‘And then what did you do?’ asked Myrtle breathlessly. ‘Had you a plan of action?’
‘I had not.’ Jack looked out at the sea and scowled at his memories. ‘I had no notion what to do at all. But I had to pretend I had, for the others were all looking to me to lead them. We scurried along backstreets and byways, and somehow we found our way east into the great space harbour at Wapping. The streets and taverns there were crowded with sailors from other worlds, so Ssil and Nipper and the Tentacle boys did not stick out quite so bad. We found an old shed to hide them in, and Nipper and I went looking for a ship, out among those thickets of mooring towers and fuel stacks. I had no money, of course; not a penny to my name. In the taverns and chop houses all the talk was of the terrible events of yesternight: Sir Launcelot Sprigg in hospital concussed, unearthly fauna being hunted all up and down the capital, a brace of Ionian skeet lizards nesting atop St Paul’s cathedral. I began to realise how much trouble I was in. I wondered if I should not just make my way to the river and put an end to my miserable existence once and for all …’
‘But you didn’t?’
Jack glanced wearily at me. ‘Course I didn’t, Art. I’m here, ain’t I?’
‘Oh, yes,’ I said.
And so Jack told us how he and Nipper had gone scouting through the harbour, hunting for a ship aboard which he and the other escapees might stow away. Not one of the great elegant clippers at the central berths – their white-suited aethernauts were too alert, their cable tiers and underdecks too clean and clear of clutter. Not one of the military ships, with all their cannon and marines. Not the miners, bound for nowhere good. Farther and farther they went through the warehouse maze of Wapping, past mountains of coal and anthracite and culm, down alleys where the air was thick with alien spices and the colourful curses of dockyard hands and barrow boys, down at long last into the rookeries of Rotherhithe, where the stink of the river filled the foggy air and the space docks started to give way to boatyards and the berths of sea-going ships. And there, dumped on a cobbled dock, they saw the brig Sophronia, with the misty sunlight a-glimmer on the funnels and trumpets of her alchemical exhaust.
They walked all round her once, the boy and his land-crab, looking up at her spindly masts and the space barnacles clinging to her planking. There seemed no one about. But when Jack went up and tried a hatch near one of the exhaust funnels a window in the stern gallery popped open and a pair of glum, inhuman faces peered down at him.
‘Clear off and be d——d!’ shouted one.
‘Looking to stow away?’ asked the other, more kindly sounding, guessing Jack’s intent so accurately that he wondered for a moment if this stocky Ionian could read his thoughts just like the Tentacle boys. But Mr Munkulus (as the Ionian turned out to be called) was not a mind-reader; just an old sailor who’d been long enough upon the aether seas to know what was in the hearts of boys who came nosing round the mooring yards.
‘Sophronia ain’t the ship for you,’ he said, sounding sad about it. ‘She’s only got one voyage left in her.’
‘Where’s she going?’ Jack asked, thinking that anywhere would be better than London.
‘Breaker’s yard in Aberdeen,’ growled Mr Munkulus’s goblin shipmate, looking as sad about it as his friend, but angry too. ‘Best little ship in the aether, but the company has decided she ain’t eek-o-nomickal any more. They’ve had a fleet of flash new clippers built, and won’t pay for poor Sophronia’s overhaul.’
‘Me and Mr Grindle here are the skeleton crew,’ sighed Mr Munkulus. ‘We’ll be taking her up to Aberdeen this forenoon, when the company alchemist comes aboard to fire up her wedding chamber. There she’ll be scrapped, and us too – laid off, without a pension or a by-your-leave.’ Two big tears trickled down his broad phiz8 and dropped off his chin, plopping on Jack’s upturned face like salt rain. ‘Thirty years I been helmsman of this ship, man and larva. I know her little ways, the way she gripes, how to keep her head up in an aether storm. And it’s all been for nothing but the scrapyard.’
Jack felt sorry for the old aethernauts. ‘Why don’t you just take her?’ he asked. ‘If the owners don’t want her, why not take her for yourselves? Then you could take me and my friends along.’
‘Take you where?’ asked Grindle. ‘We can’t get off this world without an alchemist, can we? And I don’t see the Royal College sending us one of those.’
