The Quanderhorn Xperimentations

Chapter One

Hansard, 2nd January, 1952[10]

Mr. Somerville Hastings (Barking)

Would the Prime Minister care to explain what, precisely, is being done to deal with this astonishing spate of unbridled fornication and gluttony currently enveloping the country?

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade (Mr. Henry Strauss)

I share my hon. Friend’s concern. Fifteen pie shops in my constituency have been denuded in the past two hours alone!

Mr. Speaker

Order! Order! If the hon, Ladies and Gentlemen in the back rows do not put their clothes back on and stop what they’re doing immediately, I shall be forced to eat this enormous plate of cream cakes. Ummm. Delicious.

Sir Lynn Ungoed-Thomas (Leicester North East)

Will the Prime Minister tell us when, if at all, he intends to come and see the glowing meteorite behind Westminster Post Office?

The Attorney General (Sir Lionel Heald)

I concur with my hon. and learned Friend. Yes or no? We must have an answer! It’s imperative that – I yield to the hon. Lady. Ooh! Honourable Lady – please keep doing that!

The Prime Minister

Let me assure the Attorney General: we are not standing idly by. This very afternoon, I sent a messenger to mobilise the Armed Forces, only to discover they are rogering each other senseless all over Aldershot. But to be fair, they usually are.

Mrs. Bessie Braddock (Liverpool Exchange)

But what about the meteorite?

The Prime Minister

You may go and see the meteorite if you like, Mrs. Braddock, but you’ll still be a fat ugly old cow in the morning!

Lieut-Colonel Marcus Lipton (Brixton)

Has the Prime Minister yet called upon the services of the excellent Professor Quanderhorn, one wonders?

The Prime Minister

I should be delighted to oblige my esteemed colleague, if he could perhaps explain how, in the absence of working telephony, I might accommodate such a request.

Lieut-Colonel Lipton

In that case, might the Prime Minister at least cheer us all up by calling Mrs. Braddock a fat ugly old cow again?

Mrs. Braddock is ejected from the Chamber for striking the Honourable Member for Brixton on the head with the Mace.

The Debate ends as Prime Minister leaves the Chamber to take charge of the developing crisis personally. He is heard to mutter: ‘That reprehensible blackguard Quanderhorn is behind this, mark my words.’

Pandemonium ensues.

Chapter Two

From Troy’s Big Bumper Drawing Book

[PICTURE OF A STICK MAN WITH BIG SCRIBBLED BLOBS ON THE TOP OF HIS ARMS, LABELLED ‘ME!’]

Chapter Three

Franday the rth of Phobos, Martian Year 5972 Pink

From the Secret Report to Martian Command, by Guuuurk. Also known as ‘Guuuurk the Fastidious’, First Archimandrave (Removed) to Krrrrgg, the Quite Cruel, Driller of Holes in Unmentionable Places

Seventeen hours!

Seventeen hours hiding in a ceiling cavity with a bunch of hapless humans, a nest of woodlice and thirteen bats. And frankly, the bats and the lice were better company.

I had managed to save the feckless crew by making a hole in the ceiling (don’t ask me how!), selflessly shooing everyone up there before myself, and persuading Quanderhorn Junior to plug the gap with some of that vile gunk he constantly secretes from a gland in some peculiar place in his body.

It’s hard to decide what the highlight of the long tedious night was: the game of seven card stud using three slices of National Loaf as cards and woodlice as poker chips (I lost every louse I had to the stupid boy), or the indoor cricket, using real bats. The pitiful squeaking alone is enough to put you off your stroke.

Oh! I had also rather cleverly remembered to rip the huge radio set from the wall (plaster and all!) and haul it up with me (what a feat of Martian muscle!). But we dared not switch it on until the stroke of 9 a.m., when the Housewives’ Choice programme began, lest the revelling mob below us were alerted to our presence.

And, heavens to Betsy, was that mob revelling.

I tried peering through a crack in the ceiling, but it didn’t offer a sufficiently wide field of vision. Whatever they were up to, they were doing it with unbridled gusto, I’ll give them that. I heard several peculiar phrases being called out repeatedly, which I couldn’t adequately translate. I made fastidious notes of them for later, intending to check them against Jenkins’ forthcoming ‘little book’. To improve my vocabulary, I mean.

Troy, ravenous as always, had made himself a tongue sandwich. With his own tongue. Everyone immediately shushed his inevitable ‘Ow!’. It was getting close to nine, and we couldn’t take any chances now.

Brian glanced at his watch for the umpteenth time. ‘The parrot must have got there by now.’

I raised my second and fifth eyebrows.[11] ‘If he managed to find his way to London without being swooped on by birds of prey, or blasted out of the sky by one of your inbred aristocracy, and if he remembers the message correctly, and doesn’t just bowl up and regale everyone with an account of how much he likes Gemma’s bottom.’

Brian blanched and blushed at one and the same time. He practically resembled a barber’s pole. ‘For once and for all – I never said that! The bird just made it up on its own.’

‘Of course it did,’ Gemma smiled. Was I imagining it, or was she looking at Brian with surprising gentleness? ‘Brian…’ she began.

‘Yes?’ The lad sprang to attention like a puppy to a Bonio.

‘Just in case this… doesn’t work out…’

‘Yes?’ the young infatuate panted.

‘I feel I ought to clear things up a little…’ She reached into her pocket. ‘There’s something I’ve been meaning to—’

But Jenkins spoiled all our fun by butting in with: ‘’Scuse me, sirs and miss: it’s nine o’clock coming up.’

Quanderhorn, who’d apparently been dozing against the back wall, snapped immediately to attention and crawled quickly over to the radio. His hand hovered over the knob. ‘Ready?’

We lowered a wooden pallet over the loosely plugged ceiling gap and stood on it. If the horde heard us, we might keep them out for a few seconds, but no more. Though from the noises below, I suspect they wouldn’t have been disturbed by a kookaburra playing the cymbals perched atop a battleship’s foghorn at Krakatoa.

The Professor twisted the knob, and we all winced at the sound of the Greenwich Time Signal pips. Below, there was no obvious reaction. We held our breath.

‘This is the BBC Light Programme. And now, a very special edition of Housewives’ Choice, hosted by a Most Important Person…’

The familiar signature tune started up. There was a slight hiatus in some of the pandemonium underneath. We heard one or two footsteps shuffling towards the ceiling gap, and braced ourselves.

The strains of ‘In Party Mood’ faded away to the gruff, familiar voice every Martian child has learned to despise. The cursed Churchill himself.

‘Good morning, housewives everywhere.’

There was a groan and the rustle of script pages, and an off-microphone mumble of ‘Do I have to say that?’ After a garbled reply from the producer, Churchill continued. ‘Oh, very well.’

