The Quanderhorn Xperimentations

Chapter One

From Troy’s Big Bumper Drawing Book

[PICTURE OF ANOTHER STICK MAN WITH BIG SCRIBBLED BLOBS ON THE TOP OF HIS ARMS, STANDING ON A BIG CIRCLE LABELLED ‘MOON!’]

Chapter Two

From the journal of Brian Nylon, 5th January, 1952 – Iteration 66

Dr. Janussen removed her hand from mine and sat down. She clearly hadn’t noticed they were touching, though, personally, I still felt a warm, tingling glow on the back of my hand where hers had rested. I didn’t say anything. Frankly, my mind was a bit of a mess. The experiences in the cellar had quite knocked me for six. And what was it Dr. Janussen kept trying to tell me? There really was never time to explain anything, here.

And now we were heading for the Moon.

I fastened my own harness and gripped the bench. Could it be true? The Moon? The actual Moon? Anything was possible, with Quanderhorn. But how long was it going to take us? The Moon was, what? A quarter of a million miles away, give or take? If we were travelling at the speed of sound, which was… can’t remember – surely, if I was a pilot I ought to know that – but say, five hundred miles an hour, that would take… Start again. If a train leaves Ipswich at 11.35, travelling at…

And suddenly, we stopped!

Everybody looked around nervously.

‘Destination: Moon.’

The doors slowly parted on the most extraordinary vista. Through the panoramic window of the small outpost outside, the sky was perfect black, yet pierced by a million glittering stars. The ground was chalky grey, undulating and studded with craters.

Unless I’d taken leave of my senses, we really were on the Moon! ‘How did we do that? It should have taken hours! Days! Weeks!’

Dr. Janussen shrugged. ‘Meta-acceleration, I assume. Q.’s been working on it for a while, now. Is everybody uninjured?’

Troy had already unbuckled and had bounded outside like an excited toddler on his first trip to the beach. ‘Hey! Come out here and look!’

Guuuurk didn’t leave the bench. ‘I am not stepping out of this lift into what I can only describe as an ineptly converted bus shelter with corrugated iron nailed over the gaps.’

That seemed a bit harsh to me. ‘Nonsense!’ I countered. ‘There’s official signage in a futuristic typeface. See? It specifically says “Advanced Lunar Station Q”.’

‘Advanced!’ Troy repeated emphatically.

Something about the Byzantine arcanity of Troy’s tortuous logic always seemed to get Guuuurk’s goat. He completely forgot himself, leapt up and frogmarched me outside. ‘Ad vanced? Look: it’s a bus shelter! See: there’s a timetable for the 43 to Highgate Woods!’

He did have a point. There was supposedly a bus due in ten minutes.

‘And here!’ He gestured animatedly. ‘A poster for the Tufty Club! Only on your preposterous planet would a squirrel be the spokesman for road safety. Squirrels are hopeless at crossing roads. I’ve never even seen one that wasn’t flat. Crossing the road is the very least of their talents.’[15]

Dr. Janussen tapped me on the shoulder. ‘We really ought to go straight back. Troy, tell the buttons to switch back on again.’

But the lad was rapt, staring at the sky. ‘What’s that big blue thing up there?’ he asked in wonder.

Dr. Janussen said, quite matter-of-factly: ‘That’s the Earth, Troy. Now, come on – we’re wasting time. Let’s get back in the lift.’

It crossed my mind to mention to her that the lift doors had just shut again, but at that moment, like the others, I found myself mesmerised in the thrall of the Earthglow. It bathed the lunarscape in its majestic blue radiance, and glinted tantalisingly off the myriad crashed spacecraft that pocked its surface as far as the eye could see.

‘Oh, wowzer! Look at all those beauties.’ Troy’s face was a perfect picture of innocent delight.

Guuuurk, however, wasn’t quite so captivated. ‘It’s like a bally ships’ graveyard out there,’ he whined.

Dr. Janussen tried to steer us all back to sanity. ‘Clearly a very dangerous environment. Which is why we should leave here immediately.’

An electronic buzz-crackle snapped us out of our reveries, and the Professor’s distorted voice echoed from a speaker above a small, circular screen in a box above the advert for Sharp’s Brazil Nut Toffees.

‘Advanced Lunar Station Q… Come in, Advanced Lunar Station Q…’

The circular screen fizzled, and a phalanx of zigzag lines resolved themselves into a jerkily moving image of the Professor’s face.

‘Advanced Lunar Station Q, respond…’

We bounded over. Gravity here was distinctly different. I could easily have covered six yards in a single leap without any kind of exertion, although I did bang my head on the tin roof rather badly.

Dr. Janussen found the transmit button and pressed it. ‘Advanced Lunar Station Q responding. Over.’

The Professor’s disembodied head scrutinised us with disdain. Clearly, this was a two-way visual link. ‘What are you doing up there, you idiots?’

Guuuurk was affronted. ‘I’ll thank you not to take that kind of tone, Professor. How were we to know the lift went all the way to the Moon?’

‘You’re not even supposed to be in that lift.’

Dr. Janussen asked: ‘Are you saying it’s unsafe, Professor?’

‘Well, its experimental, owing to the difficulty in maintaining the tensile strength of the cables.’

There was the tortured creak of metal rending, bolts shearing, and then a mighty twanging, snapping noise, followed by the rather unmistakable sound of a lift plummeting uncontrollably two hundred and fifty thousand miles back down to Earth.

‘Dammit!’ Quanderhorn keened. ‘What idiot decided to make them out of liquorice whips?’

Not even Dr. Janussen felt inclined to provide the slightly obvious answer to this question.

Chapter Three

The Daybook of ‘Jenkins’ Jenkins, RQMS Royal Fusiliers (terminated on moral grounds), Saturday the 5th of January, 1952

Running short of Izal.

Collect football pools money.

Steam off stamps and burn football pools.

An intruder in the cellar = lots of mess. And guess who has to clean it up? Muggins, of course. So the ball bearings are all swept up, and the pools of incandescent phosphorus nicely mopped away – takes a long time with this slow-motion gas hanging around, I can tell you – and I’m just in the porcelains relieving myself – it’s lasted sixty-five minutes so far – when yet another perishing alarm starts its caterwauling. Turns out the, ahem, ‘crew’ have been and gone and taken the lift up to the flipping moon.

I ask you.

The Prof’s calling me, so I interrupt my business without proper shakings and start rushing towards him fast as I can, but this gas means I’m moving slower than that Son of a Samurai in Burma whose hamstrings I severed with the jagged lid of a bully beef tin.

I finally drags meself into the briefing room, and there they are, on the screen, looking all little boy lost and forlorn. I can hear them all speaking over the moon radio as I gets closer.

‘How are we going to get back down there without the elevator?’ Mr. Guuuurk’s asking.

Elevator? I ask you. How that Martian can call himself an Englishman, I just don’t know. Martians? Don’t like ’em.

‘We’re working on a better cable,’ the Prof says, ‘by feeding silkworms with Brillo Pads. I’m hoping for a breakthrough shortly.’

‘What kind of breakthrough?’ asks young Nylon.

‘The kind where silkworms don’t die after eating Brillo Pads. On the plus side, we have produced some delightfully bullet-proof camiknickers.’ That’s the Prof for you. Always turning disaster into triumph.

Dr. Janussen steps up. ‘How long do you think it might be before you can effect a repair, Professor?’

The Prof don’t even have to think about it. ‘It shouldn’t take more than three weeks.’

‘And how much oxygen do we have up here?’

The Prof gets out that fancy Dan ruler of his and starts sliding bits backwards and forwards. ‘Enough for four hours.’

I did the sum in my head. They were several hours short.

Mr. Guuuurk went straight into one.

‘So,’ he wails, ‘this is how it ends for Guuuurk the Mighty, Second Reserve Novice Nose-Ring Polisher to the Emperor’s Deputy Concubine Twice Removed. Suffocated to death, fruitlessly waiting for a 43 bus on the moon. My only comfort: a series of poster-borne platitudes from a tree-dwelling rodent with negligible traffic knowledge.’

He goes rabbiting on like this for a good five minutes more, working hisself up into quite a lather. If he don’t watch hisself, that Dr. Janussen might have to give him a fourpenny one to calm him down.

‘No need for hysterics,’ the Prof coos. ‘Naturally, I have a plan.’ He always has a plan, him.

Young Master Troy pipes up from the moon: ‘Great, Pops! What is it?’

‘To replace you all as quickly as possible,’ the great man says without blinking. ‘Must run along and get straight on with that now. Well done, everybody, but mostly me.’

He snaps off the moon radio, and turns to me, rubbing his hands. ‘Right, Jenkins – when you eventually get over here – we have work to do.’

‘Should I place an advert in the Exchange and Mart for new lab assistants, as per usual, sir?’

‘That won’t be necessary. I have the replacements in hand.’ I wonder what he could have meant. ‘Get a move on, man!’ he says, getting irritated.

‘Running all the way, sir.’ I’m still six feet away, and not likely to reach him much before lunchtime.

The Prof tuts and rolls his eyes. ‘Jenkins. Have you ingested slow-motion gas by any chance?’

‘It’s very possible, sir.’

‘Here.’ He tosses me a funny-looking garibaldi with glowing raisins. ‘Eat this fast-motion biscuit.’ Ah well. In for a penny… I raises it to my mouth…

‘Can’t you eat it any quicker than that?’

‘Not really, sir. Where are we getting these replacements you mentioned?’

He smiles to himself all secret-like, and his eyes goes over to those peculiar goggles with the violet light I sometimes see him creeping around in at night.

‘You’ll see, Jenkins, you’ll see…’

He worries me no end when he goes like that. It usually means what I’ll see is trouble.

Chapter Four

Franday the rth of Phobos, Martian Year 5972 Pink

Secret report to Martian Command, by Guuuurk ‘the Magnificent’, Deputy Sand Lord of the Third Pit, Vice Guardian of the Sacred Bag of Dust, et cetera et cetera.

Dr. Janussen finished smacking my face to snap herself out of her hysterical ranting fit.

‘Thank you, Guuuurk,’ she said gratefully. ‘I needed that’.

‘You’re quite welcome, dear lady.’

I find crises like this bring out my native chivalry. I pretended to sob loudly a little longer, and pounded the floor with my fists to make her feel better.

‘What did he mean by “replace us”?’ the naïve young Nylon asked.

‘No.’ The man-boy-ant shook his head. ‘Pops would never do that.’

‘Oh, you think he would never leave his only son, his chief science consultant, his test pilot, and his closest friend and confidant to asphyxiate to death on an airless satellite in the name of Science, do you?’

‘Which one of those is me?’ Troy asked.

‘You’re the son! You’re the bally son! Who the devil did you think you were? King Haakon the Seventh of Norway?’

‘I thought I might be his closest confidence.’

‘No! I’m his closest confidence. And it’s not “confi dence ” it’s “ confi dant”.’

Brian looked confused. ‘I thought Dr. Janussen was his closest confidant.’

‘No! Me! I am!’

Dr. Janussen started smacking me again for some reason. She really was quite unstable. ‘Pull yourself together, you Martian milksop!’ she ranted. ‘If we’re going to get out of this, we need to concentrate. All right. What resources do we have?’

We all began scavenging for supplies. The station was, well, bus-shelter sized, but it was dark, and stuffed with boxes and lockers and piles of bric-a-brac.

Brian found some rations in a locker: live chickens in a toothpaste tube, a packet of dehydrated pigs, and a gallon of powdered water, the proper use of which had clearly not been thought through. He scrutinised the labels. ‘Look at this: “Contains 200 pigs. Do Not Drop in Bath.”’

‘Let’s drop it in the bath!’ Troy inevitably suggested.

Mercifully, the simpleton was distracted when Dr. Janussen’s torch alit on what at first appeared to be a pile of filthy washing, but turned out on closer inspection to be four complete spacesuits discarded willy-nilly over a stack of boxes. Did I dare to start hoping?

‘Right!’ I said, commandingly asserting myself over the hapless crew. Or it may have been Dr. Janussen. ‘Our only chance is to put on these spacesuits and find one of those ships out there we can repair. Quickly.’

