Saucerers and Gondoliers - Chapter 16

Chapter 16
Fantasm

The Jervis Bay’s lifeboats were tiny saucers even smaller than Mr. Turpin’s had been, and they had had to do an elaborate dance to allow the fighter to be gently nudged and towed into the cruiser’s boat dock. The boat dock was small and cramped, only slightly wider than the fighter, and lifeboats, towing cables and men in patched and threadbare space suits had all been needed to squeeze the vessel in.

“We’re going to need to pressurize the boat bay before we can get you out of your vehicle”, said the voice in the console. “Hang on and don’t throw open your canopy just yet.”

The boat dock doors whined shut, and a gentle hissing sounded from the walls. Most of the cockpit glass was misted up with Ant and Cleo’s breath, but Ant could just make out a dial on the wall outside with a needle wobbling from zero up towards one thousand. When the needle reached one thousand, the voice from the cruiser said:

“All right, you can pile out now. Be careful, though, there’s one half gee of gravity in here, we’re under thrust.”

Ant punched out the canopy release gratefully, and tumbled out of the cockpit clean through the saucer’s wing, gasping for air. Cleo and Glenn Bob followed, Cleo kissing the steel as if it was holy ground.

“Oh, sweet English-speaking noncommunist deck”, said Cleo. “I will never again leave you.”

“Hmm”, said a voice. “It looks as if your oxygen recycler packed up. Bally good show we found you when we did.”

Ant looked up. He saw a pair of boots in military trousers, and a gleaming metal cane. Someone had pressed the trousers until hairs could be split on the creases. The voice speaking from above the trousers was the same one Ant had heard over the radio.

Then the man behind the trousers crouched down to look under the wing, putting his weight on his cane to do so, and Ant was able to see the top half of him for the first time. He was about the size of Ant’s father, but older, with an entirely white head of hair. He was wearing a tunic in the same blue-grey as his trousers, and was flanked by men wearing uniforms that looked similar, but less important. The less important men were carrying rocket rifles. However, this was not so bad. Ant was getting used to rocket rifles by now.

The important man tipped his cap at Ant. He took a pipe from the corner of his mouth.

“Permission to come aboard, Captain?” he said.

Ant looked across at Glenn Bob grudgingly. “He’s the Captain”, he said. “He flew the ship.”

The man saluted to Glenn Bob. “Pleased to make your acquaintance, Captain”, he said. “Star Commodore Bentley Drummond, commander of the Jervis Bay, at your service.”

Glenn Bob saluted back. “Right pleased to meet you”, he said, as if he didn’t mean it.

“And this will be the young Russian lady”, said the Star Commodore.

“Erm”, said Cleo. “I’m not really Russian. My family come from St. Lucia”, she said, as if this was a consolation. She curtseyed politely. Commodore Drummond bowed gravely in return.

Then, he straightened suddenly as something oozed around his trouser bottoms. He looked down, and twenty-four varicoloured eyestalks stared back up at him. Truman J. Slughound had somehow slithered silently off the fighter and coiled himself around the Commodore’s ankles. The Commodore’s bodyguard jerked into action, and the sluggie was looking down the barrels of several rocket rifles in under a second.

“Erm”, said the Commodore. “Does he bite?”

“Not unless you’re made of polypropylene”, said Cleo, giggling.

“It’s OK, he seems to like you”, said Glenn Bob. “For some reason.”

Commodore Drummond’s cheeks drained of colour. He stared down at the excited sluggie in horror. “Please”, he said, his face ashen, “please remove it.”

Glenn Bob came forward and whistled. “Bad sluggie! Bad, bad sluggie! Here boy, there!”

Truman J. Slughound unwound from the Commodore and propelled himself in the direction of Glenn Bob. The Commodore inspected his legs as if to check they were still all there, then hobbled forward on his cane and ran his eyes along the Russian saucer.

“Golly”, he said. “Gosh”, he added.

“He’s looking at it as if he fancies it”, whispered Ant to Cleo.

“Oh, I do, I do”, said the Commodore without a trace of embarrassment. “So this is what a Fantasm looks like close up, is it?”

“Fantasm?” said Ant.

“We call them Fantasms. The Red Star Fleet calls them Mikoyan-Korolev 1000’s. The only reports we’ve had of them so far have been as blips on long range radar. Usually the target doesn’t live long enough to report anything closer. Our boffins are going to love taking this crate to pieces.” He squinted at the pilot’s cockpit, which was misted over. “I say, is there still someone in there?”

Ant peered after him. “Oh yes”, he said. “Mr. Turpin.”

“Richard Turpin? Lieutenant Richard Turpin? The Highwayman?” The Commodore lost all his cool immediately. “Of course, I should have known if anyone would bring in a Fantasm it’d be Turpin. Outstanding man, Turpin. Is there any way to open this bubble from the outside?” He walked forward as if about to stoop under the saucer, then seemed to think better of it and turned and snapped at his subordinates. “Mr. Starkey, get a squad of men with cutting gear and a first aid team down here at the double before he dies of CO2 poisoning.”