He began reading somewhat reluctantly. ‘I have a special request from a Professor Darius Quanderhorn’ (he could barely bring himself to utter the name without actually spitting) ‘to play a certain record…’

There came a scratching on the ceiling beneath us. It started to grow more urgent, and there were unearthly murmurings instead of the erstwhile frenzy.

‘Please turn up your volume knob to maximum and hear…’

He exhaled painfully and, off-microphone again, whined, ‘I know he’s just doing this to humiliate me.’ He exhaled once more, and forced himself onward.

‘Ethel Smith – brackets – First Lady of the Hammond organ – close brackets – play that lovely melody…’

Covering the microphone with his hand, he moaned, ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake!’ and finally announced: ‘Monkey on a String.’

Yes! Against all odds, the parrot had made it!

There was a violent thump on the ceiling, and we were rocked on the pallet, just as the perky melody blared forth from the nation’s radio sets.

It took effect almost immediately.

The thumping noises ceased, and were replaced by a cacophony of pained moaning and whining, and desperate cries of ‘No! No! Make It Stop!’ and ‘Not The Music! Please!’

Quanderhorn’s eyes burned with delight. ‘It’s working!’ He twisted up the volume.

On the radio, behind the music, we could hear a chair being pushed away from a desk, and Churchill declaiming: ‘No – I have absolutely no intention of saying anything concerning Gemma’s bottom! Whoever she is, and however callipygianous it may be!’ and the door slamming as he left the studio.

The opposing modal frequencies had done their job. The hung-over grumblings of the mob shaking free of their enchantment wafted up between the joists. It was going to be quite a disturbing shock for whomever came to and found themselves attached to Mrs. Wiggonby. And, indeed, there came the sudden desperate screech I associated with just such an event.

We were so caught up in the celebration we all quite forgot Gemma had been about to tell Brian something terribly important. We were not to discover the full horrifying consequences of the omission until it was far, far too late.

Chapter Five

From the journal of Brian Nylon, 4th January, 1952 – Iteration 66

The Professor thanked us all, but mostly himself. We crawled back to our rooms, all except for Quanderhorn, who rarely seemed to need sleep, and Jenkins, of course, who had a good deal of extremely unpleasant cleaning up to deal with.[12]

I tried to rest – I hadn’t had a wink in twenty-four hours – but my mind just wouldn’t stop buzzing. After four days I was still no clearer who I was or what the devil was really going on here.

I wandered back downstairs and snagged a notebook from the stationery cupboard. I thought somehow if I kept a journal I might be able to make sense of things just a little. Also, should my memory ever be wiped again – apparently a distressingly likely eventuality – the entries would yield valuable clues to my amnesiac future self. Sitting back down at my desk, I unscrewed the top of my fountain pen and began to write.

‘The journal of Brian Nylon…’ I stopped, staring at the script.

The note I’d found in my flight suit previously was my own handwriting. Clearly, it had been a warning to myself, and I’d be a fool not to take it seriously.

Of course, that note was ashes now. Feverishly I rifled though the shards of my splintered memory – what had it said?

Something about dangly boobs, I remembered that for some reason. Something else about a fellow named ‘Dave’? Or was it ‘Don’? And a reference to a fortune-teller. No, wait: it had actually said ‘Ellar!’ It seemed obvious now: the word was ‘Cellar’.

‘Don’? Done? Donkey? Don Quixote? Don Quixote’s down in the cellar? You never know in this place. There’s always some kind of bizarre danger lurking behind every…

‘Danger!’ The name wasn’t ‘Don’, it was ‘Dan’! I was warning myself about something dangerous in the cellar. The same thing that Mr. Churchill had portended. And just who might that other someone be?

There was a rap on the door. Instinctively, I went to stuff the journal between some clothes in my drawers, then I realised I didn’t have any clothes in my drawers, or anywhere else for that matter.

‘Just a minute!’ I called. ‘Just… winding my watch up.’ What a dismal excuse! ‘With no trousers on,’ I added. Which made it worse.

I ran backwards and forwards stupidly for a few moments, then jammed the tome under my mattress, struck an assumed casual pose on the bed and called ‘Come in!’

The Martian poked his enormous head around my door. ‘Brian? I thought I heard you moving about in here.’ He stepped in, notebook in hand.

‘Couldn’t sleep,’ I confessed. ‘You neither?’

‘Oh, Martians only sleep one year in seven. That’s why a full Martian breakfast has eighty-two eggs. And then you get constipation for the following six years. Listen, old boot: can you tell me what “tennis whites” are?’

‘Of course. It’s sort of white plimsolls, flannels and a white shirt and pullover.’

‘So, cricket whites, then?’

‘Yes. No!’

‘What’s the difference?’

‘Well, if you turn up for cricket in tennis whites, everyone would laugh at you.’

‘I seeeee…’ He clearly didn’t. ‘Only I’m giving lessons this afternoon to a group of sixth-form girls from St. Winifred’s.’ He turned to go, then poked in again. ‘Also, I need to know what “tennis” is.’

‘Actually, Guuuurk.’ I was aware I had to be very circumspect about my plans. He seemed like a pleasant enough fellow, but I still couldn’t bring myself to completely trust a Martian. ‘I was wondering if you could remind me which way it is down to the cellar…’

Guuuurk shut the door quickly. ‘You don’t want to go down to the cellar, old fruit,’ he hissed. ‘Remember what happened to poor old Virginia. Morning – face of an angel. Afternoon – huge pile of oozing broccoli.’

So Virginia had ventured down to the dreaded cellar. How had she got down there? ‘It’s that special lift, isn’t it?’

Guuuurk looked suddenly serious. ‘There are some things that, around here, you just don’t ask,’ he said under his breath. ‘Now then,’ he continued brightly, ‘I managed to hire a “racquet” from Jenkins, but I need to know a little more detail…’ He picked up his notebook and naughty pen again, sat down on my chair and crossed his legs like a shorthand typist. ‘Go.’

It was a very long night. When you try to explain tennis to someone who doesn’t understand it, very soon it begins to make no sense whatsoever. Particularly the scoring. And everything else. When we’d finished, I felt I knew considerably less about it than when I’d started.

Guuuurk eventually left, practising his forehand smash with what I couldn’t bring myself to tell him was actually a frying pan, and I finally felt very tired indeed. But just as I lowered myself onto the mattress, closed my eyes and began to drift into blissful oblivion, that annoying woman blurted out over the tannoy:

‘It’s 7.30 precisely. All personnel proceed to the briefing room immediately.’

Chapter Six

From the journal of Brian Nylon, 4th January, 1952 – [cont’d]

I couldn’t take much more of this. I dragged myself upright and staggered over to the washstand for a quick basin bath with rusty water and carbolic. As I’d burnt the remainder of my clothes, I attempted to rinse what I had under the tap and put them on again.

Pulling sopping Y-fronts up my cold legs, I envisaged any number of horrors that might be awaiting me. But there were no existential threats, no comets hurtling towards the Earth, no imminent invasions. In fact, the scene, when I arrived, was calm.