I grabbed a suit. It seemed heavier than it ought to have been, and it rattled oddly. I tipped it upside down and a collection of human bones tumbled out. Round about an entire person’s worth, I would have guessed.

‘Someone’s stuffed mine full of bones,’ Troy announced.

‘They’re all full of bones,’ Brian pointed out.

‘Just tip them out and get into them quickly,’ I or Dr. Janussen commanded. It may not have been me, actually, because I answered.

‘Do we have to?’

‘Do you want to live?’

I was going to explain in considerable detail exactly how much I wanted to live, but I didn’t particularly want to be smacked in the face again. So, to my eternal shame, I reluctantly obeyed the Terranean shrew.

I suppressed a shudder and choked back a tiny spasm of vomit as a femur plopped out of the leg when I pushed my own through. It was gruesome, but there’s no denying: this really was our only hope of survival. And surviving is my second favourite thing. My most favourite is surviving with a crisp, white fiver in my pocket. But I digress.

Suited up, oxygen tanks checked and working, we stepped towards the airlock. I say ‘airlock’, but it was actually an up-and-over garage door, wedged in place by garden gnomes.

Advanced Lunar Station Q!

We kicked the gnomes out of the way, the doors snapped up, the remaining air escaped with a terrifying whoosh, and the chicken Troy had squeezed out exploded with a squawk.

All we had now was the oxygen in our tanks, and our helmet radios were our only contact with each other.

Delores piped up: ‘Leaving Advanced Lunar Station Q… And remember: Tufty says “When crossing the Moon, watch out for Moon monsters.”’

‘Oh, highly amusing,’ I smiled through gritted teeth. ‘Thank you.’

Chapter Five

The Daybook of ‘Jenkins’ Jenkins, RQMS Royal Fusiliers (wanted in connection), Saturday the 5th of January, 1952

Feed boiler.

I eat the whole of that fast-motion biscuit, which turns out to be a mistake. I start racing round like Mussolini when he spots the enemy. I do get a lot done, but my heart’s thumping through my ribcage fit to burst.

I nip down to the village chemist’s in two and a half minutes. I would have gone faster, but the friction in my trousers was a worry. Old Mr. Gerber says he could rush the film through in four weeks. We haggle, and he decides two hours would be plenty. I put the revolver away. Course, I haven’t been able to get the bullets since 1949, but one sight of my well-oiled old Webley tends to encourage co-operation in even the most stubborn negotiator.

Quite keen to see that snap when printed up. I wonder who it might have caught? I has my suspicions, but I’m foresworn not to share them on these pages. It could raise some embarrassing questions round this place.

As I’m making such good time, I decide to pop into the Torso for a quick elbow-tilter, where I find Bill Blagstone celebrating. He’s just told his foreman exactly what he thinks of him, and where he can stuff his job, on account of what he thinks is a football pools win. I don’t have the heart to burst his bubble. But I do accept several pints.

Oddly enough, the drink doesn’t hit me like usual, and I get back to the lab in double record time. I have to stop every once in a while to scrape off all the insects splatted on my face, but then I’m off again, sprightly as ever.

When I get there, I find the Prof’s locked himself in the isolation lab. I press my ear to the door, but I can’t make anything out, before Himself bursts out of the door and hands me a list.

‘We need all of this right now, Jenkins.’

I studies it. A ton of nappies? Fourteen gallons of formula milk? Army size drum of talcum powder? ‘It’ll take a while, sir,’ I tells him. ‘Here they are.’

‘Too late!’ The Prof dashes off another note. ‘Now we need this.’

I studies it. Eighteen Dick and Dora books, a gross of wax crayons, and half a dozen potties. ‘I’ll have to go further afield for that lot, sir,’ I says. ‘Here they are.’

But he’s already handing me another note. I’m beginning to form an impression of what might be happening here. Four hundred and seventy blue exercise books, nineteen Fuzzy Felt kits, three train sets, a football and assorted dollies.

Mark my word, he’s growing people in there.

And he’s growing ’em fearsome quick.

Chapter Six

Franday the rth of Phobos, Martian Year 5972 Pink [cont’d]

Secret report to Martian Command, by Guuuurk, et cetera et cetera.

Walking on another planet’s surface seemed to excite the hopeless Terraneans beyond all reason, though of course to me, it was just another miserable hike over rocks and craters. Not that I’m comparing it to Mars, where the rocks are rockier, and craters infinitely more craterous.

‘I can’t believe it!’ Brian kept banging on. ‘We’re all actually on the Moon!’ Well, hooray and put out the flags. It was bleak, airless and dusty. Which, coincidentally, is a top Martian singing group.[16]

I must also register my objection, here, to the arrogant way the Terraneans call it the moon, as if it were the only one in the entire bally universe. It’s not even a particularly splendid moon, as these things go. Either of ours could knock it for sixpence. They also have the temerity to call their planet the world. What hubris! Everyone knows Mars is the world, and that’s a fact.

‘Hey!’ Troy was bounding around like a Mexican jumping bean who’s had too much coffee. ‘There’s a moon yacht tethered round the back here!’

This so-called ‘moon yacht’ turned out to be a battered old Morris Minor, with the back seats ripped out and replaced with huge accumulator batteries and a brace of queer-looking electric engines. I thought mournfully of my beautiful Maureen. Would I ever drive her again?

‘There’s only room for two,’ Brian pointed out.

‘Well, that’s fine,’ Dr. Janussen said. ‘It’s more efficient to split into two groups, and double our chances of survival.’

Immediately, my wily brain whirred into action. ‘Right!’ I said, skilfully seizing control of the situation. ‘Let’s pick teams!’

Dr. Janussen pursed her lips to say ‘OK’, but before she got past the ‘O’, I jumped in with ‘I pick Troy!’

The dreadful Terranean scold didn’t even bother to hide her disappointment. ‘Damn! That means I’m stuck with Brian.’

‘Stuck with?’ Poor young Nylon’s face was quite a picture. Even through the glare glinting off his smeary helmet you could see he was utterly crestfallen.

‘I’m on Guuuurk’s team!’ Troy grinned. ‘Great!’ I would have taken delight in the notion that he was happy to be paired with me, but frankly, if a giant bolide came crashing out of the sky and incinerated us all in a fiery cloud of white hot death he’d have said ‘Great!’.

He pulled open the passenger door and craned inside. ‘Who gets the moon yacht?’

For an idiot, he had a point. That vehicle could mean the difference between life and death. I know Delores had been joking, but there really were Things out there – Dangerous Things you really didn’t want to meet out in the open.

Resourceful as aye, I lit on the notion of suggesting a game of Martian Closey-eyesy, a schoolyard prank that wouldn’t dupe a Martian toddler with a punctured head.

‘Martian Closey-eyesy?’ Brian asked, intrigued. ‘How does that go?’

‘Well…’ I relished the moment, ‘you see that distant ridge over there, in completely the opposite direction?’

‘What? That big pointy one?’

‘Nooooooo… a little to the left of that…’

‘Where the dust cloud is?’

‘A bit further along the horizon. Do you see it now?’

‘I think so. Is it the jagged one?

‘Yes, yes: the jagged one. See it?’

‘Yes! But where’s the Closey-eyesy bit?’

‘Oh, you don’t need to close your eyes now,’ I chirruped, releasing the Morris Minor’s brake and waving genially as Troy and I drove off. ‘You’ve already lost the game!’

Hahaha. So long, suckers!

In the rear-view mirror, I could see the sad look of resignation and disdain Dr. Janussen was shooting at an even more crestfallen Brian, the poor sap.

Troy, meanwhile, was staring me down angrily, for some unknown reason. ‘Guuuurk – why did you pull me inside like that?’ He was genuinely cross. ‘I really wanted to see that ridge you were talking about.’

The more discerning reader might be questioning the wisdom of my team selection right now. Well, my logic ran thus: should we encounter danger, the insect-brained mutant would make the bigger meal, so I could happily scarper off while they’re eating him.

I must say, the moon jalopy handled rather well. Almost – though I’d never admit it in front of her – as well as old Maureen. No atmosphere and low gravity certainly helped us pootle along quite nicely. I began to wish I’d brought my driving gloves and my favourite pipe. And perhaps even a blonde or two!

I steered us due north-east towards a promising-looking cluster of wrecks. They were further away than they first appeared, which I’m afraid meant there was no way of avoiding that most dreaded of all things: a conversation with Troy.

‘Do you miss Mars, Guuuurk?’ he crackled over his radio.

Not wanting to alert these Terraneans to my undying devotion to Mother Mars, I dissembled somewhat. ‘I don’t miss squatting down a dust hole. Or the diet of Martian dust. Or the perpetual dust storm. It’s the dust I don’t miss, principally.’

He stared out of the windscreen, surprisingly maudlin. ‘If I thought I’d never see our dear old abandoned fever hospital near Carlisle again, I don’t know what I’d do.’

I studied him for a great deal of time, to see if I could detect the slightest spark of irony, but there was none.

‘I mean,’ he went on, ‘you must want to get back home very badly.’

‘Obviously, as a loyal and honourable Martian, it’s my duty to attempt escape at every opportunity,’ I admitted.

He peered at me more closely. ‘You wouldn’t double-cross me and steal one of these ships back to Mars, would you?

‘I imagine your incredible strength and fierce devotion to Earth would easily thwart me.’

‘Would it?’

‘Please say it would.’

The lad suddenly jerked over to his left. ‘Wow! D’you see that?’

‘What?’

‘I just tried to go left, but I went straight on.’

I narrowed my top two eyes. ‘Yes, Troy. That’s because I’m the one that’s driving.’

‘Oh yeah. I got confused because the Moon’s usually in the sky. Not on the floor.’

‘Ye-e-e-esss…?’

‘Well, don’t you see? It means everything’s the other way round.’

Oh dear. Troy thinking. This is exactly what I’d been hoping to avoid. ‘I don’t follow,’ I said, rather foolishly pursuing the issue.

‘Well…’ He screwed up his eyes and concentrated as hard as he could. ‘If we’re upside down that must mean that your left is my right. And – therefore – you must be me because you’re on the left, so I’m you.’

‘I’m getting a frightful headache.’

‘Oh no! Should I take an aspirin?’

The more discerning reader will by now have given up trying to figure out why I selected my team as I did. I know I had.

‘Perhaps we should stop talking,’ I said, ‘to preserve our dwindling oxygen.’

‘You’re right! Look how the dials on our suits have gone down already!’

Great Deimos! If he wasn’t right about this! I’d absolutely failed to notice it really was draining very much faster than I expected. I floored the accelerator. It was all over if we didn’t reach those wrecks soon.

Very soon.

Chapter Seven

From the journal of Brian Nylon, 5th January, 1952 – Iteration 66

Troy and Guuuurk had headed north-east along the ridge, so we struck out north-west, directly across the plain, which would, according to Dr. Janussen, ‘Optimise our potential search grid’.

We made good time, covering perhaps five or six yards with each bound. We’d started off in silence. I was still chafing from her blatant disappointment at having me as her team member, and she was still stewing over the Closey-eyesy business.

Finally, I snapped. Enough was enough.

‘I’m terribly sorry. Excuse me for bringing this up, but were you serious back there? About preferring Troy to me?’

‘It’s more efficient if we don’t speak,’ she countered coldly. ‘But to answer your question: it’s pure rationality. Troy is ridiculously brave, superhumanly strong and utterly malleable.’

I couldn’t let that pass. ‘I’m pretty darned brave.’

She let out a short sharp breath. ‘No, Brian – you really are not. Think of all the times you literally scream.’

Well, that was hardly cricket. Everyone has their quirks. ‘Well, I’m quite strong.’

‘Again: no.’

‘On the other hand, I do agree: I’m not very malleable. I’m extremely strong-willed.’

‘Shut up, Brian.’

‘OK.’

I bounded on in grumpy silence for a few minutes, which was foolish, really: there was so much I needed to talk to her about. A lot had happened in the last few hours, but my thoughts were flitting around from question to question, like an indecisive bee at the Chelsea Flower Show.

