‘Do we have to?’
‘Do you want to live?’
I was going to explain in considerable detail exactly how much I wanted to live, but I didn’t particularly want to be smacked in the face again. So, to my eternal shame, I reluctantly obeyed the Terranean shrew.
I suppressed a shudder and choked back a tiny spasm of vomit as a femur plopped out of the leg when I pushed my own through. It was gruesome, but there’s no denying: this really was our only hope of survival. And surviving is my second favourite thing. My most favourite is surviving with a crisp, white fiver in my pocket. But I digress.
Suited up, oxygen tanks checked and working, we stepped towards the airlock. I say ‘airlock’, but it was actually an up-and-over garage door, wedged in place by garden gnomes.
Advanced Lunar Station Q!
We kicked the gnomes out of the way, the doors snapped up, the remaining air escaped with a terrifying whoosh, and the chicken Troy had squeezed out exploded with a squawk.
All we had now was the oxygen in our tanks, and our helmet radios were our only contact with each other.
Delores piped up: ‘ Leaving Advanced Lunar Station Q . . . And remember: Tufty says “When crossing the Moon, watch out for Moon monsters.” ’
‘Oh, highly amusing,’ I smiled through gritted teeth. ‘Thank you.’
Chapter Five
The Daybook of ‘Jenkins’ Jenkins, RQMS Royal Fusiliers (wanted in connection), Saturday the 5th of January, 1952
Feed boiler.
I eat the whole of that fast-motion biscuit, which turns out to be a mistake. I start racing round like Mussolini when he spots the enemy. I do get a lot done, but my heart’s thumping through my ribcage fit to burst.
I nip down to the village chemist’s in two and a half minutes. I would have gone faster, but the friction in my trousers was a worry. Old Mr. Gerber says he could rush the film through in four weeks. We haggle, and he decides two hours would be plenty. I put the revolver away. Course, I haven’t been able to get the bullets since 1949, but one sight of my well-oiled old Webley tends to encourage co-operation in even the most stubborn negotiator.
Quite keen to see that snap when printed up. I wonder who it might have caught? I has my suspicions, but I’m foresworn not to share them on these pages. It could raise some embarrassing questions round this place.
As I’m making such good time, I decide to pop into the Torso for a quick elbow-tilter, where I find Bill Blagstone celebrating. He’s just told his foreman exactly what he thinks of him, and where he can stuff his job, on account of what he thinks is a football pools win. I don’t have the heart to burst his bubble. But I do accept several pints.
Oddly enough, the drink doesn’t hit me like usual, and I get back to the lab in double record time. I have to stop every once in a while to scrape off all the insects splatted on my face, but then I’m off again, sprightly as ever.
When I get there, I find the Prof’s locked himself in the isolation lab. I press my ear to the door, but I can’t make anything out, before Himself bursts out of the door and hands me a list.
‘We need all of this right now, Jenkins.’
I studies it. A ton of nappies? Fourteen gallons of formula milk? Army size drum of talcum powder? ‘It’ll take a while, sir,’ I tells him. ‘Here they are.’
‘Too late!’ The Prof dashes off another note. ‘Now we need this.’
I studies it. Eighteen Dick and Dora books, a gross of wax crayons, and half a dozen potties. ‘I’ll have to go further afield for that lot, sir,’ I says. ‘Here they are.’
But he’s already handing me another note. I’m beginning to form an impression of what might be happening here. Four hundred and seventy blue exercise books, nineteen Fuzzy Felt kits, three train sets, a football and assorted dollies.
Mark my word, he’s growing people in there.
And he’s growing ’em fearsome quick.
Chapter Six
Franday the rth of Phobos, Martian Year 5972 Pink [cont’d]
Secret report to Martian Command, by Guuuurk, et cetera et cetera.
Walking on another planet’s surface seemed to excite the hopeless Terraneans beyond all reason, though of course to me, it was just another miserable hike over rocks and craters. Not that I’m comparing it to Mars, where the rocks are rockier, and craters infinitely more craterous.