I sat on the radiator and steamed lightly.

Guuuurk was lounging in his whites – heaven knows where he’d managed to muster them from – shirt collar up and pullover looped over his shoulders, trying to jam his frying pan into a racquet press.

Troy hadn’t arrived yet, but Jenkins lurked in the corner, eyeing us all insubordinately over his steaming tin mug of compo tea.

Dr. Janussen, as ever, looked radiant and fresh, like she’d just stepped from a fragrant garden where she’d bathed in crystal waters with nymphs and been wafted dry by the sweet breath of a scented zephyr. I noticed the Future Phone key was around her neck again. I didn’t want to think about how she’d retrieved it.

The Professor breezed in cheerfully. He rubbed out the word ‘CRISIS’ on the blackboard, and chalked up the word: ‘BREASTS’.

Guuuurk immediately dropped his frying pan, whipped out his notebook, and leant forward with fierce concentration.

‘Right, let’s get the necessaries out of the way.’ Quanderhorn glanced around the room. ‘Did I remember to congratulate myself after yesterday’s triumph?’

‘Yes, Professor.’ I nodded just a tad too enthusiastically. ‘But congratulations, anyway.’ The others looked at me with disdain, but my mission to the cellar meant I had to maintain a ‘teacher’s pet’ façade to avoid suspicion. Although, come to think of it, I was exactly the sort of person who would have been the teacher’s pet.

‘Excellent crawling, Nylon! Time, then, for the business of the day… I present my latest revolutionary cross between science and underwear.’ The Professor picked up a little bell from his desk, tinkled it and stared at the door.

Nothing happened.

Quanderhorn sighed, and said again in a slightly louder voice: ‘I present my latest revolutionary cross between science and underwear.’ He tinkled the bell more loudly and stared at the door.

We all stared at the door.

Nothing happened.

Eventually, from outside, Troy called: ‘Was that the bell?’

‘Yes! Yes!’ the Professor yelled back, testily. ‘When you hear the bell, wheel the thing in, remember?’

‘OK. So, when the bell goes, then.’

‘Right.’ The Professor tinkled the bell again.

We all stared at the door.

Nothing happened.

‘Didn’t you hear that, Troy?’

‘No – sorry. Someone keeps ringing the doorbell, just when I’m ready.’

‘We don’t have a doorbell.’

‘Yes. That’s what’s so annoying about it.’

‘Let’s forget the bell, shall we? Just wheel it in.’

‘All right.’

Troy trundled in a large cage, draped with a dust sheet. Whatever was inside was clearly very big, very angry, and very not human. It roared and snapped and hurled itself repeatedly against the cage with considerable enthusiasm.

The Professor gathered himself again. ‘I present…’ He whipped away the dust sheet with a flourish. ‘…et cetera et cetera!’

Secured inside the cage was a most curious animal – certainly not a Child of Nature. It was quite squid-like, though an angry pink with a lacy sort of skin, like a pig’s caul. It had no eyes I could make out, but two large gooey, gummy mouths on each of its twin bulbous heads.

‘Sweet Lord Baden-Powell!’ I cried. ‘What is that?’

The Professor beamed proudly: ‘The Living Bra: 50% Acrilan, 20% cotton and 70% anaconda.’

The hellish chimera reared both its demonic heads and began spitting in fury.

I shook my head firmly. ‘I’m sorry, Professor – I really can’t allow Dr. Janussen to put that on.’

The Professor frowned. ‘Of course not. That would be far too dangerous. No. This is a job for our very brave Product Tester.’

Everyone seemed to be looking at me again for a very long time.

I sighed. I was beginning to learn what that meant.

‘Take your shirt off, Nylon!’

I immediately flushed red. ‘I don’t want to take my shirt off,’ I stammered, trying not to catch Dr. Janussen’s eye. ‘I don’t like taking my shirt off.’

‘Really?’ Troy seemed genuinely surprised. ‘I like taking my shirt off.’

‘Do you even have a shirt, Troy?’

‘Yeah! Course I do. This pink one with the two nipples… Oh, wait…’ He stared at his chest as he slowly processed the implications.

The cage rocked as the beast roared and flung itself against the bars violently.

Guuuurk took four or five steps back. ‘That thing looks more vicious than an eyeball-sucking Martian tiger-maggot.[13] Are you absolutely sure it’s safe for anyone to put on, Professor?’

‘No idea. Come on, Nylon, off with it.’ He nodded at Jenkins, who staggered over dragging a large trunk.

I disrobed as discreetly as I could, inconspicuously shielding my nipples with my thumbs in front of a lady. My shirt made a wet splat as it slid heavily off the back of the chair.

Quanderhorn rooted in the trunk and pulled out what looked like a pair of opera gloves made of chain mail, studded with metal spikes. ‘Dammit, Jenkins,’ he cussed, ‘I told you to bring the really armoured gloves!’ He also produced a pair of giant tongs, about two and a half feet long. ‘And I wanted the extremely long tongs.’

‘Sorry, sir: they’re at the blacksmith’s being repaired after when you put that thing in the cage, yesterday.’

‘Oh, well. Let’s hope it’s worn itself out trying to bite through the solid titanium bars in a frenzy of bloodlust. Right!’ He braced himself, tongs extended fully in his armoured hands. ‘Arms in the air, Nylon! Stand back, everyone else!’ he added, unnecessarily.

I raised my arms and closed my eyes.

‘Open the cage!’

There was a tremendous, unhuman roar, and a series of banshee screeches, over the Professor’s struggling grunts as he tried to wrangle the beast into position.

I took a deep breath and prepared to die.

Chapter Seven

The Daybook of ‘Jenkins’ Jenkins, RQMS Royal Fusiliers (dishonourably discharged), Friday the 4th of January, 1952

Jeyes Fluid bulk delivery tomorrow. Order more rubber gloves.

You should see the look on Mr. Nylon’s face as they puts that thing on him. It’s hard to tell what’s whiter: his pigeon chest or his face. As soon as it slaps against him, the creature stops growling and slithers round his ribcage, gentle as a baby octopus hugging its dear old mum.

‘And there we are,’ the Prof says. ‘Comfy?’

Mr. Nylon finally opens his eyes and looks down. ‘No,’ he says.

Mr. Guuuurk, the Martian chap, chimes in: ‘Actually I think it’s rather becoming. I’m getting quite aroused.’

I’m hoping he isn’t, ’cause the Jeyes Fluid ain’t coming till tomorrow.

The Prof leans in and peers at the creature. ‘The question is: if you actually had breasts, would it be giving you support?’

Young Master Troy pipes up with what we was all thinking: ‘He does sort of have breasts.’

‘I do not!’

Dr. Janussen says: ‘They’re bigger than mine, Brian.’ Which sends him all of a dither again.