I desperately wanted to ask her just what it was she’d been going to tell me in the lift, and in the attic, but there were some things I had to get off my chest first.

‘I don’t blame you for loathing me, actually.’ I took a deep breath. ‘I’m not sure if you know this, but I’m the callous swine who turned poor Virginia into a subhuman cruciferous vegetable.’

There! I’d said it aloud, and I was glad I’d done it. I braced myself for her righteous and thoroughly deserved disdain.

Instead, surprisingly, she said: ‘You did no such thing.’

‘You don’t have to protect me. I’m not a child. The Professor told me everything.’

‘I have no idea why he’d say that, but Virginia did it to herself.’

I stopped in my tracks, panting. ‘What? What?’

‘Keep bounding. She left you a note. I read it. I know I shouldn’t have, but I did. She said she was going to sacrifice herself to “literally beat the clock”.’

‘My word! Is that why she was climbing up Big Ben? It’s somehow connected with this Time Loop business?’

‘She thought so, I assume. She said it was the only way. That she’d seen what she called “the horrors” of the cellar, and it had to be stopped.’

I shuddered involuntarily. My own experience in the cellar had been petrifying. Of course! That’s what she’d meant in my riverside reverie: the tanks she’d spoken of weren’t military tanks, they were the bizarre tanks in which those horrifying spectres were trapped!

To think of poor Virginia down there, all alone, presumably experiencing terrifying phantoms of her failed future selves… And a thought occurred to me. ‘So… that’s why you were going down there when you rescued me: to see for yourself what she’d found there.’

Dr. Janussen nodded. ‘And what were you doing down there?’

Well, I’d started making a clean breast of things, I might as well go all the way. I sighed. ‘There’s something else I need to come clean about, Gemma: I’m a spy.’

‘Yes, I know.’

She knew? But what did she know? That I was a spy for Churchill? Or that I was a spy for Quanderhorn? I had to be careful…

‘You know?’

‘You and I are both spies for the International Scientific Ethics Authority.’

My courage failed me again. ‘Yes, that’s exactly the spying I was talking about.’

‘I thought you’d forgotten about it, with the memory loss and everything, but obviously, you hadn’t.’

‘Ha! How could I forget the…’ What the deuce was it called? ‘…the International Ethical Agency Society… thing? And their lovely headquarters in…’ Oh Lord, why did I have to keep on talking? ‘…New York.’

‘Geneva.’

‘…in Geneva!’ Shut up now, Brian, while you’re still getting away with it.

But Dr. Janussen wouldn’t let it go. ‘And the world-renowned scientist we report to is…?’

Confidence is everything when pulling off a deception. I went straight in with: ‘Thomas Edison.’

‘Who died in 1933.’

‘…when he handed the reins over to…’

Thankfully, she gave me a clue. ‘Albert…?’

‘Albert Speer!’

‘The Nazi architect?’

‘Albert Schweitzer… Albert Camus… Albert Quixall…’ Oh, God, Brian. What are you burbling about?

She put me out of my misery. ‘Einstein.’

‘Of course, Albert Einstein! Why would a Sheffield Wednesday footballer be the head of the International… whatever it was?’

‘It doesn’t matter if you’ve forgotten, you clot. You really are the world’s worst liar.’

It’s sadly true. ‘I know. I’m terrible at it. Why the devil am I a spy? I’m really not cut out for it.’

She gave me a look… I’d never seen it before, not on her… I’m not entirely sure what it meant – was it – dare I even think this? – affection? Whatever it was, it passed away again very quickly. But it made me feel rather… intoxicated.

We bounded on a while. I noticed my stomach was starting to growl. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten. I had a couple of tubes of chicken in my pocket, but the thought of squeezing them out and then, presumably, slaughtering and cooking them, didn’t appeal.

It was then I spotted it, not fifteen yards ahead of us. In case it was some kind of lunar mirage, I asked Gemma: ‘Do you see that?’ rather tentatively.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Of course I see it.’

‘It’s a hot potato stand.’

‘Yes.’

‘On the Moon!’

‘I know what it is.’

‘But I’m ravenous.’

‘Remember what Delores said, Brian. Just ignore it.’ She bounded past the hot potato stand, giving it a rather wide berth.

Bewildered, and very, very hungry, I reluctantly bounded after her.

Chapter Eight

Franday the rth of Phobos, Martian Year 5972 Pink [cont’d]

Secret report to Martian Command, by Guuuurk, et cetera et cetera.

We’d almost made it to the wrecks in blessed silence, when the lad snapped out of whatever reverie he’d been in and started bouncing animatedly on his seat.

‘Wait! Stop the yacht! Stop the yacht!’

I wrenched up the handbrake and we careened round in a cloud of grey moon dust.

‘What? What is it?’

‘Over there!’ He gesticulated wildly behind us. ‘We just passed a little cobbler’s shop! It had those sweet little windows with the swirly bits in the middle, and little mechanical elves hammering on a brogue in the display.’

‘Ye-ess…’

‘I was just thinking I need some new shoelaces…’

‘Were you really?’

‘I mean, what are the chances? A shoelace shop on the Moon, just when I need one? It’s about as unlikely as me seeing a… Oh, look! A barber’s! I was just thinking I needed a trim round the back. Do you think they have that rubber thing that puffs talcum powder down your neck? I love that.’

I heaved a deep sigh. ‘Troy, I need to explain to you about a creature called “the Lunar Mantrap”…’

‘Hang on a minute. I just need to nip over to that cute little sweet shop and get a quarter of gobstoppers.’ He was actually unhooking his seat harness. I laid a gentle hand on his shoulder as I accelerated away and tried again.

‘The Lunar Mantrap is a deadly plant life form which lures the unwary traveller into its jaws by picking up our thoughts and mimicking objects of our immediate desires. Do you understand?’

‘Oh yes! You mean… no, I don’t understand.’

‘They’re carnivorous shape-shifters. They read your mind and morph themselves to look exactly like the thing you want to see.’ He was still struggling. ‘They’re Nasty Things That Want to Eat You, so They Copy Things You Like.’

This seemed to sink in. ‘The filthy swine!’ he cursed. ‘Pretending to be toffee shops!’

‘So you see – we have to be on our guard at all ti—’ I hit all the brakes at once. Would you believe it – right in front of us was the most splendid saucy gentleman’s club! It was a riot of flashing signs: ‘Open All Nite!’, ‘Gals Galore’, ‘Free For First Timers’, and ‘Beautiful Loose-Moralled Ladies Cavorting in Their Barely Adequate Nether Garments’.

‘Wow!’ Troy gawped. ‘That’s a lot of neon.’

I unhitched myself and threw the car door open. ‘Let’s go! I’ve got a whole wad of luncheon vouchers burning a hole in my tennis flannels. Tally-ho!’

‘I’m right behind you!’

We scampered towards the lush red carpet that beckoned us towards the warm glow of the doorway. There was a poster beside it, advertising ‘Unlimited Complimentary Cocktails for Martians and Part-Insectoid Humans Every Saturday’. What a stroke of unbridled luck! It was Saturday!

I was just about to set my foot down on the carpet and step inside when the idiotic troll grasped my elbow with his muscular hand like a G clamp, holding me back. ‘Wait!’ he yelled. ‘What if it’s one of the Bad Eaty things?’

‘Let go of me, you addle-brained ape, I’m going inside!’ I knew what he was up to, the bounder: he wanted first pick of the showgirls. Well, nothing was going to stop a violet-blooded Martian like me from getting to the floozies first. I stamped hard down on his foot, and he released me.

It’s a bit of a blur from that moment. I remember my feet sticking to the ‘carpet’ as it began to roll up behind me, and banks upon banks of bayonet-sharp teeth emerging from the darkness beyond the doorway, dripping with what looked like acid. I was propelled helplessly towards them. I tried to move, but my feet were mired in its glue-like saliva. I was done for. The only honourable thing was to embrace my fate with all the calm dignity in my noble Martian breast.

‘Help! Help!’ I shouted, just to make the Terranean lad feel better, really. ‘I’m too handsome to die!’

But the scoundrel had gone! There was no sign of him whatsoever. He’d simply left me there to be chewed and digested. And I thought he was my friend!

If only I could liberate one arm, I could perhaps tap the broadcast button on my breast and warn the others of the danger, as a last heroic act of heroism. I kicked savagely at the beast’s cheeks, and managed to momentarily distract it enough to rip my hand free and hit the switch.

‘Brian and Gemma! This is the last message I shall ever send! It’s curtains for me. Don’t try and reach me – you’ll never make it. But you young things still have a chance at life – for heaven’s sake watch out for the Lunar Mantraps.’

There was a terrible roar as the savage creature reared to deliver its death blow. I punched it violently in the eye. He wouldn’t forget this meal in a hurry.

‘I go now. This is the end for Guuuurk the Beneficent: I die as I would have wished: sacrificing myself for the greater glory of Mother Mars. I peacefully await the end, and my undeniably befitting transition to Bzingador.[17]

‘Thus ends the life of a legend. Weep not for me. Weep only for Mars, who has lost her favourite son…’

‘Guuuurk out.’

Chapter Nine

The Rational Scientific Journal of Dr. Gemini Janussen, Saturday 5th January 1952 (Again)

Clearly, Brian’s hunger was not abating. Everywhere we looked there was a fully formed fish and chip shop, or a transport café, or the Aerated Bread Company. In frustration, he scooped up a pebble and hurled it at a small Italian trattoria, which immediately morphed back into its base form: a rather revolting giant Venus flytrap sort of plant, its gaping maw lined with savage teeth.

This delighted the schoolboy cricketer in Brian. He grabbed a handful of pebbles and started targeting the lunar plants with gusto. He could hurl a stone quite a distance in the low gravity here, without breaking his step.

Eventually, we left the outcrops of vegetation behind, and found ourselves in a large, dusty basin, with a cluster of promising-looking craft on the far ridge.

I was feeling the exertions, now, and my breath was coming in gulps, which was inefficient. I held up my hand and shouted: ‘Stop!’

Brian paused, panting. ‘Are you sure? We’ve got less than thirty minutes of oxygen left.’

‘Well, how much is that? That could be any amount at all right down to zero.’

‘Ye-es, but if you had ten minutes left, for example, you wouldn’t say “less than thirty”, would you?’

‘But that would be factually correct.’ Honestly, the vague way this man’s mind worked! How on earth anyone such as myself could find him remotely attractive was quite beyond comprehension.

‘OK – so we have twenty-eight minutes left. Approximately. And I still don’t understand why we’re stopping.’ He gave that funny little half-smile of his.

‘The more we strain, the more oxygen we burn. Our most efficient course is to rest for exactly three minutes.’

We both caught our breath.

I was beginning to feel a little light-headed. I checked my oxygen feed for blockages, but everything was fine. Suddenly, a tiny wisp of light flared from a nearby ditch. And another. ‘Over there!’ Brian started. ‘What are those things?’

‘They’re luminects.’

‘Whatinects?’

‘A sort of moon glow-worm.’

He relaxed and started breathing more normally. ‘They’re beautiful.’

Objectively, I had to admit: they were an appealing sight. ‘If you tune in your helmet, they say you can hear them chirruping.’

I twisted my own tuner, and sure enough, there they were. A beautiful chorus of basso song drifting in and out on the solar wind. ‘Isn’t that lovely?’

Brian was pulling a face. ‘Not really.’ He actually scratched his helmet. ‘They sound like… a room full of terribly flatulent old men.’

Pitiful. What was wrong with this boy? ‘Widen the frequency and you can hear the moon crickets, too.’

And a harmony of soothing baritone blended in to form a peerless symphony of lunar Nature, making me almost giddy with the wonder of it all.

‘Is it me,’ Brian asked tentatively, ‘or do they sound like they’re belching?’

Oh, this was typical. ‘There’s absolutely no romance in your soul, is there?’

‘Romance? That one over there sounds like it’s throwing up!’ There was an awkward pause, while the philistine shuffled uneasily. ‘Where are we exactly?’

‘The Sea of Tranquillity. Isn’t it romantic?’

He kicked at a pebble. ‘No. Not really. There’s a bit too much farting and belching and vomiting for my taste.’

