The Ancient Starship

by Cerberus Jones

  ‘But they’re not a long-term investment, obviously,’ he said modestly.

  Charlie was speechless.

  ‘Well, I got in on investment banking during the Middle Ages,’ K’Torl shrugged. ‘It wasn’t hard to make a profit.’

  Amelia wondered what Callan would say if he knew …

  By lunchtime, the ballroom had been swept, dusted, aired out and mopped clean, and by nightfall it had been carpeted from wall to wall with gorgeous silk rugs. The walls had been hung with tapestries, and every table and chair was draped in the finest Egyptian linen. The tables were covered with gold-rimmed bowls and platters, and they in turn were filled with fragrant koshari rice, spicy meat, dozens of salads, sweet nut pastries dripping in rosewater and honey, fat dates stuffed with nougat and dipped in chocolate, and warm bread so soft and fresh from the oven it made you forget about everything else.

  As if that weren’t enough, K’Torl and Q’Proll had bought presents for everyone. Amelia still couldn’t believe the lapis lazuli necklace they’d given her. Charlie, in a red fez, was overjoyed by the perfect creepiness of a real ancient cat mummy.

  ‘Was this your cat, K’Torl?’ he asked. ‘Did you mummify it yourself?’

  ‘No,’ K’Torl laughed. ‘I’m more of a dog person.’

  James had finally put down his book of Ancient Egyptian astronomy charts and was dancing with Ms Rosby, who had hooked over one elbow her new walking stick with the head of an ibis. Arxish and the two other Control agents had arrived so relaxed that, in violation of their own protocols, they had turned off their holo-emitters and were reclining on sofas like Cleopatras – if Cleopatra had been a twelve-legged land squid (Arxish), a thin, curly-furred monkey-rabbit, or a giant wood louse.

  Q’Proll came and slipped her arm around K’Torl’s waist – they hadn’t been apart for more than three minutes all night.

  ‘So what happened to you, anyway?’ said Amelia. ‘How did you get out of your ship? That was like a magic trick!’ Then she caught herself, and added, ‘That’s if you don’t mind me asking …’

  ‘No, it’s quite a story,’ K’Torl said. He saw that Lady Naomi, Dad and Mum had drifted over to listen. Mary and Tom were too busy at the buffet table to care.

  ‘Well,’ he went on, ‘as you already know, I crashed. The Fourth Law damaged my ship before I escaped through the rift, and I had little control over it as I shot out into this galaxy. I flew on for thirteen thousand years, until I was pulled into this solar system by your sun’s gravity. I identified Earth as my only opportunity for survival, and managed to direct my ship into orbit. I was very weak at this point – I had been in hibernation for millennia, and though I had revived myself only a couple of decades earlier, I was out of food and badly hungry.

  ‘When I crashed into the sands of Egypt, the impact knocked me unconscious and when I awoke, the entire ship was encased in glass.’

  ‘Buried alive!’ Amelia said in horror.

  ‘Indeed,’ said K’Torl. ‘But by my very good fortune, I was in the body of a Saurestian fire crab at the time, and it was very easy for me, even in that state, to crack the glass and dig my way out of the sand.’

  Amelia swallowed. Crack the glass? It had been almost six inches thick in places! And digging through sand – how could he have survived?

  ‘I realised that the glass was a great disguise for my vessel, and was able to emit enough heat from my claws to re-melt the glass and seal up the pod again.’

  Charlie nodded. ‘Which is why it looked untouched when they found it.’

  ‘So there I was, on the surface of this alien world, a plume of smoke coming from the sand, and me all shaky with fatigue. Of course, I was soon surrounded by humans who had heard the crash. Poor creatures – imagine them there, trying to figure out what this big sign from the skies meant, and then seeing me crawling out of the ground in front of them. And as I was, all shining in my blue and gold exoskeleton, I looked like a giant scarab beetle. They thought I was a god. One poor fellow fainted of fright on the spot, while the rest ran away.’

  Amelia touched her necklace – a gold scarab beetle hung in the centre between the blue stones. Perhaps for K’Torl it had brought back memories?

