The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes--The Martian Menace

by Eric Brown

  Then the door behind us swung open and a Martian shuffled into the room, squealing at the top of his lungs.

  For a second I assumed the Martian to be Baro-Sinartha-Gree – until I saw that the creature was brandishing an electrical gun.

  As the door swung shut, I caught a glimpse of Baro-Sinartha-Gree in the corridor, groggily picking himself from the floor and tottering around on rubbery tentacles in obvious disorientation. The last I saw of him, he had gained some coordination in his limbs and was staggering off along the corridor.

  Holmes had turned at the sound of the intrusion, and he and the Martian faced each other in a static stand-off, each pointing his weapon at the other.

  “Watson,” Holmes said, “go to the girl and release her.”

  I had my gun trained on the Martian, too, as I backed towards Miss Fairfield. “If you shoot my friend, you’re dead,” I said.

  He replied in excellent English, “If you fire that weapon, whoever you are, then I shall ensure that your friend dies. What are you doing here?”

  “Come to retrieve what is ours,” said Holmes as I backed, little by little, towards Miss Fairfield.

  Her head had dropped forward, her chin resting on her chest. She hung in the frame from her wrists like a sacrificial victim. I noted with relief that her chest rose and fell, quashing Moriarty’s claim that she would die upon completion of the duplication process.

  I had reached the frame – but now I found myself in a dilemma: if I did as Holmes commanded and freed the girl, I would no longer have my gun trained on the Martian. The alien could take a chance and fire at Holmes, hoping to get his shot in before Holmes returned fire.

  “You heard me, Watson,” Holmes said. “I have the Martian covered. If he shoots, then so will I.”

  “Then,” said the Martian, “we will both die.”

  “Holmes…?” I quailed.

  “Do as I say,” Holmes said in a steady voice. “I think I am more nimble on my feet than our friend here, more accustomed as he is to the lighter gravity of Mars. I could fire and be away before the fellow could move his ungainly bulk.”

  Fearful of what might happen next, I slipped the weapon into my coat pocket, knelt and quickly unfastened the leather straps binding the girl’s left ankle, then her right.

  I was conscious, as I did this, of a sound from beyond the barred window: a distant clank-clanking that, though familiar, I could not at that precise moment define.

  Next, before I turned my attention to Miss Fairfield’s shackled wrists, I glanced across at Holmes and the Martian: they were an eerily motionless tableau, staring intently at each other, weapons raised.

  I unbuckled the strap fastening Miss Fairfield’s right hand to the frame. She sagged, and I took her weight as she swung to one side, groaning. Holding her with my left arm, I reached out and managed to undo the remaining buckle one-handed.

  The girl slumped in my embrace, her chin hooked over my shoulder. I was now rendered quite helpless in any battle that might ensue, but at least I had released the girl from the hideous contraption.

  The steady clank-clank grew louder, and I knew then where I had heard the sound before.

  “Well done, Watson. Now, move towards the door.”

  I saw Holmes’s logic in issuing this instruction. Not only was it the only point of egress, but in moving myself and the girl towards the door I would be on the blind side of the alien: if I could hold Miss Fairfield with one arm and slip my right hand into my pocket for the electrical gun…

  Outside the clanking grew ever louder, the deliberate iron tread of a Martian tripod.

  I moved slowly towards the door, the girl sagging in my one-armed embrace.

  A great shape appeared beyond the barred window, occluding the sunlight and pitching the room into sudden shadow. I saw the leading leg of the tripod, a mere yard from the window.

  I slipped my right hand into my pocket and gripped the gun.

  I was perhaps five feet from the Martian, and almost as far from the door.

  “If you move any closer to the door,” the Martian piped up, “your friend dies.”

  I stopped in my tracks, my heart thudding. The weight of the girl was becoming an increasing strain, and I was sweating profusely and feeling more than a little dizzy.

  “Watson,” Holmes said, “move towards the door.”

  I was about to obey the command when I was spared the effort.