‘Do you want to put your arms around me?’ I said, suddenly. I don’t know why. I seemed to be feeling increasingly frivolous.

Brian was staring at me strangely. For some reason, my hand automatically went up to the right side of my helmet. ‘Your ear…’ he said, unhelpfully.

‘What about my ear?’

‘It’s…’ He seemed strangely reluctant to tell me.

‘What about my ear?’ I repeated, quite cross with him.

‘It’s… it’s winding down.’

‘Winding down?’ My hand shot up again. Why did it keep doing that?

‘And we can’t reach it through your helmet.’

‘What do you mean, “winding down”?’

But the truth was: I already knew the answer. I’d been denying it, pretending it wasn’t happening, but all those strange goings-on: the pink motor scooter, the cushions and the make-up… Could that have been…? It must have been… me!

Johnnie Ray records?

Crocodile handbags?

Actually, thinking about it now, I did quite like Johnnie Ray, particularly ‘The Little White Cloud That Cried’. And that crocodile bag was pretty snappy (ha ha!).

Oh my Lord! Winding down? It was blindingly obvious now. The right-hand side of my brain – the rational, logical side – was powered by clockwork!

Clockwork!

And there was a part of me that always knew that.

‘You’re going to be all right, Gemma.’ Brian smiled gently and stepped towards me. It was quite a sweet smile, when you thought about it. ‘You’re going to be just fine. You’ll simply start to feel increasingly emotional and intuitive, that’s all. It’s still the same old clever custard Dr. Janussen at the helm in there.’

He was right. I could fight this. It was just a question of focusing on pure rationality and expediency. We were in mortal danger, and if we didn’t… ‘Kiss me!’ I demanded. Right out of the blue. Honestly. How forward!

Brian shifted nervously on his feet and kicked another pebble.

‘Go on, kiss me,’ I positively demanded.

‘I feel…’ He squirmed. ‘I feel I’d be taking advantage of you. In this… condition.’

‘I want you to take advantage of me, you wonderful idiot!’ I tilted my head back and puckered up. Resist that if you can, boy!

But he didn’t move. ‘Gemma, it’s pure rationality. We’re both wearing space helmets. If we took them off now, our eyes and tongues would boil, literally boil, long before our lips touched. That is if our lungs hadn’t already imploded.’

‘I don’t care about boiling lungs. Kiss me.’ My hands actually reached for the clasps of my helmet. I don’t know if I’d have gone ahead and wrenched it off, but I was interrupted by a transmission from Guuuurk:

‘Brian and Gemma!’ BZZT! ‘This is the last message I shall ever send, unless you drag your arses over here sharpish and—’ ZZZTSSS! ‘some kind of fallacious floozy flophouse. That stinker Troy—’ FZZZZT SSSSSS! ‘cowardly bas—’ FZZZZT! ‘Ahhhh! It’s digesting me! I don’t want to die! I’ll give you anything if you get over here quick and—’ BZZZT! ‘I’ll even betray Mars! For heaven’s sake reply. Do you read me? Do you rea—’

I snapped the radio off.

Brian was fiddling with his receiver. ‘I didn’t get that. What did he want?’

‘Nothing. Now: tell me what you think of my eyes…’

In my headphones there was a sudden outburst that sounded undeniably reminiscent of flatulence and belching, just like Brian had been describing.

‘Sorry.’ He kicked another pebble. ‘Those were all me.’

Chapter Ten

The Daybook of ‘Jenkins’ Jenkins, RQMS Royal Fusiliers (AWOL since 1945), Saturday the 5th of January, 1952

Groom boiler.

The Prof’s scampering in and out of that isolation lab like that Eyetie POW we chased round the Colosseum with bayonets fixed.

I finally manage to attract his attention: ‘Any news from the crew on the Moon, sir?’

He looks surprised I’ve even asked. ‘Oh, it’s pretty hopeless for that bunch. As far as I can tell, there’s only one discarded ship up there that can conceivably be rendered spaceworthy. And frankly, I doubt they have the wherewithal to work out how to use it.’

‘I put all the gubbins you ordered over there, sir.’

‘Oh, bring it in. Bring it in. We’re going to start needing it shortly.’

Sometimes with the Prof, it’s best to come straight out and ask. ‘Am I right in thinking you’re… growing people again, sir?’

‘Yes. But I think I’ve got it right this time.’ I clutches an armful of baby gear and follows him into the Iso lab. ‘I’ve been scraping the dead skin from the subjects while they slept for the last nine months.’

‘In your night vision goggles, sir, would that be right?’

He fixes me with one of his looks. Sometimes, it ain’t best to come straight out and ask.

‘Yes. Well spotted, Jenkins.’ And there’s a little bit of a threat in the ‘Jenkins’. ‘Anyway, I’ve gathered sufficient bio-material to grow duplicates rapidly. Very rapidly.’ He hits a button, and a panel in the wall slides aside and there’s a window behind it. ‘If I hung around waiting for years for people to grow up properly, there’d be no end to it.’

The window looks on to this quaint little nursery room. There’s four cots: a baby boy in the first, a baby girl in the next one, then a baby Martian, of all things, and something odd in a cocoon in the last one. The Martian one has a special muzzle on, to stop him eating the wet nurse.

As I watches, I can actually see them growing! In less than five minutes, they’ve outgrown their cribs and are crawling around on a mat.

‘How are they going to learn things, sir?’

‘That’s the beauty of it: by the time they’re fully developed, they’ll have inherited the entire knowledge of their donors. No need to teach them anything! Imagine that: no more schools, no more teachers, no more rules!’

Just then, the little Master Quanderhorn duplicate bursts out of whatever pupa thing he’s been growing in, and starts stacking up the cots like alphabet bricks.

‘I’m the best!’ he’s saying. His very first words!

‘Put those beds down!’ says the purple baby, lighting a tiny miniature cigarette. ‘This place is an absolute shambles.’

The Prof’s watching approvingly. ‘They should be fully grown adults by 3.37 this afternoon.’

Young Dr. Janussen crawls over to young master Nylon, who’s heavily involved in his Brio train set. ‘Give us a kiss, Brian,’ she says, and plants one on his cheek.

He leaps up like he’s been stung by a rattler and starts rubbing his face with considerable vigour. ‘Yewgh!’ he yells. ‘Smelly girl! Go away!’ Ha! He’ll be regretting that in about forty minutes if my arithmetic is right.

‘So they’re going to be completely identical, sir, to the original crew, are they?’

‘Perfect replicas,’ he nods. ‘Almost.’

Oh dear.

‘Almost, sir?’

‘Obviously,’ he says, with that terrifying glint in his eye, ‘I’ve made one or two improvements.’

Chapter Eleven

Franday the rth of Phobos, Martian Year 5972 Pink [cont’d]

Secret report to Martian Command, by Guuuurk, et cetera et cetera.

I didn’t seem to be standing at the sacred Gates of Bzingador, where pain and suffering are washed away forever by the tinkling Fountains of Serenity. Instead, I was in considerable pain, and suffering rather badly. There was a gruesome smell, which led me to believe I may have soiled myself, my feet were screaming in agony as if being digested, and I could hear the most ghastly clanging noise.

When I opened a few of my eyes again to check why I wasn’t dead, I saw Troy outside the roaring behemoth’s gaping maw, banging it roundly over the head with what looked like a huge section of jagged steel ripped off from some structure.

‘Stand back!’ he cried, unnecessarily. I wasn’t moving anywhere. I was rolled up in the creature’s tongue like Cleopatra wrapped in an Axminster.

‘Where the devil have you been?’ I croaked weakly.

‘Getting this!’ He brandished the giant ersatz axe. ‘I pulled it off a crashed ship – take that, Moon Monster!’ He brought it down again to a horrifying screech from the Mantrap and a massive spurt of bilious sap from a huge gash in its hide.

The tongue unfurled and spat me out like used chewing tobacco. I tumbled, winded and slime-covered, onto the lunar surface.

Troy swung again and again. The creature was lunging at him ferociously. He yelled over his shoulder: ‘Get back in the yacht, quick!’

I didn’t need telling twice. To be honest, I didn’t need telling once. I was already slamming down the accelerator when he just managed to jump in beside me.

‘Guuuurk – I nearly didn’t make it!’

‘Do you really think I would leave you behind?’

He thought for a second. ‘Probably, yes.’

‘What? After you risked your life to save me from almost certain death?’

He pondered again. ‘Probably, yes.’

That, to me, is the essence of friendship. When you know each other so well.

‘What an ignominious end that would have been: savaged to death by a hotsy-totsy parlour.

We motored on. The pain in my feet gradually subsided to a dull throb. I drove resolutely past an All-Nite Stripperama, the Lunar Playboy Club, and the combined Racy Cummerbund Shop and Swedish Massage Emporium.

I glanced round at the lad. He was worryingly gullible. ‘We really need to keep our wits about us with these Mantrap demons,’ I admonished. ‘We have to remember: they always appear as something you urgently desire.’

‘Right.’ Troy nodded. He was gloriously quiet for a moment. It didn’t last. ‘Like, say, when we found this yacht.’

‘Yes… No!… What? No. That’s nonsense.’

‘Think about it. We really wanted a moon yacht, and bam! There it was.’

‘No.’ I chuckled. ‘They can’t mimic moving objec—’

‘The yacht’s one! The yacht’s one! Jump out! The yacht’s a monster!’

Before I could protest, he’d wrapped his arms round me and leapt backwards through the passenger door, bringing us both down in the moon dust with a sickening crump. The vehicle plunged onwards, dizzily out of control. It veered wildly to the left, swerved to the right, smashed into a large boulder which sent it spinning into the air. It finally embedded itself in a rocky ridge, throwing up a slow-motion plume of severed metal parts and scattered debris.

Slowly and painfully we got to our feet.

‘I think you panicked a bit there, Guuuurk,’ the simpleton castigated. ‘Turns out it was just a moon yacht after all.’

‘And now,’ I pointed out, though it hardly seemed necessary, ‘it’s just a useless farrago of smoking metal detritus.’

‘You give up too easily, Guuuurk.’ He slapped me on my back with more gusto than I’d have liked. ‘I’ll just haul it over there to that handy moon yacht repair garage.’

I glanced over to it. The sign by the petrol pumps read ‘Completely Smashed Moon Vehicles Repaired in Ten Minutes! No Wreck Too Wrecked!’. I sighed.

‘Troy, Troy, Troy, Troy, Troy.’ I shook my head genially. ‘However many times do I have to explain this: the creatures disguise themselves as something you want to see…’

‘Ye-e-e-e-esss…’ I swear I could hear his mighty brain whirring.

‘Something that’s not normally found on the Moon…’ I think I was beginning to get through.

‘Ok-a-a-a-ayyy…’

‘…But is familiar to the person they’re trying to trap!’

His eyes widened alarmingly. I could see what he was thinking. Again, I chuckled. ‘No,’ I smiled kindly, ‘they can’t do peop—’

And that’s as far as I got…

Chapter Twelve

From Troy’s Big Bumper Drawing Book

[STICK FIGURE WITH HUGE HEAD AND LOTS OF EYES]

[CRUDELY DRAWN PLANT WITH A MOUTH]

Chapter Thirteen

From the journal of Brian Nylon, 5th January, 1952 – [cont’d]

As if it wasn’t hard enough trying to make it to the cluster of wrecks before our oxygen ran out, I had to expend enormous amounts of energy, time and valuable air trying to get Gemma to focus on the mission. Everything was a distraction for her. Wasn’t this a lovely pebble? (No, it was just another dull little rock); if we settled down here, where’s the nearest school? (The Earth).

I couldn’t get her to tell me what Guuuurk had actually been saying in that transmission. In the small snatch I’d been able to make out, he’d sounded rather panicked. Worrying.

My helmet radio picked up a dull, mighty thump in the distance, and I wheeled around to see a massive plume of smoke hurling debris above the horizon from roughly their direction. ‘Merciful Heaven! I hope nothing’s happened to the others!’

But Gemma seemed quite unperturbed. ‘Oooh. That would mean we were the only two people left on the Moon. Just you and I under the twinkling stars of the Milky Way.’

