“God’s teeth!” he swore. Smythe and Wentworth looked at him in confusion. “Turn that thing off!” he commanded, waggling his gun at the machine.
Not wanting to inflame their employer’s wrath any further, Dashwood’s lackeys moved cautiously towards the sparking control console of the matter transmitter.
The machine wasn’t running as it had before. Whether it was as a result of something Ulysses had done to sabotage the Sphere, or thanks to one of Dashwood’s poorly-aimed shots in the dark, something was most definitely wrong with Oddfellow’s invention.
There was something feral and untamed about the arcs of lightning zigzagging between the crazily orbiting rings.
“Hurry up!” Dashwood bellowed.
And that was when Nimrod struck. He caught Dashwood firmly between the shoulder blades with the wine bottle, smashing it across his back and sending him reeling. As the villain stumbled forwards, Ulysses made his move. He flung himself out of the shadows and, catching both Smythe and Wentworth around the side of the head, brought their skulls together sharply.
Smythe reeled sideways, a silent expression of pain on his face. Wentworth slumped across the control panel, stunned. As he slid down the front of the console, he fumbled for purchase with a flailing hand and caught hold of a large, gleaming brass switch, and pulled.
Ulysses leapt from the control platform, sprinting past the bewildered Dashwood, covering the cellar with long strides, as the Sphere activated one last time. There was a sound like a thunderclap, deafening within the cellar. Blinding white light flooded the lab, burning Ulysses’ eyes even though they were closed. It was as if they had been caught at the very heart of a violent electrical storm, where the turbulent skies birthed their lightning progeny.
His ears hurt. His eyes hurt. His skin felt as if it were on fire.
And then the light was gone, leaving glaring after-images on his abused eyeballs, and the acrid stink of obliterated ozone in its wake.
Ulysses fought to open his eyes despite the pain. He could see nothing. The exposed skin of his hands and face stung.
He cast his gaze around the cellar, blinking all the time, and then he saw Nimrod. His faithful retainer’s eyes were watering and he looked as if he were suffering from a bad case of sunburn.
Cold realisation dawned.
He could see Nimrod. He could see the workbenches of the lab behind him. He could see the cloud of smoke left by the lightning explosion.
He looked around the cellar space again, hardly able to believe what he was seeing, or rather, what he wasn’t seeing. The reason he had seen nothing when he first opened his eyes, beyond the shadows sliding over his tortured corneas, was because there had been nothing to see.
Caught within the matter transmitter’s zone of influence, Dashwood, Smythe and Wentworth were gone. So too was the Sphere. All of them had disappeared – villains, Sphere, logic engine, all – teleported to God alone knew where.
Considering how Oddfellow’s machine had failed before, Ulysses wondered darkly whether their final destination had been anywhere within the physical realm at all.
FLASHFORWARD...
EMILIA TURNED AND, grabbing her father’s hand, ran. The old man stumbled after her, grunting and wheezing.
Ahead of them, Emilia could make out a figure – a man – beckoning to them from the entrance to the crumbling chamber, one hand outstretched towards them. Ignoring the terrifying creatures that had swarmed into the chamber with him at their head, she focused only on him, for he seemed to be their only hope now.
And then she was stumbling down the steps at the other end of the twisted walkway, still pulling her father after her. She caught a passing glance of a stubbly chin and a black leather eye-patch, and then the man took her hand and pulled her after him into the maze of corridors beyond.
They ran on, she knew not for how long. But as they ran, through the flickering pools of light produced by the shaking glow-globes, she took in the man’s mane of lank hair, his battered, poorly-made suit and his scuffed shoes. But still there was something familiar about him; his height, his build, even the feel of his hand in hers.
“Stop!” she shouted, as realisation dawned. “Stop!”
The man ran on, not once looking back.
“Stop!”
Emilia’s scream echoed away into the shadowed depths of the passageway. The man came to a sudden halt, still facing away from her. He let go of her hand.
“Turn around!” Emilia commanded.
And then, slowly, he did so.
Emilia gasped, putting a hand to her mouth. A feeble whimper escaped her father’s rheumy lips.
He might look like little better than a tramp, his hair long and unkempt, his chin covered with fine grey stubble and one scarred eye-socket covered by a black leather eye-patch, but it was still unmistakeably him.
The butt of a pistol thrust from the top of his trousers.
She made a mad lunge and then the gun was in her hand, the safety off, the muzzle pointed squarely at the man’s face.
“Hello, Emilia,” he said. “Well, I kept my promise. I came back.”
NOW...
ALEXANDER ODDFELLOW RUBBED his eyes and then read the result of the equation displayed on the glowing green screen in front of him again. It didn’t change anything.
Behind him the infernal device throbbed with malignant power and he cursed the day, for the umpteenth time, that he ever sat down to create the matter transporter.
There was no escaping the facts, no matter how hard he might wish that he could. If they continued to run the Sphere as they were, the more the very fabric of reality would be weakened. Left unchecked, the final, undeniable outcome was inevitable.
Helter skelter. Total dimensional collapse. The end of everything. Ever.
And it would occur in twelve minutes, and counting.