  Behind Holmes, the tripod lifted one of its great legs and slammed its plate-like foot through the barred window, sending glass, mortar and iron bars cascading into the room. To Holmes’s eternal credit, he didn’t so much as bat an eyelid: he later claimed that he surmised that Baro-Sinartha-Gree might attempt such a rescue – and, knowing my friend’s powers of reasoning, who was I to gainsay his word?

  No sooner had the tripod kicked an almighty hole in the wall, than the Martian fired at Holmes. My friend leapt, rolled, and returned fire, hitting the Martian square in its combined torsoheadpiece. The alien squawked and hit the door with a thump.

  Holmes strode across the room and helped me carry Miss Fairfield towards the gaping hole in the wall.

  “One moment, Watson,” Holmes said as we picked our way through the debris. “Give me your revolver.”

  I did so, wondering at his motives. He crossed to where Professor Moriarty’s simulacrum lay smoking on the floor, took aim at its charred skull, and discharged six shots. The head exploded into a thousand fragments.

  “Just to ensure that the simulacrum retains no memory of this encounter,” he explained, returning and looping the girl’s arm around his shoulder. “The last thing we need is the other Moriartys, or indeed the Martians, knowing that we were behind Miss Fairfield’s rescue.”

  We staggered over a small hillock of tumbled masonry to the waiting tripod. Its elevator plate was lowered, and we stepped aboard and gripped the safety rail as it lifted us with a stomach-churning lurch from the ground.

  The plate seemed to take an age to reach the tripod’s cowl. I stared down, expecting at any second to see armed Martians come tumbling from the institute and open fire. One curious alien did appear around the corner at the front of the building, and glanced our way, but on seeing the tripod merely turned and shuffled away. I wondered if accidents with these vehicles were a regular occurrence at the institute.

  We rose into the cowl and stepped from the plate, easing the still unconscious girl to the floor. Baro-Sinartha-Gree was ensconced in the pilot’s couch, four of his tentacles hauling levers this way and that as the tripod started up and lurched away from the building.

  I peered through an oval panel in the domed rear of the cowl, and looked down to see that a dozen or so Martians – accompanied by three Moriartys – had come to investigate the commotion: several were inspecting the gaping hole in the side of the building. I wondered how long it would be before one of their number worked out just what had taken place.

  While I fell to examining Miss Fairfield, taking her pulse then arranging her in the recovery position, the tripod increased its speed. Having given the girl a thorough examination and assured myself that she was as well as could be expected in the circumstances, I peered again through the rear panel.

  Several Martians were making haste towards the front of the building and boarding cars. I joined Baro-Sinartha-Gree and Holmes on the couch and reported this.

  Excited, the Martian jabbered something in his own tongue.

  Holmes translated: “He said, little good it will do them. The cars are restricted to using the roads. We are not.”

  I stared ahead through the forward viewscreen and saw what Baro-Sinartha-Gree meant.

  The tripod was taking gargantuan strides across fields and meadows, startling grazing cows and sheep as it strode ever further from the institute.

  Baro-Sinartha-Gree spoke again, and Holmes said, “He says he will take us across country and deposit us near a station on the London line. He will leave the tripod there and circle back to the
manufactory on foot, where hopefully his absence will not have been noted.”

  “Will you please commend him on his admirable bravery,” I said.

  “I have done so already, and assured him that word of his valour will get back to Miss Hamilton-Bell.”

  Only then, with another glance through the rear viewscreen to ensure we were not being followed, did I allow myself to sit back and enjoy the journey. It was only the second time I had been aboard a tripod, and on the first occasion we had travelled at a more sedate pace through the streets of London. Now we were moving at speed, unhindered, through open countryside.

  Much has been written about the singular means of the tripods’ locomotion. In the early days of the Martians’ appearance on Earth, engineers and scientists alike opined that the three-legged gait of the machine was impossible, much as the laws of physics decree that the flight of a bumblebee is likewise impossible, though manifestly bees do fly. So it was with the stilted perambulation of the tripods: how did they walk without stumbling and falling over? The answer was that they moved by means of what might be described as a hoick and a hop: with the left- and right-most legs planted firmly on terra firma, the middle leg swung forward, planted itself on the ground, and took the full weight of the vehicle while the left and right legs pushed off and swung forward in unison, the whole maintaining balance by dint of an onboard gyroscope. When the outer legs hit the ground, the middle one swung forward, and so on. This made for a somewhat lurching ride, but with each swinging step eating up perhaps thirty yards, progress was rapid.

