Larklight

by Philip Reeve

  ‘We’ll drop you near Mount Ghastly,’ said Jack, turning to us again as his people started going past him through the hatch. ‘You can walk to Port George easily enough from there.’

  ‘Oh,’ cried Myrtle, ‘not more walking! We are so very tired of walking, and having hair’s-breadth escapes from certain death. Could you not see your way to putting us down in Port George itself, preferably at some spot nice and handy for the Governor’s residence?’

  The others, those that heard her, all burst out laughing, but Jack just scowled. Nipper patted my sister on the shoulder with a friendly claw. ‘Bless you, miss,’ he said, ‘Captain Jack can’t go nowhere near Port George! Especially not the Governor’s place, where all them guns and redcoats are! Don’t you know that he’s a pirate and would be hung in chains along with the rest of us if ever he were caught?’

  ‘A pirate?’ said Myrtle in a small, whispery voice. She looked up at the old ship’s flagstaff, high above, and saw the banner that flew there; night black, with a three-eyed skull and two crossed bones done in white upon it, billowing proudly in the lunar breeze.

  That was enough for her. It had been a long day, filled with spiders, moths and mushrooms, and to meet with real live pirates here at the end of it was the last straw. She gave a little moan and fainted, falling backwards into the claws of Nipper, who lifted her carefully and carried her through the open hatchway into the belly of the Sophronia.

  The inside of the pirates’ ship was a musty wooden cavern, stuffed with coiled ropes, barrels, hammocks, chests, ducts, lanterns, ladders, shadows, crates, coops, racks of tools, tethered cannon, heaps of shot, stands of swords and swabs and ramrods and a strong smell of tar and unwashed, inhuman bodies. Some underclothes had been pegged up to dry on a line, and I noticed that many of the pants had flaps in unlikely places, and several of the vests had many arms. I felt quite relieved that Myrtle was unconscious, for I did not think her delicate nerves could have withstood such an unseemly sight.

  Nipper laid her down on a heap of tarpaulins in a quiet corner between two of the wooden braces which strengthened the old ship’s sides, and all the other crewmen gathered round to stare at her. Seeing her laid there amid that crowd of weird forms made me think of a picture out of Grimm’s Fairy Tales, of Snow White surrounded by her dwarves. But although they all seemed touchingly concerned for her, Jack would have none of it.

  ‘Don’t stand there gawping like you’ve never seen an Earthlet before,’ he shouted. ‘If anyone saw that lifeboat fall there will be government ships on their way here soon. And for all we know that gunboat that chased us from Mars may still be on the prowl. We don’t want ’em to catch us on the ground, do we?’

  The crew all scattered quickly into different quarters of the vessel and began hauling on ropes, fitting poles into capstans, and generally carrying on like experienced old space dogs, all the while bellowing out a lusty shanty called, ‘Farewell and Adieu to You Ladies of Ph’Arhpuu’xxtpllsprngg’. I crouched beside Myrtle, and saw that, though pale beneath her coating of moon dust, she was sleeping peacefully. It seemed unfair to wake her, because I knew that she would simply hate the din and dirt around us, so I looked about, wondering where I should go, and noticed the blue, reptilian person called Ssilissa slipping through a small brass door at the back of the big cabin. I had a notion what might be in there, and I ran after her, catching the edge of the door as it swung shut and squeezing through without Ssilissa noticing me.

  Just as I had hoped, the door led into the wedding chamber – the alchemical engine room at Sophronia’s stern. Pipes, tubes and ducts snaked all around me, tangling over the walls and roof in a way which reminded me dimly of Larklight’s boiler room. In the heart of it all squatted the great alembic: the vessel in which the secret substances which power our aether-ships are brought together and conjoin in the chemical wedding.

  Now one of the things which I remembered from those reports of Jack Havock’s doings in the news-sheets was that a certain mystery surrounded his ship. The Royal College of Alchemists claimed that none of its members would stoop to perform the chemical wedding for a pirate, and yet the Sophronia sped about the aether quite happily in the furtherance of Jack’s crimes, moving at speeds which could not be achieved without both an alchemical engine and an alchemist to operate it.

  I felt giddy with excitement as I lurked behind the knots of pipework, waiting to see the rogue alchemist whom Jack Havock must employ.

