The Quanderhorn Xperimentations

Chapter One

From the journal of Brian Nylon, 6th January, 1952 – [cont’d]

It took a mite longer than anticipated, suiting up. We all had to undergo a rather thorough and degrading hosing down, except for Guuuurk, who’d avoided the worst of the drains. But he still managed to keep us all waiting as he squirted on lashings of his disgusting gentleman’s aftershave – Ladykiller,– which he’d got in a job lot from the ironmonger’s, though beneath the handmade label, the square can looked suspiciously like 3-in-One oil.

It would have been unkind of me to say so, but I had no doubt the fumes would certainly kill any lady foolish enough to venture too close to it!

Troy had somehow found a pair of corduroy shorts, which he thought made him look much ‘hepper’ than his duplicate, and no amount of cajoling could persuade him otherwise. He refused to wear his safety suit at all. Or any kind of shirt.

I even saw Gemma surreptitiously brushing her hair! She would never previously have done that in public. When she caught me looking at her, she unexpectedly smiled.

I smiled back as I spent a sensible scant twenty minutes practising my knots in the climbing rope, just in case the situation called for a quick taut-line hitch with a double fisherman up the other end.

Still, when we were finally ready to go, we were well and truly ready, and chomping at the bit to face the challenge. We stepped out of the tent.

Up the platform, I spotted the duplicate crew heading into the ziggurat. ‘Come on, chaps – we’re falling behind already.’

Troy grabbed the flaming torch.

‘Wait a minute,’ Guuuurk protested. ‘We can’t let the Man With No Brain carry the flaming torch! He’ll incinerate us all!’

He reached to grab it, but Troy lifted it away. ‘But I want to hold it. Look! I can hold it highest.’

‘It doesn’t have to be high.’ Guuuurk rounded on Troy. ‘Wherever it is, it’s not going to get any brighter. Just like you.’ He used this little moment of triumph to snatch the torch for himself.

‘For heaven’s sake!’ Gemma grabbed it off him. ‘It doesn’t matter who holds the flaming torch.’

‘Actually, it does,’ I corrected, taking it gently out of her hand. ‘If Troy does hold it too high, it could ignite the ceiling.’

I was suddenly drenched by the entire contents of a fire bucket.

‘I thought I’d better put it out before we use it,’ Troy explained, taking back the black, smouldering stick it had now become. ‘Just to be on the safe side.’

I brushed off the excess water, to no great avail. ‘Now I’ll have to go back and change again!’ I grumbled, but Gemma had ignored the event and was marching resolutely towards the gaping mouth of the edifice. We really had no choice but to follow in her lovely wake.

I felt the strange thrill of trepidation as we gingerly entered the jaws of the ziggurat. Immediately we were inside, the sound took on a deadened, claustrophobic feel, draining away our bravado. For a moment we stood at the top of the steps and stared down into the gloom. Of the duplicate crew, there was no sign.

‘I believe,’ Guuuurk broke the silence, ‘that this might be a good moment to invoke the “No Claustrophobic Alien Ziggurat” clause in my contract—’

‘Or,’ Gemma raised her eyebrows, ‘we could invoke the “Compulsory Martian Vivisection” clause…’

‘Oh!’ Guuuurk slapped his thigh. ‘Let’s not get bogged down in picayune legalese. We’re all in this together, chaps.’ He still didn’t move.

Troy peered down the staircase, holding out the dead smoking twig in front of him. ‘Can’t see a darn thing down there. This torch is almost useless.’

‘May I remind us all,’ I said, ‘if we don’t beat the duplicates to the relic, we are literally dust. And they’ve got a head start.’

‘That’s not an advantage.’ Gemma started boldly down the stairs. ‘They’ll encounter the traps first. They’ll either neutralise them, or get snared. Either way, we’ll easily catch up.’

‘Traps? Nobody said anything to me about traps!’ Guuuurk followed her closely, clearly feeling that proximity to Gemma might be his safest course. ‘How are we all meant to see these bally traps without that flaming torch?’

‘No problem.’ Troy raced ahead, overtaking us all. ‘I’ll just pull down my corduroy shorts a smidge—’

‘What? No!’ Guuuurk yelped.

But the darkness below was suddenly chased away by a glowing incandescence emanating from Troy’s posterior!

‘Good heavens!’ Gemma started. ‘Are those sort of glow-worm buttocks you have there, Troy?’

‘I had no idea Troy had a light-emitting bottom!’ I exclaimed, partly in admiration, and partly in horror.

‘There’s lots about my bottom people don’t know.’ Troy smiled. ‘This way!’

We carefully descended the slippery stone treads one by one.

‘Actually,’ Guuuurk whinged, ‘there’s precious little I don’t know about Troy’s bottom, after that year we spent sharing bunk beds. And, frankly, I’d rather forget most of it…’

I knew why he was burbling on like that. There was one thing on all our minds we didn’t want to verbalise.

Traps.

What were these traps? And when would we find the first one?

Chapter Two

Outprint from Gargantua, the pocket Quanderdictoscribe. Dateline: Sunday the 6th of January, 1952 00.59 hours

NEW BRIAN: The other group is squabbling, as usual – they can’t seem to move two paces without falling into some contretemps or other! We’ve stolen a march on them, and entered the ziggurat first. The air is slightly warm, but surprisingly fresh. Hard to believe it’s been sealed for many thousands of years. We’ve been descending these stone steps for four or five minutes, now. Levelling off into a short corridor. I can see a tiny portal at the end… I presume we’re supposed to enter it… Oh! It’s much bigger in here! We now find ourselves in a circular vault. Watch out!

NEW TROY: Woah!

NEW BRIAN: Gemma – take my hand. There’s a pit of some kind right in the centre, leaving only a narrow ledge running around the perimeter! We’ll have to inch our way around, keeping our backs to the wall…

NEW BRIAN: A heavy door just slid shut behind us, along some sort of greased channel carved into the floor! No turning back now!

NEW GEMMA: Brian! I’m scared.

NEW GUUUURK: Why is your subordinate sex so decorative and frail? Our females are ugly and terrifying! As you will see on the Day of the Glorious Invasion, when you’re all dragged, chained and screaming, into their tents!

NEW BRIAN: Pay no attention to him, lambikins! Keep holding my hand. I can see an exit on the far side now.

NEW GUUUURK: Wait! If your Earth eyes weren’t so feeble, you’d see some of the ledge stones ahead of us are hinged – they’ll send us straight down into the pit!

