When I finished watching this aerial calamity I looked around and realised that I had become separated from the royal party. For an instant I caught sight of the Burtons. I was horror-struck to observe that poor Mr Burton had been hit by a shard of twisted metal flung out by the exploding steam contraptions. It had gone clean through his leg, pinning him to the lawn. Dear, brave Ulla was struggling to free him, but above them one of the Crystal Palace’s huge iron feet was descending! ‘Ulla!’ I screamed. I will never know if she heard me – she did not look away from her husband’s face. Thankfully I was spared the sight of their dreadful end, for the park was full of running people (many of them a very common sort). I was swept helplessly along with them, and the Burtons were lost to my view just before the foot came down on them.
At last I reached this small red-brick building, which I take to be the hut of some park keeper or other menial. There is, at least, a teapot here, and a calendar with engraved views of London in happier times, and a copy of this morning’s Times, and a stub of pencil with which I am writing this. If I peek from the window I can see that the spider is moving ponderously away towards St James and Westminster. I have heard the boom of big guns, and seen shells burst upon its body and limbs, but all to no avail. From time to time it raises one foot and quite deliberately stamps upon some great public building or other place of interest.
I wonder what has become of the Queen? I wonder if I shall be charged with High Treason, for attacking her? Oh, I only ever wanted to be genteel, and now I have sat upon royalty and am trapped in a park keeper’s hut, likely at any moment to be crushed to atoms by that giant automaton!
No. No: I must not give in to despair. After all, is it not partly my doing that this terrible machine has been unleashed upon our capital? I do not understand it, but the spiders’ plot all has something to do with Larklight, and Art, and poor Papa, and me. Now that Mr Burton and his Ulla have been squashed, I am the only soul on Earth who knows about the white spider which must lurk within that greater spider somewhere, directing its rampages. It must fall to me, mere weak maiden though I am, to put an end to it. I may die in the attempt, but I must not let my fear get the better of me. No, I must gird up my – whatever one is supposed to gird in such a situation, and put my trust in GOD and be as bold and resolute as some Christian martyr of the olden days!
The machine has paused in its wicked work, and one of its sturdy iron legs has come to rest not far from where I hide. I think that if I could reach it unnoticed I might climb up to the lower joint, and from there to the upper joint, and from there creep inside its iron body, where I suppose the controlling spider lurks. And if it is no larger than the little brute which crept out of the false Sir Waverley on Mars …
I shall arm myself with whatever weapon I can find, and then venture forth to do my duty.
But, oh, how I wish dear Jack were here with me!
Chapter Twenty
We Return Home (Huzzah!), but Discover that it May Already be Too Late to Save Dear Old England from the Vengeance of the First Ones (Boo!).
Ispun backwards, head over heels, and saw that a vast and raggedy hole had appeared in the hull, up near the stern. All sorts of things were whirling out through it – kettles and cannon balls, enamel mugs and shards of shattered planking – and in the inky aether beyond I saw the spiky black shape of the spiders’ ship go swooshing by, trailing a wake of smoke from the broadside she’d just unleashed at us.
‘D——d clever bugs, them spiders,’ said Mr Munkulus, catching me before I could go the same way as the mugs and kettles. ‘They’ve followed us all the way from Saturn’s rings!’
‘Dr Ptarmigan is insane, but he is no fool,’ said Mother, training a fire-hose on a coil of smouldering ropes while Yarg and Squidley worked the pump handle. ‘He guessed we’d be bound for Larklight, and trailed us here.’
‘Go about!’ Jack was shouting, half choked with smoke. ‘Ssil! Bring us about!’
But the song of the great alembic had died. Lilac smoke was billowing out of the Sophronia’s wedding chamber, which had borne the brunt of the spider’s attack. Through the swirling smoke came Nipper, carrying Ssillissa, who hung limply in his pincers, leaking clouds of purple blood.
And outside, between the pale horns of the crescent Moon, the spider-ship was turning, turning, making ready to swing back on a second pass and empty another broadside into our poor, crippled Sophronia!