Act One
Apollo XIII
June 1998
We are all in the gutter,
but some of us are looking at the stars.
Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan, 1892
CHAPTER ONE
Syzygy
T MINUS 9 DAYS, 23 HOURS, 12 MINUTES, 27 SECONDS
THREE HOURS AFTER curfew had sounded, a figure emerged from the inky blackness on the far side of the street in front of the cavorite works. The man paused and a face disguised by stubble peered up at the words painted on the wrought-iron sign over the factory gates.
He regarded it for a moment with his one good eye, an inscrutable expression on his lined and filthy face. The clothes he wore were just as much a mess as he was, marking him out as some kind of derelict. But a derelict was unlikely to have been carrying a crowbar and certainly wouldn’t have had a rucksack full of explosives on his back.
He had been watching the plant for days. And now that he had acquired all that he needed to complete his self-appointed mission from his criminal contacts, he was ready to make his move. Tonight was the night that Jared Shurin would pay for what he was yet to do.
Pulling his cap down firmly over his unruly mess of hair, so that its brim hid his face, shooting glances both left and right, he stepped out into the street. Atop one of the granite gateposts, a camera whirred as it rotated from left to right and back again. Choosing his moment carefully, the man darted across the street, pressing his back to the gatepost as the camera panned back across the street again.
Holding his breath, he waited, his heart thumping against his ribs. The moment the gates were out of sight of the automated lens, he clambered up and over, landing in a crouch on the other side of the gates.
Glancing left and right once more, and seeing no-one, he hefted the pack onto his shoulder and, keeping low, made for the barn-like structure ahead of him.
The growl – crackling and tinny – stopped him dead in his tracks.
The man remained frozen, eyes on the shadows ahead of him, as the guard dog walked stiffly towards him from out of the darkness. Its metal body gleamed dully in the light of distant street
lamps, the tap-tap-tap of its paws on the cobbles sounding like ball bearings dropping onto a pavement.
The man’s one remaining eye locked onto the glowing red lenses of the automaton’s optical scanners. The metal dog stopped, opening gin-trap jaws filled with gleaming steel fangs, the synthesised growl issuing from a speaker located in its throat.
Moving nothing other than his arm, the man put a hand into a jacket pocket and took something out, which he then offered to the dog. The automaton studied the proffered item and immediately stopped growling. The growl died in the attack dog’s throat and it promptly sat back on its haunches, wagging its brass coil stub of a tail.
“Good dog,” the man whispered, reaching for something from his pack this time. “Here, hold this. And don’t go anywhere.”
JIMMYING THE SKYLIGHT open with the crowbar, the infiltrator took in the long drop to the floor of the manufactory fifty feet below. The sounds of clanking machinery and bubbling cavorite rose to him from the depths of the building accompanied by the asthmatic wheeze of venting pressure valves. The processing shed was bathed in an insipid amber glow. There was a greasy quality to the muggy air rising. Carefully, he stowed the crowbar in his pack.
The plant was in operation twenty-four hours a day, as a result of the current political climate, even in spite of the curfew. After all, word was that war was coming, a scale of war unheard of before in the history of not only Magna Britannia but that of the entire human race. A veritable war of the worlds.
But, as some concession to the curfew implemented across the capital in the aftermath of the Wormwood Catastrophe, the Syzygy Cavorite Works only operated a skeleton workforce during the graveyard shift. Of the few men on duty that night – security guards, machine operators and cavorite smelters – none were within sight at that moment.
Easing himself through the open skylight, the man lowered himself on his arms. He hung from the window’s edge for a moment, feeling a twinge of remembered pain tug at his left shoulder.
Then, releasing his grip on the sill, he dropped the ten feet that remained between him and the suspended steel walkway, landing in a crouch, absorbing the force of the impact through his legs. Any noise he might have made was drowned by the ceaseless background hubbub of the processing plant itself.
Keeping low, the curlicue-ornamented railings of the walkway helping him remain invisible, he followed the bolted sections of the gantry as it traversed the length of the building, always heading towards the heart of the cavorite production plant.
Ten yards further on, the walkway became a flight of grilled metal steps. The man paused at the top and took something from his pack. It was hemispherical in shape, roughly the same size as half a chopped apple. Holding the black metal device against the railing with one hand, he flicked a switch with the other and the object immediately snapped flush to the metal as its mag-lock was activated. At the same time a tiny red bulb began to wink on and off repeatedly.
Giving the limpet mine one last look, just to ensure that it was working as it should, he scampered down the stairs two at a time, as quickly and as quietly as he could.
More suspended walkways and further stairs brought him at last to the steam-smothered factory floor and the cavorite production line.
The amber light was a product of the process itself – the ruddy orange glow of molten metals and other ingredients coursed along channels in the floor, or splashed in brilliant, glaring droplets from the ore buckets above.
Flicking the switch of a mag-grenade he tossed it into the air, where it abruptly changed direction, shooting sideways and latching onto the pivot of a bucket brimming with liquid metal.
He wiped a scorched and filthy sleeve across his forehead, smearing sweat and dirt across his brow. Sweat prickled on his back and soaked his armpits. Quickly, choosing between a pillar and a smelting engine for the location of the next limpet device, the saboteur finally plumped for the engine before taking shelter in the shadows on the far side of the shed, underneath another walkway secured to the rusting corrugated side of the manufactory barn.