  But to my surprise, blue Ssilissa was the only other being in the chamber. I watched with growing amazement as she pulled on a heavy leather apron and gauntlets, and lowered smoked glass goggles over her eyes. Then she stooped over the alembic, and opened the thick access doorway in its top – but what she did there I could not see, for a blinding light filled the wedding chamber and a strange sort of music began. Dark, wavering notes wove together in unearthly harmonies. The deck began to throb and shiver, and the pipes I hid behind started to grow warm. Frightened, I edged backwards, opened the door and slithered back out into the main part of the ship – only to feel a strong hand close on my shoulder.

  Jack Havock hauled me to my feet. His dark face had turned a few shades darker, and he said, ‘Spying, eh?’

  ‘No, sir!’ I protested. ‘Please, sir! I was only looking! I have never seen the chemical wedding before …’

  ‘Nor have I,’ said Jack, relenting a little and letting me go. ‘Aboard this ship the wedding chamber is Ssilissa’s domain, and the rest of us leave her alone there to do her work. You’d best do likewise.’

  ‘But she’s –’ I said. ‘I mean, she’s not –’

  ‘You thought only human beings could perform the chemical wedding, did you?’ Jack asked. ‘Only British gentlemen, indeed. That is what the Royal College of Alchemists would like us all to think. But it ain’t true, as you’ve just seen. Ssilissa’s got a talent for it. Speeding through the aether is as simple as walking to Ssil. Thanks to her we’ve flown rings around Her Majesty’s Navy.’

  ‘But how did she learn the secrets of the craft?’ I asked. I knew that real alchemists have great racks of books and tables of logarithms to tell them what quantities of the elements to mix, and to help them steer clear of asteroid reefs and avoid crashing into passing planets, but I had seen no such books in the Sophronia’s wedding chamber.

  Jack looked sly. ‘I’ve said too much already,’ he snapped. ‘She does know it, that’s all that matters. And she guards it as fierce as the College themselves. If I catch you snooping again I’ll give you to her, and let you see how fierce. She’ll cast you into the great alembic and let the dreadful elements bake you to a cinder!’

  He pushed me away and strode off along the thrumming, humming deck, shouting, ‘Weigh anchor, boys! Mr Munkulus, lay us a course for Mount Ghastly that won’t take us within sight of human eyes.’

  The Ionian touched a knuckle to his knobbly brow by way of salute and went swarming up a ladderway to a high platform where the wheel was mounted. The others heaved the capstan round, and as they heaved, the anchor chains rattled in the cable tiers and the Sophronia shuddered and lurched, leaping high into the sky. I felt as though I’d left my stomach behind me on the ground.

  I dashed to the nearest porthole, wondering whether I should awaken Myrtle. But she would only have started to drizzle on about the clutter and the peril we were in, and when I saw what lay outside the glass I suddenly did not want to have my first flight filled with her complaints.

  It was sublime! The Sophronia had unfurled her space wings and was flying very low, so that the Moon’s gravity still kept me on the deck. For a moment I could see our deep black shadow racing beside us along the white walls of the mountains, and then the mountains fell astern and we were soaring over flat, broken-up country where mushroom-trees grew in great profusion and herds of wild snails grazed peaceably on lawns of moon moss, their silvery trails stretching away across the plains like shining roads. A river wound down out of the highlands, growing wider and sh
allower as it snaked out of the twilight country and into the bright light of the Sun, opening at last into a shimmering lunar sea. I watched the slow waves for a while – the water was so shallow that you could see the sea floor quite clearly – and then, wanting to see more, I scurried to the front of the ship, where the kindly Nipper lifted me up so that I could look out of a higher porthole.

  ‘Where are we?’ I asked of him. ‘What sea is this?’

  ‘T’ain’t got no name,’ said Nipper, his huffly voice emerging from a slit in his shell, along with a faint smell of fish. Two round, honest eyes blinked at me from inside the slit; two more, on stalks, curved down to study me from above. I wondered what strange world he had come from. Some sea-moon of Jupiter, I guessed, where the natives took all sorts of peculiar forms.

  ‘No earthly name, leastways,’ he went on. ‘The fungus-folk call it something, no doubt, but nobody knows what. Not many of your kind have ever come to this part of the Moon. Unmapped, it is, and set to stay that way, for there’s far worse and stranger things than the old Potter Moth living up in those dusky hills behind us, ready to snatch any explorer who goes snuffling there.’