Just then, with a soft, yielding sort of crunch, our drifting ship crashed against the veils of web which covered Larklight, and her bowsprit snagged fast in the strands. My mother shouted, ‘Into the house, everyone! Let us go into the house! I believe “Abandon Ship” is the proper term.’
‘Leave the old Sophronia?’ howled Mr Grindle. ‘Never!’
‘Dear Mr Grindle,’ explained Mother, who was already opening the forward hatch, ‘If we stay aboard her the First Ones will most certainly blow us to smithereens, whereas if they see that we have gone into Larklight they will leave the Sophronia be and follow us inside. And there, perhaps, we may have a better chance of defeating them. Mr Munkulus, be a sweetheart and bring poor Sir Waverley along.’
So Mr Munkulus unstrapped the insensate industrialist from his hammock and untied the hoverhogs’ strings from their ring on the wall, and we all went after Mother, out of the hatch and along the bowsprit netting. Sure enough the looming spider-ship turned aside, and a few shots went whooshing past us as we reached the wall of web. But Jack and the others had their cutlasses out, and quickly hacked a way in for us through the gossamer. As luck would have it the Sophronia had struck just above the main entrance; indeed, the tip of her bowsprit, poking in through the web, had gone through Father’s dressing-room window. It was quite easy to climb down and heave open the big front door, which those foolish, overconfident spiders had left unlocked!
We all stumbled into the hallway. It was dark, and a few long strands of web blew about in the breeze from the open door, but otherwise it looked much as it had on the day of Mr Webster’s arrival. Bits of our smashed auto-butler bobbed about under the ceiling, and the hoverhogs who had come in with us went swooping about among the pieces, snuffling up floating crumbs and specks of fluff and looking like pink party balloons with their strings a-trailing. I recalled what Dr Ptarmigan had said about the First Ones not liking our earthly gravitation, and guessed that they had left the gravity generator switched off for their own comfort.
‘Where are all the spiders then?’ wondered Mr Munkulus, leaving Sir Waverley Rain adrift in mid-air and drawing his cutlasses.
‘Maybe they aren’t here,’ said Jack. ‘They’ve been busy shooting about the system in that ship of theirs. I suppose they just left a skeleton crew to guard this place until he found the key.’
‘So where are they?’ asked Nipper.
‘Lurking,’ said Grindle darkly. ‘They’re first-class lurkers, that lot.’
‘Waiting for their chums to come aboard so they can all tackle us together, no doubt,’ said Jack, and Yarg and Squidley flashed their agreement with sprays of flickering tentacles.
Mother went over to where poor Ssil was floating and tried to staunch the flow of blood from her wounds. ‘Oh, how fragile you all are!’ I heard her murmur sadly.
At the sound of her voice Ssil woke, and stirred, and moaned with the pain of her injuries. Her face was a pale lilac colour, most unhealthy looking. She clung to Mother’s hand and said, ‘Oh, Mrs Mumby, tell me one thing before I die. Do you know what sort of being I am? For I hatched from an egg found drifting in space, and no one knows what laid it. Have you seen others like me ever, on any of the worlds you made?’
Mother smiled down very kindly at her, and said, ‘I have never seen your like, Ssillissa. Not on any of the worlds of my sun. I believe you must have come from some other star. But you are not going to die. You will get better, and one day, I am sure, you shall find your people.’
‘Oh, my people are here,’ Ssil replied, looking round with a weak
smile at her shipmates, and most particularly at Jack. ‘I was only curious, that is all …’
She slipped back into unconsciousness, and at the same instant the engines of the spider-ship moaned loud and low, bringing her to a stop outside, and reminding us what peril we were in.
Mother nodded at Nipper to take over the job of nurse, and seized an umbrella which had drifted out of the stand at the foot of the stairs. ‘Come, Art,’ she said. ‘Jack and his friends can hold those creatures off. We shall go down to the heart of the house.’
I took her hand and we propelled ourselves together down the stairways of Larklight. I was not sure what she was planning, and before I had a chance to ask her we found ourselves confronted by a particularly big and ugly spider, who had been lurking in the shadows on a low landing, just as Jack had warned. ‘Rarrrhhh!’ exclaimed the brute (or something similar) and lunged at us with his foreclaws. My mother neatly avoided the scything talons and darted nimbly in between his legs, where she wielded the umbrella like a rapier, poking and prodding the creature in his unprotected under-parts until he retreated, whimpering, into the dark mouth of an airshaft.
