged splinters, twice as tall as me, went flip-fluttering into space. A few of the Threls fired back, but the popping of their carbines sounded awfully tinny and toy-like compared with the full-throated roar of the
Sophronia
’s guns. Jack
stopped them, anyway.

‘Hold your fire! That is my ship, and those are my friends. I want none of them harmed! It is their hats we must defeat, and we shall fight them hand-to-hand!’

At his command we whirled the grappling hooks about our heads and let them fly. Mine missed on the first attempt, but I retrieved it and tried again, and the second time it lodged tight between two of the
Sophronia
’s exhaust-trumpets. I gave a whoop of triumph, and looked round to see whether any of the Threls had managed to do as I had. But at that instant a ball from one of the
Sophronia
’s stern
chasers ploughed into the
Liberty
’s flank just below where I was standing. The decking beneath my feet erupted into a storm of tumbling planks and shards, and I found myself soaring upward, clinging for dear to life to that rope, with the power of the
Sophronia
’s engines dragging me through the void. And looking down at the
Liberty
, to see whether my friends were all right, I found that she had fallen far behind, and as I watched she seemed to blink out of existence altogether!

I guessed what had happened. That last shot must have done some damage to the alembic – and perhaps, I feared, to Myrtle too – and the
Liberty
’s chemical wedding had failed. She had fallen from the Golden Roads, and left me alone, a helpless drogue, trailing after the speeding
Sophronia
!

Of all the sticky situations I had ever found myself in, this, I thought, was the stickiest. But there was no use in moping. Exerting all my strength, and praying that the Moobs aboard the
Sophronia
might not have noticed me, I began to haul myself hand over hand along that rope. Closer and closer I drew to the space-barnacled hull of the old ship, and to the spray of brass trumpets in which my grappling hook had lodged. Once, web-bound among the reefs of Saturn, I had crept down one of those trumpets to
hide from the white spiders, and I wondered hopefully if I might climb up one now and enter the
Sophronia
that way. But Ssil had the alembic going at full blast, and from every trumpet-mouth waste gases and spent particles streamed out into the aether. I doubted that I could swim against such tides, and even if I could, I should certainly be poisoned or roasted before I reached the safety of the wedding chamber.

I reached the grappling hook, firmly wedged where the trumpets’ roots vanished through the
Sophronia
’s planking. I looked to left and right, I looked both up and down, but never a sign did I see of any useful hatch or tumblehome through which a space-wrecked mariner might force entry. The only openings in that cliff face of unfriendly timber were the mullioned windows of the stern gallery, which stretched high above me, surrounded by carved angels and gilt-painted gingerbread work. Could I reach it? I wondered. My sense of caution told me I could not. But every other sense that I possessed screamed at me to try, or be whirled off the
Sophronia
’s side by the wind of her passage, to burn in her exhaust-stream or be lost in the emptiness of space!

Tying the rope about my waist, I started to climb, my chilled fingers finding what handholds they could in the gaps between the timbers. I shut my eyes and told myself
that this was no worse than bird’s-nesting on the rooftops of Larklight, but it was. For if I had fallen off Larklight’s roof I should have had nothing worse than a telling-off from Father and Mother, and a chilly wait for them to come and retrieve me in the solar punt. Whereas, if I were to fall from the
Sophronia
, not only would I be doomed, but the last hope of saving the British Empire from the dominion of the Moobs would perish with me …

Well, gentle reader, to cut a long story short, I made it. Scrambling up over the carved scroll that bore
Sophronia
’s name, I peered in through Jack’s cabin window. And, having assured myself that no Moob lurked inside, I tugged and tugged upon my rope until the grappling hook came free, whereon I drew it up and used it to smash one of the panes,
and to clear the daggers of broken glass from the frame, until I was able to squeeze through. Naturally, every object in the cabin – as well as all the air – felt a strong and sincere desire to fly out the same way I’d come in, but I seized a book which tumbled past me and used it to plug the hole I’d made.
²⁶

That done, I let myself float limply in mid-air, uttering a sigh of relief that my perils were over. But I could not escape the nagging sensation that, in fact, they were only beginning. For when I looked out of the windows I could see no sign of the
Liberty
resuming her pursuit, and it seemed to me that I was trapped, quite alone, aboard a vessel packed with hostile Moobs, and with my former friends whom they’d enslaved. How could I hope to take back the
Sophronia
single-handed, armed as I was with nothing but a grappling hook and a woolly hat?

As I drifted there, contemplating this knotty problem, I became aware of an alarming sound. Surely those could not be footsteps approaching without the cabin door? But they could, and they were; an instant later the door was
wrenched open and my old friend Grindle peered in, blankeyed and top-hatted. The Moob which controlled him must have heard me breaking in, and had brought him aft to investigate. I had no time to hide, and Grindle saw me at once.

‘Moob!’ he growled, and drew his cutlass, which is a particularly vicious-looking weapon, as sharp as a razor and as heavy as a cleaver.

‘Mr Grindle!’ I cried, hoping against hope that he might recognise me. But he did not, of course, and only some very hasty aerial gymnastics saved me from being sliced in two as the cutlass slammed down, making a quite horrid gash in Jack’s chart-table.

‘Avast, ye ——!’ muttered Grindle, and many other dreadful curses. I do not know whether the Moob he wore had found those naughty words in his own brain, or had picked them up from Wild Will Melville’s crew.

I swiped at his Moob with my grappling hook, but Mr G. ducked and the barbs whistled past an inch or more above its black crown. The effort of the blow carried me clear across the cabin and I crashed against the bulkhead, the grappling hook tumbling from my hand. I thought that my last moment had come, for I was cornered, winded and
weaponless, and there was nothing to stop Grindle from spiking me with his cutlass. But the Moob which governed him seemed to have changed its mind. He sheathed the weapon, and, reaching into a pouch on his belt where usually he kept his tobacco, drew out a glistening, staring Moob!

‘Help!’ I cried, as the new Moob flared into hat-shape and flew at me. The Moob ignored my flailing hands and settled on my head … and yet nothing happened. I remained myself, and realised that Jack’s plan was working and that the Moob’s influence could not reach through the many layers of Threl-knit wool I wore about my brain!

Grindle, convinced that I was already a slave of the Moobs like himself, had turned away from me, swimming
towards the cabin door. I pushed myself quickly away from the bulkhead, caught up with him as his hand reached for the door-knob, and punched him as hard as I could, right in the middle of his top hat. The Moob, taken by surprise, flew from his head, losing its hattishness as it flailed about with its little black hands, trying to arrest its careering flight across the cabin. Grindle stood staring at me.

‘Art?’ he cried. ‘How did you come here? And whatever is happening? By ——! We’re aboard the
Sophronia
! I remember nothing since we all settled down to sleep last night … Only some dream about a
hat
...’

As he spoke, his Moob recovered itself and came whirling back towards him, but I was ready for it. Plunging past him, I snatched it from the air, wrenched
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away from the window and stuffed the writhing Moob out into space. All the while I could feel the Moob that sat upon my own head wriggling and fidgeting, as if it could not quite understand why I had not come under its control. Before it could work out the secret of the woolly hat I grabbed it and forced it out after its friend. For a moment the two Moobs turned over and over in the
Sophronia
’s wake, just like a pair of lost hats bowling along a windy promenade. Then they dropped into
the fiery plume from the exhaust-trumpets, and were consumed with two brief, coppery-green flashes of fire.