My indulgent smile was wearing out, but I pasted it on one more time, and ploughed on.

We’d encountered a couple of ships that appeared potentially spaceworthy, but it had quickly become obvious they were beyond salvation. The Moon was a savage mistress. She took a heavy toll on things that stayed here too long, and she would surely take us if we lingered in her arms.

Just when I thought all was lost, we rounded a dune to find an absolutely magnificent immense vessel, apparently intact, at the end of a long trench, embedded at an angle of thirty degrees in the encroaching scree. If it was still operational, it shouldn’t take much to blast it free.

It appeared undamaged: defiant and sleek, a bold, glossy metallic red. It tapered towards the top, then swelled again into a sort of bulging head, with an arrangement of portholes and grilles that made it look for all the world like a scowling demon timelessly caught in a perpetual rage. It was intimidating, but no doubt, that was the point. For us, it was beautiful. It was hope.

But was it real?

Just to be sure, I flung a pebble at it. It pinged off the sturdy hull without making the slightest mark.

Definitely real.

‘Oh, must we look at another ship?’ Gemma followed me reluctantly, deliberately dragging her feet. ‘It’s so boring.’

‘Just one last one.’

She rolled her eyes. ‘Why can’t we have some fun?’

I’d given up checking the remaining oxygen. It wasn’t helping, and checking for oxygen levels wasted… valuable oxygen. But we could only be mere minutes away from depletion.

Trying to keep my mounting excitement from causing me to breathe any faster, I circled the craft’s mighty girth. Two of its fins were indeed embedded in the ground, though I had no doubt the powerful-looking launch engines would blast it free without too much kerfuffle.

But for the life of me, I couldn’t find an entrance.

The highly polished lower hull was diamond-hard and entirely featureless. There didn’t even appear to be a seam.

‘Gemma, I need some help here. We’ve only got a couple of minutes of oxygen remaining—’

‘Oxygen, oxygen: that’s all you think about.’ And she began dry coughing.

I glanced down at the dial on her breathing apparatus. Her supply was out.

She looked at me, confused and afraid. ‘Why can’t I breathe, Brian?’

‘We’ve got to get into this ship. We’ve got to get inside it right now.’

‘My legs feel… heavy.’ She physically wilted.

I bounded over and caught her. ‘Here…’ I uncoupled my remaining tank and swapped it with hers. Rather unchivalrously, I fear, I took a final gulp of air before I did.

She started breathing again, the panic drained from her eyes, and the colour of her lips returned to beautiful. They gradually raised into a cheerful arc, then wavered once more. ‘But what will you breathe?’

‘Don’t worry. There’s still a few minutes’ worth left in my suit.’

She smiled an infinitely sad smile. ‘You really are a terrible, terrible liar, Brian.’ Then she gave me that look which had induced in me such giddiness earlier on.

‘I know’ I said.

I banged the unrelenting metal surface desperately one last time, to no avail whatsoever. There was no discernible door of any kind.

‘Gemma? I need a little rest. I’m just going to close my eyes for a while. Promise me, you’ll get inside there, whatever happens.’

‘How? Brian? Brian…?’

Hers had been the first voice I could remember hearing, and it appeared it would be the last. I felt myself disconnecting from this world. It wasn’t all that unpleasant, really. I sank to a crouch, then collapsed ingloriously to my bottom. I managed to raise my head just a touch, to see the iridescent blue glow of the earthlight, haloing the stunning face of the woman I adored.

Not a bad way to go.

Chapter Fourteen

The Daybook of ‘Jenkins’ Jenkins, RQMS Royal Fusiliers (missing, presumed dead), Saturday the 5th of January, 1952

De-worm boiler.

Kids? Don’t like ’em. Oh, the chaos! Things starts getting dodgy round about half past eleven, or as I likes to call it: ‘puberty’. We has to separate the young duplicates into individual rooms, for their own safety. The mess! The smell! The discarded clothing! I’m shovelling packets of crisps in there like there’s no tomorrow and carting out filthy laundry by the pallet load. There’s pimples and bumfluff moustaches and the monthlies and dumb insolence – that’s what I can’t stand, the bloomin’ dumb insolence. And skiffle, whatever that is. Can’t keep a washboard in the kitchen for five minutes. Good thing they sleeps most of the time.

As if that’s not enough, the Prof’s also given me a huge list of materials to pack into Gargantua, the Super Quandertechnicon. I’ll be honest, he does tend to call more or less everything ‘Gargantua’, the old Professor. I’ve no idea why. It’s not as if he’s a stupid man. I suppose he feels it’s a waste of his brain space, thinking up new names for all the whatsits and whosits he’s inventing all the time.

Anyways, I’m busy driving Gargantua, the Quanderforklift, hither and thither. Warehouse to truck, to lab, to warehouse. Perculiar list of stuff I have to shift, too: Cutting equipment, pitch torches, mobile generators, lights, protective overalls, and five hundred titanium shovels. I don’t know what it is he’s preparing for, but it’s definitely something big.

The Prof don’t bother explaining to yours truly, of course: he’s busy tormenting that poor rat of his again. I tell you: that rodent has it easy compared to me.

When the Great Man finally breezes in, I asks him: ‘Just a thought about the duplicates, sir: what happens if the others come back again?’

‘The others?’

‘The real Dr. Janussen and that. Would we have to… take care of these young perishers?’ I’ve got this old Gurkha kukri what would do the job nice.’

‘Oh, there’s no chance of that, Jenkins: Those poor devils are never coming back. Their oxygen will have run out…’ he glances at his watch, ‘…six minutes ago. Now: how about rustling me up some of your devilled liver kidneys?’

Chapter Fifteen

From the journal of Brian Nylon, 5th January, 1952 – Iteration 66

I really hadn’t expected to wake up. I opened my eyes in the most peculiar environment: everything was red! For a moment, I thought I might be in Hell. Or Woolworths. It took me a minute or two to realise I was actually still alive and on the flight deck of the alien craft.

Everything here was that same furious scarlet, except for clusters of strange symbols everywhere in incandescent crimson, which I presumed was alien writing of some description. Below the scowling portholes was a rank of what I assumed were control consoles, but they were shiny, smooth and featureless, with no apparent mechanisms.

Gemma was standing in the cockpit area, studying the blank panels. Her helmet was off. My hands shot up to my head. Mine was off, too. ‘Gemma!’ I called, but my throat was ridiculously dry, and hardly any sound issued.

She heard me anyway, and turned. ‘You’re all right, I assume?’

‘Yes, I… I think so. What happened?’

‘I’m not entirely sure. I suspect I wasn’t… completely myself for a while.’

I noticed her ear had been wound back into position, but her look defied me to mention it.

‘I remember I was… furious,’ she went on. ‘Quite out of control, really.’ It was clearly a strain for her to talk about it. ‘Furious you were dying, and I couldn’t find a hatch. Then, suddenly, a portion of the hull just sort of… gave way.’

‘Gave way how?’

Her scientific curiosity reasserted itself. ‘As if the metal temporarily became fluid and a hatchway just sort of melted into existence. I pulled you inside, but the rest of the ship was dead. I couldn’t believe it! To have got this far… it was intensely frustrating. I’m afraid I cursed the whole stupid ship!’ She looked down, ashamed at that. ‘And suddenly the life support just activated itself. Lights, atmosphere, everything.’

I climbed to my feet and lurched unsteadily over to her. ‘So is it spaceworthy?’

‘I’ve no idea. I can’t work out how to access these controls, if that’s what they are.’

‘Are you sure this is the main control deck?’ It did indeed appear to be the pilot position. I glanced through the oddly shaped viewports. There was a cloud of dust on the horizon I’d never noticed before. A storm? On the Moon? Was that possible?

‘There’s a couple of small chambers behind us.’ She nodded with the back of her head. ‘Nothing useful in any of them.’

‘Maybe the controls are hidden behind more of that liquid metal stuff?’

‘Of course. It’s axiomatic.’

We both ran our hands over the sleek surfaces. Nothing. I noticed when our hands accidentally brushed, she gently moved hers away without comment.

We stood back. ‘What exactly did you do to get the hatch to work?’ I asked.

She shook her head and tried replaying it in her mind. ‘Absolutely nothing. It just seemed to know I wanted it to open.’

‘OK, let’s try that.’ I cleared my throat and announced, in my best BBC voice: ‘I wish to use the controls.’

We stared at the ‘console’. Nothing happened.

‘Oh! Of course!’ I slapped my forehead. ‘I didn’t say “please”. What must it think of me? Please I would like to use the controls to get back to Earth, if you please. Thank you.’

And again, nothing.

Gemma started: ‘Perhaps if you—’

‘No, no.’ I waved her away. ‘I think I’m getting there.’ I started again. ‘Please, very kind machine-ship, grant me the favour of revealing unto me the hidden bounty of your marvellous controls… No no no, that’s far too obsequious. No wonder it isn’t taking any notice of me.’

I raised my voice. ‘I command you, in the name of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God, of Great Britain and the British Dominions beyond the Seas, open the hidden hatch now!’

I fixed the panel with my very best schoolmaster’s stare. ‘I mean it. I’m not joking. I’m waiting.’

I crossed my arms for further effect. ‘I’m still waiting. Nobody’s going anywhere until you open the hidden hatch.’

‘Brian,’ Gemma interrupted gently, ‘I don’t think that’s really going to—’

‘No – wait: you said you cursed it.’

‘What?’

‘You cursed the ship. What did you call it?’

‘I can’t remember…’

‘OK, you damn ship!’ I tried. ‘You think you’re so blasted clever, don’t you?’ I gritted my teeth and forced myself to swear at it. ‘You… you… you filthy machine bastard!’

‘Brian – why don’t you let me…?’ she offered.

‘I’m trying to save our lives, woman!’ I exploded in desperate frustration. ‘Can you please control these incessant interruptions?’

There was an electrical whine, and the deck lit up. The surfaces melted away, revealing bank upon bank of mysterious blinking lights – all red, of course – and strangely shaped glowing crimson screens.

‘See? I told you.’ I relaxed and breathed out. There was still a chance we could survive. I shuffled uneasily. ‘Gemma, I’m awfully sorry if I got a little heated there. I was…’

And the deck died again.

‘Curious,’ Gemma said, and started studying the surface again.

‘Don’t worry,’ I smiled, smugly. ‘Turn on again, you filthy machine bastard!’ But nothing happened. ‘You dirty, snivelling toerag!’ I tried, glancing over at Gemma apologetically. In truth, I only knew two or three swear words, and I was getting to the end of my supply. ‘You… you… vicious little snot!’

But the panels remained defiantly dead.

I heard a dull buzzing sound coming from the back of the flight area. I turned my head. ‘What’s that noise?’

Gemma stooped so her eyes were parallel with the surfaces, studying them for slender cracks. ‘Your helmet radio. It could be Q.: he might be able to help.’

I hurried back, pulled my helmet on and turned up the volume on the earphone.

And I heard the single word: ‘…traitor!’

Chapter Sixteen

From the journal of Brian Nylon, 5th January, 1952 – [cont’d]

My stomach suddenly contracted like a jellyfish being poked with a stick. ‘Pardon?’

‘I said: come in, Penetrator.’ Even a quarter of a million miles away on a short wave transmission, the growling voice of the Prime Minister was unmistakable. ‘Agent Penetrator, come in…’

Gemma glanced over her shoulder. ‘Who is it, Brian?’

‘Ohhh, I… can’t quite make out. I’ll have to go over here…’ I found a handle recessed into the bulkhead. ‘…into the Communications Room…’

I tugged open the door.

Immediately I was hit by an avalanche of crockery.

A giant tower of dinner plates toppled over like a felled redwood and crashed into the deck and shattered to smithereens. I had barely recovered from the shock when a second tower, obviously held in place by the first, cascaded over me as well. Wave upon wave of suicidal crockery seemed intent on hurling itself to the floor, till the final plate fell with a horrible smash.

‘…into this alien crockery cupboard,’ I extemporised nicely. ‘Where the… reception is better.’

‘What on earth are you doing?’

‘Shhhhh! I think closing the door might help.’

