“A man after my own heart!” said Tony. “Full steam ahead, Ivor! Warp Factor six and don’t spare the tachyons!”
The Time Train lurched forward, sending us all staggering for a moment. Ivor chugged loudly with effort, venting something very like steam from his funnel, and Tony darted back and forth, throwing the long steel levers this way and that, while keeping a watchful eye on all the various gauges. There was no real feeling of forward movement, but slowly the hangar began to slip away behind us, left behind as we moved forward into time. Molly and I clung to the sides of the cab and looked out past Ivor’s pointed prow as we headed inexorably toward Merlin’s Glass, still hovering before us and seeming to grow larger and larger, far past the point where the hangar should have been unable to contain it. There was nothing in the mirror’s surface; no reflection, no sign of the future we wanted…only an endless night, untouched by moon or stars. And then the Time Train surged forward, Tony hooting loudly with excitement, and we plunged into the Merlin Glass, which swallowed us up in a moment. At first, it was just like being in a tunnel. Darkness all around, while a single old-fashioned spirit lamp filled the cab with a warm golden glow. The only sound was the roar of Ivor’s powerful engine as we plunged on into darkness. And then, one by one, the stars began to come out; in ones and twos, then in dozens, then in thousands, until we were surrounded by great surging oceans of light. Now it was like passing through outer space, but nowhere any astronaut had ever seen. Instead of familiar constellations, there were great seas of stars, blazing with a light almost too pure and beautiful to bear. Comets sailed past Ivor, brightly coloured, like the sweets we loved as children, sweeping past in elegant arcs that contrasted sharply with the steady surging progress of Ivor the Time Train.
Strange planets passed us by, weird and uncanny, that had no place in any natural solar system.
“If this is outer space,” Molly ventured, “and I’m quite prepared to be told that it isn’t… how come we’re able to breathe?”
“Ivor has many talents and many secrets,” Tony said grandly. “You are quite safe, Miss Molly, as long as you stay inside the cab.”
“But where…exactly, are we?” I said.
Tony shrugged. “I’ve read all the books, but I have to say no one seems too sure of exactly what it is Ivor travels through. My grandfather, the last man to actually take Ivor out, said that this is what time and space look like, seen from the other side. Whatever that means. There are other theories, suggesting that Ivor travels through the universe below ours. Or possibly the one above. Believe whatever makes you feel safest, that’s what I say.”
I looked at Molly. “Conversations like this are why the family prefers to leave time travel strictly alone.”
“Pah!” said Tony. “They have no sense of adventure!”
“Hold everything,” said Molly. “What is that?”
We all looked where she was pointing. A great yellow shape was sweeping rapidly through the starry night, heading straight for us. As it grew closer, it revealed itself to be a huge yellow dragon. Disturbingly large, a hundred times the size of Ivor, it was a garish banana yellow in colour, with sickly pink markings up and down its long body. The head was blunt and bony, with a row of glaring red eyes set above a gaping maw packed with jagged, sharklike teeth. Vast membranous yellow wings bellowed out on either side of the bulging midsection. It had short grabbing arms set on the neck below the mouth, armed with vicious, curving talons. The dragon shot past us, silent as a nightmare, the massive wings barely flapping. The head turned to follow us, on the end of a long serpentine neck, and up close the head alone was bigger than Ivor.
“I’m still waiting for an answer,” said Molly. “Any answer. What the hell is that thing?”
“Well blow me,” I said, just a little testily. “I didn’t think to bring my Observer’s Book of Space Dragons with me. It’s obviously something that lives…here, and it doesn’t look too happy to see visitors. Let’s all hope very fervently that it’s eaten recently.”
“That is one big bastard,” said Tony. “Do you really think it might try and harm my Ivor?”
“Maybe it’s never seen tinned food before,” said Molly.
“It’s bigger than us, and it’s got really nasty teeth and claws,” I said. “I would lay good odds on its probably not being a vegetarian.”
“Is Ivor armed?” said Molly. “Do you have any weapons aboard?”
