George Fox glared at the professor. ‘The enormity of what you have done still seems to evade you,’ he said. ‘And I can understand that you might harbour doubts as to my sincerity. So we will put it to the test. Descend the ladder now and depart the cathedral by the time that I have counted to ten, or I will fling you from the gantry to the tiled floor beneath.’
Professor Coffin shook his head. ‘George, George, George,’ he said to George, ‘what has become of us both? Such travelling companions were we. Such adventures we had.’
‘One . . . two . . . three . . .’ went George, and, ‘Four-five-six . . .’
‘Is there nothing for it, my boy? Must it come to this?’
‘Seven,’ went George. ‘Eight,’ went George. ‘Nine,’ went George.
And—
Professor Coffin yanked a pistol from his pocket.
‘Ten, I suppose it is,’ he said. And fired it point-blank into George.
44
Rackwards staggered George, a look of horror on his face, a smoking hole in the breast of his wedding suit jacket. He tried to utter words, but none would come. His knees gave beneath him and he sank to the boards of the gantry.
‘No!’ Ada screamed.
The professor turned quickly, for she’d been sneaking up behind him.
‘You too?’ said he, but then he said no more. Ada high-kicked the gun from the showman’s hand, swung about once more with her foot and swept the legs from under him. Professor Coffin lost his balance, clawed at the air, then with a scream that sounded scarcely human, fell to the cold tiled floor beneath. He struck with a sickening, bone-breaking thud and lay very still indeed.
‘George,’ cried Ada, springing forwards to her love and flinging herself to her knees. She lifted George’s limp-necked head and cradled it in her lap. ‘My darling George,’ she wept. ‘My darling, do not die.’
George could manage whispered words. ‘Give them the statue,’ said he.
‘The Venusians?’ asked Ada, tears streaming down her face.
‘Bring down the airship,’ George managed. ‘Crash it through the windows, haul the statue out and let whoever cares to take it do so.’
‘George, don’t die. You can’t die.’
‘Please,’ said George. ‘Just do it. If you can.’
Beyond the stained-glass window, Magonian cloud-ships drifted upon high. Twinkling spheres of light sparkled down from them. Parts of inner London now took fire.
‘I will not fail, George,’ said Ada. ‘But please do not die.’
‘I will try my best,’ said George in reply and with that fainted away.
Ada Fox gently eased George’s head back to the gantry planking. Rose, made a face of terrible determination and gave forth an atavistic scream. Then she tore away the encumbrances of her petticoats and bustled skirts, shed her jacket, ripped free her bodice and stood for a moment, a Valkyrie in corset and bloomers. A girl adventurer. Gorgeously tousled.
Ada climbed onto the scaffolding, shinned higher. Balanced on its highest cross-beam and then, upon no more than a wing and a prayer, flung herself towards the rail of the Whispering Gallery. Onto this fearlessly she climbed, then from there to a tiny door that led to the outside of the dome.
Alone stood Ada under troubled skies. Above swam Jovian spacecraft like horrid copper carp. Crackles of electricity leapt towards them from the Tesla guns. The stolen Lemurian airship hung close at hand, mere feet above the great dome’s peak. Moored by a heavy cable, but not an impossible climb for such a lady as she.
A wind was whipping up now and nesting pigeons all about Ada took to sudden flight.
The adventuress in the corset and bloomers wiped away tears from her eyes. A fierce determination electrified her body. Ada took to climbing up the dome.
It was vast and there was little purchase. A safe enough place to moor a stolen airship. Ada scrabbled higher. Great booms beneath announced that the Mark 5 Juggernauts were aiming their cannons aloft. Shells exploded over her head as some lethal firework display.
Ada noted with some satisfaction that the attacking sky-craft were giving St Paul’s Cathedral a very wide berth. Neither the ecclesiastics of Venus nor the burghers of Jupiter wished to harm the holy statue. In this at least she was offered some safety to go about her task.
With fingernails broken and fingers bloodied and torn, Ada gained the very summit of the dome. Wind lashed about her now, threatening to fling this frail form of a girl away into the sky. But Ada took a mighty breath and climbed up to the airship.
‘Airships?’ queried Winston Churchill. ‘Fleets of Martian airships?’
‘Seen over New York five minutes ago,’ said Mr Nikola Tesla, ‘the message transmitted to my personal receiver—’ he held up same, a slim, flat box of brass with many buttons, ‘—via trans-Atlantic wireless telecommunication. I have installed communicating devices in Ten Downing Street, Windsor Castle, Buckingham Palace and the apartment of a lady named Lou, whom I met at the music hall.’
‘Impressive,’ said Mr Winston Churchill.
General Darwin cast covetous eyes towards the brass contraption.
‘How many Martian airships?’ asked Mr Churchill.
‘My contact counted fifty, maybe more.’ Nikola Tesla shook his head. ‘We may not win this war.’