Jack thought of the file he’d read about Ssilissa. He said, ‘I know an alchemist. She’s not from the College, but she has an aptitude. She’s had all kinds of tests and training.’
‘She?’ said Mr Munkulus.
‘I don’t believe you, Earthlet,’ sneered Mr Grindle, and then, to his friend, ‘What’s an apti-thing?’
‘Even if this lady-friend of yours could get us aetherborne,’ sighed Mr Munkulus, ‘it wouldn’t do no good. We haven’t fuel enough to get us more than halfway to the Moon.’
‘Then steal some!’ cried Jack. He did not know where the notion came from; he was just desperate to escape, and this old ship seemed his only chance. He remembered the book Dr Ptarmigan had given him; those tales of pirates and privateers; Sir Francis Drake singeing the King of Spain’s beard. He said, ‘Get up in the open aether, south of the Moon, and wait for the next merchant ship to come by. Make them give you fuel and food and … stuff.’
‘That’s flamin’ piracy!’ said Grindle, shocked.
‘We’ve got no guns,’ said Mr Munkulus, but thoughtfully, as if he were giving Jack’s idea some serious consideration.
‘Then pretend you have!’ said Jack. He looked around. On the far side of the dock, stacked beside a warehouse, a heap of iron gas pipes caught his eye. ‘They’d pass for cannon,’ he suggested. ‘Point one of them at somebody and act like you intended for to use it, and I doubt they’d argue long before they gave you what you wanted.’
‘It’s still piracy,’ said Grindle nervously. ‘And you know what becomes of pirates. Hung in chains at Execution Dock …’
‘But at least we’d have a last cruise in the old Sophronia first, eh, Grindle?’ said his friend. ‘Wouldn’t that be something? To take her out among the stars again. Fit her up. Show those penny-pinching company accountants she’s got some life left in her?’
He leaned out of the stern-gallery, reaching one of his four big hands down to Jack. ‘Bring your alchemical friend here, young fellow, and you’ll have yourself a ship. I can fly her for you, and Grindle here can help. But of course the piracy is down to you. Me and Mr Grindle, we don’t know nothing about that.’
‘Neither do I,’ Jack was about to say, but stopped himself in time, for he was already beginning to realise that Munkulus and Grindle expected him to lead them, just as Ssilissa and the Tentacle Twins had. So he said instead, ‘Get her ready to leave,’ and went running back to the shed his friends were hidden in, to tell them, ‘We have a ship!’
Jack finished his tale. Above our heads the Changeling Trees rustled softly in the breeze. None of us said anything. I was still waiting to hear the exciting bit, about the piracy. Myrtle just looked sad.
Jack seemed sad too. He stood up and rubbed his back and walked away beneath the trees, running his hands over their bark and whispering to them. If I squinted hard, I thought I could just make out the human forms that they had once been, as if Jack’s family were still there inside those silvery boles, spellbound perhaps, and dreaming gentle dreams. ‘They can’t hear me,’ he told us. ‘I reckon they ain’t aware of much beyond the turning of the seasons, the Sun and rain. Thinking tree thoughts.’
‘“A green thought in a green shade,”’ said Myrtle quietly.9
Jack looked round. ‘What’s that?’
‘That is poetry, Mr Havock,’ she replied.
Jack put his head on one side, and stared at her, and then he smiled. ‘That’s pretty,’ he said. ‘I like that.’
Well, Jack and Myrtle stood there gawping at each other under those trees for so long that I began to feel quite awkward. I
was almost relieved when a sudden blurt of noise drew my attention skyward. ‘I say!’ I cried. ‘There is another ship!’
There was, too. It was quite dark now above the hills, so I could not make out what sort it was, but its engine light flared prettily as it swooped in towards the Sophronia’s mooring place.
‘D—!’ shouted Jack Havock.
‘Language, Jack!’ wailed Myrtle.
But Jack was not listening. The spell of the peaceful headland was broken, and we all went running back as fast as we could towards the Sophronia, Jack in the lead, of course, me hanging back to help Myrtle, who kept tripping over her petticoats and getting her crinoline entangled in the undergrowth. By the time we emerged from the ruins we could see pistol fire flashing around the Sophronia, and hear shouts and cries.