NEW BRIAN: You may be an unpleasantly outspoken fellow, but bless your Martian low-light vision, you’re right!

NEW GEMMA: Brian! I can hear something scurrying around down there in the pit!

NEW BRIAN: What is it?

NEW GEMMA: I can’t tell! Whatever it is, I think it’s heard us!

NEW TROY: I could lure it away by throwing it a piece of liver.

NEW BRIAN: Troy – remember what I told you before? Your liver has to stay…

NEW BRIAN/NEW TROY: (TOGETHER)… on the inside!

NEW TROY: Yes.

NEW BRIAN: OK, everybody, nil desperandum. Just put your feet exactly where Guuuurk’s have been, like good King Wenceslas’ page! All the way round – that’s right…

NEW GEMMA: I can still hear those things scuttling down there…

NEW BRIAN: Come on, everybody – nil desperandum!

NEW GUUUURK: I think I can almost reach the handle… thank Phobos! If I had to listen to any more of that caterwauling, I’d throw myself into that (PROFANITY EXPUNGED) pit!

NEW BRIAN: This way, everyone – before this door closes too!

NEW GUUUURK: I’m through!

NEW TROY: And me!

NEW BRIAN: Gem-gem?

NEW GEMMA: Ow! I can’t make it! I think I’ve turned my ankle! You’ll have to leave me.

NEW BRIAN: Nonsense! I’ll just pick you up. Here!

NEW GEMMA: Woo! Thank you, kind sir. (WHISPERED) I haven’t turned my ankle at all! I just wanted you to hug me!

NEW BRIAN: You little minx! Come on – we can’t let those old fogeys catch up!

We are entering a vast—

Chapter Three

The Daybook of ‘Jenkins’ Jenkins, RQMS Royal Fusiliers (Empite Medal of Consticuous Gallantry and bar), Sunday the 6th of January, 1952

I arrive back at the lab in treble quick time, thanks to the Prof’s rubber band car and an entire packet of fast-motion garibaldis.’Course, there’s a number of cats embedded in the radiator, but that’s just the price of progress, I suppose.

I have meself a little chuckle thinking of them frozen in the headlights, going: ‘Me? – Ow!’ Ha ha. You’ve got to laugh, or you’d cry.

That’s what I tells meself when I finds meself a few moments later lying at the bottom of the secret cellar service stairway with a broken leg.

Bad, too. It’s bent over backwards.

I agonisingly fishes out the walkie from my back pocket and calls the Prof. ‘Professor? Jenkins here, over.’

He shoots back with: ‘You took your time, dammit! Are you down in the cellar yet?’

‘Yes, sir. But small problem in that department. The good news is: I’ve found the invisible shield. It was lying across the stairs. The bad news is: I lost it again when I tripped over it, fell down the steps and wound up at the bottom with a compound fracture of the lower tibia. It’s rather painful, actually, sir. It’s bent over at a bad angle. And I think I can see a piece of bone protruding through my trousers.’

‘Dammit, Jenkins – I’m relying on you.’

‘I’m very sorry, sir. Dragging myself along the floor as best I can, sir. Anything you could do that might alleviate the situation would be most appreciated.’

‘Alleviate the situation? I can’t be in two places at once! Wait!’ He thinks for a moment. I wonders what’s going through his head? Meanwhile I bites on my key fob and pushes the bone back as best I can. I’m almost blacking out as I hears him say: ‘Yes – I can be in two places!’

‘How’s that, sir?’ I grunts through gritted teeth.

‘Years ago, I created a duplicate of myself for just such an emergency.’

I tries to say ‘Splendid news, sir,’ but all I can manage is: ‘Gnnnurrhuuurgunhuurnur!’ as I shoves it right back in.

‘Did you hear what I said, Jenkins?’

I ties a stair rod into a makeshift splint using my regimental tie. ‘Yes, sir, splendid news. Where is this other you?’

‘He’s in suspended animation, in a cupboard just down the corridor. It’s marked “ Under No Circumstances Open This Cupboard! ”’

‘I see it, sir. Dragging myself over to it now, sir.’

‘Hurry up, man! We haven’t got much time!’

‘Still dragging myself, sir…’

I hears him sigh, more than once.

‘Still dragging…’

Dragging goes on for some time. As does the sighing.

‘Are you there yet?’

‘Yes, sir. It’s right in front of me. This is the one, isn’t it, sir? “Do Not Open This Cupboard Under Any Circumstances!”’

I reaches up, unlocks it and manages to tug down the handle. The door springs open, and I’m face to face with a huge yellow-and-black striped buzzing winged monster insect, hovering menacing-like, staring at me with red-eyed fury and a sting on its arse like a Cossack’s sabre.

Well, I seen some pretty big mosquitoes when we was liberating the Philippines, but this beauty knocks ’em all into a cocked hat.

‘What’s all that noise, Jenkins?’

‘It’s a giant psychopathic wasp, sir!’

‘Don’t let it out! Shut the door! Shut the door!’

‘I’m trying, sir!’ Believe me, I was, and all. ‘Only the wasp don’t want me to.’

I was putting my shoulder into it, but the bloomin’ wasp was the size of Rocky Marciano. I pulled the stair rod out of my splint and started beating the blighter with it. He goes to sting me, and I manage to slam the door shut. The sting comes straight through the wood and misses my head by a whisker. I hammers the barb crooked, so the varmint can’t pull free, and locks the door again.

‘What’s going on now?’

‘Just putting my splint back on, sir.’

‘Why on earth did you open the giant psychopathic wasp cupboard?’

‘Because it said “Do Not Open This Cupboard Under Any Circumstances!” sir.’

‘What idiot would open a cupboard that said that?’

‘Begging your pardon, sir, but you told me to.’

‘No, no! I said: open the cupboard marked: “Under No Circumstances Open This Cupboard!”’

‘Ah! That would be the other cupboard, sir. Just dragging myself over… Still dragging, sir… Still dragging…’

‘For goodness sake, can’t you drag yourself any faster?’

‘Nearly there, sir. Nearly there.’ I decide it’s best to make some conversation. ‘This other “you” I’m looking for, sir: have you in any way… “altered” him at all?’

‘Only slightly.’

Oh dear.

‘I’ve given him ethics.’

‘But don’t you always says that thing about ethics, sir. How’s it go? “The pursuit of Scienticifal Truth, and that, is the only Ethical Poppy—”’

‘The pursuit of Scientific Truth is the only Ethical Boundary one ever needs; the rest is just poppycock.’

