Starcross (5 page)

At last the train began to slow, and the auto-guard came stumping along the corridor and slid open the door of our compartment to announce, ‘Next stop, Starcross Halt.’ We traversed a last, dark, echoey tunnel through the heart of a mined-out boulder called Scarcity, and I watched my own reflection in the window and waited wide-eyed for my first glimpse of Starcross.

‘There!’ cried Mother, just as eager as I, kneeling at the window as the train shot out from the shadows of the tunnel. Even Myrtle raised her head a little.

Ahead we could see the end of the line, a tiny world of reddish mountains with deserts of pale sand flashing in the starlight. I felt a great wave of excitement, and then, almost at once, a wave of disappointment even greater. I could see the roof of a small station, but precious little else. Starcross was just another old mining asteroid pitted with ugly craters. A few spindly aether-trees clung to the uninviting crags, while here and there some fragment of old pithead winding gear jutted up like a gibbet. Where was Sir Waverley’s hotel? I wondered. For the only building I could see, apart from the station itself, was the ruin of some old mine-owner’s mansion, which stood among the spoil-heaps, stark white and empty windowed, like a gigantic skull.

Chapter Three

We Arrive at the Grand Hotel and Are Made Welcome by Its Mysterious Proprietor.

‘O
h, I declare!’ cried Myrtle, as the train bore us down a last long curve towards that dismal world, with its lonely cluster of station buildings. ‘We have been practised upon! Mr Titfer’s invitation was but a foolish prank, and we have come all this way for nought!’

I was inclined to agree. Even Mother seemed downcast. Then I looked again at the grim mansion, and saw that I had ‘
been mistaken. Some trick of the light – some passing haze or optical illusion – had made it look a perfect ruin. Indeed, it still seemed to have a hazy, wavering, insubstantial look. But an instant later it stood out sharp and solid, and I could not understand how I had been deceived. It was no ruin at all, but rather a grand, elegant building, standing on a curved sweep of promenade which overlooked one of those dry, dead basins of white sand, its lofty Gothick turrets reaching up through the asteroid’s thin atmosphere to touch the very tides of space.

The train descended a last long incline, and came to a halt beside a station platform with a painted canopy, hanging baskets full of song flowers, and its name,
STARCROSS HALT
, picked out in white stones upon a bed of space thyme. I saw several liveried automata waiting on the platform to help us with our luggage, a three-legged water tower looking for all the world like one of those fighting machines the ancient Martians used to employ, and on a siding beyond it a small hand-car standing idle, with asteroid light glinting off its glass canopy. It was as pretty a station as you can imagine.

Myrtle, however, was still dissatisfied. ‘Mr Titfer promised us sea bathing,’ she said fussily, as we made our way to the door. ‘And yet there is no sea.’

I knew why she was so vexed. One of the big trunks which the auto-porter was heaving down on to the platform contained her new bathing costume, a very fashionable garment ordered straight from London, and I knew she had been looking forward to a little graceful swimming in it.

‘Perhaps the place is still under construction,’ Mother said. ‘I gather it is not unknown for these resort hotels to advertise themselves as their proprietors hope they will one day be, rather than as they really are.’

‘Perhaps Mr Titfer plans to import some sea from another, more watery sphere, and set it down in that dry depression in front of the promenade!’ I said, for I well
knew that all manner of things are possible in this great age of engineering and invention in which we live.

We stood on the platform and looked towards the hotel. Behind us the train snorted and let out a single, shrill hoot before chuffing onward, past the station and on to a turntable where it would be spun about, ready to begin its journey back to Modesty. The station-master automaton who had waved it on its way turned and strode to where we stood, bowing low as he reached us.

‘Welcome to Starcross,’ he droned, and indicated a black metal carriage which waited nearby, with a pair of mechanical horses standing ready in the traces. ‘The steambrougham is available to convey you to the hotel, or …’

‘I think we will walk, thank you,’ replied Mother. ‘We are all decidedly stiff after our journey, aren’t we, children? I’m certain the exercise will do us good.’

