He turned to poor Mr Spinnaker, who stood nearby looking quite numb and mindless beneath his hypno-hat. ‘Herbert!’ he barked. ‘You have soup all down your front!’
Mr Spinnaker’s waistcoat was as white as fresh snow, but he looked down and gave a little cry of vexation, then began trying to wipe off the imagined spillage with his pocket-handkerchief.
‘See that?’ chuckled Sir Launcelot. ‘Never fails to amuse. During the day, while the hat’s off, he doesn’t remember a thing. But come the night, when he’s asleep, that hat starts calling to him, and then he’s my creature. Him and all the others. They think they’re asleep in their beds, when all the time they’re doing my bidding.’
Mother did not look amused. She said, ‘The other thing I should like to know is, how did you come by the old gravity engines from Larklight? When I dismantled them, and handed over the parts to Sir Waverley Rain, he assured me that they would all be melted down in one of his steel mills. Does he, too, wear one of these strange hats of yours?’
‘Sir Waverley Rain?’ Sir Launcelot fairly chortled. ‘Why, Rain’s such a squirt I didn’t need a hypno-hat to bend him to my will! As soon as I got wind of the fact that he was carrying those strange old machines of yours to England aboard one of his ships I hurried to find him. “Melting down other-worldly miracles of engineering, Rain?” I said. “There’s some who’d think that dashed short-sighted. Unpatriotic, even.” “But Mrs Mumby’s a friend of mine,” he whines, “and I gave her my word.” “Who knows what Mrs Mumby is?” I told him. “Some kind of unearthly monstrosity, I don’t doubt, with a house that can fly about faster than any of our aether-ships, and who can say what her word’s worth, or her friendship? She could turn nasty and eat us all up, and then you’d look a proper flat for not handing over the secrets of her machines to those who know what to do with ’em, when you had the chance.”’
‘Oh!’ declared Mother, quite shocked. ‘I have never eaten anyone! At least, not since I was a Callistan snapdragon, and that was absolutely ages ago …’
‘Long and the short of it was,’ went on our host, not listening, ‘that Sir Waverley Rain was persuaded to fly his ship out here instead, where I took delivery of all your mysterious contraptions. Rain did his best to put them back in working order, and I set about using them to further my own ends. The hotel makes a useful disguise, and the guests the hotel attract have been my labour force. Why, even Sir Richard Burton was toiling away for me for a while, though he thought he was here to spy upon me! But he worked out what was going on at last – him or that Martian wench of his – and I had to dispose of them.’
‘So it was you who turned Sir Richard and his wife into –’
‘Changeling Trees!’ laughed Sir Launcelot. ‘Professor Ferny created the hybrid spores for me, working away under hat-hypnosis in a laboratory I had constructed down here for the purpose.’
‘So the spores he discovered yesterday were his own invention? And, of course, you had to dispose of him too, in case he succeeded in reversing their effects …’ Mother looked fiercely at Sir Launcelot, as she understood the depth of his villainy. ‘And what of me and Art, and Myrtle? I presume that you had some purpose in luring us here. What part do we play in your plans?’
Sir Launcelot sniggered. He was one of those villains who was forever gloating, and most amused by his own feeble jokes and schemes. He even rubbed his hands together like some wicked uncle in a melodrama, as he said, ‘The children have no use, except perhaps to persuade you to help me.’
‘But what persuasion do I need?’ replied my mother. ‘Surely you need only set one of your hats upon me and I shall be entirely at your bidding.’
‘Ha!’ exclaimed Sir Launcelot bitterly. ‘There was one concealed in a hatbox in your suite. For two nights it has been calling out to you to put it on …’
‘I never heard it,’ said Mother.
(‘I did!’ I said, but no one noticed.)19
‘No doubt it was unable to influence your weird, unearthly brain, madam.’
‘I protest, sir!’ retorted Mother. ‘There is nothing the least bit weird about my brain!’
‘Nonsense!’ barked Sir L., losing his sense of humour in a flash. Turning, he stood looking up at the spire of machinery which silly old Sir Waverley had given him. His foot tapped impatiently. He said, ‘This carried Larklight from the Trans-Lunar Aether all the way to London in the blink of an eye, I gather. But when I switch it on, it just hums.’