  ‘I thought,’ he continued, ‘that they might have gone to fetch weapons, and honestly, I was so tired, I didn’t care. I just lay in the sand and rested. But the dear things – it turned out they had arranged a sacrifice in my honour, and they brought me all sorts of meat and honey cakes and wine. Far more than any of them could afford, of course, but I didn’t know that at the time. I just fell on it and ate the lot. I’ll always be profoundly grateful.

  ‘Well, they were all around me, clapping and singing, and it was very kind and welcoming, but obviously it couldn’t go on. Fortunately, I managed to snip a little hair from one of them – I believe he took it as a special blessing – and after I had eaten and rested enough to return to full strength, I simply flew away to a more isolated place, and reconstituted myself into a human body.’

  ‘But you were all alone,’ said Lady Naomi, her face full of pity. She glanced over at Tom. ‘No-one there for you, to help you survive.’

  K’Torl shrugged. ‘I am Munfeep,’ he said. ‘Being alone is how we survive.’

  ‘But you’re not alone now!’ Q’Proll chided, and snuggled closer into his side.

  ‘Ah.’ K’Torl turned to her. ‘But I’m not just surviving anymore, am I? Now we are together, finally I can begin to live.’

  Rolling his eyes and barely suppressing a gagging sound, Charlie dragged Amelia away.

  ‘I wanted to hear what happened next!’ Amelia protested.

  ‘I already know what happens next,’ said Charlie. ‘The same thing that’s been happening all night: they kiss and slobber all over each other for about an hour.’

  Looking back over her shoulder, Amelia saw that Charlie was right.

  ‘But still,’ she said, ‘I wanted to know how he got here, to the hotel, at the exact moment that Q’Proll did.’

  ‘Oh, I can tell you that.’ Charlie threw himself down into an armchair.

  ‘You can?’ Amelia sat in the chair beside him.

  ‘Yeah, he told Arxish he’d been hanging around the dig site since the archaeologists first found the ship. Like, a year ago or whatever. And then when Control’s advance team went in a couple of weeks back, K’Torl overheard them talking about the gateway.’

  Amelia snorted. ‘You mean it was Arxish’s own team that blabbed?’

  ‘I know,’ Charlie grinned. ‘It’s classic. Anyway, I’ve been thinking …’

  Amelia raised an eyebrow.

  ‘It’s about Q’Proll,’ he said. ‘She made herself human before she came through the gateway, right?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Amelia said, not fully paying attention. ‘I asked her about that. I guess she felt safer getting it done before she left home.’

  ‘But where did she get the human DNA she needed?’

  Now Amelia sat up straight. ‘You’re right – where did she?’

  ‘I’ve got a theory. Actually, I’ve got three.’

  Amelia nodded.

  ‘One,’ said Charlie. ‘Someone like Leaf Man who comes here all the time could easily get a bit of human DNA and sell it to whoever was interested.’

  Whoever was interested? Amelia thought. Who would be? Apart from the Munfeep, who were so rare they had been thought to be extinct, who would want human DNA? And what would they do with it? Were there alien scientists out there somewhere doing experiments with human genes?

  ‘Two,’ said Charlie, ‘there might be another human planet out there. Maybe because all life on Earth actually started somewhere else and just fell through the gateway accidentally back at the beginning of time, or maybe because that other planet started up a colony on Earth on purpose, or maybe there is just another planet out there with different DNA, but we kind of coincidentally look like the same species.’

  Amelia raised her eyebrows.

  �
��It could happen,’ said Charlie. ‘Parallel evolution. Like with lemurs and squirrels – different species, but they turn out the same.’

  ‘I can tell the difference between a lemur and a squirrel,’ said Amelia.

  ‘Whatever,’ Charlie said easily. ‘It’s not my favourite theory anyway; I was just trying to cover all the possibilities. So now we’re up to theory three.’ He leaned toward her. ‘I think that Earth is really the only planet with humans on it. But we’re also the planet with the most active gateway in the universe. So what if someone from our side has gone through? What if there is a human being out there, somewhere, lost in the universe?’

  All the hair stood up on the back of Amelia’s neck. It was possible. Very possible. She remembered Tom warning them so angrily the first time Charlie had tried to sneak a look down the gateway stairwell – he’d told them how dangerous the gateway was, how the wormholes were always shifting and how things could accidentally get sucked through. That’s how Grawk had ended up on Earth, after all.