I crunched my way into the tiny cupboard and wrenched the door shut behind me, dragging all the shattered fragments noisily back in with me.

‘Sorry about that, Prime Minster,’ I whispered. ‘We’re in a bit of a pickle at the moment…’

‘Speak up, man! The radio link might fail at any moment. You’re on the Moon, you know.’

‘Yes, I’m sorry about that—’

‘Stop whispering, Penetrator. You’re barely audible.’

‘I’m afraid I can’t really speak up.’

‘Just attend to me, then. I have new and urgent information. On no account must you go down to Quanderhorn’s infernal cellar until you have disabled the hidden security camera.’

Hidden security camera? Then it hit me: that flash when I was fleeing the cellar! It must caught me full on. I doubt even my gravy browning camouflage and sock balaclava would be sufficient disguise. I was rumbled!

‘But, Mr. Churchill:’ I hissed, ‘I’ve already—’

‘Just thought I’d better warn you, Penetrator. Now, enjoy your spot of French leave. It’s coming out of your holiday days, you know.’

‘Mr. Churchill…’

But there was only the dead buzz of static. And for some intangible reason, the lingering sound of herring. I jumped as Gemma dragged open the door.

‘Brian, we’re still in serious trouble out here. Who knows how long this life support’s going to hold out.’

‘All done, now.’ I crunched back over the plates and shut the door behind me.

‘Who was it?’

‘I… I couldn’t quite make it out, perhaps it was Guuuurk repeating his message.’

Gemma looked pained. She was clearly wrestling with a recollection that she found especially difficult. ‘Brian, I’m so sorry. I should have told you this before. I tried calling them when… when we got here, but there was no response. We have to face facts. They’re way past their oxygen limit. I’m afraid the pure rationality is: we’re never going to see Guuuurk or Troy again.’

I actually smiled. I don’t know why. It hardly seemed appropriate. The very thought seemed somehow impossible. ‘What?’

‘They’re gone, Brian. We’re on our own.’

I barely had time to accommodate this devastating news, when a hatch melted into the bulkhead and Guuuurk stepped through, removing his helmet.

‘There you are, you absolute rotters! I’ve been ringing the blasted doorbell for five minutes!’

Chapter Seventeen

From the journal of Brian Nylon, 5th January, 1952 – [cont’d]

‘There’s a doorbell?’ I echoed, incredulously.

‘Of course there’s a doorbell. Where d’you think this is? Pluto?’[18] He turned and dragged Troy up the ramp, boots first. ‘We’re not all savages, you know, just because we’re alien. And the Galactic Convention, carefully laid down over millions of years and observed across cultures throughout the known universe since time immemorial, is that when someone outside rings the wretched thing, someone on the inside bally well answers it!’ He let Troy’s feet fall to the deck, and the hatch sealed itself behind him.

Gemma tilted her head. ‘It’s probably in a frequency beyond our hearing range’

‘That’s what the Plutonians always say. But that’s just an excuse for being skiving layabouts.’

I looked down at the prone Troy. His face was quite blue. I knelt and unscrewed his helmet quickly. ‘Is he…’ I began, and his eyes blinked open.

‘Can I stop holding my breath now?’ he wheezed.

Guuuurk looked puzzled. ‘When did you start doing that?’

Troy climbed to his feet and swayed, still holding his breath. ‘When the air ran out half an hour ago.’ He gagged. ‘I’m feeling very—’ His eyes rolled back in his head and he fell poleaxed to the deck again.

Guuuurk shook his head wearily. ‘Don’t worry. It’s just lack of oxygen to the brain. It’ll make very little difference, honestly.’

‘We saw the explosion from the basin,’ I said.

Guuuurk held up his helmet. It was latticed with a filigree of spiderweb cracks. ‘There was a slight misunderstanding,’ his eyes cursed Troy, ‘resulting in the rather unnecessary demise of my radio. We did try waving to you. But Dr. Janussen here was busy drawing romantic doodles in the moon dust, and you were intent on dragging her away.’

‘Romantic doodles!’ Gemma scoffed. ‘I was doubtless trying to explain an advanced scientific concept.’

‘Yes,’ the Martian smiled. ‘Using a giant heart with an arrow through it.’

Troy rasped. ‘Can… I… breathe… yet?’

‘Yes, you knuckleheaded twit! Breathe!’

Troy just lay there, his eyes flitting from side to side. Finally, he asked: ‘How do you do that again?’

Guuuurk hung his head. ‘In out, in out.’

‘Oh, yeah. Then shake it all about!’

‘That’s not breathing, that’s the hokey cokey!’ He turned to us. ‘You see what I’ve had to endure? It’s a miracle we survived. Happily, you don’t need nearly as much oxygen as humans if you’re a Martian, or a half-insect, half-moron.’

‘Hey!’ Troy raised his head. ‘Was that an insult?’

Guuuurk narrowed five of his eyes. ‘Only a moron would think it wasn’t.’

Troy got to his feet again. ‘Well, that’s where you’re wrong, because I’m one, and I think it was!’ He marched over and thrust his face into Guuuurk’s. ‘I’ve had it up to here with your rudeness, you huge-headed purple-faced…’ He reached for the worst taunt he could muster. It turned out to be: ‘bad, bad man.’

And suddenly, there was the electrical whining again.

‘The deck’s up,’ Gemma called.

‘Wow!’ Troy cooed in childlike wonder. ‘This ship is pretty darn hep!’

And just as rapidly, the electrical whining ceased.

‘…and the deck is down.’

‘Well,’ Guuuurk said, ‘just power it back up again.’

‘We don’t know how.’ I shrugged.

‘You don’t know? Well, how did you get into the ship, then?’

‘We don’t know.’

‘You don’t know?’

Gemma stepped in. ‘Would you kindly stop saying we don’t know and tell us what we do need to know?’

‘I thought it was obvious.’ Guuuurk crossed to the consoles. ‘Didn’t you notice the scowling portholes?

Troy giggled. ‘Yeah – they look really really cross!’

Guuuurk rolled many of his eyes. ‘This is a Mercurian Star Clipper.’

We all looked at each other, slightly baffled. ‘Meaning?’ I asked.

Guuuurk sighed in exasperation at the poverty of our intergalactic species knowledge. ‘Mercury’s either ridiculously cold or insanely hot, so the Mercurians are per petually cheesed off. I mean: absolutely fuming. If you bump into one in a dark alley, you’d better have your estate in order and a fully paid-up funeral plan. Ergo, they power their craft with their biggest natural resource: raw anger.’

‘It’s powered with anger?’ I struggled to understand how that might work in practice, but Gemma got it immediately.

‘Of course!’ She beamed that delightful radiant smile which always accompanied a new scientific insight. ‘That’s entirely consistent with our experience. I was angry when we got into the ship, remember? And you were angry with me when the console lit up.’

‘Oh, I wouldn’t say I… well, I suppose I was.’

Guuuurk stepped away from Troy. ‘That’s why I was mildly irritated when I first came in. I’d had to work up to that pitch to open the hatch. Of course spaceships don’t have doorbells, you idiots, but I had to get angry about something. Honestly. Sometimes I think you credulous shower will believe anything.’

I was shocked to my core by this admission. ‘You’ve never lied to us about anything else, have you, Guuuurk?’

‘Brian!’ he gasped. ‘You cut me to the quick! I swear to you as an Englishman: I have never lied about anything else whatsoever.’

‘Well, that’s all right, then. I apologise for implying any such thing.’

‘Apology accepted.’ A thought occurred to him. ‘Actually, this may be a bad time to ask, but d’you remember that five pounds you owe me?’

‘No.’

‘Oh, no: of course you wouldn’t remember. What was I thinking? In actual fact, I’ve a notion it might have been ten pounds. But I won’t hold you to that. Let’s call it seven guineas and draw a line under the whole messy business. Now I will take cheques, and personal items of an accredited value—’

Gemma took control, as usual. ‘Can you all please concentrate? There’s a permanent lunar storm, and it’s closing in on us.’ She nodded through the scowling portholes.

The cloud of dust seemed to have grown in size quite alarmingly, and was indeed heading our way.

She turned back. ‘If we don’t get up and running before it hits, the ship could be buried too deep to blast free. Then we’ll be stuck here for ever.’

Chapter Eighteen

From the journal of Brian Nylon, 5th January, 1952 – [cont’d]

I broke the horrible silence. ‘So what do we do, then? Get angry, somehow?’

Gemma nodded. ‘Troy, get angry with Guuuurk again.’

‘Why? What’s he done?’

‘This!’ Guuuurk trilled, and slapped him.

Smack!

‘Ow! That really hurt!’

The controls started powering up.

Gemma called: ‘It’s working. Slap him again.’

Guuuurk complied.

Smack!

‘Ow! Do that again, and I’ll get really…’

Smack!

‘…angry. Owwww!’ Troy rubbed his face. ‘Stop doing that!’

Smack! Smack!

And now the consoles were thrumming with electrical life. ‘We have power!’ I buckled myself into the pilot’s seat. Through the viewport, I could see the swelling dust storm was distressingly closer.

Gemma pointed to a meter on the console. Its needle was hovering in the red zone below the redder red zone, which wasn’t quite as reddy red as the utterly red zone at the top. ‘We’re going to need more anger.’

‘I’m smacking him as hard as I can,’ Guuuurk protested.

Smack!

‘Owwwwwwwww! I think he is,’ Troy agreed, rubbing his ruddy cheeks.

Gemma looked over at them. ‘Maybe you should try shooting him with one of your useless Martian Death Rays.’

All Guuuurk’s eyes turned steely. ‘I’ll have you know…’ He paused to slap Troy with some venom.

Smack!

‘Owwwwww!’

‘…our Death Rays are the best in the Solar System!’

The humming got louder and the needle wavered up towards the slightly more red area.

‘In fact, the intergalactic magazine Popular Xenophobe gave Martian Death Rays an unprecedented five-skull rating, when compared with other species’ Death Rays in a totally randomised, double-blind—’

Troy slapped Guuuurk quite hard.

Smack!

‘Ow! What was that for?’ He slapped Troy back.

Smack!

‘Ow! I’m trying to make you angry!’

‘Well, I can’t say you’re not succeeding.’

Smack!

‘Ow!’

Smack!

‘Ow!’

Gemma called: ‘Keep slapping each other! The storm is almost on us! Don’t stop, whatever happens.’

There followed a tit-for-tat slapping spree, reminiscent of the traditional Bavarian dance, only without the annoying accordion.

The power was building, but we still needed more.

I glanced over at Gemma, who’d reached the same conclusion: one of us needed to get angry.

She shook her head. ‘I’m afraid I’m fully wound. I can’t get angry.’ There was a dolorousness in her eyes at this. It was clearly a painful admission.

There was nothing else for it. ‘All right!’ I yelled. ‘Somebody make me angry. Quick!’

Troy, eager to please as always, leapt in first with: ‘Brian, you’re stupid!’ Smack! ‘Ow!’

‘I know,’ I agreed. ‘I am pretty dense, I’m afraid.’

Guuuurk tried. Smack! ‘Ow! You’re hopeless with women!’

‘True,’ I sighed. ‘Come on! We’re losing power.’ The vanguard of the storm was already here. I could hear the myriad tiny pebbles it swept before it pattering against the hull.

‘Brian, you’re smelly!’ Smack! ‘Ow!’ was Troy’s rather dismal contribution.

Smack! ‘Ow! You’re a dithering milksop!’ was Guuuurk’s.

‘You’ll have to make me much angrier than that, if we’re going to create enough energy for a lift-off!’

Gemma had been thinking quietly to herself. She turned to me and said: ‘Brian, England is a dreadful place.’

I was shocked. What on earth did she mean? ‘There really is no call for that kind of—’

‘Her Majesty the Queen,’ she added, ‘is not a very nice woman.’

There was a sudden surge and the needle leapt into the upper red, really really red zone.

‘Now, that is completely unfair,’ I protested, barely containing myself. ‘Everyone says she’s quite the most delightful lady—’

‘Scones,’ Guuuurk chipped in coldly, ‘are not as good as apple strudel.’ Smack! ‘Ow!’