‘That’s it! So what did you want to give him ethics for, if I may be so bold?

‘To weaken him. He has to be weaker than me, in case he should try to usurp me in some way. But he should be more than capable of helping you for the present.’

‘Very foresighted, sir. Ah! Here I am. “Under No Circumstances Open This Cupboard!” Do you really think I should open this cupboard, sir?’

‘Yes! Yes! We’re wasting time!’

‘Fingers crossed then…’ I says, hauls meself as upright as I can, and opens it.

And there he is! The Professor himself! Or rather his ringer. Covered all over in a big cellophane sheet, like dry cleaning.

I tears off the wrapper and looks at him for signs of life. Nothing. He’s like a waxwork. Then, just as I’m peering close at his face, his eyes pop open! Just like he’s just been having forty winks.

‘Jenkins!’ he says.

‘Thank heavens, sir,’ I says into the walkie. ‘The duplicate Professor is all right.’

‘Duplicate?’ snaps the Prof in front of me. ‘I’m the real Quanderhorn, you idiot! It’s that charlatan who’s the imposter!’

Chapter Four

From the journal of Brian Nylon, 6th January, 1952 – [cont’d]

After descending the stone stairway for a good few minutes, we found ourselves in a short corridor with a tiny portal at the end. Troy’s buttocks disappeared into it, and we had to scramble after him to avoid being left in the dark.

It led to a large, round chamber. We narrowly avoided falling into a dark pit in the centre, and found ourselves balancing precariously on a four-inch ledge.

‘That must be the aforementioned trap!’ Guuuurk announced. ‘I must say, I was expecting something a little more creatively fiendish.’

The door suddenly shut behind us.

‘Yes,’ Guuuurk nodded. ‘More like that.’

I peered into the gloom. ‘No sign of the other crew.’

‘D’you think we beat them to it?’ Troy asked, hopefully.

Gemma shook her head. ‘Not yet: we’d have passed them.’

‘What if they turned off down some other passageway?’ I asked.

‘It’s a labyrinth, not a maze.’

‘Meaning?’

‘A maze has alternative paths, a labyrinth just one.’

‘Looking on the bright side,’ Guuuurk mused, ‘perhaps they fell here, at the first hurdle, and their poor, broken bodies are rotting down there in the pit.’

This thought, rather callously, cheered us up enormously.

Gemma went on: ‘Everybody keep facing the drop. We’re going to have to inch our way around the rim. I imagine the egress is somewhere on the far wall.’

We began a slow and perilous shuffle along the ledge.

‘Wait!’ Guuuurk yelled. We halted, tottering. ‘I can just about see something on the ledge ahead, with my Martian low-light vision!’

‘You never told us you had low-light vision,’ Troy protested.

‘And you never told us you had an incandescent bottom!’

‘Well, I wouldn’t have needed an incandescent bottom if you’d told us about your low-light vision-ness.’

‘And I wouldn’t have needed my low-light vision if your glowing behind actually had a few more lumens to it.’

Gemma rolled her eyes. I stepped in – this was no time for squabbling. ‘What is it you’ve spotted, Guuuurk?’

‘Don’t get your hopes up, but it looks for all the world… like a crisp, white fiver!’ He recklessly turned and crabbed around to it, but as he stooped, the stone he was standing on suddenly tilted…

I cried ‘Guuuurk! No!’ but too late; he teetered backwards and fell straight into the void before I could reach him. I almost stumbled in after him, but just managed to steady myself in time, ricking my ankle rather painfully in the process.

‘Oh no!’ Troy wailed. ‘Poor Guuuurk!’

Gemma craned over to peer into the abyss. I held her back. ‘Don’t look, Gemma. There’s no point. We’ve lost him.’

‘Yes.’ She cast her eyes down. ‘I know.’ Did I actually see a tear on her cheek? ‘He’s… gone.’

Troy stared at the pit in disbelief. Gemma and I hung our heads.

‘What are you doing up there!’ Guuuurk chirped from the darkness. ‘It’s only a couple of feet deep! I’m fine.’

‘What’s down there?’ Troy asked.

‘Hard to see much, really. The floor’s strewn with something soft and downy…’

But there came another noise, from the far end of the pit. A sort of scuttling.

Gemma and I exchanged looks. ‘Guuuurk – get out of there,’ she yelled urgently.

‘Just a tick. I’m sure that crisp, white fiver is around somewhere…’

And another burst of scuttling.

Guuuurk heard it this time. ‘What’s that? There’s something down here!’

‘Guuuurk – get out of there, now!’

I got out my rope and looked for something to tie a taut-line hitch to.

‘Brian – it’s two feet deep,’ Gemma pointed out.

I mumbled an apology, and started winding the rope back up.

More scuttling now. Much more. Growing closer and closer…

‘Something’s coming!’ Guuuurk’s voice wailed in the dark. ‘I can see its pitiless eyes glinting in the gloom!’

‘Over here!’ I shouted desperately leaning over as far as my throbbing ankle would allow. ‘Take my hand!’

‘Great Phobos!’ There was a petrified pause. ‘It’s a duck!’

‘A what?’

‘It’s a duck! It’s a duck!’ he screamed in complete terror, and started racing aimlessly round the pit below. We could track his progress from the loud quacking noise and flapping that followed him.

Gemma was horrified. ‘A giant duck?’

‘Who said anything about a giant duck?’ Guuuurk yelled. ‘It’s a normal-sized duck! It’s after me! Get away! Get away!’

The quacking and scurrying and yells of terror reached manic proportions.

‘I could lure it away by throwing a piece of liver,’ Troy offered.

‘Troy, remember what I told you before,’ Gemma said gently. ‘Your liver has to stay…’

And together they chorused: ‘…on the inside!’

The screaming and quacking continued in the background:

‘It’s a duck attack! It’s a duck attack! Get away from me! No! No! It’s going to spring!’ and so on ad taedium.

‘Why on earth,’ I asked Gemma, ‘would ancient aliens set a trap with a duck?’

She shrugged. ‘It was a billion years ago. They had no way of knowing what would emerge as the dominant species. This is probably designed to ensnare creatures who evolved from worms.’

‘For mercy’s sake, will you two stop wittering on like a pair of idle hairdressers and get me away from this vicious monster!’

‘Calm down, Guuuurk, it’s just a duck.’

