The Mechanical Messiah (41 page)

‘And reverse the neutron flow—’ said Cameron Bell. But then he looked up at the corporal.

‘Is it getting hot in here?’ he asked him.

Mighty furnace doors were opening below.

Above the
Marie Lloyd,
Venusians slipped the silver cables.

alling like a stone towards the furnace, the
Marie Lloyd
went down and down and down.

Darwin clung to Alice and Alice clung to Darwin. The Jovians said prayers their mothers had taught them. Cameron Bell discovered God and wondered whether the Almighty really did offer his eternal blessings to those who made eleventh-hour conversions to His faith.

The flames roared up, the ship dropped down.

Down into the furnace and was gone.

Then up again in a roar of engines. Up into the sky.

Corporal Larkspur clung to the joystick, red of face, with eyes all popping out. Cameron had a fine sweat on and offered his thanks to God.

The Jovians cheered, Alice cried and Darwin the monkey fainted.

‘Out into space,’ cried Cameron Bell. ‘Back to the Earth at the double.’

‘I know what I’m doing,’ Corporal Larkspur said with bitterness. ‘You might thank me for saving your life.’

‘I think you will find that it was I who started the engines,’ said Cameron Bell.

‘But I who flew us from the jaws of death.’

‘But you who let the batteries run flat.’

‘But you who stole the ignition key.’

‘But—’

‘Gentlemen,’ said Colonel Katterfelto, ‘best cease congratulating each other. Aether ship on our tail, doncha know? Best get a move on, eh?’

‘Is the prang cannon operational?’ Cameron asked the colonel.

‘Depends how you define
operational,
old chap. Have the firing seat working now. Come to borrow the ignition key.’ The colonel reached towards it.

‘Best not,’ said Cameron Bell. ‘I will pick the lock on the cannon.

It was certainly to be hoped that things would all work out right in the end. As Cameron and Colonel Katterfelto scuttled off towards the armoured gun port, the pursuing Venusian craft trained cannons of its own upon the speeding
Marie Lloyd.

Scholars of cosmology and those who write wordy treatises upon the life of the inhabited worlds have long found wordless gaps in their work when they write of the planet Venus. How exactly a race so polite, charming, godly, peaceful and cooperative had for so long managed to stymie all attempts at anthropological study by other races was, if nothing else, a triumph of interworld diplomacy.

Attempts had been made, some of these most valiant.
The Rough Guide to Venus,
briefly published before the threat of war had it removed from the shelves of W. H. Smith, included maps, a history of Venus and a
Good Food Guide
to Rimmer. Authored, very possibly, by the enigmatic Herr Döktor and now more highly prized than an original copy of
The Necronomicon,
this small tome represented
all
that was known of the planet Venus and her people.

In the section entitled MAGICAL WEAPONRY, these words were to be found:

As with the Venusian ships of space, which are referred to as Holier-than-Air craft and move through the aether by the power of faith alone, the weapons of this magical world do not function by mechanical means. An ecclesiastic, trained in the aiming of the ‘Weapon of Wrath’, concentrates his thoughts through a meditative process into a ‘will to punish’, then mentally propels them through the nozzle of the gun. This nozzle is fashioned from the sacred metal
Magoniam,
a subtle form of gold capable of carrying the power of magic. It is said that no minerals on any other planets possess this property.

White stripes of destructive force issued from the aether ship. The death patrol was now in hot pursuit.

Corporal Larkspur glanced into a wing mirror then made what he considered to be an evasive manoeuvre. Cameron Bell found himself plastered to the ceiling of the armoured gun port.

The colonel, once more harnessed to the firing seat, said, ‘Don’t be a silly arse, Balls. We’ve serious business here.’

The
Marie Lloyd
did loopings of the loop then swept towards the blackness of space. The equivalent of Earth’s gravitational pull increased by a factor of three and had Cameron now pasted to the floor and the colonel’s mustachios meeting at the back of his neck. But at least these loopings of the loop brought artificial gravity to the
Marie Lloyd.

‘Tally-ho!’ cried the old soldier, when he was able. ‘Damn good fun, eh, Balls?’

Cameron scraped himself into the vertical plane.

A white stripe of concentrated malice cleaved a tail fin from the
Marie Lloyd,
sending the craft into a corkscrew trajectory that was most unpleasing to the spaceship’s occupants.

Jovians brought up their breakfast.

Darwin fainted again.

Cameron Bell tinkered at the prang cannon’s dashboard with his fork. The colonel spun stopcocks and gave valves professional flickings.

‘Fast as you can now, please,’ was his advice.

Cameron tinkered, then threw up his arms, drew out his ray gun and pointed it at the dashboard.

‘Ah,’ said the colonel. ‘Good idea. Use the retractable charge cable in the ray gun’s stock. Reverse the neutron flow. Job done.’

Cameron took aim and shot the dashboard.