‘What absolute tosh! Everyone knows German cakes are useless. Have you ever eaten dampfnudel? It really is like chewing sweaty socks.’

And as if that weren’t enough nonsense, he added: ‘Queuing is stupid!’

Well, I’ve never heard such out-and-out balderdash. ‘Don’t be ridiculous – it’s the very cornerstone of civilisation!’

There was a huge roar, and the main engines blasted into life. The whole ship shook as it struggled to pull clear of the lunar rubble.

The slapping had apparently become unnecessary, now.

Guuuurk was starting to enjoy himself. Rather too much, if you ask me. ‘Steak and kidney pudding tastes like donkey urine!’

‘Well, that actually is true.’

The power began to wane.

‘Vera Lynn,’ Gemma tried, ‘is an appalling singer.’

I opened my mouth, but words wouldn’t come out.

The engines throbbed back to full power.

Guuuurk added: ‘And George Formby isn’t funny.’ Well, that was just plain Wrong. The man’s an absolute caution!

Then they all started pitching in.

Guuuurk: ‘A nice cup of tea does nobody any good.’

Troy: ‘Cricket is stupid!’

Gemma: ‘The Archers is incredibly boring.’

Guuuurk: ‘Shakespeare was French.’

Troy: ‘Cricket is stupid!’

Guuuurk: ‘Florence Nightingale was a heartless bitch!’

Gemma: ‘The British never play fair!’

Now, that really was beyond the pale. I was fairly sure we’d racked up enough energy by this point – the needle was actually bending against the upper marker – but Guuuurk was unstoppable:

‘Beer tastes better when it’s chilled! Public schools are just for thick people! The BBC is not the envy of the world! A bow tie doesn’t make dinner taste any better! And “Britons never shall be slaves”? What a joke! You’ve been persistently invaded by any nation who could rustle up three boats and a set of carving knives. The Italians, the Danes, the Swedes and Norwegians, the French, the Dutch, the Germans… Yes! There’s a headline for you: your Royal Family are all Krauts! They’re not really called “Windsor ”, but “Saxe-Coburg-Gotha”! The clue’s in the name!’

I could actually hear the vein in my temple throbbing now. ‘That’s quite enough of that!’ I shouted, rather rudely. ‘This is beyond irritating.’

‘Well done, Brian,’ Gemma wheeled in her seat to face me. ‘You can calm down, now. See: we’re clear of the Moon and heading for the Earth’s atmosphere.’

‘Cricket is stupid!’

‘That’s enough, Troy.’

‘But it really is!’

I looked through the viewport. The Earth was indeed looming towards us, or, more accurately, her gravitational pull was dragging us in.

‘We’ve done it!’ I cheered. ‘We’re safe! We’re free-falling back to Earth.’ Somebody started screaming.

Chapter Nineteen

Transcription of Mercurian Flight Recorder, Flight DIS-TA-GRAKK, Date: Gakrr i Nar di trlll (estimated Earth equivalent: 29th September, 1949)[19]

TEE-POL (PILOT): Look at that shitty blue planet down there! Those bloody Earth bastards think they’ve got the bloody lot, don’t they?

POL-TEE (CO-PILOT): Those two-armed stuck-up monkey cousins make me puke! They’re all [MIMICKING] Ooooh! Look at us with all our water, and our frozen poles and our equatorial warmth, and everywhere in between [LA-DE-DAH VOICE] ‘temperate’. Wouldn’t last two minutes on [PROFANITY EXPUNGED] Mercury!

TEE-POL: No, they’d be like: ‘Ooooh, my feet have literally caught fire in the scorching rays unfiltered by the atmosphere.’

POL-TEE: Bloody ‘atmosphere’! Jammy bastards! [LA-DE-DAH VOICE] ‘We’ve got an ‘atmosphere’! I can’t wait for the heat death of the Universe, when the sodding Sun turns to a big red giant and literally incinerates the smug bastards while they’re having their ‘cups of tea’ and their ‘pizza pies’ and their ‘beef quesadillas’!

TEE-POL: Oh, yes, [LA-DE-DAH VOICE] ‘cups of tea’! They don’t have to put up with liquids that boil so fiercely they could melt your shoes, or frozen so solid, when you try to drink them, they stick to your skin and you literally have to rip your own lips off just to get sustenance!

POL-TEE: Shut up!

TEE-POL: You shut up, you [PROFANITY EXPUNGED] [PROFANITY EXPUNGED]!

POL-TEE: Shut Upppp! There’s a transmission coming in!

QUANDERHORN: Professor Darius Quanderhorn here, speaking on behalf of the Human Race, via a remote link somewhere on the road to Carlisle. Alien vessel: we wish you no harm. Just follow the signals and this space beacon will guide you safely down to our planet, which we call ‘Earth’, where we can discuss peaceful co-operation between our two great peoples.

TEE-POL: What did he say?

POL-TEE: Didn’t understand a [PROFANITY EXPUNGED] word, the stuck-up Terranean ponce. Let him have it!

TEE-POL: Ha ha ha! Got it right up the [PROFANITY EXPUNGED]. That bastard beacon is now space dust!

POL-TEE: Look out, here comes their moon!

TEE-POL: Oh, yes, [LA-DE-DAH VOICE] ‘We’ve got a mooooooon! Mercury hasn’t got a moon, but we’ve got a great big [PROFANITY EXPUNGED] of a moon.’

POL-TEE: We’re coming in too fast, you dick! Swerve! Swerve!

TEE-POL: I am swerving, you daft [PROFANITY EXPUNGED]. What d’you call this, if it’s not a swerve?

POL-TEE: It’s a crap swerve.

TEE-POL: Oh, you think you can pilot this better, do you? Here, here, put on the pilot sucker. Here it is!

POL-TEE: Put it back on, you stupid [PROFANITY EXPUNGED]. You’re going to kill us all.

POL-TEE: [PROFANITY EXPUNGED].

TEE-POL: [PROFANITY EXPUNGED].

POL-TEE: Activate the [PROFANITY EXPUNGED] shields!

TEE-POL: Oh yes! The [PROFANITY EXPUNGED] shields should easily repel an entire [PROFANITY EXPUNGED] moon, you dozy [PROFANITY EXPUNGED]-wit!

POL-TEE: Better get into the escape pods, then.

TEE-POL: Where the [PROFANITY EXPUNGED] are the [PROFANITY EXPUNGED] escape pods?

POL-TEE: You were supposed to load the [PROFANITY EXPUNGED] escape pods!

TEE-POL: What am I? Head of [PROFANITY EXPUNGED] escape pods?

POL-TEE: Yes, you [PROFANITY EXPUNGED] are! It’s embroidered on your [PROFANITY EXPUNGED] pocket!

TEE-POL: [PROFANITY EXPUNGED].

POL-TEE: [PROFANITY EXPUNGED].

POL-TEE: [PROFANITY EXPUNGED].

TEE-POL: [PROFANITY EXPUNGED].

POL-TEE: Right. It’s parachute time.

TEE-POL: Where the [PROFANITY EXPUNGED] are the [PROFANITY EXPUNGED] parachutes?

POL-TEE: You were supposed to pack the [PROFANITY EXPUNGED] parachutes!

TEE-POL: What am I? Head of [PROFANITY EXPUNGED] parachutes as well now?

POL-TEE: Yes, you [PROFANITY EXPUNGED] are! It’s embroidered on your other [PROFANITY EXPUNGED] pocket!

TEE-POL: [PROFANITY EXPUNGED].

POL-TEE: [PROFANITY EXPUNGED]. I’m getting out of here!

TEE-POL: No! Don’t open that hatch! We’ll both be sucked out into [PROFANITY EXPUNGED] space!

POL-TEE: You stay if you want, you kamikaze [SHORT PROFANITY EXPUNGED], I’m bailing.

TEE-POL & POL-TEE: Ohhh - [MULTIPLE PROFANITIES EXPUNGED]!

Chapter Twenty

The Daybook of ‘Jenkins’ Jenkins, RQMS Royal Fusiliers (deserted), Saturday the 5th of January, 1952

Call vet re: boiler foot rot.

Students! Don’t like ’em. The duplicates is all that age now, which means, of course, they knows everything. They’re all busy drinking Woodpecker cider, smoking stinking French cigarettes and reading John Paul Satire while playing the bongos.’Cept for the Martian, who’s obsessed with reading The Will to Power by Neacher whilst listening to Vargner. I hates the music, but I do like them pigtailed blondes in horned helmets and pointy metal breasts on the record sleeves. Can’t get enough of high culture, meself.

In other words, at this stage the duplicate crew is pests. On the whole, I tries to avoid them. I just shovels in the fags and the cider and the Valderma antiseptic balm, and leaves ’em to sort themselves out.

The Prof’s none too interested, neither. At least, not for the moment. He’s busy looking for that bloomin’ rat of his. Somehow, the little blighter’s managed to escape from his maze. It must have been a fairly elaborate escape and all: he left behind a dummy rat made of matchsticks and bird droppings.

While he’s busy running round calling, ‘Here, Ratty! Here’s a nice piece of cheese for you,’ I cough to draw his attention. ‘If everything’s OK, sir, I’ll just pop to the front desk to see if that intruder photograph’s arrived.’ Truth is, I’m well behind in my begging letters, and I needs to go through the obituaries again.

He doesn’t look up from his searching, or even put down the cattle prod and the gunny sack. ‘Yes, Jenkins, that would be—’

And blow me, if yet another bloomin’ tocsin doesn’t start up.

‘Alert! Alien spaceship approaching Earth rapidly.’

Well, the Prof drops the prod and the bag now, and runs straight into the Space Defence Operations Centre, with me on his tail. He’s busy switching on screens and turning on radars, oscilloscopes, cosmic arrays and, for some reason, Workers’ Playtime on the Home Service.

‘What idiot turned that godawful music on?’ he yells.

‘Sorry, sir, I’ll get rid of it at once.’

‘You know I hate Anne Shelton.’

I didn’t, but I clocks it for future reference.

‘Alien spaceship now entering Earth’s exosphere.’

‘Punch it up on Gargantua, the Giant Space Tellyscoppyscreen, Delores.’

‘Initialising.’

The seven-inch screen starts up. We watch the little light in the middle for a bit.

‘Valves warming up.’

‘Oh, come onnnnn.’ The Prof taps the desk impatiently.

‘Valves still warming up.’

Then, all of a sudden, the picture blossoms out from the centre. There’s this huge ship powering towards us with a really angry-looking face. I’m sure I’ve seen its kind before… but I can’t place where.

‘Dammit, Jenkins: looks like a Mercurian Star Clipper!’

Oh yes. I remembers now. Mercurians! Don’t like ’em. ‘Shall I activate the peace beacon, sir?’

‘If you recall, Jenkins, the last lot of hooligans in one of those vessels blasted the previous peace beacon to space dust.’

‘So they did, Professor. What shall we do then, sir? They’re getting closer.’

‘Can we afford to give them the benefit of the doubt a second time?’

‘It’s hardly my place to say, sir, but I don’t trust them slippery snarky swines. Not one inch.’

‘I hate to say it, Jenkins, but I’m afraid you’re right. For the security of the whole planet there’s only one course of action we can take. Actuate Gargantua, the Dangerous Giant Space Laser.’

I glances over at him. There’s this strange look in his eyes I ain’t never seen before. What he’s suggesting is not only a potential Act of Interplanetary War, it’s also premeditated cold-blooded murder. On the other hand, they is only aliens.

The actual firing barrel of the Dangerous Giant Space Laser is up there in orbit of course, but we controls it from a remote gunnery panel right here. So, I takes a deep breath, marches over to the laser vault door, selects the key on my fob and puts it in the upper lock. The Prof puts his own key in the lower one, and we nods, and turns them in unison.

I heave open the door, and there she is: the Dangerous Giant Space Laser Control Turret, in all her terrible glory. It’s enough to give any red-blooded Englishman a stirring. And I don’t mean in his breast.

‘Alien vessel breaching thermosphere.’