He stopped suddenly, panting. ‘Oh yes. Just a duck. Of course. I don’t know what came o—’

And then there was another quack.

‘There’s two of them!’ He raced off again. ‘Ducks! Ducks!’

‘Shall I pull him out?’ Troy asked.

‘Two ducks! Double duck attack!’

‘No, just ignore him,’ Gemma said. ‘Troy, can you reach that handle over there?’

‘Yes,’ he replied confidently. ‘Yes. Absolutely. Absolutely.’ There was an uncomfortable pause, breached only by Guuuurk’s incessant pleas and the odd flurry of feathers. ‘The – what was it?’

‘The sticky-out thing that opens the door.’

‘A pair of ducks! A small pack of vicious ducks!’

‘You mean this?’

‘That’s it. Pull that down.’

The stone exit door slid open.

The light it shed was enough for Guuuurk to find the ledge and finally let us haul him back onto it. ‘You saved those ducks in the nick of time,’ he panted. ‘One minute longer, and it would have been orange sauce overcoats for the evil little blighters!’

Troy had already slipped out through the portal towards the sound of cascading water, leaving us in near blackness. Gemma bundled Guuuurk out after him, then turned back to me. ‘Brian – what are you waiting for?’

There was no escaping it any longer. I hung my head. ‘Dash it all, Gemma! I didn’t want to say in front of the others, but I seem to have twisted my ankle.’

‘Don’t worry, you’ll manage—’

‘No – it’s bad. Very bad. I can’t walk at all. Don’t argue – you’re just going to have to leave me behind.’

Chapter Five

Mission log. Flight number 001, Advanced Laboratory-Blasting Squadron (‘The Lab Busters’), Wing Commander William ‘Wee Willy Winkie’ Watkins, Office Commanding. Dateline: Sunday the 6th of January, 1952 01.18 hours

This whole circus is dashed odd. Being ordered to bomb a target in one’s own backyard rather goes against the grain. I’m assured it’s in the national interest, but it still rankles. Still, ours is not to reason why.

Took off at 00.52, on the direct orders of the Old Bulldog himself, and on course to deliver payload at… 03.13 hours.

Wing consists of six B-29 Superfortresses, fully loaded with the old bunker-busting bangers, so they handle a tad on the reluctant side, even for a Yankee kite!

Off the record, the bloody pipers in the back are driving me bonkers! ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ played on those god-awful things is the ghastliest racket you could ever imagine.

Best not to upset the Jocks, though. They’ve been nipping at the old Highland giggle water since ten. Plus, they’re all wearing kilts and none of them have their legs crossed. It’s the stuff of nightmares, I can tell you.

At least the infernal din is taking my mind off things. Chances are this whole business is nothing more than a dry run, and we’ll get the recall codes any time now.

My eyes keep flitting to the incoming message light.

The bagpipes play on.

The light remains dead.

Chapter Six

The Daybook of ‘Jenkins’ Jenkins, RQMS Royal Fusiliers (confused), Sunday the 6th of January, 1952

This other Professor, he ain’t such a bad type. He sorts out my leg in double quick time, injecting it with his quick-hardening plastic bone substitute. Then he sprays on his Experimental Insta-Skin.’Course, me leg will be covered in fish scales from now on, but that’s the price of progress, I s’pose.

While I’m walking about a bit, testing my weight on it, he’s switched off the alarms and that, and taken a quick gander in the secret cellar bit. Never been in meself. Not without the black goggles and sound-deadening helmet. Never had no inclination to, neither. What with the noises what come out of there.

He emerges all ashen. ‘What in the name of all that’s holy has my maniac duplicate been up to? There are some places even science shouldn’t venture.’ he shudders. ‘I see now I didn’t create a mere duplicate: I created a dangerous monster!’

‘Begging your pardon, but the Professor told me you’re the duplicate Professor, Professor.’

‘Of course he’s saying he’s the real Professor. He lies! I rather foolishly removed his ethics to make him more efficient!’

‘So he’s the duplicate?’

‘Yes. He trapped me in suspended animation many, many years ago.’

Well, this gets my brain in a proper spin. It makes sense, doesn’t it? Evil duplicate overpowers Original and locks him away like in The Man in the Iron Mask, starring Louis Hayward. On the other hand, this could be the evil duplicate trying to undermine the real Professor, like in The Man in the Iron Mask, starring Louis Hayward.

Whichever one he is, he’s ranting away: ‘I can’t believe he’s stored all this surplus time in these unstable conditions! It’s insanity! The slightest tremor could trigger a cataclysmic extinction event!’

Well, that might be so. On the other hand, he might be the wrong Professor. I has to be sure, somehow. ‘If you’ll just excuse me for one minute…’ I turns away and takes out the walkie. ‘Professor!’ I says, ‘The Professor here says he’s the real Professor.’

‘Of course he thinks he’s the real Professor! It’s the only way he could function.’

The other one chimes in: ‘Obviously, I programmed that one to think he’d programmed me to think I’d programmed him.’

I’m getting quite the headache now. And it’s not from the fishy smell of my leg.

‘Look,’ the one on the walkie barks, ‘there’s no time to explain right now. Just shore up those defences, the pair of you. That cellar cannot be compromised. Understood?’

‘On that we do agree,’ says the other one. ‘I just pray we’re not too late.’

Chapter Seven

Private Diary of Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill: Sunday the 6th of January, 1952 [cont’d]

Perhaps it was both disingenuous and foolish, but I was gripped by an overwhelming desire to witness Quanderhorn suffer his richly warranted come-uppance at first hand, and, as it were, in the flesh. The Germans have a word for it: Bezirksschornsteinfegermeister. Or is that the word for ‘head chimney sweep’?[23] No matter.

The brigand had terminated a clearly fractious walkie-talkie exchange, and was rabidly studying the printout from his transcribing machine, when suddenly he looked up and sniffed the air, like a predatory coyote. ‘Is that you over there, Mr. O’Reilly?’

And even though I was a good fifteen feet away from him, and in deep shadow, he turned slowly and looked directly at me!

‘Or should I say, Mr. Cheeuuuurch ill!’ He slurred that distinguished nine-hundred-year-old appellation in such a way as to make it sound like a Rumanian gypsy’s curse!

I returned the favour. ‘Indeed, it is I, Qu wwaaaaaa nderhorn!’

‘Did you really think that pathetic leprechaun disguise would fox me for one moment?’

‘What gave me away?’

