by Philip Reeve
‘Hallo!’ shouted Sir Richard at intervals.
‘Hallo!’ the rest of us chorused, joining our high voices to his deep and manly one.
But no answer came out of the fog, and the thick, rubbery leaves of the cabbages swallowed any echoes. It seemed to me that there might be no one else living at all in that dismal place.
And then I sensed a movement away to my right. I turned towards it, signalling to the others to follow me, and soon reached the edge of that forest of cabbages. The ground ahead was covered by a thick carpet of fog, whiter and denser than that above it. Again I thought I saw a movement: a figure, faint behind the veils of the mist. ‘Hallo!’ I called, and stepped towards it.
I realised my mistake at once. What lay beneath that denser fog was not ground, but liquid! I plunged into it and went under with barely a splash, for it was the strangest water I have ever known. When I tried to fight my way to the surface I found that there was no surface, just a vague boundary where the water shaded imperceptibly into vapour. I struggled silently, and looked round for my companions – only to find that they were not there!
In that instant, a rush of wild and dreadful imaginings seized me. Sir Richard and the others must have taken a wrong turning in the fog, or failed to notice me branch off at all!
And then strong hands grabbed the collar of my coat and lifted me, propelling me back towards the cabbages. I could see now that these vegetables were not rooted in any soil, but simply grew out of a thick mat of woven roots which must float somehow upon that gaseous ocean. What good fortune, I thought, that our lifeboat had fallen upon such a mat, and not plunged into the water!
I scrambled back on to the safety of the root-mat and turned to thank my rescuer, wondering whether it was Sir Richard or Ulla who had dived into that strange sea to save me. (I was pretty sure that Midshipman Bradstreet would not have had the strength to lift me so easily.)
The figure which loomed over me, however, was not Sir Richard or his wife. Indeed, it was not even human!
From the waist up the thing was roughly man-shaped, but as bony as an Egyptian mummy, with a great keel to its chest like the prow of a boat. It had four arms and four long-fingered hands, one of which clutched a primitive spear while another still had hold of my coat collar. Its head was awful: a finned grey mask with a long slit filled with needles for a mouth and no eyes at all, just two darker patches where its eyes should be, as if membranes of translucent skin had grown across them. It had no nose and no hair either, but from the centre of its high forehead grew a bony rod with a feathery dangling thing upon the end, like the lures with which the deep-sea anglerfish of Earth are wont to attract their prey.
This object twitched and jiggled as the monster leaned over me, and I felt those eyes-which-were-not-eyes regard me with a curious air, as if it were trying to decide whether or not I would be good to eat.
‘Help!’ I cried as loudly as I might. The creature jerked away from me at the sound, and to my great relief I heard the running footsteps of Sir Richard and the others, and then their answering shouts. The root-mat trembled under me as they came charging out of the mist.
The creature, alarmed, backed away with an awful swirling movement. From the waist down it was not man-like at all, but more closely resembled an enormous snake or eel. A flick of its powerful tail sent it scooting out into the billows of that fog-sea, where it did not sink from sight as I had done but somehow kept itself afloat, staring back at the rest of us as we crowded along the edge of the root-mat to stare at it.
Ulla drew her throwing blade, but Sir Richard stayed her hand. ‘Don’t, dearest! It may be friendly.’
‘I can’t imagine ever being friends with anything that ugly!’ said Mr Bradstreet.
The creature came back towards us, parting the thick mists of the fog-sea with quick, muscular movements of its tail. The lure dangling from its head glowed with a faint violet light. It opened its mouth and out came a dreadful noise, like someone dragging a knife over the teeth of a steel comb. It waved its spear and made strange, antic gestures.
‘I imagine it thinks we are a threat to it,’ said Sir Richard.
‘I suppose we have invaded its world,’ Ulla declared. ‘Let us back away slowly so that it may see we mean no harm … ’
We did as she suggested, but the creature seemed only to grow more agitated, waving its four arms at us and clattering and clicking for all it was worth. Then, quite suddenly, it dived beneath the mist and was lost to our sight.
‘Curious fellow,’ said Sir Richard.
‘A savage brute!’ said Mr Bradstreet.
