Starcross (31 page)

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.

I cleared my throat, and explained my plan of battle. There wasn’t much of it, I’m afraid.

‘We shall set down on the promenade just outside the entrance to the pier,’ I announced. ‘We shall all arm ourselves with as many swords and guns and cutlasses as we can carry, and as soon as the ship is landed we shall swarm out and charge into the hotel, where we shall wallop, pistol or poke every Moob we see.’