‘It is the bluecoats!’ hollered Jack, and sped off ahead of us, dragging a gun from his belt.
‘Oh, Jack!’ cried Myrtle, starting after him.
Just then there was a flash of light from up ahead and I saw the newcomers’ ship quite clearly. It wasn’t HMS Indefatigable, nor anything like her, but I knew it all right. It was that same black, spiny, seed-pod looking tub that had been hanging outside Larklight when we left, and I guessed at once that the spiders were not finished with Myrtle and me, and that they had tracked us somehow through the wilds of space.
‘Myrtle!’ I shouted, running after her as she ran after Jack.
Just then, something big and horrible came out of the dark, all legs and glinting eyes. A great pale limb shot out and grabbed me in its pincered claws. The spider lifted me up and turned me this way and that, considering me carefully with its big eyes, which glistered like window panes. Myrtle was shrieking and lamenting, the sounds moving away from me, and I realised that there must have been another of the spiders, and that it was making off with her.
‘Jack!’ I bellowed, top of my lungs.
A pistol crashed, very close, and I felt the shot whisk past me. Some of those window-pane eyes went out, smash! My spider reeled and staggered, dropping me, and I had a nasty view of its many legs all silhouetted against the afterglow. Then the pistol rang out again and it went down twitching and thrashing, and strong hands grabbed me by my shoulders and the belt of my Norfolk jacket and dragged me clear.
‘Mr Munkulus!’ I gasped, recognising my rescuer.
‘All right, Art, lad?’ asked the Ionian, throwing his empty pistols aside and drawing out three more. ‘There’s dozens of the blighters. Came down on us all at once …’
‘My sister!’ I cried.
We ran together towards the Sophronia. Again that flash of ghostly light lit up the sky and ground, and this time I saw that it came from the tentacles of Squidley and Yarg. They were standing close together, and the great pulse of electric current pouring from their crowns sent a spider hurtling backwards in a cloud of choking steam. The campfire was still burning. Ssilissa crouched beside it, tending to Nipper, who had lost an eye-stalk and was bleeding clear, gluey blood.
Jack ran out of the darkness. ‘Where’s Myrtle?’ he shouted.
‘I don’t know,’ I said.
‘One of them poxy monsters took her, Jack,’ said Grindle.
Another wave of light burst over us, and this time it came not from the Tentacle Twins, but from the engines of the spider-ship. We all turned away or hid our faces as the spiny vessel soared into the sky, the backwash from its wedding chamber setting fire to the grass, which squealed most horridly as it burned, and groaned and grumbled as Mr Munkulus and the others ran around stamping out the flames.
‘Myrtle?’ people were calling. ‘Miss Mumby?’
There was no reply. We fetched out lanterns from the Sophronia and wandered to and fro, all the way from the forest’s edge to the ruins on the promontory. We found six dead spiders, curled up like clenched, white, bony hands. But of my poor sister there was not a trace.
Jack strode about, tearing down swags of web which the spiders had cast across his ship’s hull, as if in the hope of anchoring her to the ground. They had fired some sort of big gun at her as they landed: there were four smouldering craters in the ground where their shots had gone wide, and a horrid hole in Sophronia’s side where one had not.
‘How did they follow us?’ Jack demanded angrily. ‘What’s so important about Miss Mumby and Art that they’d come across half of space to snatch them? For they’d have had Art too, if we’d not been here to scare them off …’
And still he walked about, snatching at the webs, hacking at them with his cutlass. It was as if he had to move; there was so much anger in him that it was forcing all his muscles into motion, making his fists clench and his teeth grind and his feet walk and walk about. I was sure it couldn’t be my sister’s kidnapping that had affected him so, for he had never seemed to like Myrtle any more than she liked him. I supposed it was the way the spiders had invaded his place, and tried to harm his crew.
‘They’re looking for something, maybe,’ said Nipper, who was sitting up, bandages flapping like a flag from the stump of his broken-off eye-stalk.
