Sister Ships and Alastair - Chapter 22

22. The Elephants Now Have the Stun Gun

Ant rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. He was staring at MISS APRIL from what described itself as the 1973 ELECTRIC SPACE SHIP COMPANY CALENDAR, which was sellotaped to the bottom of the bunk above him. A thoughtful crew member had made Miss April safe for Ant to look at by adding three pieces of chewing gum to the picture. Miss April was sitting astride what, by now, he could confidently identify as a Spatchcock Flange. She was looking far more excited about this than people usually were in Ant's experience.
He dragged himself out of bed, banging his head on the bunk; he weighed less than he should. The vessel was under lower thrust than it had been when he'd gone to sleep. A crewman snored above him. A number of other Miss Januaries, Septembers and Augusts were taped up round the walls, made Ant-safe with the addition of strategic paperclips, Blu-Tak and Post-It notes. From the size of their frizzy perms, they had been photographed in the early 1980's.
A perfect cuboid of immaculately ironed and folded clothes was next to the bunk. Attached to it, in very shaky handwriting, was a note: COMMODORES COMPLIMENTS J McNAUGHT. The clothes were his own, the ones he'd been wearing in Bedford while he'd run through muddy fields in heavy rain, scrambled over walls, struggled through elephant dung. They were perfectly, spotlessly clean. Even the pair of trainers sitting on top of them was immaculate. Ant had never, ever been able to remove ground-in dirt from a pair of trainers. Compared to this achievement, interstellar spaceflight was child's play.
Slowly, not turning the light up in case he disturbed the sleeping crewman, he began pulling on his clothes.
Ant's bunk had been donated by one of Jervis Bay's crewmen, who was currently sleeping in the cruiser's rec room. It was the size of a really large cupboard. It had running water and a space toilet of sorts, which Cleo had refused to use for some reason. All the plumbing facilities in the cabin bore long lists of things that should never, ever be put down them.

He could hear voices. The voices were arguing.

He pushed the door open a fraction. He could hear violent Russian yelling. Surprisingly, as Glenn Bob and Major Yancy were the only Americans on board, he could also hear violent American yelling.

Outside, the corridor portholes opened out on an immensity of stars.
"They're not stars, you know", said a voice far to his left. He turned, startled, to see Cleo leaning against a bulkhead at the end of the corridor, dressed in the same clothes she had come to New Salem in. They were perfectly, spotlessly clean.
He couldn't think of anything to say. "Not stars?" he said.
Cleo shook her head. "There aren't this many stars close to the Sun. Gondolin must be in the middle of an enormous asteroid belt. That's probably why it hasn't got any advanced native life. Once every couple of thousand years, it gets hit by a big one."
"Stop trying to figure out where Gondolin is, Cleo. If you find out and Alastair finds out you've found out and he catches you again, he'll take you apart to get the information out of you, and he will get the information out of you, and then the whole colony's lost."
Cleo shrugged, fished a brand new mobile phone out of her pocket and stared at it with an expression of immense sadness.
"You won't get a signal out here."
Cleo sighed, nodded, and continued to turn the phone over in her hand.
"Don't worry, you'll be able to phone home soon enough. We're back on Earth tomorrow." Ant yawned. "I didn't feel us coming out of hyperspace."
"Me neither. We were probably asleep. I only got back to the ship four hours ago. Lieutenant Farthing had to fly a Harridan back down Southside and pick me up."
"Elizabeth Ortega didn't bring you back to -"
Cleo shook her head.
"So you're not up for a tin star any more", said Ant.
Cleo smiled sourly. "Doubt it."
Ant blinked out into the dark. Gondolin was growing ahead of the ship, a silvery globe at which someone had flicked ink to make oceans. The ship was swimming through a sea of stars as if they were bubbles in black champagne. Some of the stars were moving faster than the others, like nearby scenery. In fact, some were moving particularly fast, in a three-dimensional constellation that resembled -
"Cleo, those asteroids are flying in formation."
Cleo shrugged. "They're probably ships. USZ ships, escorting us in."
"But isn't Jervis Bay supposed to be the only USZ ship stationed at Gondolin? What if those are US or Russian ships that followed us from New Salem?"
"Can I hear Glenn Bob", said Cleo, craning her neck to look past Ant through the open rec room door at the other end of the corridor, "arguing with Vladlena?"
"The sound of anyone arguing with Vladlena", said Ant, "is hardly surprising."