  Then she thought of the space on her wall where that little locked safe door was, and the oil painting that used to hang over it – a portrait of Matilda Swervingthorpe, the original owner of the Gateway Hotel. She’d lived out here all alone … right up until she’d gone missing without a trace.

  ‘You’re right,’ she said slowly. ‘I think that’s exactly what’s happened, Charlie. Someone, at least once, has got lost through the gateway.’

  ‘What’s all this?’ said a laughing voice. It was Lady Naomi coming over to them with a plate of fruit. ‘You’re looking far too serious for a party.’

  Amelia and Charlie stared at each other. Someone getting lost through the gateway – and someone else spending all their time researching … or was it just searching? What was Lady Naomi looking for with that equipment? Or who? And was she searching on Earth, or some other planet? What had she hoped to learn from that ship before they found out it was Munfeep?

  Amelia’s head spun with questions. Like, what did Q’Proll mean when she’d said K’Torl had got lost before the gateway system evolved? And now she came to think of it, with the gateway right there only a short walk from the hotel, why was Lady Naomi’s research all being done in the bush in Forgotten Bay? How come she wasn’t travelling to different parts of the universe through the wormholes whenever she wanted? And also –

  ‘Amelia?’ said Lady Naomi, a little concerned.

  Amelia realised she’d been sitting there with her mouth hanging open, and shut it. ‘Sorry,’ she said quickly. ‘Just thinking.’

  ‘Thinking?’ said Ms Rosby, who was tottering by. ‘No time for that, my girl! Look over there – our dear Arxish has decided to give being Control’s most pompous snob a rest for the night, and he’s actually going to juggle for us. Come on – it’s the most dangerous sport on his home planet, and he’s rather good at it. You must see!’

  Amelia and Charlie turned, and there in a cleared space on the ballroom floor was one of Gateway Control’s Big Three on Earth, standing on his huge squiddy head, and waving all twelve tentacles in the air, each one holding a knife, a sword, a full glass of wine, or an egg. Around him, the other Control agents, K’Torl, Q’Proll and the rest of Amelia and Charlie’s families were standing in a wide circle. Ms Rosby started a slow clap and the rest joined in. Some started to stamp the floor in time until the whole ballroom throbbed with the beat. And then Arxish started to juggle …

  Lady Naomi’s face broke into a huge smile as she watched those flailing legs weave through the air faster and faster, Arxish’s balance and timing impossibly good, not a single drop of wine spilt, and still he went faster. Every now and then, one of the Control agents would give a shout of warning, and throw another object into the mix. There would be a little hitch and everyone would hold their breath, but then Arxish would get his rhythm back and keep juggling, now faster again.

  It was just like the Gateway Hotel itself, Amelia realised. Every new piece of information they discovered brought another three questions up behind it. Each new part of the puzzle they solved just turned out to prove that the big picture was so much bigger than they had thought. She wondered if they would ever get to the end of it – if it would ever be possible to understand the gateway itself.

  Lady Naomi gave a great whoop of delight and threw in a bunch of grapes. Arxish, driven on by the clapping and stamping around him, juggled faster again. And Amelia forgot all her wondering, and just enjoyed the crazy, impossible show.

  Amelia finished washing her hands at the sink and went back to put up her chair, wiping her hands on her uniform. Around her, it was the usual Friday afternoon chaos. Shani and Sophie F were still trying to do just a bit more on their self-portraits, whereas Charlie had packed up ages ago and already had his bag by his desk, ready to go as soon as the bell rang. The rest of the class were somewhere in between, washing paintbrushes, hanging art smocks and pegging up wet paintings on the line.

  Sophie T wove between the tables, narrowly avoiding being hit as Erik flipped his chair upside down and put it on his desk. She was so focused on not spilling the filthy paint-water she was carrying that she didn’t notice Charlie’s bag until she tripped over it.

  She let out a little shriek of dismay and went sprawling to the floor, landing flat on the paint palette she had in her other hand. The jar of water slopped all over Dean and sent paintbrushes scattering to the carpet.

  Amelia cringed as Sophie T picked herself up. The whole front of her uniform was now blotched with bright patches of colour. Her face was blotchy, too, but that was the red flush of fury. Sophie T turned to Charlie, her eyes flashing, and opened her mouth to yell.