‘That is not quite all it does, is it?’ said Mother. ‘I think it is having all manner of effects. Why else does this asteroid keep falling back through time to pre-historic Mars?’
Sir Launcelot shrugged. ‘Starcross has always been prey to time-slips. It’s a freak of nature. That’s why the miners ran away, superstitious blighters. Nothing to do with the machine.’
‘And it’s not just pre-historic Mars, is it?’ said Mother. ‘That’s the most powerful slip, the one that happens most regularly. But there have been others. Art and Myrtle and myself experienced a minor one as we arrived. And then there are these horrid hats … I can assure you that they are like nothing I have seen in all my years, and I have been around for a quite surprisingly long time. No such peculiar creature could have evolved without me noticing. I suspect that they have come from the future and have dropped into our own era through some rift which you have opened with your meddling. The fabric of time is just like any other fabric, you know; it can be crumpled and torn and rendered quite unwearable if you do not treat it with due care.’
‘Be silent, woman!’ bellowed Sir Launcelot and bent forward so that his plump, ruddy face was close to Mother’s pale and lovely one. Patches of dried spirit-gum showed on his cheeks, with strands of his false whiskers still clinging to them. ‘Make it move, Mrs Mumby,’ he commanded. ‘Make this machine of yours move and give me the knowledge to control it –’
‘I can sense an “or” coming,’ said Mother. ‘Tell me, are all the Fellows of the Royal Xenological Institute insane megalomaniacs, or is it just you and Dr Ptarmigan?’
Sir Launcelot Sprigg struck her with the flat of his hand. ‘Or your precious brat will be putting down roots at Starcross,’ he growled, ‘just like Dick Burton and his Martian girl!’
He turned away and barked another command. At once Grindle and Mr Munkulus came forward and dragged me to my feet, while the others went into a far corner and returned bearing an enormous urn of potting compost. I tried not to let Sir Launcelot see how scared I was as I realised what he planned to do to me.
‘Ferny’s new Changeling spores,’ he said. ‘Faster acting than the natural variety, and they lose power once their work is done. Imagine what a weapon that will make when I put it into production! And when we combine it with the space ironclads I plan to build, powered by engines like this one here, I shall be unstoppable! Then the Government will see what fools they were to dismiss me! I shall be appointed Prime Minister, and Generalissimo over all the forces of our Empire! There will be no more pussyfooting about once I am in charge! I shall bring every nation of the Earth and every world of the Sun under Britain’s heel! I shall set our flag flying everywhere from the tin moon of Mercury to the mountains of those nameless planetoids beyond Georgium Sidus!’
Mr Spinnaker wheeled a small set of library steps over, while his companions lofted me up to stand in the urn. Mr Grindle produced a box of respirator masks, and everyone clamped one over his face, and buckled its thick leather strap around the back of his head. Mrs Spinnaker did the same for my mother. Then Sir Launcelot drew a perfume spray from inside his jacket and climbed the steps so that he was holding it out on a level with my face.
‘Sadly we have only produced a few batches so far,’ he said, his voice muffled and rubbery behind the respirator. ‘But the spores are quite effective, as Dick Burton and his Martian bride could tell you if they weren’t so busy swaying gently in the breeze. So what will you say, Mrs Mumby?’
His hand reached for the dangling ru
bber bulb of the spray.
‘Shall you give me dominion over Space of your own free will, without any tricks or foolish attempts to outwit me?’ he asked dramatically. ‘Or shall you watch this boy of yours become a Changeling Tree?’
Chapter Thirteen
In Which Mother Decides.
Mother tipped her head on one side to think over Sir Launcelot’s ultimatum. It was a girlish gesture that she often made, but it looked awful and grotesque, masked as she was in that ugly respirator.