‘But do you not think,’ asked Myrtle, as we left the station and started along a winding gravelled path towards the hotel, the porters following with our baggage, ‘that the hotel has a rather silent, almost abandoned look?’

‘Oh, that is easily explained,’ said Mother, opening her purse and waving a thick buff pamphlet which she extracted from it. ‘I have consulted Crevice, and I gather that here on Starcross it is the middle of the night.’
⁹

We walked through the starlight of that sealess sea front, looking down over the promenade rail at where the bathing machines stood drawn up in a hopeful line at the edge of that bone-dry bay. About one hundred yards from the shore lay a knoll planted with shrubs and trees, and here and there on the slopes around the hotel stood spinneys of Martian
birch, and other ornamental plantings. All else was drear, dead desolation. It was a melancholic vista, and I felt quite relieved when we turned our backs upon it and considered a more cheerful prospect: the entrance of the Grand Hotel, where gas lamps were ablaze, casting a gentle amber glow down the red-carpeted steps. We climbed those steps, Mother pushed open the glass doors marked ‘Reception’ and we entered into a fairyland of gold and marble and gleaming Martian crystal.

Do you remember that poem which goes, ‘In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a sacred pleasure dome decree’? Well, Mr Khan would have been as sick as a dog if he could have seen Starcross,
because his old pleasure dome could not have held a candle to it for opulence and luxury. Fountains tinkled, chandeliers twinkled and startling works of modern art by Mr Rossetti and Mr Millais hung in gilded frames upon the walls. A herd of hoverhogs with the hotel’s coat-of-arms painted on their spotless flanks snuffled about amid the finery, the faint poot-pooting sounds of their exhalations drowned out by the gentle voices of hanging baskets full of song flowers.

‘Well!’ said Mother. ‘This is very grand!’

We approached the reception desk, a block of Martian mahogany polished like a mirror. An automaton behind it lurched to life as we drew near, and I heard clockwork whirr, and a needle drop on to one of the wax cylinders inside his head. But before he could speak, a human voice quite unlike the drone of an auto-servant, cried out, ‘Mrs Mumby! And Miss Myrtle and Master Art as well!’

A door near the reception desk had been flung open, and a large, ruddy gentleman with black side-whiskers, tinted spectacles and a bottle-green coat came hurrying out to bow low before us and kiss my mother’s hand.

‘Mr Titfer, I presume?’ said Mother.

‘The very same, dear lady,’ said the Titfer in question, straightening himself and beaming at us all, whiskers aquiver.
‘How very glad I am that you chose to accept my humble invitation. You’ve seen the promenade, I take it? As fine a stretch of sea frontage as a body could find anywhere in British Space.’

‘Indeed, it is most picturesque,’ said Mother. ‘Tho’ we could not help noticing the lack of –’

‘Oh, here at Starcross you will lack for nothing!’ boomed Mr Titfer. ‘You need only ask! My hotel has a great number of staff, all eager to do your business. Not nasty, fallible human staff, mind, who would forever be falling in love with visiting valets and stealing the cufflinks of the Duke of ——. No, every last maid and bellboy has been manufactured for me by Rain & Co. Why, even the manager is automatic! I am spending the summer here to ensure that everything is running smoothly, but once I return to London I expect the place to tick along quite nicely without any human guidance at all.’ He checked his fob watch, and said hastily, ‘But I must not detain you,
for it is very late and I am sure you will wish to rest after your voyage. The auto-porters will take you to your rooms, and at breakfast you shall meet the other guests. The sea should be back by then, too.’

‘Why, whatever do you mean?’ asked Mother, smiling sweetly, as if she expected him to make a joke.

But Mr Titfer was in earnest. ‘The sea, dear Mrs Mumby. I hope you do not think I had lured you here with the promise of a beach holiday only to make you look out at this dreary, desolate scene for your whole stay? No, no. My word is my bond. Starcross offers the finest sea bathing anywhere in the known worlds. It is simply that, ah, the
tide
is out at present.’