CHAPTER 11
MOON ROCKETS
Not for the first time, Reginald Elephant wished he was smaller. It was true that his large size had many advantages, but it had more disadvantages. He hadn’t slept lying down since he was a calf, as a fully grown elephant would break ribs and cut off blood circulation lying too long on one side. He ate out of doors, as there were no restaurants in Port Isabel large enough to admit him. He had never climbed a staircase to the second floor, as stairs would not support his weight. His grocery bill was bigger and there seemed no end to his appetite so he always felt hungry. It was hard to be inconspicuous in a crowd as he towered over every other species but giraffes. He had broken more carelessly placed tails, knocked over more market stalls and created more potholes than anyone else in town. And he always seemed to be apologising for accidental damage.
Reginald was now faced with another size-related disappointment. He had opened a secret door in the rear of his old office in the burned out husk of what had been the Museum of Ancient Antiquities but was far too large to pass through. The privilege of exploration had fallen to Cecil Sloth. Cecil would be Reginald’s eyes and ears. He might be the first to learn what Reginald had spent a lifetime searching for: evidence of what happened to the owls and why.
As soon as the secret door opened, Reginald knew it had been made by owls. It wasn’t just that the door was owl-sized, it was the ingenious way the door had been hidden and the smoothness with which it opened after 200 years without use. They were masters of the machine. They could do things with gears, springs and leavers that no one had been able to replicate since. Their disappearance had plunged Port Isabel into a mini dark age. Innovation and invention had virtually stopped.
‘What do you see?’ asked Reginald, stooping to peer with one eye down the passage behind the secret door. Icy sleet began to fall causing the firebrand beside him to fizz and flicker. There would be snow tonight.
‘Nothing yet, just a passage cut into the hillside,’ answered Cecil. The warm light of his torch danced through the open door.
‘Don’t go down unless you’re sure it’s completely safe. It’s not worth the risk. It will all be here tomorrow so there’s plenty of time.’
‘I know you don’t really believe that,’ said Stanley to Reginald. Stanley and Elizabeth stood side by side between Reginald and what was once the office door. There seemed to be a new understanding between them, as if they had become more than friends.
‘Believe me, Stanley. It’s never worth the risk. There’s always time to be safe, to do it properly, to be prepared.’ He looked down wistfully at the tattoo on the tip of this trunk and remembered his dead classmates.
‘I see something,’ called Cecil, his voice resonating distantly off the smooth walls. ‘There’s a mosaic running the length of the passage. There are also lantern holders at regular intervals.’
‘Tell me about the mosaic,’ said Reginald, a tremor of excitement running though his voice. He knelt down in the icy slush at the entrance. It was too low to see down its length but he could hear more easily by kneeling.
‘It’s like the picture on the parchment that used to hang at the entrance of the museum, the one near the information counter,’ Cecil called back.
‘The one showing owls using machines?’
‘Yes, but this one’s much bigger. It’s a mosaic made from tiny tiles and it goes down the whole length of the passage. It’s a landscape. There are mountains, the sun and the moon.’ He paused. ‘That’s strange…’ Cecil broke off and they could hear hollow, scuffling sounds.
‘What?’ Reginald asked.
‘The moon has houses on it,’ said Cecil. He mumbled something Reginald couldn’t understand.
‘Did you say houses?’ asked Reginald. ‘Houses on the moon?’
‘Yes, more of a town, actually,’ Cecil called, his voice booming whenever he faced them. ‘But it’s hard to tell, it’s not very big so there’s not much detail. A town on the moon! I don’t recognise any of the machines. Some of them are large. Oh, I recognise one of them though...’ His voice trailed off.
‘Which one?’ Reginald longed to see for himself.
‘That big tall silver one with the pointy top that’s in the middle of the museum,’ said Cecil, distantly. ‘The Cylinder House, I think it’s called. The thing with the door outline at the top and the fish fin legs. The one that survived the fire.’