I shins up into the seat and straps meself in. A circle of blue lights burst into life around the pedestal base, and the target overlay illuminates all orange and pretty and plots out the course of the target vessel. ‘Got ’em in my sights, sir,’ I says.

The Professor looks uncommon grave. Normally something like this wouldn’t give him pause for a moment. Eventually, he says: ‘We really have no choice, Jenkins. No choice, I’m afraid.’

‘Alien vessel penetrating mesosphere.’

On the screen, the huge orbiting solar-powered laser barrel turns majestically in space towards its prey, and begins to initiate its warm-up sequence.

‘Alien vessel entering stratosphere.’

This shakes the Prof out of his funk. ‘We can’t let them breach the troposphere, Jenkins. You’ll have to blast them.’

Now, I’m not saying I enjoy pressing the button on this thing, ’cos that might make me sound like a sicko, and this is a weighty business. Still, ready to do my solemn duty, I pops a humbug in my mouth, starts humming ‘Rule Britannia’, and flexes my index finger in small circles over the trigger. ‘Locked on target, sir.’

‘What are you waiting for, man? Fire.’ He turns and leaves the room quietly muttering ‘Dammit,’ under his breath.

I lets ’em have it.

The explosion! It’s like Guy Fawkes Night round at the Aga Khan’s in the middle of the Blitz in Hiroshima. When the blast clears, there’s nothing left at all.

Absolutely nothing.

Not even the splattered remains of unidentifiable organs.

Chapter Twenty-One

News strip recovered from Quanderhorn’s Telemergency Print-O-Gram, 4.53 p.m., 5th January, 1952

Chapter Twenty-Two

Three minutes earlier, from the journal of Brian Nylon, 5th January, 1952 – Iteration 66

‘We’ve done it!’ I cheered. ‘We’re safe! We’re free-falling back to Earth.’ Somebody started screaming, ‘We’re free-falling back to Earth!’

‘Please pull yourself together, Brian,’ Gemma chided. ‘We’re going to need all our energy to get sufficiently furious to power the landing rockets.’

Suddenly, the lights all glowed a brighter red and a peculiar sound erupted from speakers somewhere.

‘It’s a red alert!’ I called.

‘Well, of course,’ Guuuurk drawled. ‘Have you seen this ship? What other kind of alert could it be?’

‘I think it’s about as red as a red alert can get. Even here.’

The sound erupted again.

‘Pardon me,’ Troy apologised.

‘That’s not you, Troy,’ Gemma said.

‘Are you sure? It sounds like me when I’ve burrowed into too many cabbage leaves.’

The sound again.

‘Pardon me.’

Gemma was scouring the readouts. ‘I think the ship may have detected some sort of threat.’

I could make neither head nor tail of the displays. ‘What’s it saying on this screen, Guuuurk?’

‘Oh, yes. Because all aliens must know each other, I can magically read Mercurian now.’

‘I’m sorry, but it’s just gibberish to us.’

‘It’s gibberish to me, too.’ He started feeling under the desk. ‘I was hoping it wouldn’t come to this – we’ll have to use the emotional interface.’

Gemma and I stared at him blankly. Troy also stared blankly, but I don’t think he was joining in with us.

‘Very big on emotions, the Mercurians, remember?’ Guuuurk answered our gapes. ‘So they use one of these…’

He found what he was looking for under the console and tugged out a flexible tube, like a cross between a slimy octopus tentacle and a vacuum cleaner hose with a plunger on the end. It was, of course, red.

I eyed it with deep suspicion. It seemed to be secreting a sort of gloopy gunk from the end and making a slight slurping noise. ‘What are we supposed to do with that?’

‘You?’ Guuuurk threw back his head and laughed. ‘Your puny Terranean minds wouldn’t be able to cope with the forces of overwhelming mental strain. Leave it to a Martian.’

With another derisory laugh, he attached the sucker in the middle of his forehead between his top two eyes. Instantly, his expression fell and his head deflated with a terrible trumping noise.

‘AAAAAAArgh! Fear! Fear! Fear!’

Troy yelled: ‘Unplug him, quick!’

‘Fear! Fear! Fear!’

‘No,’ Gemma insisted. ‘We need to know what’s happening.’

Guuuurk managed to twist his head round sufficiently to shoot her a look of intense hatred. ‘Fear! Fear! Fear! Terror! Gut-wrenching horror! Argh! Argh! Please! Please unplug… Fear!’

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake.’ Gemma reached for the plunger.

‘Fear! Fear! Overpowering dread!’

She tugged the sucker off Guuuurk’s forehead with a hideous ripping sound. He collapsed to the deck, but his head started to reinflate reassuringly.

‘I didn’t completely get the entire nuances and subtleties of the message,’ he said, pretending to ignore the rivulets of sweat cascading from his swelling forehead, ‘but I’m going to go right out on a limb here, and say: something quite frightening is happening.’

Gemma looked at me. ‘We’ll have to plug Brian in.’

‘Oh!’ I wasn’t entirely sure I was up to that. ‘Me? Really?’

‘Well, I’m not likely to have much luck with an emotional interface, am I? And we can hardly leave it to Troy. No offence, Troy.’

‘Why,’ Troy asked belligerently, ‘would I know a fence? I’m a person.’

‘Yup,’ I nodded, ‘you’ve convinced me.’

And without any ceremony, she jammed the sucker onto my brow.

Chapter Twenty-Three

From the journal of Brian Nylon, 5th January, 1952 – Iteration 66

All at once, the scene before me melted away into a fog. I perceived the ship as an entity, flying through the atmosphere.

Then I was the ship itself.

I was zipping happily downwards towards the beautiful blue Earth, the rushing atmosphere just beginning to caress my hull, warming me up pleasantly. It looked nice and welcoming down there, and I was looking forward to firing my splendid retro-rockets for a smooth and luscious landing. Then a strange feeling overtook me…

‘Hmmm,’ I said, quite unconsciously. ‘That’s slightly annoying.’

Somewhere off in the distance, I heard Guuuurk exclaim ‘What?’ as if affronted.

The strange sensation seemed to be emanating from somewhere a little below, and off my starboard bow. The feeling was…

‘What is it, Brian?’ I heard Gemma ask through the haze.

… a threat! There was a threat of some kind. My vision tunnelled into the darkness and I saw it! A floating platform. A huge tubular pipe, ringed with oscillating neon-esque ellipses. A cannon!

‘It’s… it’s some kind of huge space gun.’

I heard the disbelief in Gemma’s voice: ‘Not the Professor’s Dangerous Giant Space Laser!’

‘Fear!’ Guuuurk shouted. ‘Fear! Fear! Stomach-churning panic!’

Gemma pointed out tartly that Guuuurk wasn’t even connected any more.

‘I don’t need to be,’ he shot back, then squeaked quietly under his breath. ‘Fear! Fear!’

‘It’s rotating towards us,’ I warned. I was starting to sense growing anxiety.

‘Don’t worry,’ Troy piped up. ‘Pops would never fire at us!’

‘It’s beginning to power up!’ Extremely worried now.

Gemma said soberly: ‘He doesn’t know it is us.’

‘No, Pops, no!’ Troy yelled very loudly indeed.

‘He can’t hear you, Troy.’

‘Guuuurk!’ the lad shouted, quite disturbed. ‘Quick! Do your thinky-leapy mind thing and tell him.’

The Martian shook his head. ‘I can’t leap into a fully developed mind.’

‘You leapt into mine.’

‘Precisely.’

‘We can see the barrel through the viewport, now,’ Gemma called. ‘Yes – the tip’s starting to glow.’

I tugged off the sucker. The sense of mounting terror immediately drained away.

Then, as the viewport swam back into focus, it came flooding back again.

The laser was indeed getting brighter by the moment. I reached for the joystick, but I must still have been connected to the ship in some way, because I was instantly aware that firing the retro-rockets wouldn’t be sufficient to escape. ‘We have to get out. Are there escape pods? Parachutes?’

Guuuurk shook his inflating head. ‘Nothing like that. I happened to check that the very first moment I came aboard, by sheer coincidence’

‘So,’ I tried to keep the desperation out of my voice, ‘is there nothing we can do?’

Guuuurk frowned for a moment, then smote his forehead. ‘Of course! What was I thinking? The shield!’

‘We have a shield?’

‘Of course! Every Mercurian ship is fitted with a ceramic-powered weapon shield.’

On top of the burgeoning terror, I began to feel slightly nervous. And sick. ‘A what?’

Guuuurk clambered to his feet and started fighting his way to the back of the flight deck. ‘An impenetrable energy shield that can repel anything – even a Martian Death Ray.’

Unhelpfully, Gemma murmured: ‘I have a sequinned bag that can do that.’

Guuuurk pretended he hadn’t heard. ‘It’s powered by ceramic oscillation. A series of discs fit into that slot there.’ He waved his hand at the console. ‘They’re the exact dimensions and structure to create the perfect resonance.’

‘Ceramic discs?’ I asked. For some reason, I was beginning to sweat a great deal.

‘Yes.’ Guuuurk began opening and closing various doors and hatches.

‘You mean like… dinner plates?’

The Martian snorted. ‘I suppose so, to the untrained eye. Yes. Fortunately, every vessel has a large store cupboard full of them.’

He opened the door. The couple of plates I’d managed to leave still intact slipped off the shelf and smashed into the rest of the detritus, with a horrible final crash.

‘What the blazes?’ Guuuurk squeaked. ‘It’s like a Greek wedding in here!’

‘I may have chipped one or two of them earlier,’ I admitted.

‘Chipped? Chipped? They’ve been pulverised to powder!’ On his knees, he started rooting through the debris, trying to find a plate that was more or less whole.

Troy was at the viewport. ‘Laser thingy’s going all blue! I think it’s about to blast us!’

No time for guilt! ‘Could we glue some bits together?’

‘Oh yes!’ Guuuurk scooped up handfuls of ceramic fragments and let them dribble through his thumbs. ‘We have ample time to painstakingly reconstruct an entire dinner service from what is essentially dust, and perhaps paint it daintily with a lovely willow pattern and sign it “Josiah Wedgwood” in our remaining two seconds of life!’

There was definitely a lingering connection with the ship’s emotional interface, because I felt a sudden surge of energy in my stomach, and the needle on the console’s power indicator leapt simultaneously.

Gemma had spotted this herself. ‘Calm down, Guuuurk – you’re overloading the anger engines.’

‘Calm down? CALM DOWN!?’ His face began to take on a rather dangerous tint of orange, and his head started swelling alarmingly. ‘I’ve been very patient with all of you up till now, even though you’re an utterly useless shower!’ I’d never seen his head quite so swollen. ‘I’ve been catapulted to the Moon, forced to project myself into the head of an imbecile and locked in an attic for twenty-four hours while a possessed village performed a ceaseless cacophony of uncontrollable rumpy pumpy in the room below.’

I opened my mouth to try and reason with him, but he was in full flow now.

‘I’ve been tortured by Mole People, imprisoned by shape-shifting troglodytes and painfully stamped on by a giant sandal in the Attack of the Forty-Foot Bishop…’

The power needle had leapt off the scale, and the whine of the engines had grown to a deafening roar. ‘Guuuurk… you’ll blow us sky-high!’

He simply ranted on and on. ‘But this really puts the skin on the Ambrosia Creamed Rice, this does! Our one, solitary, slim chance of survival, and Brian, a man who was drummed out of the Quakers for being excessively placid, suddenly takes it into his head to go on a senseless rampage of crockery destruction – like a deranged Italian housewife who’s just discovered her husband in bed with the Pope.’

I could barely make out what he was saying above the shrieking engines now.

‘Why, Brian? Why?’

I felt a hand in mine, and looked down to it. Gemma mouthed: ‘I’m afraid we’ve really had it this time.’

Guuuurk raised his voice above the cacophony. He was raving and shrieking now. ‘And as if that weren’t enough, at the end, the only companions of Guuuurk the Magnificent, Patronome-In-Waiting of the fifteenth biggest gas puddle on Phobos, are a clockwork-brained female, an insectoid simpleton and a pottery-hating psychopath who—’

We were all enveloped by a blinding flash, and I actually felt my component atoms scatter in a million directions.