“There are any number of defence systems,” said Tony, looking at me. “Unfortunately, they are all situated back in the carriages.”
“Somehow I just knew it would all turn out to be my fault,” I said.
The dragon swung around and came flying straight at us again, the huge jaws grinning wider and wider as though it planned to swallow Ivor whole. It might have been roaring or howling, but I couldn’t hear anything. The utter silence made the situation even more nightmarish. I drew my Colt Repeater and fired the gun again and again, aiming for the massive head. Every shot hit home, but the bullets were just too small to do the monstrous creature any real harm. Tony slammed a long steel lever all the way home, using both hands to do it, and Ivor lurched forward with a new burst of speed. The dragon shot past us, impossibly large, and one yellow hand raked down Ivor’s black steel side. Great showers of silent sparks flew off into the darkness, as diamond-sharp claws dug long furrows in Ivor’s side.
He vented a long blast of steam like a scream.
The cab rocked from side to side, and Molly and I had to cling to the sides of the cab to keep from being thrown out. Tony shouted obscenities, and worked his levers furiously. Molly yelled at me.
“Distract the bloody thing, while I work on a spell!”
“Distract it? What do you want me to do, drop my trousers and moon it?”
“Just do something!”
I grabbed the side of the cab with both hands, and leant out for a better look. The huge yellow dragon was already turning around and heading back for another attack. I drew the Colt Repeater again, aimed carefully, and shot out the dragon’s glowing eyes, one after another. The terrible jaws stretched even wider in a howl of rage and pain I could sense, even if I couldn’t hear it. It was like fingernails down the blackboard of my soul. The dragon shook its head back and forth, as though trying to shake off the sudden pain and blindness, but still it kept coming, heading right for us. It just kept getting bigger and bigger, blocking off the view ahead, until its great yellow form filled the view before us.
And then Molly leaned right out over her side of the cab, stabbed a single finger at the dragon, and pronounced several very unpleasant Words of Power. The awful sound of the Words seemed to echo endlessly on the quiet, and the dragon suddenly didn’t seem quite so big or imposing. In sharp jerks and shudders, it shrank rapidly in size, becoming smaller and smaller, until by the time it reached Ivor’s cab it was no bigger than an insect. It fluttered around our heads, buzzing angrily, until Molly reached out and crushed it between two fingertips. And that was that.
Molly wiped her hand on her hip and smiled sweetly at me. “You should have remembered,” she said. “In space, all size is relative.”
“You scare me sometimes,” I said.
We carried on, through the space that wasn’t space, and saw many strange and wondrous things. Planets came and went all around us. One planet opened like an eye and stared at us coldly as we passed. Another had a dozen rings spinning around it, all circling madly at different speeds and in different directions. It looked like a great clockwork toy set in motion at the beginning of the universe, slowly winding down. Another planet suddenly opened up like a flower, and hundreds of long tentacles burst out of it, groping and grasping at Ivor, trying to lock on and pull us in. Tony sent Ivor plunging this way and that, with judicial use of his long steel levers, and skillfully evaded every tentacle that tried to curl around us. A few slapped harmlessly against Ivor’s sides, and Ivor seemed to shudder at the touch. But we soon left the planet behind, and it closed slow
ly up again, sulkily pulling its feeding tentacles back inside.
Another planet disappeared entirely as we approached, only reappearing after we were safely past.
I couldn’t tell you how long the journey took. There were sights and incidents enough to mark the passing of time, but there was no real sense of duration. It might have been minutes or days or weeks. I never felt tired or hungry or bored. But finally the stars ahead of us began to dance and swirl, churning around us in complicated patterns, finally coalescing into a giant rainbow below us, of such rich and vivid colours that they dazzled the eye. There were even hues and shades that had no counterpart in the dull and ordinary everyday world. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. Molly and I clung together for comfort in the face of something so inhumanly glorious, while Tony clung to Ivor.
“What is it?” Molly said finally, breathlessly.
“It’s the Starbow,” said Tony, his voice faint and awed. “I read about it in grandfather’s journal, but I never imagined…”
“I’ve heard of it,” I said, “but never expected to ever see it. They say you can follow it to the end of the universe, and maybe even to your heart’s desire.”