  Ahead of us, above the brightness of the sea, another range of hills appeared, and seemed to rise higher and higher as I watched; tall snowy summits poking up over the curve of the Moon. I recognised their jagged profiles from A Boy’s Atlas of the Solar System: Mount Ghastly and her neighbours Mount Horrible, Mount Vile and Mount Absolutely Beastly. Captain Frobisher must have been in a sour mood on the day he named them, for as far as I could see they looked no worse than any of the other mountains we had seen here on the Moon.

  ‘The prison colony lies on the far side of that big one,’ said Nipper. ‘We’ll soon be there.’

  ‘And are you quite sure it’s safe for you to fly so close to Port George?’ I asked, for I would not have liked our rescuers to risk capture and execution on our account.

  ‘Bless you, young Earth child,’ huffled Nipper. ‘Captain Jack wouldn’t have offered if he didn’t think he could fly you in safe. Don’t you worry – as soon as we’ve set you and the young Miss Mumby ashore Ssil will see to it we leave orbit so fast there ain’t a revenue cutter on the whole Moon that can catch us. We’re as safe as the Bank of Mars.’

  At which moment there came a loud ‘bang’, the entire ship quivered, and I saw a hole the size of Nipper’s head appear in the planking above us, and then another, still larger, in the opposite wall, as the cannon ball that had made the first hurtled across the cabin and smashed out through the far side.

  Chapter Seven

  In Which We Encounter the Gentlemen of Her Majesty’s Royal Navy.

  Moon wind burst in upon us, flinging ropes and papers about, tearing at my hair and clothes as Nipper hastily set me down.

  ‘What was that?’ I shouted, but the great crab was scuttling away. All the pirates were scuttling and scurrying, and once more it was only I who knew not what was happening, nor what I was supposed to do.

  I crept up some iron rungs which had been set in the wall close by, and gingerly poked my head around the ragged, splintered edge of the hole. The wind threw moon dust in my eyes, but my goggles were still around my neck, and when I pulled them up the first thing I saw was another vessel flying alongside. There was gold scrollwork at her bows; a white chequerboard of gunports stretching along her flank. From a mast upon her upper hull, the Union Jack flew out proud and bright in the lunar sunshine. I could even see sailors running about upon her top deck, manning a gun which went off as I watched with a white smudge of smoke and sent a second cannon ball whirring past Sophronia’s bows.

  ‘Huzzah!’ I cried, filled with patriotic fervour at the sight of our brave tars. Then I added, ‘Oh no!’ for I realised that rescue for me and Myrtle would mean certain death for Jack Havock and his crew.

  ‘Stand aside there!’ growled Mr Grindle, elbowing me out of the way so that he and the Tentacle Twins could patch the shot-hole with a sheet of oiled tarpaulin. ‘And keep your head down,’ he added, glancing back at me as he set to work with hammer and tacks. ‘There’s going to be a fierce old fight!’

  I looked behind me. Nipper and the others were hastily loading the Sophronia’s fat cannons with anything they could find – stones, coins, cutlery, old fish-paste sandwiches – and preparing to roll them up to the gunports. Up on the steering platform, Munkulus spun the wheel while Captain Jack stared intently into a brass periscope. He looked grim, and after a moment he stepped back and picked up his speaking-trumpet. ‘It’s no use, lads!’ he shouted. ‘We can’t outrun her. Heave to!’

  ‘Heave to!’ bellowed Mr Munkulus, relaying the order to Ssillissa in her wedding chamber. The Sophronia slowed, the song of her engines ending with a dying fall. She settled gently into the lunar sea, and above the creaking of her timbers and the lap of water I heard the wing-beats of the other ship as it swung over our heads. Jack’s crew were groaning, cursing and shaking their fists. Squidley and Yarg cooed softly, waving their tentacles in complicated gestures of mourning and despair. Grindle was weeping.

  ‘Rotten bluecoats!’ said Nipper bitterly. ‘They’ve followed us all the way from Martian space, and why? Because we took a few trinkets from a couple of Earthbound merchantmen, that’s all!’

  I ran to check on Myrtle, but she had slept all through the short chase, and she was sleeping still. As I rose from her side Captain Jack came hurrying down the stairs from his steering platform and passed close by me.

  ‘What are we going to do, Jack?’ called Grindle, embroidering his question with several foul curses which I shall not repeat.

  ‘Surrender, of course,’ said the young captain, very grim. ‘They’ll hang me for certain, but maybe if we give up quietly you’ll be spared.’