‘The smell of herring. You’re the only person I’ve ever treated with the Experimental Insta-Skin.’

‘And I curse that Mephistophelian day I heedlessly allowed you to cause my testicles to forever shine like a stickleback. Better I had died from the shrapnel wound.’

‘If you’re trying to stop me, you’re too late, you dipsomaniac has-been.’ He held up the printout with something approaching triumph in his manner. ‘In just a few short minutes, my team will be at the heart of the ziggurat, and the powerful relic therein will be in my hands!’

‘Much good it will do you, you maniacal Bedlamite!’ I speared the end of a fresh Romeo y Julietta with a match, ignited it and inhaled, to deliver the delicious coup de grace. ‘At this very moment, a crack squadron of bagpiping bombers is en route to reduce your disreputable monster factory to ashes!’

Well, that stopped the fellow in his tracks!

But I had scant opportunity to relish my victory. I expected him to be angry, to rant and curse; perhaps even throw himself on the ground and pound the floor with his fists, like the gigantic, thwarted toddler I took him to be.

Instead he seemed to age ten years before my eyes, and something in the sinking of his shoulders chilled me to my very soul.

‘Prime Minister,’ he croaked with sudden deference, a look of genuine fear flooding his features. ‘There’s something you really have to know…’

Chapter Eight

Outprint from Gargantua, the pocket Quanderdictoscribe. Dateline: Sunday the 6th of January, 1952 01.24 hours

NEW BRIAN: Well, we got through the Mirror Maze of Lightning Death in no time at all! I thought the Waterfall of Glue was simple, but this was really easy.

NEW GUUUURK: The Collapsing Stairway of Strangling Vines was so elementary, it wouldn’t even have duped a Venusian carpet salesman.[24] It’s an insult to my superior Martian intelligence.

NEW TROY: The Corridor of Huge, Dangerously Swinging Weights was great! Can we go back there?

NEW BRIAN: (CHUCKLE) All in good time, Troy. And they’ll have to come up with worse things than armies of poisonous scarabs flooding out of the walls if they’re going to stop us getting to the centre.

NEW GEMMA: Silly old aliens not as clever as my Bri-Bri.

NEW TROY: Hey! Is this another of those sticky-out thingies?

NEW BRIAN: A handle! Yes. Well done, Troy – you’re learning. Let’s go!

NEW TROY: I hope there are big spikes in this one! Spikes are great!

NEW BRIAN: I think we’re on the final—

Chapter Nine

From the journal of Brian Nylon, 6th January, 1952 – [cont’d]

‘Those huge dangerously swinging weights nearly took my testicles off!’ Guuuurk wailed. ‘All eleven of them!’

‘Troy,’ Gemma grunted breathlessly, ‘you can turn off your bottom now. It’s light enough in here.’

‘I can’t… really… talk at the… moment,’ Troy rasped. ‘I’ve got strangling vines round my… neck.’ He began recklessly hacking at them with his Bowie knife.

Gemma turned her face to me. ‘And I absolutely refuse to carry you any further, Brian.’

‘I’m afraid you’ll have to,’ I apologised. ‘My trousers are still stuck together from the Waterfall of Glue.’

She set me down quite brusquely anyway. ‘You’ll just have to hop.’

Things had not been going quite so well between the two of us. She seemed to become less fond of me the further she carried me. I don’t know why. Well, I do know why – I really was the most hopeless article imaginable.

However, on the positive side, I discovered that, since being savagely bitten by the army of poisonous scarabs that poured out of the wall, my ankle had gone completely dead, and it had no problem holding my weight again.

I turned to assess this latest challenge we’d wandered into, and nearly jumped out of my skin.

I was face to face with my duplicate!

The ziggurat had clearly taken a toll on the wretched creature – instead of the handsome dashing hero I’d seen before, he had been reduced to a ragged, gawping, dishevelled wreck! Weak character of me, I know, but I admit to experiencing a momentary surge of triumph, to see him reduced to this beaten bewildered scarecrow.

But as I turned further, I could see several more of the pathetic soul. In fact, there were hordes of him in every direction…

‘We’re in a Mirror Maze,’ Gemma noted, somewhat deflating my cruel delight.

Reflections of ourselves stretched out wherever we looked, mimicking our movements in unison like some crazy dance troupe. It was almost impossible to see where, if anywhere, was the path forwards. I made to take an exploratory hop…

‘Nobody move!’ Gemma ordered. ‘There’s some sort of inscription etched on this mirror here.’ She used the sleeve of her cardigan to wipe the mirror closest to her, where a patch of condensation had misted its surface, revealing various pictoglyphs.

‘Why do all aliens seem to use hieroglyphics?’ I wondered aloud.

‘Everything’s a hieroglyphic if you don’t understand the language,’ Gemma explained. ‘Guuuurk?’

‘Why always ask me?’ he complained. ‘Haven’t a clue.’

Gemma scrutinised the etching carefully. ‘Well, this is clearly a lightning bolt.’

‘Oh,’ Guuuurk smiled sarcastically, ‘that sounds inviting.’

‘And below it, here… this looks like a route through the Mirror Maze. We have to head forwards and take the first right—’

And ZZZKKKKOWWWWCRK!

A jagged blue bolt of lightning sliced through the air without warning.

Gemma, Troy and I quite easily rocked out of its path, but poor old Guuuurk barely escaped being sliced in half!

‘Sorry, what did you say?’ Troy asked Gemma. ‘I was distracted by that indoor lightning bolt.’

‘Oh, you mean the one that nearly bisected me?’ Guuuurk raised himself from the floor.

‘What was that you said about the route through?’ I asked Gemma.

‘She said,’ Guuuurk condescended, ‘head forwards and take the first right—’

ZZZKKKKOWWWWCRK!

Another bolt ricocheted around the mirrors, leaving Guuuurk’s hair smouldering slightly.

‘Wow!’ Troy enthused. ‘I thought it never struck in the same place twice.’

‘Wait! Nobody say anything else!’ Guuuurk dabbed at his singed hair with his hand. ‘It seems to have some sort of verbal trigger.’

‘So,’ Troy mused, ‘you’re saying that a special word makes it happen. Right?’

ZZZKKKKOWWWWCRK!

Guuuurk nodded. ‘Right.’

ZZZKKKKOWWWWCRK!

This last bolt actually sliced the end off the cigarette in Guuuurk’s holder. He narrowed half his eyes and motioned for us to be quiet. ‘Shut up! Shut up! Yes. I see it now. Troy, you understand what word you mustn’t say?’