‘No they’re not! Not that I’ve looked… Or wanted to look… or seen how big… or not… Not that there’s anything wrong with them whatever size they are… Oh Lord… somebody help me, please.’ The Prof obliges:

‘How does it feel?’

‘Well, it feels very… uuuuuuuuh…’ he says, or noises to that effect. His eyes go round and round like the fruit in the one-armed bandit at the King’s Torso, and he starts sweating more than a pig doing jankers. ‘Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…’ he goes. Hard to tell whether it’s terrifying him or titillating him. ‘It’s strangely… nuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhh…’

‘I think we can call that a success,’ says the Prof. ‘Women everywhere will not only have firm support, but also something to fetch the newspaper in the mornings.’ That’s the Prof for you: always thinking of other people’s convenience. Everyone starts putting their things away, then Mr. Nylon chirrups:

‘Can I take it off now?’

Well, that thing growls like it knows every word he’s saying.

The Prof frowns: ‘Ah. Well. That might not be advisable right at the moment.’

‘Thing is, Mr. Nylon,’ I says, ‘we haven’t fed it today. Or actually ever.’

Well, he pulls such a face, like a Jerry I once garrotted with my bootlace. ‘Unghhhuhhhh,’ he groans. ‘It’s contracting! Get it off!’

The beast don’t like that kind of talk, that’s for sure. It growls so loud you can feel the floor rumbling underfoot.

‘Don’t startle the bra!’ the Prof yells. ‘It could be dangerous.’ He’s not wrong. Now you may think Mr. Nylon is a gutless wonder with no spine to speak of, but you’d be wrong. I know something about him what would change your mind, but I cannot share it in these pages.

‘Get it off me! Get it off me!’ he screams in his high-pitched voice.

‘If you insist.’ The Prof turns to yours truly. ‘Bring me the rifle.’

Somehow, Mr. Nylon’s face finds an even paler shade of white. ‘What?’ he squeaks.

‘I’m afraid the only way is to shoot it off,’ says the Prof. ‘Don’t worry: everyone in the Army told me I’m a crack shot.’

Well, I couldn’t let that stand. ‘Beg pardon, Professor: they told you you was a crap shot.’

He waves his hand at me. ‘Don’t bother me with pettifogging details! The rifle!’

Ours not to reason why. I reaches into the trunk and hands him the trusty Lee-Enfield No. 5 Mk 1 ‘Jungle Carbine’, loaded and safety catch off, as per standing orders.

He raises the weapon. ‘Everybody stand back.’ To be honest, everyone was still standing back from last time, but Mr. Guuuurk managed somehow to stand back a little bit more.

The Prof takes careful aim at the bra from two feet away, squeezes the trigger, and scores a direct hit on the Telemergency Print-O-Gram, a good ten feet to the left, blowing it to smithereens.

‘Actually,’ Mr. Nylon says, surprisingly calm, like, ‘it’s starting to feel quite comfy now.’ You can tell he’s lying, because he’s squirming something rotten, and a gasp of pain hisses out of him as the creature tightens its grip.

The Prof yells: ‘Stand still, dammit!’ and shoots again, this time missing ten feet to the right, and blasting Alaska out of the globe on his desk.

‘Please stop shooting, Professor,’ poor Mr. Nylon pleads, sounding quite breathless now. ‘It’s making him very tense.’ He can hardly get those last words out.

There’s a crack – everyone hears it, and he croaks quite matter-of-fact: ‘I think that was one of my ribs.’

And blow me sideways, there’s another crack, and he nods and rasps just: ‘Yup!’

The Prof starts rooting through the trunk. ‘I’m afraid we may have to use the flesh-eating virus pistol to get it to release its grip.’ I didn’t have the heart to tell him I’d lobbed it into the Obliteration Chamber after that last horrific fiasco.

But poor old Nylon doesn’t know that, does he? ‘No, no. I wouldn’t dream of putting you to all that trouble, Professor,’ he babbles. ‘I’ll just keep wearing it for a bit.’

The bra loosens off a bit when it hears that, and starts a sort of purring noise.

Mr. Nylon quickly slips his shirt back on. Not much point. It’s so wet, you can see the bra right through it.

‘OK! That’s it! Demonstration over.’ The Prof starts dumping all the equipment back in the trunk, no thought to putting it in any kind of order, of course. ‘Nylon!’ he yells. ‘A word.’ And nods towards his office.

Well, of course, there’s plenty of mess to be cleared up, as per, so I grabs my trusty broom and starts sweeping up behind them as they walk towards the Prof’s office and go in. By amazing coincidence, I just happens to catch the beginning of the conversation before the Prof looks up, spots me accidentally watching him, pulls down the venetians on his office door and slams it shut.

So I can’t make out another bloomin’ word after: ‘It pains me to say, Nylon, that we have a traitor in our midst…’

Chapter Eight

From the journal of Brian Nylon, 4th January, 1952 –[cont’d]

I wandered into the Professor’s office. I’d glanced in before, but had never (at least in my memory!) actually been inside. I tried to scan the room on the q.t. It was crammed with half-completed prototypes, stacks of dog-eared notepads and skeletons of creatures not to be found in any encyclopaedia. Quanderhorn followed close behind me.

‘It pains me to say, Nylon, that we have a traitor in our midst.’

He shut the venetian blinds and closed the door as I tried to stop my ears turning red by sheer willpower. I doubt I was successful. My eyes fell on a pair of goggles on the desk that seemed oddly familiar. Quanderhorn quickly swept them into a drawer.

He was too agitated to notice. ‘A snake in the grass!’ he went on. ‘A double-crossing Judas, passing as one of us and reporting to that pompous egotist Churchill. Or as I call him…’ He affected the most disdainfully childish expression and voice: “ Cheeuuuurch ill”.’ I would have been rather taken aback by the vehemence of his loathing, had I not been scared so utterly witless.

‘A traitor?’ I tried to ignore the increasingly urgent signals now transmitting from my bladder like the order to arrest Crippen, and focused instead on the pain in my ribs. ‘Surely not, Professor?’

His face struggled to adopt a kindly expression, which was thoroughly unfamiliar to it. ‘I know to someone as basically decent as yourself, Nylon, such a thing is too disgusting to contemplate. Which is why, before your memory… went away, I engaged you to root out this lying, despicable, backstabbing turncoat.’

Which circle of Hell had I wandered into here? Which ward of Bedlam was this? I had been recruited by Quanderhorn to hunt down Churchill’s agent, who was also me? I forced my features into a facsimile of a smile. ‘And I said I’d do it?’

‘Yes. You vowed to find out who this foul, two-faced, weaselling ingrate was, so they could be eliminated.’

‘And by “eliminated”,’ I offered hopefully, ‘I meant given a jolly good ticking-off and sent home without—’

‘No.’

‘No, of course not. I meant dock their holiday pay and—’

‘You meant – they would have to be…’ He fixed me with a stare that left no ambiguity. ‘Taken care of.’