‘I can’t believe it!’ Brian kept banging on. ‘We’re all actually on the Moon !’ Well, hooray and put out the flags. It was bleak, airless and dusty. Which, coincidentally, is a top Martian singing group. *
I must also register my objection, here, to the arrogant way the Terraneans call it the moon, as if it were the only one in the entire bally universe. It’s not even a particularly splendid moon, as these things go. Either of ours could knock it for sixpence. They also have the temerity to call their planet the world. What hubris! Everyone knows Mars is the world, and that’s a fact.
‘Hey!’ Troy was bounding around like a Mexican jumping bean who’s had too much coffee. ‘There’s a moon yacht tethered round the back here!’
This so-called ‘moon yacht’ turned out to be a battered old Morris Minor, with the back seats ripped out and replaced with huge accumulator batteries and a brace of queer-looking electric engines. I thought mournfully of my beautiful Maureen. Would I ever drive her again?
‘There’s only room for two,’ Brian pointed out.
‘Well, that’s fine,’ Dr. Janussen said. ‘It’s more efficient to split into two groups, and double our chances of survival.’
Immediately, my wily brain whirred into action. ‘Right!’ I said, skilfully seizing control of the situation. ‘Let’s pick teams!’
Dr. Janussen pursed her lips to say ‘OK’, but before she got past the ‘O’, I jumped in with ‘I pick Troy!’
The dreadful Terranean scold didn’t even bother to hide her disappointment. ‘Damn! That means I’m stuck with Brian.’
‘ Stuck with?’ Poor young Nylon’s face was quite a picture. Even through the glare glinting off his smeary helmet you could see he was utterly crestfallen.
‘I’m on Guuuurk’s team!’ Troy grinned. ‘Great!’ I would have taken delight in the notion that he was happy to be paired with me, but frankly, if a giant bolide came crashing out of the sky and incinerated us all in a fiery cloud of white hot death he’d have said ‘Great!’.
He pulled open the passenger door and craned inside. ‘Who gets the moon yacht?’
For an idiot, he had a point. That vehicle could mean the difference between life and death. I know Delores had been joking, but there really were Things out there – Dangerous Things you really didn’t want to meet out in the open.
Resourceful as aye, I lit on the notion of suggesting a game of Martian Closey-eyesy, a schoolyard prank that wouldn’t dupe a Martian toddler with a punctured head.
‘Martian Closey-eyesy?’ Brian asked, intrigued. ‘How does that go?’
‘Well . . .’ I relished the moment, ‘you see that distant ridge over there, in completely the opposite direction?’
‘What? That big pointy one?’
‘Nooooooo . . . a little to the left of that . . .’
‘Where the dust cloud is?’
‘A bit further along the horizon. Do you see it now?’
‘I think so. Is it the jagged one?
‘Yes, yes: the jagged one. See it?’
‘Yes! But where’s the Closey-eyesy bit?’
‘Oh, you don’t need to close your eyes now ,’ I chirruped, releasing the Morris Minor’s brake and waving genially as Troy and I drove off. ‘You’ve already lost the game!’
Hahaha. So long, suckers!
In the rear-view mirror, I could see the sad look of resignation and disdain Dr. Janussen was shooting at an even more crestfallen Brian, the poor sap.
Troy, meanwhile, was staring me down angrily, for some unknown reason. ‘Guuuurk – why did you pull me inside like that?’ He was genuinely cross. ‘I reall
y wanted to see that ridge you were talking about.’
The more discerning reader might be questioning the wisdom of my team selection right now. Well, my logic ran thus: should we encounter danger, the insect-brained mutant would make the bigger meal, so I could happily scarper off while they’re eating him.
I must say, the moon jalopy handled rather well. Almost – though I’d never admit it in front of her – as well as old Maureen. No atmosphere and low gravity certainly helped us pootle along quite nicely. I began to wish I’d brought my driving gloves and my favourite pipe. And perhaps even a blonde or two!
I steered us due north-east towards a promising-looking cluster of wrecks. They were further away than they first appeared, which I’m afraid meant there was no way of avoiding that most dreaded of all things: a conversation with Troy.
‘Do you miss Mars, Guuuurk?’ he crackled over his radio.
Not wanting to alert these Terraneans to my undying devotion to Mother Mars, I dissembled somewhat. ‘I don’t miss squatting down a dust hole. Or the diet of Martian dust. Or the perpetual dust storm. It’s the dust I don’t miss, principally.’