‘No.’

‘Well, obviously I can’t say the word, or I’ll set it off again.’

‘Oh yeah, you’re right.’

ZZZKKKKOWWWWCRK!

Gemma and I had resignedly ducked before the bolt had issued this time.

‘Ow!’ Guuuurk yelled, beating out the flames on his blue spotted silk pocket handkerchief. ‘How does it know where I am?’

I decided to bring some sanity to the proceedings. ‘Troy – as long as nobody says it again, we’ll be all—’

‘Ah-ah!’ Gemma warned. ‘Careful.’

‘Sorry!’

Troy was still baffled. ‘So – what’s this word we mustn’t we say?’

‘The word,’ Guuuurk said carefully, ‘is R-I-G-H-T.’

ZZZKKKKOWWWWCRK!

‘For the love of sand!’ Guuuurk frantically doused the collar of his protective suit. ‘The wretched thing can spell!’

‘But I can’t,’ Troy pointed out. ‘I still don’t know the word.’

Guuuurk pulled out a scrap of paper. ‘Anybody got a pencil?’

I gave him mine.

‘What are you doing?’ Troy asked.

‘I would have thought it was obvious even to someone of your level of cognitive inanity,’ he drawled. ‘Since I can’t say it, I’m going to write—’

ZZZKKKKOWWWWCRK!

‘Ow! That’s not even spelled the same!’ He scribbled frantically before the flaming pencil burnt away completely, and handed the note to Troy. ‘There! This is it – see now?’

Troy studied the scrap of paper for some considerable time, concentrating as hard as I’d ever seen him. ‘Yes,’ he nodded. ‘Yes. Yes.’

‘You see what the word is?’ Guuuurk twinkled.

‘Not really. It’s very long.’ His lips tried to form the letters one by one. ‘Rrrigggiitee? Rrrrigghuhurtt? Arruggitta?’

‘It’s Right! The word is Right! Right! Right! Right!’

ZZZKKKKOWWWWCRK!

ZZZKKKKOWWWWCRK!

ZZZKKKKOWWWWCRK!

ZZZKKKKOWWWWCRK!

ZZZKKKKOWWWWCRK!

Multiple bolts forked around the chamber like flights of deadly flaming arrows. They ricocheted back and forth through the gallery of mirrors, blasting them into clouds of glittering shards.

When we picked ourselves up off the floor and pulled out the tiny slivers of glass from our clothing, only one mirror was still standing intact.

‘Well, my brilliant ploy worked rather superbly,’ Guuuurk crowed. ‘Now we can see our way clear to the exit.’

‘Your… foot’s actually burning like a log fire’, I pointed out.

‘Yes, I meant it to do that,’ he lied casually, trying to pretend it wasn’t hurting quite a lot.

‘Here,’ Troy offered, ‘let me stamp you out.’

‘Thank you very much!’ Guuuurk winced, pretending it wasn’t hurting even more as a size 14 boot smashed his toes repeatedly.

‘We’ve wasted too much time already,’ I warned. ‘We need to move now.’

Guuuurk began limping towards the exit, Troy followed, and I hopped after them, realising after a moment that Gemma wasn’t with us. I turned round to see where she was.

She was rooted to the spot, staring into the single remaining mirror.

Her ear was rotating…

Chapter Ten

The Rational Scientific Journal of Dr. Gemini Janussen, Sunday 6th January 1952 (Again)

So that’s what I looked like.

And that’s why I’d banished all mirrors from my bedroom.

I’d thought, at the time, it was merely to avoid vanity, which is a foolish waste of effort and energy. But the truth was I had simply been avoiding looking at myself. Because I didn’t like seeing what I saw. It made me anxious, inadequate – unhappy, even. And feelings like that are best locked away, safe inside where they can be ignored. As long as I was fully wound, they’d stay there, and I’d be safe.

And yet, hadn’t Brian said he thought I was beautiful? Of course the lovestruck always think the object of their desires is beautiful. Beautiful I wasn’t! There, I’d finally acknowledged those feelings, and now that I had – somehow I realised they were completely irrational.

I looked over my features again, but more calmly this time. True, I wouldn’t win the Miss World Contest – and frankly who would want to? – but the inventory wasn’t too depressing.

My hair was thick and healthy enough. Eyes were a warm hazel colour and rather clear. Skin fairly free of blemishes. Lips not exactly Rita Hayworth, but not Boris Karloff, either. I wasn’t fat or thin, just normal really. Actually, I quite liked how I looked.

Of course the worries of inadequacy hadn’t gone away, but they had been tempered by fact. I was, in truth, quite presentable. And that was good enough for me.

And if Brian wanted to say I’m beautiful to him – who was I to stop him?

I though he was rather handsome too, between you and me, when he stood up properly and stopped wittering on and forced a smile… There he was behind me now, with that lost puppy dog expression. What a useless lump! But quite a cutie, though, if you ignored the—

‘Gemma! Please – come on!’ he was urging.

‘Good grief! We need to go!’ I wound up my ear in a flash, grabbed his hand and we scooted off. In spite of the urgency and the peril we were in, just for a moment it felt to me as if we were a couple of schoolchildren happily running the three-legged race.

Chapter Eleven

The Daybook of ‘Jenkins’ Jenkins, RQMS Royal Fusiliers (very confused), Sunday the 6th of January, 1952

We’re shoring up the cellar, as per instructions.’Course, I already knows the so-called ‘intruder’ was only Brother Nylon inspecting the cellar for ancillary site safety purposes and allied management misconducts, but I carries on the charade anyways.

I’ve just finished stacking the last of the slow-motion gas cylinders, taunting the attack penguin into a bloodlust frenzy, and replacing the ball bearings with exploding kumquats from the Farm.

This Prof’s not too pleased to see what I’m doing when he comes back from looking through the other Prof’s latest notebook.

‘Slow-motion gas? Killer attack penguins?’ He dodges its lunge and goes to pop a kumquat in his mouth, but I stops him in time. ‘Weaponised fruit? And as if that weren’t enough,’ he smacks the notebook with the back of his hand, ‘now he’s trying to gain access to dangerous alien technology to retrieve a hopeless situation, using experimentally modified human replicas like himself! Is there no end to his god delusion? Is there no end to his hubris? Is there no end to… my nose?’

The nose does seem to be rather crumbly at the end, now I looks. It’s sort of… caving in, like a sandcastle when the tide takes it.