  ‘Charlie, you –’

  The bell rang loudly. ‘All right, you lot!’ called Ms Slaviero. ‘Don’t forget your notes for next week’s excursion.’

  Charlie grabbed his bag, ignoring Sophie T completely, and headed for the door. Amelia gave her a quick, sympathetic smile, then followed Charlie out as Ms Slaviero grumbled cheerfully to Sophie T and Dean, ‘Come on, then. Let’s get you two cleaned up.’

  Outside, it was a perfect Forgotten Bay summer afternoon – the kind you wished would last forever. Amelia and Charlie began the familiar walk back up to the hotel.

  ‘The thing about Sophie T,’ Charlie said, ‘is that she’s always blaming someone else. She never admits it’s her fault. Like, how is it my problem that she’s stupid and clumsy? Oh wait, that’s right – because she makes it my problem. And another thing –’

  ‘Charlie …’ Amelia groaned. ‘Who cares? You don’t have to see her again until Monday. Can’t we talk about something else?’

  ‘Okay,’ said Charlie, easily. ‘I’ll tell you what I was thinking about when I was painting: the portrait that used to be in your bedroom. You know, of old what’s-her-name.’

  ‘Matilda Swervingthorpe.’

  When the Walkers had arrived at the Gateway Hotel, it was full of the original owner’s things, from up to a hundred and forty years before: massive pieces of wooden furniture, vases, books, artist’s easels and loads and loads of paintings. Most of the paintings in the corridors and library were of bowls of fruit and landscapes, but in Amelia’s room there was a huge portrait in a heavy gilt frame.

  The woman in the portrait had looked very kind, but there was something about the way her eyes followed Amelia around the room that was unbearable, especially when she needed to get changed. So Dad had taken Matilda Swervingthorpe away.

  ‘Matilda Swervingthorpe,’ Charlie mused. ‘That’s right. Because she was an artist too, eh? I was thinking about how your dad said she disappeared.’

  Amelia laughed. ‘Yeah, when he said it, I thought she must have got lost in the bush or fallen off the cliff.’

  ‘But now it’s obvious, isn’t it? She must have gone through the gateway. I wonder if Tom knows anything about it.’

  ‘I wonder if he’d tell us if he did.’

  Then up ahead, Grawk bounded out of the bushes, his p
aws covered in dirt. His fur was standing up, and a growl rumbled deep in his chest.

  ‘What’s wrong with him?’ asked Charlie, eyeing the not-quite-a-dog warily.

  ‘I don’t know. He’s been acting weird lately – like, eating all the time and being super grouchy. He won’t even let me scratch behind his ears anymore.’

  ‘He sounds like James,’ grinned Charlie. ‘Except for the ears bit.’

  Grawk barked at them both and then turned and ran up to the hotel.

  Amelia and Charlie knew better than to stand around wondering what to do. Without a word, they hitched up their school bags and began to run.

  It was a steep hill up the headland, and Amelia had a stitch in her side by the time they reached the gates to the hotel’s driveway. Grawk barked again, and Amelia saw he was standing beside a hole he’d scratched in the long grass off to the left. His tail was stiff and his ears were flat against his head. He growled again.

  Feeling spooked, and more than a little nervous of the usually friendly Grawk, Amelia slowly approached the hole. Lying in the dirt only a couple of inches below the surface was a bright white sphere about the size of a tennis ball. It gave off a low hum and was shining so intensely that Amelia couldn’t see its edges. Most amazing of all, it appeared – now that she looked more closely – to be not actually resting on the earth, but hovering a millimetre or two above it.

  She crouched down to study it, Grawk still growling beside her.

  ‘Wow!’ said Charlie, who immediately reached out to grab it.

  Amelia slapped his hand away. ‘Careful!’

  ‘Ow!’ Charlie looked at her reproachfully. ‘Grawk brought us here. He wants us to see it.’

  ‘He’s growling. Do you think he wants you to touch it?’

  Charlie ignored her and quite deliberately picked up the sphere. Instantly, his hair stood on end as though charged with static electricity, and currents of blue light swirled over the surface of the globe. A look of delight on Charlie’s face suddenly vanished as he jerked his head over one shoulder and stared behind them. ‘Who was that?’