He stared out of the windscreen, surprisingly maudlin. ‘If I thought I’d never see our dear old abandoned fever hospital near Carlisle again, I don’t know what I’d do.’
I studied him for a great deal of time, to see if I could detect the slightest spark of irony, but there was none.
‘I mean,’ he went on, ‘you must want to get back home very badly.’
‘Obviously, as a loyal and honourable Martian, it’s my duty to attempt escape at every opportunity,’ I admitted.
He peered at me more closely. ‘You wouldn’t double-cross me and steal one of these ships back to Mars, would you?
‘I imagine your incredible strength and fierce devotion to Earth would easily thwart me.’
‘Would it?’
‘Please say it would.’
The lad suddenly jerked over to his left. ‘Wow! D’you see that?’
‘What?’
‘I just tried to go left, but I went straight on.’
I narrowed my top two eyes. ‘Yes, Troy. That’s because I’m the one that’s driving.’
‘Oh yeah. I got confused because the Moon’s usually in the sky. Not on the floor.’
‘Ye-e-e-esss . . .?’
‘Well, don’t you see? It means everything’s the other way round.’
Oh dear. Troy thinking . This is exactly what I’d been hoping to avoid. ‘I don’t follow,’ I said, rather foolishly pursuing the issue.
‘Well . . .’ He screwed up his eyes and concentrated as hard as he could. ‘If we’re upside down that must mean that your left is my right. And – therefore – you must be me because you’re on the left, so I’m you .’
‘I’m getting a frightful headache.’
‘Oh no! Should I take an aspirin?’
The more discerning reader will by now have given up trying to figure out why I selected my team as I did. I know I had.
‘Perhaps we should stop talking,’ I said, ‘to preserve our dwindling oxygen.’
‘You’re right! Look how the dials on our suits have gone down already!’
Great Deimos! If he wasn’t right about this! I’d absolutely failed to notice it really was draining very much faster than I expected. I floored the accelerator. It was all over if we didn’t reach those wrecks soon.
Very soon.
* Bleek, Hairless & Dusty have so far released 22 albums, including such number one smashes as: ‘The Emperor Ate My Family, Made Me Feel So Sad’, ‘Rockin’ Round the Rocks With Rocks’, ‘Dust Gets in All Six of Your Eyes, Unfortunately’, the classic ‘Boy – It’s Hot Here (Except When It’s Freezing)’, and their runaway hit ‘Kill the Accursed Earthlings With Death Rays (Then We’ll Be Dancin’ All Night)’. They were recently inducted into the Martian Hall of Imprisonment For Offences Against The Emperor.
Srce: Fragment from Martian Teen magazine Just 32, edition 4955
Chapter Seven
From the journal of Brian Nylon, 5th January, 1952 – Iteration 66
Troy and Guuuurk had headed north-east along the ridge, so we struck out north-west, directly across the plain, which would, according to Dr. Janussen, ‘Optimise our potential search grid’.
We made good time, covering perhaps five or six yards with each bound. We’d started off in silence. I was still chafing from her blatant disappointment at having me as her team member, and she was still stewing over the Closey-eyesy business.
Finally, I snapped. Enough was enough.
‘I’m terribly sorry. Excuse me for bringing this up, but were you serious back there? About preferring Troy to me?’
‘It’s more efficient if we don’t speak,’ she countered coldly. ‘But to answer your question: it’s pure rationality. Troy is ridiculously brave, superhumanly strong and utterly malleable.’
I couldn’t let that pass. ‘I’m pretty darned brave.’
She let out a short sharp breath. ‘No, Brian – you really are not. Think of all the times you literally scream.’
Well, that was hardly cricket. Everyone has their quirks. ‘Well, I’m quite strong.’
‘Again: no.’
‘On the other hand, I do agree: I’m not very malleable. I’m extremely strong-willed.’
‘Shut up, Brian.’
‘OK.’
I bounded on in grumpy silence for a few minutes, which was foolish, really: there was so much I needed to talk to her about. A lot had happened in the last few hours, but my thoughts were flitting around from question to question, like an indecisive bee at the Chelsea Flower Show.