‘I meant that?’ The fake smile was dying on my face.

‘Yes, like you did with Virginia, when you transmuted her into the giant broccoli monster.’

‘What?’ I felt the ground had opened beneath me and I was falling into an abyss from which there would never be any return. ‘That was me?’

‘Oh, of course – you’ve forgotten: when you discovered she’d been down to the cellar, what choice did you have but to blast her with the Vegetablising Ray?’

The more I found out about my past, the less I wanted to recover any more of my memory. The man I’d been – I didn’t want to be him again. Duplicitous, violent, ruthless. None of it felt right. None of it at all.

‘B-but then,’ I stammered, ‘surely we’ve already dealt with Churchill’s agent?’

The Professor shook his head sadly. ‘I fear another, more dangerous imposter is still at large. We suspect their codename is: Agent Perpetrator.’

I almost corrected him, but only allowed the first syllable to escape before I caught myself. ‘Pen—’

‘What?’

‘I was just looking for a pen. Ah! Here it is. Here in my pen pocket. Where it always is. I’ll just make a note of that on my hand: Perpetrator.’

If the Professor found this odd, he didn’t let on. ‘Nylon – I’m relying on you to smoke out this vile, amoral, self-serving vermin, and give them the brutal treatment you usually mete out.’ He looked me up and down, as if appraising me for the first time. ‘Who could have realised that pathetic, wet, incompetent exterior concealed the stony heart of a sadistic, merciless bastard? Certainly not I.’

A small buzzer sounded in the corner of the office, and Quanderhorn strode over to monitor some experiment he was conducting with a rat, a drainpipe and some vicious-looking electrodes. He didn’t dismiss me, he just seemed to forget I was still there. And who could blame him, contemptible creature that I was? I slunk towards the door, but as I opened it, I saw the Professor glance at me out of the corner of his eye in a curious way.

Were there more, even darker secrets buried in my past?

There was a flash of light, a puff of smoke and a plaintive rodent squeal.

I shuddered and left.

Chapter Nine

From the journal of Brian Nylon, 5th January, 1952 – Iteration 66

I stumbled up to my room, quite thankful not to bump into any of the others, except Jenkins, whose gaze I avoided.

I sank onto the miserable bed and tried to muster my painful thoughts. What was the truth? Could I believe the Professor? Why would he lie to me?

The only way I could ever get to the bottom of this whole thing was to go down to that terrifying cellar and find its secret.

It was a long and difficult day. There were a lot of preparations that had to be made. I needed some boot polish for facial camouflage, a dark balaclava, some shoes that made no noise, lock-picking equipment, a jemmy and some kind of climbing rope.

On the pretext of securing some fresh clothes, I managed to persuade Jenkins to let me have the key to the stores (it cost me my watch!). The shelves were surprisingly empty, with only the occasional item on view.[14]

For genuine, daily use, I did manage to rustle up a couple of pairs of itchy wool trousers, some string underwear (which I loathe, but needs must), and some grey shirts made of an odd synthetic material which sparked if you rubbed the sleeves together. There was no boot polish, but I managed to find some gravy browning. No balaclava either, but I did discover a rather large sock I might cut a hole in for my face. Not ideal, but beggars can’t and all that. As for the noiseless shoes, though, no sign.

I was hoping perhaps for gym pumps, but Guuuurk had presumably taken the last pair for his tennis apparel. After an hour of increasingly desperate rummaging, I came across a pack of balloons amongst the Christmas decorations. If I stretched one of the long thin ones over each of my brogues, it should, in theory, muffle them sufficiently. Make do and mend, as Mumsie used to say.

Surprisingly, the storeroom did yield a crowbar and a rather professional-looking lock-picking kit. What on earth they were doing there, Lord alone knows. I stuffed the whole lot in a military duffel bag and hoisted it over my shoulder.

Fully stocked, I now had to chew over the problem of getting it all past the eagle-eyed Jenkins. Mercifully, as I headed back to the main building, I saw him scuttling off towards the village on his bicycle, presumably to get my watch to the pawnbroker’s before it closed.

Safely back in my room, I laid the equipment out on my desk. I could hardly make my cellar incursion in broad daylight, so I closed my eyes for just a few minutes, and didn’t wake up until night had fallen. Obviously, I had no idea of the actual time, but an angry moon was flooding the room with white light.

I made my preparations.

It was quite difficult to get the right consistency of water to gravy browning, and mixing it up made me feel incredibly hungry. I smeared it over my face and checked the mirror.

So far, so good.

The balaclava would conceal most of the drips and streaky bits. I pulled on the argyle sock. It was a snug fit, and the coloured rectangles made me look a little bit like a violent Harlequin, but on the whole, professional, though it did have a tendency to ping off my head if I turned too quickly.

I had the devil of a time stretching the red and green party balloons over my shoes. Several of them went out of the window, and one almost took my eye out. They didn’t quite do the job as well as I’d hoped, because I now squeaked quite gratingly with every step, setting my own teeth on edge. Still, better than the sound of my clodhoppers, so long as the dangling coloured overhangs at each toe didn’t trip me up.

I tucked the rest of the equipment in the bag, and crept to my door.

I opened it just a chink.

There was no light under Dr. Janussen’s door. I slipped out. I crouched and listened at her keyhole. I could just about make out the gentle rhythm of an extremely delicate, feminine snore rattling the door.

Satisfied, I straightened and turned, and almost jumped out of my balloons to find Guuuurk standing right next to me.

‘Hello, old sport!’ he chirped. His various eyes roamed over my outfit. I was suddenly acutely aware I was smeared in gravy browning, wearing a sock on my head, balloons over my shoes, and carrying a bag that made a clanking noise every time I moved. ‘On your way to a little “assignation”?’

‘Certainly not!’

‘No, neither am I.’ He winked. ‘The very idea of tennis lessons at midnight is a scurrilous lie.’

‘You’re probably wondering why I’m dressed like this…’

‘Like what?’ He seemed genuinely baffled.

‘Nothing. In my typical earth night-walking outfit.’

‘Really? How interesting. Not sure about the balloons, though. And you do smell…’ he wrinkled his Martian nose, ‘…rather meaty.’

‘That’s to repel the mosquitoes.’

Guuuurk chewed this over and finally said: ‘I thought the whole point of mosquitoes was that they liked meat.’

‘These are vegetarian mosquitoes.’

‘Vegetarian mosquitoes!’ He shook his head sadly. ‘This planet is such a shambles. Evolution clearly took a detour around you lot.’ Then he slipped off down the stairs ahead of me, mouthing ‘Cheery bye’ as he disappeared.

I ran a quick check at Troy’s door. He was obviously within… was that the sound of him rubbing his legs together?

Jenkins was undoubtedly boozing away my watch money in the King’s Torso, so there was only the Professor to worry about.