“Oh Eddie,” said Molly. “Could we…”
“Yes,” I said. “We could. But we have somewhere else we have to be. We have duties, and responsibilities.”
“Yes,” said Molly, not looking away from the Starbow. “If only…”
“If only,” I said. “Always the cruellest words. Tony, get us out of here.”
He poured on the speed, and slowly we left the Starbow behind us. And sometimes I think that was the hardest thing I ever had to do.
Finally Merlin’s Glass reappeared before us and we roared through it, and just like that we were back in the reality we knew, back in the future I’d seen before. The Time Train seemed to drop like a stone for a long moment, and then a great icy plain rose up beneath us, and the next moment Ivor was churning along through thick snow. Molly and Tony and I were thrown this way and that as Ivor’s speed cut back in vicious shocks and jerks. Tony wrestled his controls with both hands, shouting and cursing, and finally the Time Train slammed to a halt.
It was suddenly very cold, our breath steaming thickly on the air before us. My bare face and hands smarted from the sudden exposure, and I peered out the side of the cab, looking for familiar details. We were actually on the alien world this time, with its pink sky and three fiercely shining suns. The snowy wastes stretched away as far as I could see in every direction. Thin twists of mist turned this way and that on the freezing air.
“You bring me to the nicest places, Eddie,” said Molly, beating her frozen hands together and blowing on them.
“Hey, this is a whole new alien world!” I said.
“You couldn’t have picked a warmer one?”
“Well, we’re in the right place,” I said.
“How can you be sure?”
“Because I recognise the bodies,” I said.
They were just as I remembered them, dozens of dead men and women, scattered across the bloodstained snow.
“Giles Deathstalker’s work,” I said. “He’s a hell of a fighter.”
“Could be a hell of a mass murderer, for all you know,” said Molly. “Where is he, anyway?”
I looked around, but there was no sign of the future warrior. I had to wonder just how accurate Ivor and Merlin’s Glass could hope to be. We’d come a long way, and just a few day’s difference after…who knew how many centuries, was only to be expected. A lot could happen to a man on the run in just a few days, most of it bad. But…Ivor and the Glass were all I had, so I was in no position to complain. Molly and I climbed down from the cab and strode out across the blindingly white plain, our feet sinking deep into the thick snow with every step. It was bitterly cold, almost unbearable, away from the protection of Ivor’s cab, but the sheer effort involved in forcing my way through the snow soon had me sweating. Every breath seared my lungs, and my forehead ached like someone had punched it.
But it was still an alien world, with three suns burning bright in the garish pink sky. I pointed this out to Molly, but she just grunted, unimpressed, and hugged herself tightly, as though to keep any warmth from leaking out. I waved cheerfully at Tony in the cab, and he waved back, but showed no sign of wanting to leave his beloved engine.
I trudged through the snow towards the dead bodies. They were everywhere, hundreds of them, lying sprawled in awkward poses in the blood-soaked snow. Some were missing limbs, some were missing heads. Some had been gutted, hacked open. But up close, it soon became clear that my earlier identification had been wrong. These weren’t men in futuristic armour; their armour was a part of them. These people were some kind of cyborg. Man/machine composites. Steel cables and jagged pieces of technology projected from dead white flesh. Cameras in eye sockets, guns built right into the hand. No two of the bodies were exactly the same, but they were all clearly the result of the same process. They looked ugly as sin. Whoever had put them together had valued function over aesthetic. The faces seemed human enough, and the blood was all too familiar.
“Nasty injuries,” said Molly, lurching to a halt beside me. She leaned over one body for a better look, careful not to touch. “But no bullet wounds. These poor bastards have been hacked to pieces. If I didn’t know better, I’d say Mr. Stab had beaten us here.”
“Giles does seem to prefer the sword, believe it or not,” I said. “He was carrying a bloody big one the last time I saw him.”
“They’re using swords in the future?” said Molly incredulously. “When they have the technology to produce cyborgs like these?”