He stepped back from under the saucer, took out a monogrammed handkerchief, and mopped his brow. “We’re close to our destination”, he said. “Please follow me. You’ll need to be strapped in for the final descent through the atmosphere.” He turned and swaggered off, leaning on his stick heavily. A door squealed open automatically to let him pass.

The soldiers motioned (with their eyes rather than their rifles, a detail that Ant found encouraging) for Ant, Cleo, Glenn Bob and Truman J. Slughound to follow. One of the soldiers leaned down close to Ant’s ear, and whispered:

“By the way - the Commodore lost ‘is left and right legs in an accident. Both ‘is legs is polypropylene.”

***

Ant fell into step beside the Commodore. “Excuse me, sir”, he said, raising a hand politely. “Did I hear you mention ‘Gondolin’ on the radio a few minutes ago?”

“You did indeed, and you’re all about to visit it.”

Glenn Bob pursed his lips, gnashed his teeth and set his jaw. It looked painful. “Sir, I must caution you that, as a loyal citizen of the United States of America’s Colonies in Space, I would feel myself duty bound to report the location of Gondolin should I discover it.”

The Commodore smiled at Glenn Bob. “Ah, so you’re USA, not US Zee, are you? We’ll just have to make sure you don’t go anywhere near a navigation chart, then, Captain.”

“I must add, sir, that in view of your gallant rescue of myself and my comrades, I would consider it a dishonourable act to try and discover the location of Gondolin there, sir. I only mean to draw your attention to the fact that I would feel duty bound to report Gondolin’s location was I to discover it accidentally.”

At all of this, the Commodore’s eyes narrowed. “You’re from New Dixie, aren’t you, Captain?”

Glenn Bob stuck his chest out proudly. “I am indeed, sir.”

“Then I take it you haven’t heard the, ah...news.”

Glenn Bob bit his lip. Cleo answered for him.

"We were there, sir", she said.

"Indeed?" The Commodore raised an eyebrow as he stopped to rattle the door of a compartment labelled MEDICINAL ALCOHOL STORE to check whether it was locked. "Then I take it you know it wasn't us."

"No", said Glenn Bob, fixing the Commodore with a stainless steel glare, "we don't."

"We weren't at the colony when it was, um, attacked", said Ant. "That's how we survived, I imagine."

“It must have been terrible for ones so young”, said the Commodore. “Any idea of the ratio of casualties to survivors, by any chance?”

“There were no casualties”, said Glenn Bob firmly. “My mom and dad are still alive.”

“Back up there a moment”, said the Captain. “How can there have been an attack without casualties?”

“There were no bodies”, said Ant helpfully.

“So”, reasoned the Commodore slowly, “whoever was responsible for the attack was interested in taking the bodies. Whether those bodies were dead or alive.”

“Alive”, said Glenn Bob defiantly.

“Quite, quite”, agreed the Commodore. "It was a Soviet attack, of course", he added, signing a sheaf of forms a crewman had run up to him with. "It was a Soviet ship that relayed the message that the colony had been attacked. Too much of a coincidence that a Soviet ship just happened to be in the area, you see."

"No", said Ant, shaking his head firmly. "It wasn't the Soviets."

"Then who?" said the Commodore. "Aliens?" Ant could tell that answering 'yes' would be a mistake.

"Who made the ship the Americans found crashed at Roswell?" said Cleo.

"We don't know", said the Commodore, heaving himself up a set of steps to a higher deck and grimacing as he did so, "that they found any such vessel. The United States of America tell us they found a crashed ship at Roswell, the Russians say they found one at Tunguska, and both say the other side copied their designs. To be quite honest, we don't know who to believe - if anybody! If either of them can convince us the science behind the saucer drives is alien, you see, we're less likely to try to understand it ourselves." He stopped, leaned over a tiny grille on the wall, and puffed into it with his pipe. Alarms sounded deafeningly all the way through the ship. "Smoke detectors working splendidly, Bo'sun", beamed the Commodore. "Well done."

Ant was contemptuous. "You mean you don't know what makes your own engines work?"

A crewman, who Ant assumed was the Bo'sun, pelted back down the corridor yelling "NO FIRE! NO FIRE! FALSE ALARM! FALSE ALARM!"

The Commodore looked after the Bo’sun. “Capital fellow, the Bo’sun”, he said. Then, he shrugged. "The Americans give us blueprints, and we copy them. Sometimes we...muck about with them a bit, and see what happens. But no - we don't really understand what makes them go. Nor do the Americans either, I think, for what it's worth."

"But I thought this was a USZ ship", said Cleo.

"Certainly it is. But it's a USZ ship from Gondolin. Gondolin's the thirteenth star, the thirteenth colony of the United States of the Zodiac. And each State of the Zodiac is an independent planet, and twelve of them are American, and we, as you've no doubt noticed, are British. The others are very suspicious of us." He tapped Ant and Cleo on the shoulders. "And don't think I haven't noticed you two are Britishers, too. You'll be from Her Majesty's Colony on Lalande 21185, I take it."

Ant blinked. "Erm - no", he said. "Northampton."

The Commodore blinked back. He removed his pipe from his mouth.

"You're from Earth?", he said. "Oh, my dear, dear fellows. How confused you must be!"