Only the Professor!

I crept down to the reception area.

Deserted.

I tiptoed squeakily towards the bank of lifts. I found my shoulders loosened themselves when I spotted one of the lifts was on the forty-third floor of the High-Rise Farm. Hopefully, Quanderhorn would be up there, squeezing cows into the wee small hours.

Nonetheless, my hand was shaking as I reached out to summon the Professor’s private lift.

Chapter Ten

From the journal of Brian Nylon, 5th January, 1952 [cont’d]

I half-expected all kinds of alarms to go off as I pressed ‘Call’, but the doors slid open smoothly, and I stepped inside the car. They clanged shut behind me again very quickly. I tried not to feel trapped. Who knows what Jenkins had meant by ‘security devices’?

I forced myself to keep calm and studied the array of buttons. They were marked with the usual impenetrable symbols, which presumably only the Professor would understand. A fish; a portcullis; a moon; a ghost… And what was that one? Siamese twins? None of them evoked ‘Cellar’ to me, or anything like it, so I simply pressed the bottom button, but nothing happened. Clearly, they were not yet activated.

I started as the metallic voice of that damned woman issued from the speaker. ‘Please state your identity and destination.’

I gulped back the growing feeling of dread that rose like so much bile in my throat, and pulled off what I honestly think was a pretty brilliant facsimile of the Professor’s growling, angry voice. ‘It’s me, Quanderhorn. Dammit!’

There was a short pause, and a strange whirring noise while the mechanisms, whatever they were, assessed my verisimilitude. I aged about seven years.

Finally, old metal-voice kicked in: ‘Welcome, Professor. Where can I take you today?’

Triumphant, I quickly replied: ‘The cellar, of course. Dammit.’ I really think I got the impatience level just right.

‘Certainly,’ she said. I was on my way!

But then she went on: ‘Simply answer the security questions, to verify that you are not a shape-shifting troglodyte from beneath the Earth’s crust. Who is the current Prime Minister of Great Britain?’

Ah! I knew this one. ‘Cheeuuuurch ill!’

More whirring, but less tension this time. I’d got that bang on.

‘Correct. Level two security question…’

How many questions were there going to be? I tried to think as Quanderhorn might… ‘Don’t bother me with pettifogging details, dammit!’

‘Is the correct answer. Level three…’

‘I really need to get on. Dammit. Emergency override. Dammit.’ Was I over-doing the ‘Dammits’?

This time there was a much longer, louder whirring. Hopefully I hadn’t pushed my luck too far…

Suddenly a small hatch slid open about waist height in the wall panel.

‘Quandermetric Emergency Identification Reader activated.’

I had pushed it too far.

‘Please place the designated body part into the aperture provided.’

I looked at the aperture provided, and its height above the ground. ‘Which body part would that be?’ I asked, really hoping I was wrong.

The metal-voiced harridan taunted: ‘You may need to unzip.’ Good grief. Why on earth would anyone install such a device?

‘Remind me again—’ what had Guuuurk called her? ‘— Delores! Why did I fit this particular precaution?’

She sighed. ‘The troglodyte shape-shifters only mimic what they can see of a person, so will not have this particular appendage. Please place the designated body part into the aperture provided.’

I looked at the aperture again. She couldn’t be serious. Could she?

‘Alarms will be activated unless the designated body part is inserted into the—’

‘Yes! Yes! I’m doing it! I’m doing it right now!’

And I did. There was an electronic swishing sound and a bright blue light slid across inside the aperture, rather disturbingly.

More whirring. Then:

‘Have you put it all in?’

‘Yes! Yes! Please hurry up!’

Another swish and the bright blue light again. And more whirring.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Come onnnnn!’ Was she teasing me, the witch?

‘Thank you, Professor. Please leave it in there for the duration of the trip.’

The lift clunked into action and shot down rapidly.

I was on my way to the infamous cellar. So focused had I been on getting there, I’d completely forgotten to be utterly terrified.

But now I remembered.

Chapter Eleven

The Rational Scientific Journal of Dr. Gemini Janussen, Friday 4th January 1952 (Again)

I spent most of the day trying to restore my room to its simple efficiency. I can’t understand how it had got so disordered: I only come here to sleep and wash and change clothing. Is Jenkins subletting my room to someone else in the hours I don’t use it?

I boxed up all the perfume bottles – why would anybody need more than one? – took down the Tony Curtis poster, threw all the cushions and soft toys out of the window, collected up all the shoes (dozens of pairs!) and discovered, of all things, a Plus~a~Gram record player under the bed! Not only that, there was a collection of disgustingly maudlin Johnnie Ray records beside it. Honestly, each time I put on a new song, thinking it might be better than the last, it turned out to be even more syrupy and sentimental.

For some reason, I suddenly needed a tissue. Hay fever, I expect, as it was January. I went to my bag, only to discover it had been switched with one made out of some kind of lizard leather. Most impractical. Really, I’m going to have to have this business out with Jenkins, once and for all.

I rooted through the unfamiliar bag. Needless to say, it had been cluttered up with all kinds of lipsticks, compacts, scented unguents and some sort of strange greasy black pencils, which I can only assume were meant for scribbling on your face in some frivolous way. I came across the letter I’d almost given Brian last night in the attic, when it looked as if our number might be up. Virginia had asked me to give it to him the last time I’d seen her, and I’d been waiting until the fog cleared from his memory loss, but that didn’t seem to be happening. If anything, he seemed to be getting foggier. As the thought of Virginia crossed my mind, I noticed a faint tickle on my cheek. Curse this wretched pollenosis!

But wait: the letter had been opened! When can that have happened? It’s certainly not something I would ever do.

Still, now the seal had been broken, as it were, and presumably the contents scrutinised by someone unknown, pure rationality suggested I should read it.

So I did.

And what I read changed everything.

Chapter Twelve

From the journal of Brian Nylon, 5th January, 1952 – Iteration 66

The lift finally lurched to a stop. And so, for a second, did my heart. My nerves jangled like a set of cowbells dropped on the floor in a funeral parlour.

‘The Cellar,’ the metallic voice announced, and the doors slid open creakily.

I snatched my ‘designated body part’ from the aperture, zipped up and stepped out.

‘Thank you,’ I tried to say, but only a hiss of wind escaped my throat.

‘Maximum safe exposure time: three minutes.’

‘What?’

The doors shut behind me.

‘Wait! Wait! What d’you mean, “Maximum safe exposure time”?’

But all I heard was the sudden rapid whine of the lift’s electric motor as it wisely fled back to safety, taking with it my only escape.

I was alone.

But I did not feel alone.

Slowly, I turned. The cellar was not as I’d imagined. It was more like a huge tunnel, hewn through the limestone, presumably created during the quarry mining phase. The white walls seemed wet, but when I touched them, my hand came away coated in some sort of vile, sticky slime.