I shrugged. “Who knows what’s normal around here?”
I spotted a discarded gun lying in the snow, and bent down to pick it up. The gun was eerily light in my hand, for all its bulky size. It was mostly a dull green metal, crusted with glowing crystals and blinking coloured readout lights. But it had a barrel, and a trigger, so I aimed it out across the plain and fired. A searing bolt of energy blasted from the gun and blew a massive crater out of the snow a good hundred yards away. The ground shook under our feet for a moment, and Molly grabbed at my arm. All the snow above the crater had been vaporised, leaving thick spirals of mist twisting in the air.
I hefted the energy gun, grinning. “Oh, Uncle Jack is just going to love this.”
“If you can keep from blowing us all up,” Molly said dryly. “Put it away, Eddie. You can play with it later.”
I looked for a safety catch, but the gun didn’t seem to have one, so I just slipped it carefully into my jacket pocket. Molly knelt down beside one of the cyborg bodies.
“Do you think we should take one of these back with us? The Armourer could probably learn all kinds of things from the technology.”
I considered it, but shook my head firmly. “Feels a bit too much like body snatching, I think.”
“Wimp,” said Molly. She started to straighten up, and the cyborg grabbed her suddenly by the arm with one dead hand.
Molly yelled, despite herself. She tugged fiercely, but the cyborg had a death grip on her arm. I stepped quickly forward, and stamped hard on the cyborg’s chest. The armour bruised my heel even through my shoe, but the impact tore the cyborg’s hand away from Molly’s arm. It grabbed for my leg, but I’d already stepped back. Molly backpedalled away from the cyborg as fast as the thick snow would let her, cursing loudly. The cyborg sat up in the bloody snow and looked at us both with a dead, expressionless face. Silvery circuit patterns covered his brow and trailed down one side of his face. He raised one arm and pointed at us, and a thin black barrel slid smoothly out the back of his hand. I threw myself down into the hard-packed snow, and an energy bolt flashed through the air where I’d been standing, close enough that all the hair on my body stood up at once.
I rolled to one side and struggled to my feet. The cyborg rose up out of the snow in swift, jerky movements, already turning his head back and forth, checking for a n
ew target. And yet for all of this, I never once got the feeling that the cyborg was alive. The man was clearly dead, his eyes fixed and unblinking; it was just the built-in machinery that kept him going, probably set off by Molly’s proximity.
I subvocalised the activating Words and armoured up, the silver strange matter flowing all over me in a moment. At once I was insulated from the alien world’s cold, and I felt stronger, faster, sharper. I ran easily through the deep snow, heading straight towards the cyborg. It turned quickly and shot me at point-blank range. The energy beam hit me square in my armoured chest, and ricocheted harmlessly away. I relaxed a little. I’d been pretty sure the armour would protect me, but it was nice to know. I reached out, grabbed the cyborg’s gun arm, and ripped it right out of the socket with one burst of armoured strength. The cyborg rocked on its feet, but didn’t cry out and didn’t fall. It started to raise the other arm, so I tore that one off too. It still didn’t fall, so I grabbed its head with both hands and yanked it clean off.
The eyes stared up at me, unblinking. The mouth moved a few times, and then was still. I looked at the cyborg body. It stood in place, unmoving. I threw the head away.
Molly applauded, the sound flat and small in the empty quiet. “Hardcore, Eddie.”
“He was already dead,” I said. “Or at least, I hope so. Tell you what; let’s give the other bodies plenty of room, okay?”
Molly sniffed loudly, still hugging herself against the cold. “I don’t like this place. Really. My senses are supernaturally attuned to the natural world, to the energies generated by all living things…and I’m not getting anything. I know, I know, this is an alien world, but even so … I ought to be picking up something. I’m telling you, Eddie, there’s not a living thing here. Nothing. And not just here, in this place…you’ve brought us to a dead world, Eddie. These cyborgs, or whoever they were fighting, killed everything on this planet.”
“You can’t know that,” I said. “Might have been a dead world before they got here.”
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