Then a pair of double doors opened in front of them, and Ant saw stars.

The bridge of the Jervis Bay opened on to space. The stars outside slithered across the windows in a way that suggested the glass they were being seen through was thicker than the glass in the average learners' swimming pool.

"CAPTAIN ON THE BRIDGE!" squawked someone, causing the entire room to snap to attention, though it seemed they had been concentrating fairly fiercely even before the Commodore had come in.

"Cease deceleration burn and bring her head round", he said. "Close heatshields."

There was a chorus of Aye sir's, and the Commodore motioned to Glenn Bob, Ant and Cleo to hold on to handles on the walls. A red light winked on saying GRAVITY LOSS, accompanied by a klaxon. Crewmen who weren't in their seats scurried to them.

Ant felt the jumping-into-water feeling of the ship closing down thrust. He had to hold on hard to the handles to stop his feet floating free of the deck. As the ship turned, the stars in the windows went out. Something bigger and far fiercer-burning was filling the sky - a nearby sun. Huge steel shutters began closing over the bridge windows.

"I don't recognize none o'they stars", whispered Glenn Bob to Ant. "We're a powerful long way from home."

Remembering that the Commodore had said 'heatshield', Ant asked: "Are we travelling down through a planetary atmosphere now, sir?"

Loud bangs sounded from the other side of the shutters. "Half the atmosphere's made of lumps of flying rock at this height", muttered a crewman.

The Commodore, meanwhile, seemed delighted that Ant had figured this out. "Why, yes. Most small ships, and some big ones, can land purely under their own steam, but big old lumbertubs like this one still need a little help from atmospheric friction, I'm afraid. Rather like your Earth 'Space Shuttles'. Danged dangerous contraptions to my mind. Sitting on a bally great firework, all the way up into orbit? No, give me a poorly understood mysterious alien propulsion system any day."

A crewman at the console cleared his throat loudly. "Ahem. We're through the outer atmosphere, sir."

"Very good. Open the shutters."

The heatshields wheezed back from the windows, and a few final chunks of airborne cinder bounced off the glass. There was a planet outside.

Gondolin, if this was Gondolin, was a world that looked as if it had been made with a pastrycutter. Circular seas, circular mountain ranges, circular island chains, plateaux and, in places, worrying lakes of fire covered the place from pole to pole, making it look as if someone had taken a map of the Moon and spilt water into its dry seas, making them real.

"What you see here, of course, is a heavily meteorited landscape", informed the Commodore, "formed by the erosive and depositive action of a Phobos-sized asteroid or two crashing into Gondolin once every few days or so." And as Ant watched, one did. Halfway round the planet, a searing white trail scuttled across his retinas and impacted into the landscape with a blaze of light. A ring of fire streaked out from the point of detonation, spreading out hundreds, maybe even thousands of kilometres. Ant felt sure that nothing beneath that glowing wave could live.

"As you can imagine", said the Commodore, "native life on Gondolin hasn't progressed beyond a primitive stage".

The ship was skimming above a wildly cratered landscape. Parts of it steamed like newly laid road tar, parts of it were piles of lifeless stone, but some parts were a patchwork of sky blue, sea green, sulphur yellow, blood red and deep violet.

"That's grass down there!" said Cleo. "It's green!"

"And water!" said Ant.

"It looks like a real, living planet, I'll grant you", said Mr. Starkey, staring at the landscape angrily, "but it's all lichen. A fingernail's thickness of lichen, over solid rock!"

"Mr. Starkey is correct", said Commodore Drummond. "The first explorers to crash land here had run out of drinking water, and their spectrometer told them there was fresh liquid water at the planetary equator. Unfortunately, the native species of lichen Instaraquae Saxiphagia reflects light in almost the exact same spectrum as pure standing water, and it grows only in desert regions."

"Did they die?" said Cleo, wide-eyed.

"They did not", said the Commodore haughtily. "One of them was Flight Sergeant Ronald Turpin of His Majesty's Royal Space Force. The others were Leading Aircraftman Winston Pink, Senior Aircraftman Bahadar Singh, and Flight Lieutenant Arthur Wellesley Drummond - who was, as it happens, my father. They survived by centrifuging the sweat from their own long underwear, and on such heroic endeavour is our colony of Gondolin built."

Cleo narrowed her eyes. "But you have proper supplies of drinking water now, yes?"

"Of course. All modern conveniences." The Commodore swelled with pride. "Why, in the Civic Hall, we even have a single flushing toilet. And we make our own soap. Out of lichen."

Ant and Cleo exchanged glances. This was not good.

The saucer was dropping down into the shadow of a range of ragged-peaked mountains, in the centre of which was a circle of brilliant emerald.

"Lichen", said Cleo.

But as the saucer settled down slowly on the gentlest whiff of power, the green was revealed to be grass, stretching away over rolling plains like a gentle dusting of down. There was a barely perceptible bump as the landing struts kissed the grass blades.

"We are on the green, sir", announced Mr. Starkey.

"Hole in one, Mr. Starkey", said the Commodore. "Now, Captain, if you and your crew will do us the honour of accompanying me, I'll show you around Gondolin."