There were strips of dim fluorescent lighting running along one wall. Some of the tubes were old, almost black at either end, some were dead, and others flickered off and on at random.

The tunnel stretched away ahead, fading into an impenetrable gloom.

And was it my fevered imagination, or did that sound like a not-quite-human cry in the distance?

Now, I’m not a believer in ghosts and spirits and such foolishness – though I admit my beliefs were being challenged in this place on an almost hourly basis – but every hair on my neck was telling me there was something down here.

Something not of this world.

I bit my lip hard. The pain helped me pull myself together. Three minutes? I didn’t have long. Nor, in all honesty, did I want long. I took a tentative step towards the source of the sound, and then another. And somehow, without having to muster up the courage to do so, I was walking.

Each footfall echoed around the curved walls. The fluorescents buzzed and sputtered into the distance. Occasionally, I’d imagine I’d heard something skittering behind me, but when I wheeled round, there would be nothing there: just the fading impression of my footprints on the damp floor.

There were a number of doors lining the tunnel wall, with foreboding messages like ‘Do Not Open This Cupboard Under Any Circumstances!’, and ‘Under No Circumstances Open This Cupboard!’. There was an ominous angry buzzing sound behind one of them. I had every intention of obeying the instructions.

Suddenly, I realised I’d had to start hunching my shoulders, as the ceiling got lower, and eventually, I was shuffling along in a crouch.

As I grew closer, what I’d thought had been the sound of a human voice became a throbbing harmonic hum, a babble of incoherent buzzing that was at one and the same time in the background, yet also drilling deep into my subconscious. Somehow both plaintive and sad, like a million dying wasps all trapped in a giant bottle.

I became aware that the air was getting thicker, in some way. Soupier. As if I were being enveloped by a mink-lined fog.

Then, in a sudden flicker of light, I saw something inexplicable.

The space at the end of the tunnel pulsed and warped, as if reality itself had no hold in this place. That, or my mind didn’t have the capacity to interpret what it was seeing, as if I were a caveman wandering into Battersea Power Station. I stood transfixed as the warping resolved into a shifting series of impossible shapes, and I perceived I could step forward through a small opening.

Instantly, the sound became deafening. All around me, stretching up into a vast vaulted chamber, were huge, shining metal tanks. Although they seemed solid, their actual shape was beyond my comprehension.

Then all the sounds resolved at once into a single voice. And the voice was saying:

‘Help us.’

The voice was mine.

Chapter Thirteen

From the journal of Brian Nylon, 5th January, 1952 – Iteration 66

‘Help us!’ Where was this strange omni-voice coming from? I peered at the closest ‘tank’. Its surface shimmered as if in a heat haze, and became filmy and opaque, then melted away to translucence, and I was staring straight at me.

But not quite me. I looked slightly older. Harrowed. My hair was parted in the centre now, not quite disguising the thinning locks. This other me banged his fist against the tank. Somehow, it made the whole chamber shudder.

‘Help us!’ he howled.

‘You… you’re me?’

He was roughly pushed aside by another figure. Another me. This one considerably older: stooped and with even less hair. ‘We’re all you!’ he yelled, his open maw exposing a distressing poverty in the tooth department. But worse by far was the hollow stare of his yellowed eyes where hope had died some time ago.

And then another me thrust his face forward. Middle-aged and gone to seed. Would I really let myself accumulate such a paunch without caring? ‘You’ve got to get us out of here!’

I stepped back. The tank seemed to wobble and bulge, as if it could barely maintain its integrity. And now there were dozens of ‘me’s: Some young – though none younger than my present age – some old, some positively decrepit. All of them elbowing each other aside for attention. All of them pleading with me.

Looking at them, these ragtag editions of myself who were never incarnated –these phantoms who had never had the chance to be – I felt the deepest pity in the hollow of my soul. Didn’t Quanderhorn realise the unspeakable consequences of his infernal time loop? And presumably not just to me: to everybody. The innocents who never got to exist. The millions and millions of lives unlived.

‘You’ve come before,’ an eighty-year-old me with a hearing aid croaked. ‘And you never help us!’

‘What do you mean I’ve come before?’ I cried back at them. ‘When? When did I come before?’

And then others took up the cry: ‘You never help us! You never help us!’

‘How? How can I help you?’

And as one, a giant chorus of Brian Nylons howled back. ‘Releeeeeeeease us!’

I had to do something. I stepped towards the tank again and took a closer look. I couldn’t perceive any kind of hatch or gateway, nor any controls that might operate such a thing. There were patches of peculiar-looking deposits at its base, like glowing orange frost, as if there was some curious seepage. I had a vague idea I’d seen it somewhere before, but who knows where?

Slowly, tentatively, I reached out to touch the bulging, pulsating walls of the silo. Perhaps I could…

A deafening siren screeched into life.

‘Cellar breach attempt!’

As one, the Brians reared up and keened the most plaintive, miserable wail, then swirled into a vortex as if they’d been stirred up by a giant spoon, spinning away from me, shrieking as they were snatched into the maelstrom: ‘Help! Help us! Let us live!’

‘Wait! Wait! What do I have to do?’ But the tank was solid again, and the only sound was that infernal siren. Red warning lights were strobing accusingly.

‘Unauthorised personnel detected…’

‘No, no, Delores! It’s me! The Professor. Dammit!’ I staggered back towards the entrance to the chamber. Suddenly, a magnesium flare flashed straight into my eyes, momentarily blinding me, and for a terrifying few moments, I couldn’t locate the exit at all. I thrust myself forward, but persistently found myself back where I’d started, without any apparent travel. Then, finally, a wild desperate charge and I burst through whatever orifice had borne me here, and back into the tunnel.

‘Deploying anti-intruder defences…’

‘No, don’t do that!’ I pleaded, scrambling wildly along the narrow passage as fast as a crouch would allow. I had just managed to haul myself upright when the metallic voice continued:

‘Releasing slow-motion gas…’

Slow-motion gas?

With a flash of insight, I realised just too late that the invisible ink note had been warning me the cellar was ‘BOOBY TRAPPED’. I cursed my dunderheadedness as I pumped my legs in the direction of the lift. I thought I could make it before… Suddenly, there was an ominous hissing from all sides.

And I slowed motion.

Suddenly, it took all the muscles in my body straining to their maximum to move forward just a tiny fraction of a step at a time.

It was frustrating, physically draining, and, given the terror that was thumping thickly through my heart, oddly boring. Every half inch of progress was like running a marathon while pushing a cricket roller.

The lift was only three yards away, though my advance was now so languorous it would surely take me weeks to get there, and I feared I’d be completely exhausted within a couple of minutes.

The lift doors slid open. I don’t know why. But it gave me hope. The light inside spilled out a warm glow of safety. I strained every sinew for a desperate sprint. I might just make it…

‘Dropping ball bearings.’

I wasn’t going to make it.