But I was not so sure. Once my initial terror at the creature’s horrid phiz and threatening manner had faded, I had begun to remember what Mother had told me of her time on Georgium Sidus so long ago. She had been a sort of mer-person, she had said, and of course I had imagined her like a mermaid in an earthly sailor’s story, beautiful and golden-haired and sitting upon a rock with her comb and mirror. But perhaps she had actually been a creature like the one I had just encountered. How strange and unsettling it was to think that once she might have worn an aspect as hideous as that!
‘We should get away from this shore before the creature returns with more of his kind,’ said Ulla, and her husband agreed. We turned inland and struck out again through that forest of cabbages, wondering how large this mat or island was that we were marooned upon.
We had not gone far when of a sudden there came a rushing noise, and Sir Richard uttered an exclamation, clutched at his neck and fell face downward among the cabbage roots!
We rolled him over. His eyes were closed, his face pale.
‘He’s dead!’ squeaked Mr Bradstreet.
‘He is unconscious,’ Ulla assured us, though she sounded most awfully afraid. ‘Look!’
Sticking from Sir Richard’s neck was a tiny dart which appeared to be made from bone. We all began to look about us, alarmed at the thought of some enemy lurking among the mist and vegetables – an enemy with the cunning to make certain that the strongest of our party should be the first to be struck down!
‘It’s them mermen, I’ll be bound!’ cried Mr Bradstreet. And as he spoke I thought I saw someone go hurrying across a misty gap between two cabbages not far behind him. Not a merman, but something which ran on two legs, crouching low. Was that the scraping of metal scales I heard? And then, again, that rushing sound, and it was Mr Bradstreet’s turn to cry out and spin about and fall.
Ulla had out her throwing blade. She paused a moment, listening, then hurled it into the fog. There was a clang, a shriek, a thud of something falling. The blade came whirling back out of the vapours. Ulla caught it and turned to me with a look of great alarm.
‘Art, there may be many of them!’
‘We should go back to the shore!’ I said.
‘But that mer-creature … ’
‘Perhaps his gestures were not as ferocious as we thought, Mrs B. He may have been trying to warn us of the presence of these others. If we can only – ’
And then I heard again that rushing sound. Ulla stiffened and let fall her knife and dropped to her knees. ‘Go to the waters!’ she told me. ‘Run … ’ And then her senses left her, and she measured her length at my feet, a bone dart sticking from the nape of her russet neck.
Between the cabbages more man-shapes flickered, closing in on me through the swirlings of the mist, with long, armoured tails a-twitch.
How I wished then that I had been struck down like my companions! Better to be lying insensible among the cabbage roots, I thought, than to be yet conscious and all alone and to have to decide whether to share their fate or try to save myself. But Ulla had told me to run, and so I ran, reasoning that if I could only elude the dart-throwers I might return to tend to my fallen companions at a later time.
I fled as swiftly as I could across that yielding, reverberating carpet of roots, which sprang and bounced beneath my boots like some vast mattress. A hissing cry in the fog behind me told me that my flight had been obs
erved. Another instant and a dart rushed past my left ear with only a quarter-inch to spare. It stuck quivering in the fleshy outer leaves of a great cabbage, which let out a hollow groan and toppled sideways. I scrambled past it and zigzagged through a veritable cabbage jungle, then hid, breathless, and heard my pursuers go racing past me in the mist.
When the sounds had faded I crept from my hiding place, meaning to return to where Sir Richard, Ulla and Mr Bradstreet lay. But when I had walked for more than ten minutes through the fog without happening upon them, I started to realise that I had gone wrong and that in that world of endless murk and identical cabbages I might never find my way back to them.
I was about to give in to despair, when all at once a terrifying shape reared up before me, and I found myself confronted by the very being who had saved me earlier in the gas-sea. I remembered that my own dear mother might once have been a creature such as this, but I still could not prevent myself from jumping back and pressing myself against a cabbage trunk.
‘I say,’ said a girlish voice. ‘There’s nothing to be scared of! I suppose you wouldn’t happen to have any chocolate about you, would you?’