It’s really an awful bore being held hostage by mad geniuses and threatened with this or that in order to make one’s mother do their evil bidding. It sometimes seems as if never a week goes by without some reprobate or other pointing a revolving pistol or a Changeling-spore disseminator at me and insisting that Mother share with him some ancient secret or other. It makes a chap feel a little hard-done-by, and inclined to ask, ‘Am I a boy, or a mere bargaining counter?’ And then there’s always the worry that one day, when asked to choose between the safety of her Art and the future of the Solar System, she might plump for the Solar System for a change …
But this time, she chose neither, for that few seconds of thinking time had been enough for her to see a way out of our predicament. She tore off her mask and declared, ‘Gentlemen, you forget yourselves! You are in the presence of a lady! Be so good as to remove your hats!’
Her voice was so loud and sudden and commanding that I would have obeyed her myself had I had a hat to remove, and had not my hands been tied. My fellow guests all jumped to do as she asked, and as Sir Launcelot looked round at her in momentary surprise she sprang at him. Somehow she had managed to undo the cords with which he’d bound her! One hand lashed out to strike him on the chin – she has a very creditable uppercut, my mother – while the other snatched the dreadful spores from him.
Sir Launcelot crashed to the floor and lay there, dazed and groaning. Mother placed a foot upon his shirt front to stop him getting up, and reached out to tear the hat from off the head of Mrs Spinnaker.
The gentlemen all stood looking about them, and down at the strange hats in their hands, and blinking, and wondering how in the worlds they came to be there instead of safe in their beds. The hats, for their part, seemed to sense that they’d been rumbled; they wrenched themselves from their former wearers’ hands and flapped off to cluster in a high corner of the cavern like so many bats.
‘Great Scott!’ cried Colonel Quivering, who was the first to recover. ‘Whatever’s afoot, Mrs Mumby? What place is this? What are those beasts? And who is that gentleman upon whose chest you are standing?’
‘This is the author of our misfortunes,’ said Mother. ‘At least, he thinks he is.’
‘It’s Mr Titfer!’ cried Mrs Spinnaker.
‘But what has become of his whiskers?’ asked her husband.
‘He’s not a Titfer at all! He’s Sir Launcelot Sprigg!’ gasped Nipper, looking most confused, and not a little ashamed, at letting his old enemy deceive him so successfully.
‘The very same,’ Mother said. ‘Now, if you would help me to secure him, I have to ask him something rather important.’
Sir Launcelot struggled indignantly as the others set about him, but before long they had him pinioned between them. ‘This is an outrage!’ he shouted angrily.
‘No, it isn’t,’ said Mother patiently. ‘The only thing that is outrageous is the way that you are planning to spread your hats across the Solar System.’
‘Nonsense! I have no such plan!’
‘Oh, how can you deny it?’ cried Mother. ‘I saw for myself that vast great advertisement at Modesty Station –’
‘I know of no such advertisement! It is not my doing!’
‘And ever since I arrived here,’ Mother continued, ‘I have been distracted by thoughts of Titfer’s Toppers and their shiny blackness, and resolving to buy one for Edward and for everyone I know.’
‘Well, they are simply splendid hats,’ said Colonel Quivering.
‘I’m sure we all think so,’ agreed Mr Grindle.
‘Exactly,’ said Mother. ‘And yet I guarantee none of us had even heard of a Titfer’s Topper before they came here. There is only one explanation. You have had Professor Ferny devise an advertisement spore which will persuade people to buy your horrible hypnotic hats. No doubt you should like to see half the gentlemen in British Space wearing one, and wandering about in trances as a consequence, obeying your every command.’
‘No!’ cried Sir Launcelot quite plaintively. ‘The thought had never crossed my mind! There are only a dozen of the hats in existence. They were handy for persuading these fools to do my bidding, but I could hardly set out to hypnotise the whole Empire!’
Mother frowned and looked thoughtful. ‘No … no, of course. And yet someone is hoping to persuade people to invest in Mr Titfer’s hats.’
‘What are you suggesting, madam?’ asked Colonel Quivering.
‘I am not sure,’ replied Mother. ‘But it seems to me that there is something going on here far more serious than Sir Launcelot’s attempts to make himself powerful. Indeed, his whole approach seems rather curious. Why bring the Larklight engine here, and set it up upon an asteroid known for its time-slips and other curious phenomena?’
‘Well, that is quite simple,’ declared Sir Launcelot. ‘I … I … I …’
‘And why go to all the trouble of starting up a hotel?’