‘Are there owls inside it, Cecil, or humans?’ The purpose of the Cylinder House was unknown. Like everything else in the Museum of Ancient Antiquities it was made sometime in the distant past, somehow surviving the freezing and crushing forces of glacial ice. Its makers, materials and purpose were a mystery.
‘There’s an owl at the top looking out through a window or a door,’ said Cecil, hesitating. ‘It’s hard to tell but I think he’s wearing a fish bowl on his head. There are lots of owls watching the House and I think its flying.’
‘Flying? Did you say “you think it’s flying?”’ called Reginald. How he wished he could see the mosaic for himself.
‘Yes, there are red tiles that look like fire coming out of the bottom. Hey, there’s a word written underneath.’
‘What’s the word?’ called out Reginald, excited.
‘Roc-ket. It says “rocket”.’
‘Rocket?’ asked Stanley. ‘What’s, what’s a rocket?’
‘I don’t remember ever hearing, or reading, the word rocket, which is strange don’t you think?’ said Reginald, his brow furrowing.
‘How do you mean?’ asked Elizabeth.
‘Well, all animals are born knowing the Latin vocabulary, the common tongue, but the word rocket is not part of the vocabulary for some reason. Cecil could read it so it had must have been written in the Latin alphabet, but it’s not a word any of us have ever heard before.’
‘Maybe the owls made the rocket machine and then made up the word,’ said Elizabeth, pondering. ‘You said they were good with machines.’
‘You have a wonderfully insightful mind, Elizabeth,’ said Reginald, looking down at her fondly in the flickering torchlight. ‘Yes, they could have done just that. They would want a new word for their new machine.’
Stanley looked behind and out the door of the office, towards where the rocket stood in the dark. ‘The silver metal the rocket’s made from looks like the m-m-m..., looks like the m-m-m…’ His words locked up on the word ‘metal’. He tried again. ‘Like the m-m-metal arms I saw inside the, inside the ruins inside Razor Reef.’
Reginald looked up at Stanley. ‘So you think the ancient humans made the rocket, and not the owls? You could be right. I see no evidence in the literature that owls ever made a machine that could fly. Such a thing is clearly impossible by modern standards. It would be far too heavy. I’m afraid it’s another mystery.’
Stanley turned back and drew up beside Elizabeth. ‘But at least you now know that it’s, it’s not a house. It’s a machine called a rocket, a rocket that can fly if you light a fire underneath.’
‘Yes, you’re right to say so, Stanley. We now know what it’s called and we know what it does. Now we need to learn how it does it, who made it and why. More mysteries to keep us puzzling, I’m afraid. You open up one door and find two more behind. That’s the way it is with owls. But two out of five questions answered is a good start, don’t you think?’ He lowered his head again and looked up the passage with one eye, knees cold and aching. ‘Are owls using the other machines too?’ he called out.
‘Yes, lots of owls,’ replied Cecil, his voice echoing. ‘And there are humans too, but not many. Further down the wall, the humans are standing back watching. They look… curious. Wait, no… more afraid, I think.’
‘Any other animals?’ asked Reginald.
‘I’ll look,’ said Cecil.
They could hear Cecil padding down the passage, his torch periodically clattering against the wall. The passage was long and the noise echoed.
He sounded faint and distant when he next sp
oke. ‘No, no other animals, just owls driving machines and humans watching. I must be deep in the hillside now. The passage looks… old. There’s slime covering part of the mosaic and the roof’s collapsed a bit here. Hey, there’s a…’
‘A what?’ Reginald called. His knees were getting sore and he would soon have to stand. ‘Cecil?’ he called again. There was no answer, just the sound of scuffling.
Reginald turned to Stanley, then Elizabeth. Elizabeth looked worried.
‘Cecil? Are you okay?’ Elizabeth called through the opening.
‘Yeah,’ he called back, his voice was faint with distance but Reginald had good hearing. ‘There’s a door at the end of the passage. It’s heavy and made of metal. I was just trying to get it open. It has a complex latching system but I’ve worked it out. I’m opening it now.’
They heard squeaking hinges and a hiss as if the door had kept the room beyond airtight.
‘Be careful. Take your time,’ called Reginald, anxious.