Bulbs sprang into vivid life along the cannon’s length. A whining, as of dangerous power, rose to an eardrum-splitting pitch. Cameron Bell pocketed his ray gun. ‘Aim it and fire it!’ he cried, clamping his hands over his ears. ‘Fire it before it overloads.’

‘Speak up!’ shouted the colonel. ‘A lot of noise in here.’

‘Fire it!’
shouted Cameron.

‘Fire it? Jolly good.’

The
Marie Lloyd
lost another tail fin, which at least stopped all the spiralling. Jovians peered pale-faced through their portholes as the Venusian aether ship began to draw alongside.

‘Hold hard a moment,’ shouted Cameron Bell. The din of the prang cannon overcharging itself had risen to a pitch beyond that of human register. On Venus the dogs all started to howl. Which meant they have dogs upon Venus.

‘What are you saying?’ shouted the colonel, for everything else in the armoured port was still rattling noisily about. ‘Can’t hear what you’re saying.’

‘They don’t know we are armed,’ bawled Cameron Bell. ‘Don’t shoot until they are right alongside. Then give them everything that we have.’

‘Just like we did to Johnny Martian, eh?’ The colonel made the thumbs-up.

Alice now peeped through her porthole. She saw the beautiful craft. So close it was that she could see that it more resembled a galleon than a flying castle. There were Venusians upon the decks, laughing and pointing. Some appeared to be drinking cocktails. One was aiming a very big gun indeed.

Alice saw a Venusian in an extravagantly decorated uniform approach the being that manned the very big gun. He raised his hand then brought it down and there was a terrible bang.

The explosion tore the ship apart, dissolved it into atoms, made it simply cease to be.

A single craft now moved through the silence of space.

‘Alexander’s greatcoat!’ said the colonel. ‘That was a prang if ever there was one. Damn fine job there, Balls.’

After a great deal of watch-checking and heated debate, it was finally agreed that the time was nearing one of the lunchtime clock. Earth time.

‘And the sun is bound to be over the yardarm,’ said the colonel. ‘Drinks all round, my treat.’

Major Thadeus Tinker patted the old campaigner on his bowing back. ‘This fellow’s a hero,’ said he. ‘Best give him a round of applause.’

‘Balls did most of the work,’ puffed the colonel. ‘I just pressed the firing button. Let’s have three big cheers for Mr Balls.’

‘Let us not bother,’ said Cameron Bell. ‘And please stop calling me Balls.’

There had been drinking before on the
Marie Lloyd.
Heroic drinking by men of the Queen’s Own Electric Fusiliers. On the way back from the Martian Campaign, with crates of Martian gin. And the colonel had enjoyed a particularly memorable booze-up with the survivors of a previous big-game hunt. Two of them had died from alcohol poisoning, the colonel recalled. But this was somehow a special party. A special party indeed.

To Colonel Katterfelto’s enormous surprise, Corporal Larkspur paid him the balance of his wage, in cash, without any fuss.

Darwin stuck out a hairy hand and the colonel gave him half.

‘We have triumphed,’ quoth the colonel, ordering all the champagne on board to be uncorked and offered around. ‘Those of us who have survived will be wealthy men when we reach Earth.’ He raised his glass to the Jovians. ‘You fellows, already wealthy,’ he said. ‘But with the diamonds, even wealthier now, eh?’

The Jovians laughed and cheered the colonel, then all drank champagne.

‘Think we’ll be going home with our heads on our bodies,’ Colonel Katterfelto whispered to Darwin. ‘So all is well as ends well, I suppose.’

Darwin was already enjoying a slight degree of simian insobriety.

‘You are my bestest friend,’ he told the colonel.

‘And you mine, my dear fellow, you mine.’

The two clinked glasses. Darwin poured some champagne into his ear.

Major Thadeus Tinker appeared with a smile on his face. It was a visible smile now as he had shaved away his great white beard and given himself a haircut.

‘You missed a bit under your ear there, Tinker,’ said Colonel Katterfelto. ‘But damn me if you don’t look ten years younger.

‘I am very grateful to you, Katters.’ The major put his arm about his old friend’s shoulders. Darwin made a face and turned away. ‘I will be very glad to get back to Blighty. And we must take that night out at the Music Hall. What do you say?’

‘Well, about that—’ huffed the colonel. But Alice started to sing.

It was that much-loved Music Hall standard, a poignant Irish ballad of a mother’s love for a boy with very big ears. Who leaves his mother all alone to bring up five children when he joins the British Army and marches off to fight the enemies of the Crown. So sad a song was this as to be capable of raising a tear from the eye of a tiger.

The Jovians who knew it sang along; the others, who did not, simply wept.

The verse that most remembered went as follows:

The big-eared boy has gone away

To fight a foreign war,

No more to hear the children play

But only cannons roar.

His mother now has lost her joy.

She walks a lonely road

Where he marched away as a soldier boy —

Ungrateful little toad!

Amidst the cheering, Cameron Bell took out his hankie and noisily blew at his nose.