‘We will win it,’ quoth Mr Churchill. ‘We will fight them on the beaches, in the parlours and up the back passages. We will never surrender. Some chicken, some neck. Some giblets.’
‘Still needs a bit of work,’ said Mr Tesla. ‘I am thinking to make my departure now, if you have no objection. I have been working for some months past upon a time machine. I think now might be the moment to test its capabilities.’
‘You do that,’ said Mr Churchill. ‘And if you get it working, come back yesterday and tell me about it.’
Mr Tesla carelessly thrust his personal telephonic communicator into what he thought was his trouser pocket, saluted Mr Churchill and left.
Mr Churchill chuckled to General Darwin. ‘An impressive feat of sleight of trouser,’ he complimented the ape. ‘Kindly lend the thing to me – I have to speak with the Queen.’
General Darwin offered Mr Churchill one of those old-fashioned looks.
‘Yes, all right,’ said Winston. ‘Perhaps after I have spoken with the lady known as Lou.’
The whistles on the speaking tubes now shrieked in ill harmony.
Winston Churchill shook his head and lit another cigar.
In the eye of a smoking hurricane, on the flight deck of the airship, Ada Fox acquainted herself once more with the on-board controls. Flying the craft would be easy, for the Martian pilot had unknowingly shown her how. First, release the cable that moored the airship. Ada flung the lever, shot the bolt.
The craft lifted rapidly. Ada Fox applied herself to steering the ship down. She felt that perhaps she might have but a single attempt at this. Crashing the airship through the stained-glass window might well rupture the gas bag. Hooking up the statue and hauling it out into the night was something that would have to be done speedily. There were perhaps terrible flaws to this plan. Insurmountable flaws.
The actual act of desecration, of destroying the beautiful window, meant very little to Ada. Windows, any windows, could be replaced. Balanced against all of the rest of London, the window seemed a tiny sacrifice.
But hauling out the statue was another matter entirely.
What if it was to be damaged?
What if she accidentally destroyed it?
And then a sudden thought came unto Ada. On the face of it, a terrible thought. A mad and desperate thought. An iconoclastic thought. What if she was to purposely destroy the statue?
Blow it up?
Smash it utterly to pieces?
Destroy it beyond all repair?
Surely then there would be nothing left to fight over.
Surely then the alien craft would simply fly away.
As Ada brought the airship low and backed it away from St P
aul’s, preparatory to taking a great rush forward at the window, she mused upon just what might happen if the statue simply ceased to be.
It was, if one thought about it dispassionately, only a statue. As the stained-glass window was really only a window.
A religious faith that was sincere and devout did not depend upon the existence of some manufactured object. True, the claim was that the statue had never been created. That it had always existed. But it was only a statue. Wasn’t it? Ada Fox took very deep breaths and clung to the controls. Haul it out, or smash it up?
A terrible dilemma.
But then, of course, Ada had seen the statue. Had witnessed its mind-rending beauty. Its absolute perfection. Its aura of the divine. Could she, Ada, really destroy such a thing? Did she have the right?
‘One way or the other,’ said Ada, ‘something is going to happen.’
She disengaged the air brakes, jammed her foot down onto the accelerator pedal and clung for the dearness of life as the airship thundered forwards.
Again there came a moment. Of silence and of peace. When everything happened in the slowness of slow motion. Serenely, with queer dignity.
The nose cone of the airship ploughed into the cathedral window.
Images of saints and stern apostles. The Christ child in his virgin mother’s arms. God Almighty clothed in golden raiment in the heavens. Noah in his wondrous ark and Samson as the pillars part. Angels at the dawn of man, the Architect’s celestial plan. Eve and Adam in the garden, tempted by the evil serpent’s charms . . .
. . . all rendered in a thousand glorious hues of tinted glass, struck and shattered by the airship’s entrance. Spiralling shards and fragments of the holy tableaus, rent and violated, torn and tumbling. Light of sky-borne fires flaring in about the vast intruder. The nose cone of the airship jamming fast. Engines dying at the touch of Ada’s hand.
What was to be done had to be done and as the Martian war craft gained the English coastline Ada scrambled down a landing line from the airship and ran at speed to re-enter the cathedral.
The devastation she had wrought was sickening. But Ada could think only of George. That she might do what she must do most quickly, then return to him and pray he was not dead.
Ada tore away the remaining canvases from the horrid inner temple.
Gauged the statue’s height and whether it might feasibly be hauled away without bringing down all the scaffolding upon it. And without bringing down all the scaffolding upon George.
There would be room.
A cable connected between the statue and the prow of the airship could, if pulled with sufficient care, ease the statue out, then carry it aloft.
Ada Fox did shakings of the head. It was all clearly ludicrous, the chances of actually getting the statue out without destroying it hopeless at best.
Ada slumped down and began to cry. It simply could not be done.