  We sat back as the tripod marched through idyllic pastureland and meadow, sharing the skies with starlings and startled rooks; we had the rare opportunity of staring down on the tops of oak trees, shortened in perspective. The countryside stretched away in serene silence, a rolling vista of fields crosshatched by hedgerows and veined by a silver stream.

  At one point I heard a flustered exclamation from behind the couch, and jumped to my feet. Miss Fairfield was attempting to sit up, wiping her brow and appearing confused and exhausted.

  “Where am I?” she asked, then stared at me. “Do I know you, sir?”

  “John H. Watson, at your service, ma’am. We have met, but two years ago.”

  She shook her head. “That man… Smith—”

  “You have undergone something of an ordeal, Miss Fairfield. You need to rest a while, and all will be well, I assure you.”

  “But… but Smith. The frame! He… he fastened me into it, and… and that’s the last I remember. Flashing lights… I tried to struggle, to free myself! I couldn’t!”

  I gripped her hand. “Please, don’t fret. All that is over. You’re free now. We are taking you back to London, where you will rest among those you can trust. We’ll notify Wells, and arrange for your care until you’re fully recovered.”

  Holmes appeared and knelt beside her.

  She peered at him, her eyes narrowed. “I remember now. Two years ago, the affair at the embassy… Sherlock Holmes! You… you allowed me to go free.”

  “We did the right thing in the circumstances. The only thing,” Holmes said. “Now, take the good doctor’s advice and rest. Come, you will be more comfortable on the couch.”

  “The couch? Where are we? Oh!” she exclaimed as I helped her to her feet and she beheld the vertiginous view of the countryside far below.

  We settled her beside Baro-Sinartha-Gree, and minutes later that worthy raised a tentacle to indicate a snaking train line in the distance.

  “I stop here,” he said. “Only short walk to station, through fields.”

  “And you?” Holmes enquired. “Are you sure you won’t be implicated in the rescue?”

  The Martian replied in his own tongue, the better to articulate his thoughts. Holmes paraphrased: “He said that we should not worry ourselves on his behalf. He’s faced worse dangers than this while working as a spy for the Resistance.”

  Baro-Sinartha-Gree hauled on a lever and the tripod came to a grinding halt, once again poised steadfastly on all three legs.

  We stood on the elevator plate, with Miss Fairfield held securely between us, and gripped the rail as we descended. I looked back the way we had come, but there was no sign of pursuing Martians.

  Once in the high grass of the meadow, Baro-Sinartha-Gree pointed us in the right direction, then took our hands with the sucker of a tentacle. He uttered a short valedictory phrase, then turned and disappeared into the undergrowth.

  “What did he say?” I enquired.

  “To victory!” said Holmes as we set off for the station.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Arrivals and Departures

  Holmes was pensive for the duration of the journey back to London. While Miss Fairfield dozed in the corner of the compartment, and I perused a copy of The Telegraph donated by a kindly old parson who had alighted at Weybridge, Holmes stared through the window, brooding.

  Only as we were approaching Waterloo Station did I say, “Penny for them, old man?”

  Holmes roused himself and gave a grim smile. “I was contemplating the bad old days and my encounters with Professor Moriarty,” he said. “I considered my plate a full one then, Watson, with only one Moriarty at large. Little did I dream that one day we would be faced with a horde of the evil genius, in league with our alien oppressors.”

  We alighted at Waterloo and took a cab to Barnes, where we found Miss Hamilton-Bell still not returned from her day job at the Natural History Museum. Holmes let us in with the spare key, and I gave Miss Fairfield a cup of tea laced with a little brandy and saw her off to rest in a spare bedroom, saying I would look in on her in a couple of hours.