I was startled to hear such high, sweet tones issuing from that dreadful mouth, which a few minutes earlier had only seemed able to make grinding, grating, clattering sounds. I was mystified, too, as to how such a creature might have learned the Queen’s English. But being a well-brought-up boy, I did not let my surprise show and simply rummaged about in my pockets till I found a bar of Mr Fry’s excellent chocolate, somewhat melted and misshapen but still perfectly edible.
This I held out to the mer-person, with the words, ‘I’m pleased to meet you, sir. My name is Art Mumby.’
‘Oh, it’s not for him!’ said the voice. ‘Over here!’
I realised that once again I had been deceived by Georgium Sidus’s ceaseless fog. Another figure stood quite near the merman, but showed so faintly through those vaporous billows that I had not seen it until then. I went towards it, flapping my hand in front of me to clear the air until I saw the speaker.
She was a girl of about my own age, with freckles and pigtails, wearing a grubby pinafore dress and the remnants of a straw boater.
‘Oh, ripping!’ cried the girl when she saw the chocolate bar which I was holding out. She took it, broke off a square and ate it with an expression of great relish. ‘I say! How utterly divine! I’ve not had a taste of chocolate for simply months and months. It’s one of the things one misses most living out here. Thank you! Charity Cruet.’
‘What?’ I said, for I was feeling a touch befuddled and did not quite understand that last part.
‘My name. Charity Cruet. What’s yours?’
‘Art Mumby,’ I replied.
‘No relation of Mr Edward Mumby, of Larklight?’
‘He’s my father.’
‘Gosh! What a coincidence! He’s an old friend of my father. Papa is always talking of him … He was, I mean.’
Of course I had realised by now who this strange girl was. Providence, and Sir Richard’s navigation, had brought me to the very spot on Georgium Sidus where Father’s missionary friend had been wrecked, and here was his daughter! I said at once, ‘Your distress flares were seen by the Astronomer Royal! We came here to rescue you aboard a warship, the HMS Actaeon.’
‘Thank Heavens!’ cried Charity Cruet, clapping her hands together. ‘Where is she? Have you lost your companions in the fog?’
‘Alas, I have no companions left. We were attacked in orbit by gigantic moths, and the Actaeon was destroyed. I landed with three others, but they have been struck down by some jolly unsporting coves who lurked in the mist and shot at us with narcotic darts.’
‘Oh, how vexing!’ cried the girl. ‘Did you not receive my message? I sent it at the same time as I launched the flare: Great danger threatens. Georgian space in the hands of a Hostile Power. It is imperative that you send a massed fleet.’
‘Only a few words were received,’ I explained. ‘The meaning was lost. We were not sure if it was a warning or just a distress signal. But who are they, these moth-riders? You say a hostile power … ’
Before she could answer, the merman let out a clattering cry which sounded like someone kicking a large heap of empty sardine cans down a stone staircase. He pointed with his spear into the mist behind me.
‘They are coming back!’ cried Charity. ‘Quickly! Come with me!’
And so saying, she seized a hold of my hand and, before I could stop her, leapt from the edge of the cabbage island into the sea of mist!
Chapter Seven
In Which I Take Up Queer Lodgings and Come to Learn of the Fate of Reverend Cruet and His Mission to the Outer Planets.
‘Oh!’ I cried, as I plunged with Charity Cruet through that perpetual fog which forms the surface of the Georgian sea. I remembered all too well my earlier dip and was certain that we were both about to drown.
‘Take a deep breath!’ warned Charity, as the fog thickened around us into chilly water. I did as she said and kicked out after her as she let go my hand and started to swim. Somewhere nearby in that grey soup which enveloped us I caught a glimpse of the merman driving himself along with powerful movements of his eel-like tail.
Above me I could dimly discern a latticework of sturdy roots and I surmised that we must be beneath the cabbage raft. Then, all at once, there was light ahead of us, and as I looked for its source I crashed against some rubbery, yielding membrane which seemed to be stretched like an invisible wall across my path. I cried out in alarm, and the last air rushed from my lungs and vanished surfacewards in silver bubbles. I floundered, until Charity Cruet’s merman took hold of me, used his blade to slash an opening in the membrane and thrust me bodily through it.
I fell on to a wet floor, which wobbled like a jelly. But it could wobble all it liked as far as I was concerned, for there was at least air to breathe. I took a few deep gulps of it before I bothered to say, ‘Where are we?’