He feels the tip of his conk with his fingers. It shatters like a biscuit. There’s a whole lot of tiny granules down his shirt front now. He looks down at them, sprinkled all over the place, and groans quietly: ‘Nooooooo!’

‘Don’t worry about your nose, sir. Just brush the crumbs to the floor and I’ll fetch the Ewbank.’

What’s left of his face is ashen. ‘Jenkins, this is a bitter blow – my corporeal form is clearly unstable. You realise what this means?’ he keens. A tiny bit of his earlobes falls off at the bottom.

‘Yes, sir. It means you’re falling to pieces.’ I don’t add, ‘If you could crumble into a neat pile, that would be most helpful.’ Though it’s true.

‘It means I’m the duplicate, not him! It means that unethical, mad iteration is the real Quanderhorn after all.’

I can’t help feeling disappointed, on account of I quite liked this version. I sighs. ‘Well, at least we know where we are now, duplicate sir. He’s the top copy, you’re the carbon.’

‘I’m deteriorating rapidly,’ he rasps as his little finger crumbles to the floor. ‘Regrettably, the duplication process itself must be fatally flawed. We have to warn him: he can’t rely on those facsimiles.’

‘Bit late for that, sir. They’re well inside that ziggurat by now.’

‘Then we’ll have to warn him before he sends them in. Yesterday.’ He holds up the notebook again. Where’s this so-called “Future Phone” I—’ He checks himself. ‘He invented?’

‘There’s an extension over here, sir. But there was only enough tempor-what’s-i-um for one call, and we used it yesterday.’

He snorts a ha! ‘Think, man: this will be yesterday’s call.’

‘You may be a crumbling wreck of a duplicate, sir, but you still outranks me in the brains division.’ I hands him the receiver and dials in ‘Yesterday’.

It starts ringing at the other end.

‘Jenkins,’ the crumbly Prof hisses, ‘this is critical – I may need you to prompt me from time to time, so it’s exactly the same as yesterday. Clear?’

This Future Phone business makes my head fair spin, it does. It’s always trouble, if you asks me. I leans in close to listen.

‘Hello,’ I hears me yesterday self answer.

‘Quanderhorn here. I need to speak to Quanderhorn.’

I thinks back, and whispers to the crumbly Prof: ‘First, you’ve got to tell him about the ziggurat, sir.’

He covers up the mouthpiece. ‘That makes no sense. Why don’t I go straight to the warning?’

‘Dunno,’ I shrugs, ‘but that’s what you did.’

And we both hear the Yesterday-Prof says to Yesterday-me: ‘Tell him I’m out.’

The carbon Prof yells: ‘And I know he isn’t out. I’m in the future, dammit!’ He covers the mouthpiece again and turns to me. ‘You’re sure the dire warning didn’t go first?’

‘Definitely not, sir’

‘I’d better not be wasting my own time,’ comes from the other end. ‘Hello?’

‘Listen, Quanderhorn, there isn’t much time. The advanced technology in that Mercurian vessel has stirred a powerful alien artefact, a giant ziggurat, slumbering these many millennia under Piccadilly Circus.’

‘Oh, really?’

‘Anyone who penetrates the heart of its structure will astonishing secrets beyond human understanding.’

‘I see. And why are you bothering to tell me this?’

‘To be honest, I don’t have the faintest idea. I need to get to the point.’

‘Well, get to the point, then.’

‘Well, if you’d just stop interrupting me, I would get to the point—’

‘You’re interrupting me!’

‘No – you’re interrupting me. Just listen: I must give you this dire warning… whatever you do, don’t…’

And that operator’s voice. ‘To continue this call, please deposit more temporium.’

‘…rely on the duplicate crew, because they’re going to crumble… Hello?’

But the line’s gone dead.

‘Dammit!’ He slams the phone down in such a fury, his hand snaps off with it.

We both stare at the hand on the floor as it trickles away like the grains in an hourglass.

‘I’ve had it, Jenkins’, he says quietly and he begins to sink slowly to knee height into a growing pile of dust. ‘I don’t have long now…’

I unfolds a sheet of newspaper and lays it on the ground. ‘If you wouldn’t mind just aiming yourself onto this, sir, it would make my job so much easier.’

But he’s staring into the distance. ‘It was all going to be so wonderful. Virginia and I had such plans. We would cure the sick, feed the starving… Where is she, by the way?’

‘Um – Dr Whyte? She’s, er… not been quite herself just recently…’ is the best I can come up with. ‘Rotting in a putrefying mass on the compost heap’ seems too cruel.

He’s down to the waist now. ‘Sixty-six years in a cupboard, and then this!’ he manages to croak, as his torso collapses.

‘I must say, sir, it’s been a real pleasure working with you.’ And it’s true, even though he’s ruining my newly swept floor. ‘Sorry you have to leave us.’

Then, with just his head remaining atop a pyramid of flakes, he barely murmurs: ‘I’m sorry, too, Jenkins – only the real Quanderhorn can save you all now…’

And he’s gone.

Chapter Twelve

Mission log. Flight number 001, Advanced Laboratory-Blasting Squadron (‘The Lab Busters’) Wing Commander William ‘Wee Willy Winkie’ Watkins, Office Commanding. Dateline: Sunday the 6th of January, 1952 02.03 hours

I’ve been awfully patient with the Scotsmen, but I’m afraid I finally snapped.

‘Good God in Heaven! Can’t you kilted bastards play anything else?’

There was the hideous baby-strangling strains of the bags deflating, followed by an ominous silence. Then the chief Jock stood up, took several steps towards me, creased his brow and rumbled: ‘We could do a selection from Showboat, but Angus here’s a wee bit iffy on “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man”.’

A bagpipe was hurled to the deck at the back, and an even deeper voice boomed: ‘Only on the middle eight! D’ya want to mak somethin’ of it?’

‘It’s no’ a criticism, Angus,’ the pipe major rationalised. ‘It’s down to the tonal range o’ th’ instrument—’

‘Could we just calm down a bit,’ I intervened, ‘and perhaps you’d enjoy a little rest for a moment or two?’

But the piper wouldn’t leave it. ‘Are you sayin’ ma “tonal range” is inadequate?’ he challenged, real menace in the voice.

The pipe major squared up to him. ‘Are you sayin’ ma tessitural knowledge is inaccurate?’

‘Aye, I’m sayin’ it. Ye dinna ken wha’ the deil ye’s talkin’ ’bout!’