  After we had changed from our disguises and scrubbed the greasepaint from our faces, Holmes declared himself famished and slipped from the house to fetch provisions. He returned a little later with a cob of bread, a jar of Patum Peperium, and a slab of Stilton. I made a pot of tea and we ate in the crowded front room, too tired to vacate our armchairs for the kitchen table.

  On glancing at the mantelshelf, I noticed that the framed photograph of Miss Hamilton-Bell’s brother was no longer in pride of place. I wondered at its absence, and mentioned it to Holmes.

  He nodded. “I too noticed that it was no longer there. It can mean only one thing.”

  “It can? And what might that be?”

  “That she is vacating the premises. Perhaps, as a matter of precaution, she must change location from time to time, moving from safe house to safe house around London so as to avoid detection.”

  I resolved to ask her about this when she returned, and settled back in my chair.

  I was dozing, sometime later, when the opening of the front door awoke me. Miss Hamilton-Bell breezed into the room, pulling a sun hat from her dyed tresses and smiling at us as if she had not a care in the world.

  She took in our exhausted forms and said, “While it is good to see you, gentlemen, you look dead beat. I take it that Woking was a signal failure.”

  Holmes managed to raise a smile. “On the contrary. It was, all things considered, a success. Thanks to you, we managed to wrest Miss Fairfield from Professor Moriarty’s clutches. She sleeps upstairs as we speak.”

  Miss Hamilton-Bell sat down on the settee. “Thanks to me?”

  “Had it not been for your alerting Baro-Sinartha-Gree to our imminent presence in Woking, who knows what disaster might have ensued.”

  “So he did find you!”

  “Not only did he locate us, but his assistance proved invaluable.” She helped herself to tea, and Holmes recounted the entirety of our adventures, from our arrival in Woking to our precipitate departure from the institute aboard the Martian tripod.

  “While we achieved the aim of rescuing Miss Fairfield,” he finished, “we also discovered the grim fact of Moriarty’s multiple duplication. It makes the task of defeating the Martians, my dear, all the more difficult.”

  She was smiling somewhat primly to herself, as if in receipt of a secret she
would take pleasure in duly imparting.

  “What?” I said. “You look rather pleased with yourself.”

  “Might it,” ventured Holmes, “have anything to do with your imminent departure from these premises?”

  She regarded him wide-eyed. “However can you know of that, Mr Holmes?”

  “Simplicity itself,” he said, indicating the mantelshelf and elucidating his line of reasoning. “I also observed that you have cleared away the various perfumes, soaps and the like from the bathroom cupboard.”

  She finished her tea and replaced the cup on its saucer. “Gentlemen, we are approaching the end game, and I am hopeful of success.”

  “Success?” I said. “The planet is overrun by merciless extraterrestrials, hundreds if not thousands of our eminent politicians, soldiers and others have been killed and replaced by copies obedient to the Martians, and the dastardly Professor Moriarty is abroad in number… and you speak of success?”

  Her superior smile remained.

  “The young lady claims that the end game approaches,” Holmes said, “and I for one am eager to hear more.”

  “First, gentlemen, let me tell you about the gains we have made in recruiting members of the armed forces, as well as politicians, to our cause. Several of my colleagues have been working to this end for a number of months – their task made that much easier when we received the detection devices from our contacts on Mars. Formerly, for obvious reasons, we were loath to approach eminent members of the army and navy. Now we are able to identify every simulacrum in an eminent position, and have about them men and women ready to take their place when the time arises – and it will be soon. Also, several of my comrades have infiltrated the government broadcasting department, ready when given the order to disseminate radio bulletins to the nation detailing the Martian perfidy and exhorting citizens to join the uprising.”

  “While this is heartening to hear,” Holmes said, “it hardly betokens the success of which you speak. The threat of Moriarty alone is inestimable. I have had dealings with him in the past, and can report that he is a foe not only evil but intellectually brilliant – and now, moreover, he is not a single individual, but perhaps a hundred or more.”