"I don't care whether you done given up on your own folks, I ain't given up on mine! My folks is ALIVE, and I am GOIN TO FIND EM -"

"You hyave nyot see your pyarents yeaten by blue yorganism! If you hyave see this, you understyand they are DEAD! DIGESTED!"

"What are they arguing about?" said Cleo.

"Nothing much. Some stuff about whether their parents are alive or dead." Ant clapped his chest. "I mean, I know Glenn Bob's parents. I'm surprised he's bothered at all."

"It's his parents, Ant. How would you feel if your parents were eaten by a blue amoeba?"

Ant looked hard at Cleo for a long, long time. Cleo looked away.

"BRACE FOR HIGH-GEE LANDING! ALL HANDS BRACE FOR UNEVENTFUL ROUTINE LANDING!" shrieked the wall speakers.

"I wish he wouldn't put it like that", said Ant.

The heat shields closed over the porthole as the ship nosed into the atmosphere. Ant stumbled through the hatchway into the rec room past snoozing crewmen and a furiously arguing Glenn Bob and Vladlena as the entire hull of the vessel shook with the stress of landing. There was a hideous grinding smash as the ship's landing feet touched down, then the heatshields over the portholes motored open again as a disgruntled voice sounded in the tannoy:

"MR. STARKEY, THIS IS A CRATER FILLED WITH GREEN LICHEN. GRASS IS NOT APPARENT. WE ARE IN THE ROUGH. YOU ARE ONE LANDING UNDER PAR. PLEASE PUT US ON THE GREEN, IF YOU WOULD BE SO KIND."

Ant smiled maliciously as the engines began struggling up to landing power again, and tottered sleepily for'ards towards the galley.