‘Underneath the floating island,’ said Charity, wringing out her wet dress. ‘Of course, it’s not really an island; it’s one big plant, and air-bladders like this one help it to stay afloat. There is a whole clump of them down here.’
I glanced nervously behind me, afraid that water must be seeping through the opening which I had entered by. But to my surprise, I saw that there was no longer any opening there! The wall of the bladder had sealed itself shut, leaving only a rough line of scar tissue to show that there had ever been a wound.
‘The bladders heal themselves,’ said Charity. ‘They have to, you see, otherwise they’d just pop like balloons every time a spiny whale-grub went blundering by. They’re jolly tough and filled mostly with oxygen, so they make splendid little houses. I usually come in through a trapdoor on the surface so I don’t end up so beastly wet, but it’s in the middle of the island and the whole place is crawling with moth-riders today.’
‘Are they the rulers of this world?’ I asked.
‘I don’t believe they come from this world at all,’ replied Charity, pulling off her boots and tipping water out of them. ‘There was no sign of them when Daddy and I arrived. But we had barely settled ourselves upon the island and begun to set up our chapel, than all of a sudden the fog was full of wings, and the horrid blighters came and shot Daddy with one of their darts and carried him away.’
‘Away to where?’ I asked. ‘My own friends were treated in the same rough manner. We must find where they are and rescue them!’
‘I don’t know,’ said Charity sadly. ‘They took him away on the back of one of those giant moths, I know not where. They would have captured me too, but luckily Mr Zennor rescued me.’
She indicated her strange companion, who was watching us from just outside the bubble. She waved her hands at him, flickering her fingers in a curious way and touching them to her mouth and various other portions of her person. I wondered if her dreadful experiences had made her go a little funny in the head. But Mr Zennor seemed quite unpert
urbed. His lure flashed brightly, and he turned and swam away.
‘Of course, Zennor’s not his real name,’ Charity assured me. ‘His real name is KrxckKckarrakkkaclkkx akka Xkaggoxka-akx Klllxklplx-atgnsl’xkkanklxlk’abhz nhahmak’k’ k’k’k’a-akkamkajrkrkkrkrkrkwkllukk KrxckKckarrakkkacl kkx akka Xkaggoxka-akx Klllxklplx-atgnsl’xkkanklxlk’ abhz nhahmak’k’k’k’k’a-akkamkajrkrkkrkrkrkwkllakk. But that’s a bit of a mouthful, so I call him Zennor, after the place in Cornwall. There are lots of mer-people in Cornwall, or at least there are in the stories. I grew up there. Well, I suppose I’m still growing up, but what I mean is that I used to live there. Daddy was the vicar of St Porrock’s near Morwenstow until he got his calling. He heard the Voice of GOD, you know, telling him to come out to Georgium Sidus and save souls. I must say, it’s a pity the Almighty couldn’t have seen his way to mentioning the moth-riders while He was about it, but He moves in Mysterious Ways.’
Charity Cruet was moving in a mysterious way herself while she told me all this. She had put her boots back on and made her way across the bubble to press her hands against the further wall. Then, reaching into a pocket on her frock, she withdrew a penknife, which she opened and used to make a long, curving cut in the skin of the bladder. We stepped through the slit she had made into the next-door bladder as easily as stepping from one room to another. And this inner bladder was very like a room, for Charity had furnished it with things which she must have salvaged from her father’s ship. There was a threadbare carpet on the floor, a cabin trunk, a small bookshelf, a brass bedstead and a portable harmonium. In addition, a tree of pinkish coral served as a hatstand and a huge shell filled with water made a serviceable washbasin.
I peered out through the transparent wall of the bladder, and saw merfolk moving in other bladders all about me. It was as if a great apartment house in London had been built with walls of glass so that you could see into every room. In one bubble a mer-mother was nursing her mer-children, in another an old mer-crone seemed to be weaving a garment of seaweed stalks upon a coral loom, while in a third a group of mermen were busy at some game involving heaps of shells. Each scene was illuminated by the glowing lures which dangled from the merfolk’s brows, so that the bubbles had a cosy, homely feel.