‘How tiresome,’ Mother complained, looking down at the globules of spider blood which were tumbling through the air, bursting against the ceiling and soaking into the carpet. ‘As soon as we have saved the Solar System, Art, we shall have to redecorate.’
Just then, the boom of pistols and the clash of cutlass against spider claws began to echo down the stairwells from the hall, where Jack and the others were trying to hold off the boarding party from the First One’s ship. At the same moment we heard whisperings and leggy scrabblings emerging from the air shaft. The spider which Mother had bested must have climbed off to find reinforcements from among the other creatures left to guard our house, and now they were returning!
‘Quickly,’ she said, pushing me past her. ‘To the gravity engine!’
I suddenly understood what she was about, and as the white legs of another spider appeared out of the shaft and Mother turned with her umbrella raised and cried out lustily, ‘En garde! ’ I scrambled as fast as I could into the heart of Larklight, pulling myself along by means of banisters, gas mantles and the ducts which snaked along the walls towards the boiler room. After all my odd adventures that strange place, with its mysterious air currents and ever-shifting patterns on the floor, felt quite homely, and I greeted the huge, antique bulk of the gravity engine like an old friend. Lots of strands of web were hung about it, and there were many spidery claw prints in the dust on the floor all around it, but no actual spiders, thank Heaven! A few panels had been removed, exposing the intricate workings of the old machinery, but I paid them no heed, just rushed to the main controls and heaved on the levers as I had done a hundred times before to start the gravity working again.
This time, though, I adjusted the dial so that the humming machine produced two and a half times British Standard Gravitation. ‘If those First Ones don’t care for the gravity upon the Earth or Mars,’ I said to myself, dropping heavily to the floor, ‘let us see what they make of this!’
I began to wonder if I had been quite wise as I climbed back up the spiral stairway outside the boiler room. Walking in two and a half BSG makes you feel as if you’re wearing a lead suit, and granite socks, and carrying a knapsack full of flat irons on your back, while trying to balance an anvil on top of your head. By the time I reached the top of the stairs I was puffing and panting as if I had just conquered Mount Victoria. But there I was rewarded with a sight that bucked me up exceedingly. Mother was stood triumphant over the dead body of a spider which she had run through with her brolly, while two more appeared to have tumbled from the air shaft and now lay quivering and helpless on the floor, their spindly legs unable to cope with the sudden increase in their weight.
‘Jolly good work, Art!’ cried Mother, quickly binding up their legs with handy lengths of web and running to kiss me (the extra gravity seemed to trouble her not a bit).
Together, we made our way back upstairs towards the hall. The sounds of battle had ceased, and we could hear Mr Grindle singing a boisterous victory song, so we no longer feared for the safety of our friends. This was a good thing, as the anvil on my head seemed to be getting heavier and heavier, and Mother kept having to pause and wait for me to catch my breath.
It was during one of these pauses, as we stood on the landing below the hall, that I happened to look round and noticed a strangely shaped bundle dangling from the ceiling in a web-strung corner. I knew at once what it was. ‘Oh dear!’ I cried. ‘Oh no! It is poor Father!’
Mother ran to him, and I hobbled after her. By the time I reached the place, she had already tugged away enough of the webs for me to see his face, which was very pale and dead looking.
‘Is he …?’ I asked, but I could not bring myself to say, ‘alive’: it seemed too much to hope for.
‘I believe so,’ replied my mother, stroking his dear face and setting his spectacles straight. ‘No doubt the spiders felt he might be useful to them.’
She stood on tiptoe then, and kissed him. And whether it was because she was a Shaper, or whether it was simply the Power of Love, like in a fairy tale, the spider venom seemed to lose its hold on him, and he stirred, and mumbled something, and opened one eye.
‘Amelia!’ he said. ‘Aha! So this is another dream. Or, rather, an hallucination produced by the venom of those intriguing pseudo-arachnidae. I must say, this one is more agreeable than the others.’