‘A little too much for you, my dear?’ The voice of Professor Coffin echoed hollowly in the vast cathedral hall. ‘But thank you for your work so far. I will take charge of matters from here.’
Professor Coffin had regained his pistol. He limped towards Ada, bloody of face, his left arm broken and twisted.
‘Allow me to direct,’ said he. ‘The cable you require is coiled within the statue’s hollow base. Kindly remove it and I will instruct you how to link it up. I am somewhat wounded, thanks to you.’
Ada hesitated. She glared at the professor.
‘Perhaps your husband still lives,’ crowed the evil showman. ‘Be advised that I will not hesitate to shoot you dead, should you play me false.’
By the light of the high church candles and the flaming braziers that flanked the passive statue of the beautiful Sayito, Ada swung open the stone doors at the statue’s base, dragged out the heavy cable, did as the professor ordered. Followed his instructions.
Instructed simply to ‘fire when ready’ all about London, gunners trained their weapons on the sky. Chaos reigned above and great confusion. There was no doubt in the minds of the Earthbound gunners that the alien forces were now not only bombarding the army of the British Empire, but indeed each other. Terror weapons buzzed and flashed, cloud-ships fell and bulbous craft exploded. The devastation was spreading now across the face of London, for every wounded craft, no matter its planet of birth, fell upon the city spread beneath it.
Beneath the airship’s nose cone, Ada stood. Perspiring, bedraggled, utterly ravishing. The cable had been connected, the statue now could be dragged out into the night.
‘Well enough, young woman,’ said Professor Coffin. ‘You are truly of heroic stock and quite a beauty too. Why not throw in your lot with me? I was born to adventure and so were you. Together who knows what we might accomplish. What marvels we might achieve.’
‘I would rather die,’ said Ada Fox.
‘That is exactly what I expected you to say,’ said Professor Coffin. ‘Your husband is dead and you must join him in this death.’
And so saying he aimed his pistol at Ada and pulled on the trigger.
45
Ada closed her eyes.
A shot rang out and echoed.
Ada did not fall.
She heard a thump, a clatter of steel.
She opened her eyes and beheld.
Professor Coffin was slumped on the floor. George stood over him, glowering down at the body.
‘I hit him with a scaffold pole,’ said George. ‘I think I might have killed him, but it is probably all for the best.’
And then George cried, ‘Ada!’ For Ada had fainted away.
He awoke her with a kiss, as any gallant knight would do. Her eyelids fluttered and her green eyes opened.
‘George,’ she whispered. ‘You are alive. You are alive. But how?’
‘Saved by this,’ said George Fox, and he pulled from the inner pocket of his punctured wedding jacket The Book of Sayito. ‘Its metal cover deflected the bullet. The force, though, knocked me out.’
‘The book,’ Ada whispered. ‘A miracle,’ she said.
‘That I would agree with,’ George said, ‘for I know full well that I did not put the book in that pocket.’
‘Oh, George.’ The two embraced.
Ada, tears in her beautiful eyes, said, ‘You must help me, George. Together we can move the statue, drag it into the open.’
‘No.’ And George raised a high hand. ‘Disconnect the cable,’ he said. ‘The statue must not be moved.’
Ada said, ‘Are you all right? The statue must not be moved?’
‘I had a revelation,’ said George Fox. ‘I have seen the light.’
Light as air, fast and deadly, Martian forces closed upon London. Mr Churchill had now pulled the whistles from the speaking tubes. He and General Darwin were into their second bottle of port, the map table upon which they lolled a matted tangle of colourful flags, with several stuck in the end of Darwin’s cigar.
The militarist and the monkey were all that remained in the war room. The elderly generals in their exaggerated uniforms had fled; Mr Tesla had gone to whenever he might have gone.
‘We are doomed,’ slurred Mr Churchill. ‘Damned unfortunate, as it happens. It will look bad on my record.’
General Darwin toasted Mr Churchill.
‘But you,’ Mr Churchill continued, ‘are my bestest friend.’
General Darwin broke wind tunefully.
Both were reduced to giggles.
But Martians knew not laughter, only vengeance wanted they. Vengeance and Sayito’s safe return. The Lemurian airships swept in low from the west, laying waste to everything before them. Guns and tanks and troops and British airships. Cloud-ships of Magonia and Jupiterians too. The devastation was epic. It was biblical.
‘A revelation,’ George Fox continued. ‘The book saved my life, do you not see? The book did it. It saved my life because it is my destiny to read it. That is what the prophecy said, that I would read the book and that the future of the planets would depend upon me.’ r />
‘But I do not understand.’ Ada clung to George now. The walls of the great cathedral shook with the shockwaves of explosions. Shrapnel whined. Mark 5 Juggernauts thumped at the sky. The heavens were in flames.
‘It is what I have to do,’ said George. ‘Now is the time – the time that the book should be opened and I should read from it.’