‘Ah, I have a reason for that, a very good and cunning one … But I have forgotten what it is …’
‘Surely,’ Mother went on, ‘you would wish to keep visitors away from the scene of your crimes, not to encourage them? It makes no sense.’
‘Yes, it does …’ protested Sir Launcelot, but he seemed unable to put his finger on quite how.
Mother turned to the rest of us. ‘My dears, this foolish man is nothing but a pawn in some far greater scheme, devised by … Well, by whom? In whose interest would it be to meddle with time, and open a hotel here, and lure all sorts of guests to it so that they might travel home wearing one of these strange hats?’
We all looked at one another, wondering, and then raised our eyes towards the cavern roof, where the defeated hats had stopped bothering to even try and look like hats, but had melted into sinuous smoky shapes like the one I had glimpsed upon the balcony that first night at Starcross: tadpoles of black smoke with white stars for eyes.
‘Sir Launcelot,’ said Mother thoughtfully, never taking her eyes from the creatures, ‘do you own a top hat?’
‘What? You think I’d let myself be hypnotised like these weak-minded dupes?’ Sir Launcelot laughed, flecking poor Mother’s face with spittle. ‘I do own a top hat, madam. There it sits, upon that table. Examine it if you wish. You shall find that it was made for me like all my other hats by Lock & Co.’
‘An excellent establishment,’ said Mother, ‘utterly above suspicion. And yet, if it is not your hat which controls you, then what?’
She paused a moment, pondering, then, lightning quick, reached out and snatched the black satin cravat from around Sir Launcelot’s throat. There was a tearing sound as the pin which had held it in place ripped his shirt linen, and then another noise – a fierce, animal hiss. The cravat writhed like a serpent in Mother’s hand. She tried to hold it, but it slid through her grasp and, changing shape, flapped off to join the other creatures which hung rustling in their high corner.
‘Great G-d!’ Sir Launcelot wailed, clasping both hands to his throat where the creature had nestled. ‘What is it?’
‘It is one of those hat-creatures in another form,’ said Mother. ‘It may only have been wrapped about your neck, but clearly it was still close enough to your brain-stem to influence your thoughts and deeds. I wonder how long it has been controlling you.’
‘It was not controlling me!’ insisted Sir Launcelot. ‘I control the hats! I used them to make these other fools do my bidding!’
‘Yes, yes,’ said Mother. ‘The hat-creatures have made you believe that
you are a criminal mastermind, but you are really just a buffoon. Poor Professor Ferny has been down here creating spores all right, but not just for you; we know now why he found time to create only a few of your nasty Changeling spores. His real work has been on an advertisement spore which infects unwary minds with the desire to wear a Titfer’s Top-Notch Topper!’
‘But, Mrs Mumby,’ protested Colonel Quivering, ‘what does all this mean?’
Mother rounded on him, pale and beautiful and looking far more worried than I had ever seen her.
‘Elementary, my dear Colonel,’ she said. ‘When every sensible explanation has been disproved, then whatever remains, however silly, must be the truth. And the truth is that the British Empire stands on the brink of an invasion by highly intelligent hats from the future!’
Chapter Fourteen
The Battle of the Boiler Room.
They were not really hats, of course. When you looked up at them, clustered in their lofty corner, it was easy to see that. Ink-black and pale-eyed, they shifted shape like blobs of oil, extending small black hands to clutch the cavern roof, slithering like lizards through the passages between the stalactites. ‘Moob, mooooob, mooooob,’ we heard them whisper. It was really jolly unsettling to look up at them, and to think that, given half a chance, they’d form themselves back into hat-shapes and leap upon our heads.
‘Keep an eye on them!’ ordered Colonel Quivering. ‘I’m going to fetch my shotgun!’
‘Now, Colonel, dear,’ said Mother, ‘violence may not be the only answer!’
‘Well, I hope you can tell us another, then,’ said Sir Launcelot Sprigg rather rudely, from the corner where Mr Munkulus and Mr Spinnaker were restraining him.
Mother did not heed him, but turned to me. ‘Art,’ she said, ‘now that we see those creatures in their true form, would you say they are the same as the one which you encountered on our first night here?’