***

"I don't think Cleo's version mentioned the elephant, sir", said Ant.
"Elephant", said Major Yancy in candid disbelief. He wrote 'ELEPHANT?' down on his notepad.
"There was an elephant", agreed Cleo. "It slipped my mind."
"There was what I am reliably informed was an elephant", nodded Turpin. "It ate my Personal Orgonizer."
Commodore Drummond toyed with the plastic inkstand on his desk, which was in the shape of St. Paul's Cathedral and bore the faux-gold-leaf message GREETINGS FROM ENGLAND. "Elephants", he said, "in Bedfordshire. Well, I imagine this Global Warming phenomenon is to blame. They probably swam to England clinging to driftwood from the Continent."
"It was in a safari park", said Ant. "A sort of big zoo. Lieutenant Turpin parked his ship in it."
"It is true, sir", said Turpin. "My incompetence knows no bounds."
Commodore Drummond unscrewed the top of St. Paul's and checked his oil was still there. "This was a normal English elephant, I take it", he said, "not some sort of cunning NATO robo-elephant."
"We're sure", said Ant. "Cleo examined what was coming out of the back of it in some detail." Cleo glared at Ant.
The Commodore's private office, like most private offices on Gondolin, formed part of the Commodore's own quarters. It was large enough to hold the Commodore, but cramped when Glenn Bob, Vladlena, Ant, Cleo, Major Yancy, Lieutenant Turpin and Lieutenant Farthing had to share it with the Commodore, which was currently the case. Unlike any private room Ant had ever seen on Gondolin, it had a heavy, lockable steel door, which Ant suspected had probably started life as part of a spaceship. The door was covered with a collection of fridge magnets attached to notes saying things like RECALIBRATE SPATCHCOCK FLANGE, MRS. McNAUGHT'S BIRTHDAY 12 DECEMBER, GO TO ALPHA COMAE & PICK UP DRY CLEANING and WE COULD MAKE POWER FROM BURNING HUMAN WASTE! VERY IMPORTANT!
Major Yancy, the USZ Intelligence Officer on Gondolin, drew a large elephant doodle on his notepad. Next to it, he wrote THE ELEPHANTS NOW HAVE THE STUN GUN. MILITARY THREAT?
The Commodore nodded. "Meanwhile, Vladlena Matveyevna Ilyushina. You present us with a problem. By rights, we should be handing you back to Mother Russia, but conscience dictates otherwise. I believe you expressed a desire to stay here on Gondolin."
Vladlena sat up stiffly on the supply crate she was using as a chair. "I have change my mind. I wyish to claim polyitical asylum in state of Novaya Alyaska."
The Commodore's eyebrows raised. "Irregular, if technically legal. May I ask why?"
"They are Russian like myself."
"But they are not communists."
"I will tyeach them wyisdom of beautiful communist thought. Sergeant Romanov will listen. He is prime yexample of workying class Russian ccccchero."
Drummond looked across the table at Yancy with a face of mild amusement. Yancy cleared his throat. "Ah, I think the expression working class does not strictly apply in this case, miss. I would draw your attention to Sergeant Romanov's surname?"
Vladlena's jaw dropped, as if she had been told her father was a murderer. "Yis...yis boyar?"
"In communist terms, he is worse than just a boyar. Sergeant Romanov is the eldest son in the latest generation of a morganatic branch of the Romanov family. He is in fact one of a number of claimants to the Russian throne. As far as the inhabitants of Alyaska are concerned, he is the legitimate Czar of All the Russias. Do not ever dare tell them he is not."
Vladlena looked as if she would be physically sick. "But...but yis Sergeant..."
"Apparently he refuses to accept any higher rank", said Drummond. "Says if his colony is invaded he wants to fight in the front line with his subjects. Causes no end of trouble. Lieutenants keep saluting him. So...does this change anything?"
An internal turmoil was taking place in Vladlena. After only seconds, however, it resolved itself, and steel returned to her eyes. "Yabsolutely nyot."
"Jolly good. I'll arrange for a berth for you on the first Alyaskan ship to dock. In the meantime, you can share Lieutenant Farthing's quarters." Drummond looked sternly at Penelope. "She brought you home, so she can keep you."
"I'd like to skip forward again to the point where Lieutenant Turpin engaged the UFO", said Major Yancy. "You said it had flight characteristics superior to our own fighters."
Turpin nodded. "Superior to a Fantasm or an Aurora, even. Better than anything the Russians or Americans have."
Yancy looked at Drummond. "Well", he said, "I suppose we always knew this time would come."
"What time?" said Cleo, looking from Yancy to Drummond. "What UFO? I thought we all flew around in UFO's."
"We fly around in MiK Fantasms, Hawker Harridans, Phantomworks Auroras and Revere class cruisers", said Major Yancy. "The enemy craft, the bogey, was of unknown origin. Therefore it's an Unidentified Flying Object until further notice. And it couldn't have been American or Russian, or one of our own craft, unless someone had an experimental combat-ready prototype out there we're not aware of. Ladies and gentlemen, the facts point to the conclusion that the Saucerers have returned."