Chapter Fourteen

The Rational Scientific Journal of Dr. Gemini Janussen, Saturday 5th January 1952 (Again)

The lift doors opened onto a tumult of sirens and flashing lights, and amidst it all, to my surprise, there was Brian.

For a second I thought he was frozen to the spot, then I noticed his leg moving forward slightly, and realised he must have triggered the slow-motion gas. Far from standing still, he was actually running for his life.

‘Dropping ball bearings.’

Brian’s eyes widened slowly. Very slowly. His body inched towards the lift almost imperceptibly. ‘Ooooohhhhhhh… Shhhhhhhhiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiping… Foooorecaaaaaast,’ he drawled, as the hatches opened overhead and discharged their painful load.

Being non-organic, the ball bearings were not subject to the effects of the gas. They rained down upon him like hail from a blunderbuss, clunking off his skull with sickening regularity as he ineffectually attempted to dodge them like Tom Brown running the gauntlet past Flashman and his cronies. ‘Ooooooooowwwww! Ooooooooowwwww! Ooooooooowwwww!’

Covering my mouth with my handkerchief, I reached out my arm. ‘Brian! Grab my hand! Quick!’

‘I’mmmmmmmmmmm tryyyyyyyyiiiiing…’

‘Engaging corridor flame-throwers…’

Already I could feel the gas beginning to slow me down. If I didn’t grab him right now, all would be lost.

I stretched as far as I could, fingertips straining, and managed to grip his flailing hand. I pulled him to me with all my might, simultaneously kicking the ‘Door Close’ button with my heel, praying it wasn’t too late.

I heard more hatches flying open in the cellar walls, and caught the distinctive garlic-like odour of phosphorus.

There would be no second chances.

With a terrible roar and a blinding flash, the phosphorus spontaneously ignited in the moist air and a giant fireball bloomed towards us.

I hugged Brian tightly and closed my eyes, preparing for the worst. There was a jolt, and I opened them again.

The lift doors had finally closed.

I prayed they’d hold back the intense heat long enough for us to get out of there. They began to glow as the pungent stench of scorched air seeped under them.

Then suddenly we were on our way upwards. We could begin to breathe without fear of scorching our lungs as the air began to cool. We took in great gulps of it, gratefully.

Slowly, I became aware Brian and I were looking into each other’s eyes, our chests heaving, still locked in a close embrace which, on reflection, might no longer have been appropriate.

‘Oh! Sorry!’ I tried to disengage, but my arms seemed to have developed a will of their own – a side effect of the slow-motion gas, no doubt. Strangely, Brian didn’t attempt to disengage either.

‘Yes!’ he burbled. There was a very, very embarrassing pause whilst we looked at each other, then several ball bearings fell out of Brian’s bra and clattered to the floor, mercifully breaking the spell.

We hastily separated.

‘That was close.’ I brushed down my skirt quite unnecessarily.

‘Yes,’ Brian agreed wittily. ‘That was close.’ He tried to make it look as if a man casually plucking metal spheroids out of his cleavage was the most natural thing in the world. He failed.

He looked up and caught me staring. His eyebrows contracted. ‘Wait a minute: how did you manage to work this lift? Surely you need…’

I didn’t want to go into that, most definitely, but my hand involuntarily checked the clasp of my crocodile bag was firmly shut. I changed the subject skilfully. ‘Never mind that. What were you doing down there?’

He looked, for a second, as if he genuinely wanted to answer. But then the impulse passed. ‘What were you doing down there?’

Somebody had to make the first move. I heaved a sigh. ‘Brian. There’s something you really need to know…’

There was a ping! ‘Ground floor.’

The doors slid apart on a very animated Troy. ‘Brian! Gemma! There’s an intruder in the basement!’

Guuuurk pushed his way past the lad into the lift. ‘Exactly. Delores – take us to the roof.’

‘No,’ Troy stepped in behind him, ‘the intruders are down.’ He bustled Guuuurk away from the button array. It was like watching schoolboys squabbling over the last Wagon Wheel at the tuck shop window.

‘And that,’ Guuuurk ducked under Troy’s arm, ‘is why we’re going up!’

Brian and I knew, naturally, that there was no intruder. At least, not any longer. ‘The optimal course of action is for us all to leave the lift right now.’ But as I stepped forward, the doors slid shut in my face. I reached down and pressed the ‘Open’ button, but for some reason it was unresponsive.

‘In which case,’ Guuuurk tilted his head in that annoying interrogatory way he has, ‘what are you doing in the lift in the first place?’

I glanced round at Brian. His face was circulating though that strange array of expressions he adopts when he is struggling to make up one of his dismal untruths. Fun as it was to watch him, I decided to step in to the rescue. ‘We were heading down to try and find the intruders, weren’t we, Brian?

Brian opened his mouth, but a few baby sounds were all that escaped: ‘Buh… Maaah… Hnuuuh?’

Hopeless. I had to rescue him, as usual. ‘Then we realised only the Professor can operate this thing.’

‘It always works for me,’ Troy grinned. ‘Lift! Activate that button over-thing, where it all lights up and does stuff!’

I suppose the Quanderhorn voice pattern must have been similar enough to fool the device, because the bank of peculiar hieroglyphics illuminated obediently.

‘Manual override enabled.’

I tried to open the doors again, but that button was still dead. Curious.

Guuuurk studied the console without comprehension. ‘Right! Which one is the roof?’

Troy bustled him aside. ‘No – we need to go down and catch those intruders. They may be dangerous.’

‘The thing is,’ Guuuurk looked down at his tennis outfit, ‘I really can’t be seen by dangerous intruders in my plimsolls. It gives such a bad impression…’

‘We’re going to the very bottom,’ Troy insisted, ‘and that’s that.’ And he pressed a button.

Brian looked perplexed. ‘Troy – that was the very top button.’

‘No, bottom. That’s the one at the top, isn’t it?’

The lift jolted and started winching us upwards. The rate of acceleration was quite alarming. I had to grip the handrail. Brian’s hand was already there, and mine fell on his. I didn’t want to embarrass myself further by making an issue of it, so I left it there.

Guuuurk steadied himself in a corner, both hands braced against the lift walls. ‘What on earth have you done now, you mutton-headed dolt?’

‘Nothing…’

‘Next stop: Lunar Station.’

Brian literally squeaked. ‘Lunar? This lift goes to the Moon?’

Trapdoors sprang open in the walls, and benches with harnesses attached unfolded out of them.

Guuuurk raced over to the console and started punching buttons wildly. ‘No! Delores! Stop! No Moon! No Moon! Reverse! Reverse mechanisms! Stop!’

‘Manual override deactivated. Please secure yourselves.’

Guuuurk gave Troy his Death Glare, then carefully slid down onto the nearest bench and started buckling himself in. ‘Well,’ he smiled pleasantly, ‘that’s another delightful contretemps you’ve ingeniously masterminded.’