  His crew-beings all protested; they’d rather die fighting, they said, than see their captain taken. I felt much the same sentiment myself, even though I had known him but an hour or two, and knew that he was a most terrible pirate. He had saved me and Myrtle from the Potter Moth, after all, and I hated to think of him being dragged in irons to Execution Dock.

  I cried out, ‘Is there anything I can do to help?’

  ‘You?’ He glanced at me, incredulous. ‘Of course there ain’t!’ he scoffed. But then his eye fell upon my insensible sister. Myrtle is always at her best when she is unconscious. Her spectacles had fallen off, and she looked almost pretty, lying there all pale and swoonsome. Jack Havock frowned thoughtfully, tugging at the brim of his wideawake hat. ‘Or maybe there is,’ he said softly.

  He issued some orders, too quick and full of spacefaring jargon for me to understand. The next thing I knew, Mr Munkulus had grabbed a hold of me, and Nipper had picked up my sister again, and Jack Havock was leading us back up the twisty ladder to the steering platform, and on again up another, through a circular doorway in the ceiling and out on to the Sophronia’s star deck, which is the top part of the ship, open to the sky.

  The warship sailed past, wafting us with slow beats of its big, black, bat-like wings. Upon her star deck a group of uniformed officers had gathered, and a round, red-faced young man lifted up a brass speaking-trumpet and bellowed at us across the gap which separated the two ships.

  ‘Sophronia!’ he cried. ‘I am Captain Moonfield of Her Majesty’s Spaceship Indefatigable. I have orders from the British Admiralty to apprehend the notorious pirate Jack Havock. I advise you to hand him over, or I shall open fire.’

  Jack stepped up to the rusty handrail which ran around the Sophronia’s star deck. He didn’t need a speaking-trumpet. ‘I’m Jack Havock!’ he bellowed, and you could hear the echoes dancing off for miles across the sluggish sea.

  ‘Stuff and nonsense!’ exclaimed Captain Moonfield. ‘You’re just a boy! Let the real Captain Havock come out at once and talk to us!’

  ‘I’m Havock, all right,’ Jack hollered back. ‘And these Earth children here are my hostages! What do you think of that?’

  I saw telescopes glintin
g as they swung to point at me and Myrtle. Nipper shook my sister a little, to make it appear that she was struggling; Mr Munkulus used one of his spare hands to give the back of my leg a pinch so that I writhed about.

  ‘We’re leaving now,’ Jack vowed. ‘You try to stop us and this sweet young lady and her brother will both die. Fire on us, and I’ll blow the Sophronia to kingdom come, and them along with her.’

  This caused great consternation aboard Indefatigable. All sorts of telescopes and perspective-glasses were trained upon us, and I could see Captain Moonfield talking angrily to his officers, doubtless asking who these hostages were and why he had not been warned of this new complication. I wondered whether he was a kindly sort of captain who would have pity on us, or the sort who would put his orders and the good of the Empire first, and it made me writhe and wriggle even more to think that he might be the latter, and that I might die at any moment in a storm of shot and ray from the Indefatigable’s batteries of Armstrong guns and Rokeby-Pinkerton phlogiston agitators.

  But Jack, who must have anticipated the confusion his words would cause aboard the other ship, stamped once upon the Sophronia’s hull, and somewhere below us Ssilissa heard his signal and coaxed her idling engines to full power. The Sophronia shot forwards, the Indefatigable and the pale seas of the Moon dropped away beneath us at a dizzying rate, and behind us the thin air filled with the light and noise of the chemical wedding. As Jack opened the hatch and threw me through it I had a glimpse of the blue eye that was distant Earth whirling across the sky ahead.

  I missed the stairs entirely and fell, but it did not matter, for we were free of the Moon’s weedy gravity by then and everything not strapped down was floating about in midair. I tumbled harmlessly through an airborne Sargasso of clutter, while Jack, Nipper and Munkulus came floating down behind me. Myrtle’s legs kicked weakly amid a cloud of petticoats as she drifted free of the great crab’s careful claws. She turned upside down, and her skirts fell over her face, which woke her. Struggling her petticoats back into place and holding them down, she glared at us all as though she were the victim of some impudent prank. But even Myrtle could not ignore for long the alarming creaks and complaints that issued from the old ship’s timbers, nor the pallid, golden light that streamed in through every porthole, like evening sunlight shining through a mist.