I desperately wanted to ask her just what it was she’d been going to tell me in the lift, and in the attic, but there were some things I had to get off my chest first.
‘I don’t blame you for loathing me, actually.’ I took a deep breath. ‘I’m not sure if you know this, but I’m the callous swine who turned poor Virginia into a subhuman cruciferous vegetable.’
There! I’d said it aloud, and I was glad I’d done it. I braced myself for her righteous and thoroughly deserved disdain.
Instead, surprisingly, she said: ‘You did no such thing.’
‘You don’t have to protect me. I’m not a child. The Professor told me everything.’
‘I have no idea why he’d say that, but Virginia did it to herself.’
I stopped in my tracks, panting. ‘What? What? ’
‘Keep bounding. She left you a note. I read it. I know I shouldn’t have, but I did. She said she was going to sacrifice herself to “literally beat the clock”.’
‘My word! Is that why she was climbing up Big Ben? It’s somehow connected with this Time Loop business?’
‘She thought so, I assume. She said it was the only way. That she’d seen what she called “the horrors” of the cellar, and it had to be stopped.’
I shuddered involuntarily. My own experience in the cellar had been petrifying. Of course! That’s what she’d meant in my riverside reverie: the tanks she’d spoken of weren’t military tanks, they were the bizarre tanks in which those horrifying spectres were trapped!
To think of poor Virginia down there, all alone, presumably experiencing terrifying phantoms of her failed future selves . . . And a thought occurred to me. ‘So . . . that’s why you were going down there when you rescued me: to see for yourself what she’d found there.’
Dr. Janussen nodded. ‘And what were you doing down there?’
Well, I’d started making a clean breast of things, I might as well go all the way. I sighed. ‘There’s something else I need to come clean about, Gemma: I’m a spy.’
‘Yes, I know.’
She knew ? But what did she know? That I was a spy for Churchill? Or that I was a spy for Quanderhorn? I had to be careful . . .
‘You know ?’
‘You and I are both spies for the International Scientific Ethics Authority.’
My courage failed me a
gain. ‘Yes, that’s exactly the spying I was talking about.’
‘I thought you’d forgotten about it, with the memory loss and everything, but obviously, you hadn’t.’
‘Ha! How could I forget the . . .’ What the deuce was it called? ‘. . . the International Ethical Agency Society . . . thing? And their lovely headquarters in . . .’ Oh Lord, why did I have to keep on talking? ‘ . . . New York.’
‘Geneva.’
‘. . . in Geneva!’ Shut up now, Brian, while you’re still getting away with it .
But Dr. Janussen wouldn’t let it go. ‘And the world-renowned scientist we report to is . . .?’
Confidence is everything when pulling off a deception. I went straight in with: ‘Thomas Edison.’
‘Who died in 1933.’
‘. . . when he handed the reins over to . . .’
Thankfully, she gave me a clue. ‘Albert . . .?’
‘Albert Speer!’
‘The Nazi architect?’
‘Albert Schweitzer . . . Albert Camus . . . Albert Quixall . . .’ Oh, God, Brian. What are you burbling about?
She put me out of my misery. ‘Einstein.’
‘Of course, Albert Einstein ! Why would a Sheffield Wednesday footballer be the head of the International . . . whatever it was?’
‘It doesn’t matter if you’ve forgotten, you clot. You really are the world’s worst liar.’
It’s sadly true. ‘I know. I’m terrible at it. Why the devil am I a spy ? I’m really not cut out for it.’
She gave me a look . . . I’d never seen it before, not on her . . . I’m not entirely sure what it meant – was it – dare I even think this? – affection? Whatever it was, it passed away again very quickly. But it made me feel rather . . . intoxicated.
We bounded on a while. I noticed my stomach was starting to growl. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten. I had a couple of tubes of chicken in my pocket, but the thought of squeezing them out and then, presumably, slaughtering and cooking them, didn’t appeal.
It was then I spotted it, not fifteen yards ahead of us. In case it was some kind of lunar mirage, I asked Gemma: ‘Do you see that?’ rather tentatively.
The Quanderhorn Xperimentations Page 17