"The people who built the ship that crashed at Roswell in 1947?" said Cleo. "The one our own ships were copied from?"
Yancy nodded. "They seem to have improved on the original design. And I'm afraid they also seem to be hostile." He turned to Commodore Drummond. "Ben, we should be warning the Soviets and the Polaris Treaty."
Drummond threw his hands up in despair. "I've tried warning them. They think it's a trick." He paused a moment for reflection. "Maybe I shouldn't have tricked them all those other times."
"You made visual contact with the ship?" said Yancy.
Turpin nodded. "It was operating some sort of Greenglow / Podkletnov / Phantomworks saucer drive, just like our own. Strange configuration, though. Cigar-shaped, like the ship that Cleopatra and Anthony said attacked New Dixie. I didn't get close enough to spot any other features."
"I have here Mr. Singh's analysis of the damage it did to Penelope's ship", said Commodore Drummond, peering down at a sheaf of papers through half-moon-shaped bifocals. "Inderjit estimates the weapons technology in use was decades ahead of our own. The projectiles had a kinetic energy ten times higher than our own guns can throw out at the same estimated range. And it had that nasty trick of being invisible to targetting radar. We got away alive because we only ran into one of these beasts. If we get hit by a squadron, we are space junk."
"There was another thing", said Turpin, fidgeting as if embarrassed to mention something irrelevant. "When it brewed up, a big piece of its hull tore off and flew right past my cabin. Damn near killed me; had to swerve to avoid it. It had a sort of insignia on it. A sort of barry cross."
Silence settled across the room. Yancy's and Drummond's eyes were interlocked.
"Hunnenfeld", said Drummond.
Yancy nodded. "So the stories are true."
"I had a chemistry teacher once called Barry Cross", said Ant, and was ignored.
"Could you draw this insignia for us?" said Major Yancy.
Turpin nodded. "I've seen it once before. On Earth. But I can't remember where."
"I think it would be best", said Commodore Drummond, "if everyone apart from Lieutenant Turpin, Major Yancy and myself left the room at this point. Debriefing dismissed."
Ant searched mentally for a reason why he should be allowed to stay. On the other side of the room, he could see Cleo doing likewise.
"Run along now", said the Commodore. "That's an order."
"Erm", said Ant, holding his hand up and looking at Drummond. "Could I possibly come and see you later about something? Something important?"
Drummond nodded briefly. "Make an appointment with Mr. McNaught. Now, please, if you don't mind...?"
Reluctantly, Ant, Cleo, Glenn Bob, Penelope and Vladlena left the office, Penelope looking most reluctant of all. The steel door swung shut behind them. The wheel in the centre of it turned to lock.
"Well", said Penelope, arms folded, hugely put out. "Really."
"CLEOPATRA! ANTHONY!"
Ant and Cleo turned to be greeted warmly by a perfectly normal man neither of them remembered having met.
"Uh", said Ant.
"Erm", added Cleo. "Hi. Er. Who are you?"
The man was white, and dressed in a T shirt, jeans and trainers. The T shirt was red, and had VODAFONE printed across the chest. His hair was cropped close to his head.
"Actually", said Penelope, "I'm not quite sure I know you either."
The man grinned triumphantly. "Fantastic, isn't it. Took me ages."
Penelope peered closely at the man's face. "Put one hand over the right side of your face."
The man did so.
"Steve Deveril!" said Penelope in astonishment. "Is that some sort of rubber mask?"
"I cut my hair", said Deveril, as if cutting his hair were a major new scientific achievement.
"That's amazing, Steven...you look just like an Earthling."
"I just had it done", said Deveril gleefully. "I wanted to impress Cleopatra and Anthony."
"I'm impressed", said Ant, who was.
"You've even left the shop label sticking out the back of your trousers", said Cleo. "You look just like a real Englishman."
"I am a real Englishman", said Deveril, slightly put out.
"We hear you promised to get us some cheap uniforms", said Deveril to Cleo.
Cleo reddened, though only Ant could tell. "Erm. Yes. In a sense."
"Jolly good. Jolly good!" Deveril grabbed Cleo's hand and pumped it up and down like a car jack. "We've been getting some Earth money together for you, all we can spare. And Michelle Enlyfrith has been drawing up designs since first light. She's terrifically excited. We -"
Cleo's expression darkened, and everyone could tell. "Michelle Enlyfrith is designing uniforms."
"Yes. She's used up nearly all our stocks of pink tartan."
"Take me to her", said Cleo, "before more damage is done."