‘Edward, my dear, I am not an hallucination,’ Mother told him, and explained, while helping him out of his straitjacket of cobwebs, that she had not died, but merely been captured and imprisoned by the First Ones. Of course, they went in for a great deal of kissing and stuff too, and calling each other by silly baby names and suchlike, which I think was a bit unnecessary really. I’m surprised they don’t know better, being grown-ups.
All in all it was a great relief when Father felt well enough to free himself from Mother’s embrace and come and greet me.
‘Art!’ he said, taking my hand. ‘I’m glad to see you well! I feared those beasts had – well, I shall not say what I feared. They are fascinating specimens, but one does not really want them loose about the house. There was one who wore a hat, you know, and woke me up to ask me about a key … No, surely that must have been another dream. But, I say, where is Myrtle? I hope you have kept her safe, as I instructed.’
I did not know what to say. I know that it is wicked to tell lies, but I was afraid that if I told him the truth it might shock him into a decline.
Luckily, Mother saw what a bind I was in, and came to my rescue. ‘I fear we have mislaid poor Myrtle,’ she said gently. ‘Finding her must be our next act. As soon as we are certain that the First Ones are defeated I shall prevail upon Jack Havock to take us to Mars, her last-known whereabouts.’
‘Myrtle is on Mars?’ cried poor Father, quite bewildered, as we began to follow Mother upstairs to the hall. ‘And who, pray, is Jack Havock?’
‘He is a very brave and personable young man,’ said Mother sweetly, ‘and I believe he has formed a sentimental attachment to our Myrtle.’
‘But is not Myrtle somewhat young to be forming sentimental attachments?’ asked Father plaintively. And then he stopped, for we had emerged into the hall, and quite a scene of devastation it was.
Spiders lay all over the floor, some dead and clenched up on their backs, others flattened by the weight of gravity and feebly struggling. Our pirate friends were suffering the effects of two and a half BSG too, but they took it cheerfully, sitting about on the hall furniture, binding up their wounds and cleaning their cutlass blades. Jack Havock heaved himself to his feet when he saw Father, and nodded, which is as close as I ever saw him come to showing respect to his elders and betters. But he was spattered from head to toe with spider juice, and I do not believe he made a good impression upon Father. Father stared at him, and then at the gang of monsters lounging about our hall, and at las
t his eye lighted on Ssil, who lay on the floor near the foot of the stairs, moaning piteously while Nipper and Grindle tried to nurse her.
‘That poor creature!’ Father exclaimed. ‘What species does she belong to? And what in all the worlds has happened to her?’
‘Nobody knows what she is, Your Honour,’ said Nipper, touching his shell with a respectful pincer.
‘And she got blowed up by a dirty big cannon shell, begging Your Honour’s pardon,’ explained Grindle. ‘It would have cut her right in half, it would, if it hadn’t been for these prodigious great thick skirts she’s took to wearing, which preserved her against the worst excesses of the blast.’
‘You must bring her at once to my study!’ Father cried, and I believe he was rather relieved to have an injured Xenomorph to tend to, for it saved him from having to make conversation with Jack Havock.
Nipper gathered Ssil up again and he and Grindle hurried off after Father. Mother turned to Jack and asked, ‘What of Mr Webster?’
Jack shook his head. ‘He was stronger than the rest of ’em, Mrs M. This gravity was too much for him, but he still managed to make it out the door, and that spiky ship of his took off with him. Gone back to Saturn’s rings to lick his wounds, I reckon, and good riddance.’
A cooing and a fluttering of brightly coloured tentacles alerted us to Squidley and Yarg, who had been keeping watch on Sir Waverley Rain. The industrialist was stirring, frowning, opening his eyes at last. He looked about, and cried out at the sight of the Tentacle Twins stooping over him solicitously. They startled him so much that he rolled right off our hall table and fell crash upon the floor, where he found himself surrounded by dead and disabled spiders.
‘Help! Help!’ he wailed.
I waded to his side through the treacly gravity, and he seemed reassured by the sight of a normal, human boy.