There he waited, listening for any sounds that would betray the presence of an employee, or the tap-tap-tap of an attack dog’s approach.
Unable to pick out anything out of the ordinary – for a cavorite processing plant at least – keeping to the wall and the shadows, the man moved from the smelting works into the ever so slightly cooler atmosphere of the house-sized laboratory, where the combination of the various molten metals and other ingredients was controlled by Babbage engine-regulated machinery. This was also under the constant supervision and critical stares of human supervisors. For, as the old adage had it: To err is human – to really screw things up takes a Babbage engine.
It was here that he would really have to watch himself.
He could make out two of the supervisors on the other side of the vaulted dome. They were dressed in long-sleeved once-white coats and heavy, vulcanised rubber aprons. Large-lensed brass goggles masked much of their faces.
The two men were pacing up and down in front of a bank of steel logic engines, clipboards and styluses in hand. They were wholly oblivious to the saboteur’s presence within the laboratory.
Making the most of that fact, he darted from the gargantuan doorway that connected the two parts of the plant, ducking under a tangle of pipes. Using the cyclopean plumbing for cover, he approached the overseers’ position, clamping another limpet mine to one of the blistering conduits as he did so.
He was only a dozen yards from the cogitator banks now. The technicians monitoring them were still unaware of his presence, thanks to the background hubbub of the factory eradicating the sound of his footsteps altogether. And, of course, no alarms had been sounded, no security posts alerted to his presence within the plant. But that would all change in only a matter of minutes.
Heart racing, every sense alert and straining, his mind working overtime, he watched and waited for the perfect moment. If he made a move for the next chamber – the one where the finished cavorite was stored – the technicians would see him. But they stayed exactly where they were and time continued to tick by, to the point that the saboteur began to worry that the placated mechanical mastiff would be found by a patrolling security guard before he was able to finish his work.
If he wanted to hit Shurin where it would really hurt, he needed to get to the cavorite store. What he needed was a distraction.
Retreating back the way he had just come, he soon found what he was looking for. Taking the crowbar from his pack he forced it into the mechanism of a pressure valve in one of the criss-crossing pipes above his head and pulled hard. The metal twisted as the valve was wrenched open. With a noisy rush of venting steam, a thick mist soon filled the chamber.
He heard the startled cries of the two overseers and them hurrying towards him, even as he doubled back and snuck round behind them, throwing a last magnet mine behind the banks of Babbage engines as he did so. And then he was through into the cavorite containment chamber itself.
An ambient heat filled the chamber, emanating from the six huge crucibles that filled the cathedral-like space. The air was redolent with the coppery stink of hot metal.
As long as cavorite was kept at a temperature above sixty degrees Fahrenheit, and it remained in a liquid state, it behaved just like any other molten alloy. It was only as it dropped below sixty degrees Fahrenheit that its gravity-shielding properties exerted themselves. It was cavorite that made space travel possible. Without it, there would not have been any colonies on the Moon or Mars.
A grim smile twisting his lips, the saboteur set to work, every one of the vast crucibles acquiring a mag-locked limpet-mine.
When he was finished he opened his rucksack again and peered inside. At the bottom of the bag lay the crowbar, just one more of the magnet-mines, and a slim, black metal device, not unlike a lighter in form. Taking these items from the bag he cast the empty rucksack aside and considered his escape route.
Footsteps echo
ed hollowly in the vaulted space of the cavorite containment facility.
“Hey! Who are you? What are you doing here?”
He spun round to be greeted by the shocked expression on the face of a technician.
“What are you...”
The words died on the overseer’s lips as he caught the desperate glint in the saboteur’s remaining eye and saw what he was holding in his hand. Cold realisation dawned and he began to scan the chamber and the crucibles with rising panic.
“Dear God, no!”
“Dear God, yes, I think you’ll find,” the saboteur declared.
He flicked a switch on the last device and hurled it at the side of the barn in front of him, before throwing himself behind one of the massive cavorite containers.
The black hemisphere snapped onto the rusted iron bulkhead, its tiny red bulb flicked on, and the device promptly detonated.
Smoke and noise filled the factory barn and the technician staggered backwards, putting his hands to his face, as his companion joined him.
As the smoke cleared, the roughly man-sized hole in the side of the factory shed was revealed, all ragged metal edges and smouldering steel. But of the saboteur who had made it, there was no sign.
SOMEWHERE NEARBY A siren began to wail.
He could hear shouts now and the tinny barking of attack dogs. He didn’t turn back, but kept running.
The main gates lay a hundred yards ahead. To his right loomed the massive, cathedral-like structures of the cavorite works. It was time.
It his left hand he held the crowbar, in his right the detonator.
With a savage snarl, an automaton flew out of the shadows between two steel pillars, jaws open wide, its fangs snagging the sleeve of his jacket. As the man reacted, pulling his arm clear of the snapping gin-trap teeth, he lost his grip on the detonator and the device tumbled away from him, clattering across the cobbles.
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