‘Something they hoped to find in that house of yours, Art,’ agreed Mr Munkulus. ‘But it wasn’t there, and now they think you’ve taken it with you.’
‘But what could they want?’ I wept. ‘We have nothing of value. We never had anything of value. Only Father’s books and samples, and we left all those behind at Larklight. Why must they steal Myrtle away? Where have they taken her?’
Jack shrugged. ‘Back to wherever they came from, I suppose. Ssil, you got a good look at these beasties. We seen their like before?’
The lizard-girl shook her head, her eyes fixed on him. We were all watching him, waiting for him to tell us what to do. But for once, Jack seemed not to know.
‘What’s it matter?’ asked Grindle. ‘They’re no good to us, these Earthlets. If the spiders want them, let ’em take them, that’s what I say. Pity they haven’t took the boy too.’
‘Miss Myrtle was our shipmate!’ shouted Jack, to everyone’s surprise. ‘Anyway, it’s bad for business, these creepy-crawlies flying about upsetting things. We’re meant to be the most fearsome pirates in the aether. I don’t want a bunch of old spiders snatching loot that’s ours by right. We need to find out what they are, and where they come from, and what their intentions might be. And we need to learn where they’ve took Myrtle, for one thing’s clear: you don’t come all that way to take someone just to eat ’em. They want her for a reason, and they’ll be holding her somewhere.’
Mr Munkulus spoke then, in his low, rumbling voice. ‘You could ask the Thunderhead. Not much he doesn’t know. I was thinking how a run back to Io might be needful anyhow. We’ve got a few repairs to make. Leave the Sophronia in a safe shipyard there, and go and ask old Thunderhead about these web-worriers.’
The others looked at each other and back to Jack, waiting for his answer. I said, ‘Thunderhead? Isn’t he just a story?’ (I nearly said, ‘a heathen superstition’, but I didn’t wish to offend Mr Munkulus.)
The Ionian shrugged all four shoulders. ‘In the past my people thought he was a god, and some still do, but he’s real enough. Not much happens among the worlds but the Thunderhead comes to know of it. If anyone has heard about these spiders, it will be him.’
Jack nodded slowly, then spoke fast. ‘Ssil, did the spiders harm our wedding chamber?’
Ssilissa said, ‘I don’t think they hurt it, Jack. I think if we can jusst cut away all these websss and threadsss they’ve tied uss down with …’
‘Jump to it then, Grindle,’ Jack ordered. ‘Go with him, Art. Mr Munkulus, you’ll help me plug that hole. It’s a fair way to the Planet of Storms.’
Feeling numb, I began to follow Grindle towards the ship. Jack stopped me as I passed him, and handed me a cutlass. ‘For cutting the webs away,’ he explained, and then, softer, as if he did not want his crew to hear, ‘Don’t be afraid, Art. Trust in me. We’ll find her.’
And so we set to work. It is a grand
remedy for heartache and worry, work. There in the dark of Venus we cleared and cut and tidied and made repairs, and pegged fresh sheets of tarpaulin across the breach in poor Sophronia’s hull, while Yarg and Squidley stood guard with their tentacles ablaze to light our labours and to drive off any carnivorous plants which came prowling close.
When we were done, Ssilissa set about her work in the wedding chamber, and we began our journey to the worlds of Jupiter. A long journey it was, and slow, and the vapours of alchemy crept around the edges of the tarpaulin seal and filled the ship with golden haze and our heads with strange, unsettling dreams. But it was not an exciting voyage, by the usual standards of the Sophronia, and so, while we are about it, I shall let you know what had befallen Myrtle, and the best way to do that is to let you read a few entries from her diary.
Chapter Eleven
Being an Excerpt from the Journals of Miss Myrtle Mumby.
April 23rd
What a very curious day this has been!
I awoke this morning to find myself in a comfortable bed, in this most charming suite of rooms, whose windows look out on to a well-tended garden, with many towering copper beech trees. I knew at once that I was upon the planet Mars, for I recognised the snowy heights of Mount Victoria towering in the distance, just like the painting in the blue drawing-room at Larklight. (How pleasant, incidentally, that the greatest mountain in all Creation should have been conquered by Englishmen, and named after our own dear Queen!)