‘I’m takkin off m’ pipe major hat, now this is jus’ between us, mon tae mon.’ He put up his fists. ‘What’s keepin’ ye, Shirley Temple?’

‘I’ll no’ sully m’ knuckles on a scabby scunner frae Aberdeen. It’d be like punchin’ a wee blind kitten.’

‘Oh – a kitten, is it? Well, even a kitten could beat a hackit jessie frae Inveraray wi’ a face like a scrot—’

‘Why don’t we all sit back down,’ I soothed, trying with my free hand to cram the feather bonnet back on the pipe major’s bullet-like head, ‘and just have a nice cup of char…?’ I suddenly realised that the message light had been flashing urgently for some seconds. I yelled ‘Quiet!’ and flicked the switch.

‘Come in, Lab Busters…’ It was unmistakably Old Bulldog himself! I felt myself come to attention, even though I was sitting down.

‘Yes, sir, Prime Minister, sir.’

‘The urgency of the situation demands I speak to you directly. Do you acknowledge my commands?’

‘Yes, sir. Of course, sir.’

‘Now listen carefully: I’m making an alteration to your orders’

Much as I ached to obey my de facto Commander-in-Chief, there was a complication. ‘Sir, your standing orders were to ignore any deviation from the mission, no matter what efforts were made to the contrary.’

‘And now I’m changing that standing order.’

I took a deep breath. ‘Sir, I’m most terribly sorry, but I cannot disobey the standing order without your giving me the top secret termination phrase.’

‘Yes, you’re right, I remember now. I rather cleverly devised a phrase that no one else would think to utter it in these circumstances.’

‘Understood, sir.’

‘Very well, open your sealed envelope now.’

I nodded at the co-pilot and he dialled in the combination of the tactical security locker, and handed me the sealed envelope within.

I tore it open and scanned the code in dismay.

It read: ‘Proceed with the bombing’.

‘Wing Commander, have you read it?’

‘Yes.’

‘I now say to you: Proceed with the bombing. Do you understand?’

I didn’t. ‘Not entirely, sir.’ I could feel my heart pounding under my shirt.

‘Proceed with the bombing. I couldn’t be any clearer than that, could I?’

My mouth was dry and I had difficulty speaking now. ‘Are you saying “Proceed with the bombing,” meaning I should proceed with the bombing? Or “Proceed with the bombing,” meaning “don’t proceed with the bombing”?’

‘I’m saying “Don’t proceed with the bombing”.’

‘But, sir – that’s not the phrase.’

‘I know it’s not the bloody phrase. The phrase is: Proceed with the bloody bombing.’

‘No, that’s not the phrase, either, sir.’

‘All right, all right: Proceed with the bombing. Clear?’

‘I’m… sorry, sir. I’m still rather confused.’

‘I don’t know how to make it clearer to you: Proceed with the bombing! Don’t proceed with the bombing!’

My head was spinning now. ‘Sir, we’re approaching the point of no recall. Bomber Command will automatically switch us to radio silence.’

‘For the love of mercy, man, listen to what I’m saying: Proceed with the bombing! Proceed with the bombing! Proceed with the bombing!’

I gulped back the lump in my throat. The radio silence light above the cockpit blinked on. ‘Acknowledged. Over and out, sir.’

I wasn’t sure but I thought I caught the final faint words as the radio faded out. ‘The idiots are proceeding with the bombing…’ But it was drowned out by the pipes striking up ‘Old Man River’.

There was no turning back now.

I had my orders and, whatever my personal reservations, I intended to carry them out.

Chapter Thirteen

Outprint from Gargantua, the pocket Quanderdictoscribe. Dateline: Sunday the 6th of January, 1952 02.12 hours

NEW BRIAN: We seem to have lost signal for a few moments there. To bring you up to date: we negotiated the Riddling Sphinx of the Living Flames with consummate ease, and now find ourselves in an immense, echoing, airy chamber. Clearly, this is the heart of the ziggurat. The walls are glowing with a gentle amber phosphorescence of some kind – it’s magnificent! There are fluted columns of gold and other lustrous metals I’ve never seen nor heard of, and glimmering crystals embedded in the vaulted ceiling—

NEW GEMMA: Look, Bri-Bri! Tell them about the—

NEW BRIAN: Yes, yes, I’m getting to it, darling. Please don’t interrupt.

NEW GEMMA: Sorry, darling. Do forgive me.

NEW BRIAN: (CLEARS THROAT) As I was about to say: ahead of us is a wide flight of steps. We’re mounting it now. It leads to an altar-like platform… Half a tick! The chamber’s entrance is opening again behind us…

Chapter Fourteen

From the journal of Brian Nylon, 6th January, 1952 – [cont’d]

Bruised, singed, half-choked and exhausted, we staggered into the welcome coolness of a rather grand corridor with an enormous carved and gilded door at the far end.

Guuuurk was still moaning. ‘Oh, the untrammelled ecstasy of answering riddles where flames shoot out of the floor every time you’re wrong!’

‘We weren’t wrong many times,’ Troy protested.

‘We were wrong all the times! We didn’t get one right!’ Guuuurk exploded. ‘Not even that one where it was obviously a penguin in a lift! Whatever possessed you to say “a skunk on a trampoline”? My co-respondent shoes are still smouldering!’

‘Shall I stamp them out again?’

‘No!’ Guuuurk snapped. He was right at the end of his tether. We all were.

On the bright side, at least my trouser legs were no longer glued together. On the dark side, my trouser legs had been entirely burnt off. Along with my leg hair. Not to mention, the elastic in my pants had slightly melted. Gemma had offered me a safety pin, but it wasn’t very effective in keeping them up. I had to walk with my legs ludicrously far apart in order to maintain my dignity.

As we approached them, the palatial double doors swung open grandly, bathing us in a brilliant golden glow from the chamber beyond.

A thought suddenly struck me: could it be we were actually approaching the culmination of the quest? Did we dare to hope?

We stepped through the arch into an immense, echoing cathedral-like vault, and stood blinking in the unaccustomed light.

‘Oh my goodness! We’ve made it! We’ve won!’

‘Brian…’ Gemma warned.

As my sight adjusted, I could see an immense staircase at the far end of the vault, and a group of figures just about to reach its top.

The duplicates had got here first!

‘We’ve lost!’ My face collapsed. ‘They’ve beaten us fair and square.’

‘There is no “fair and square”.’ Guuuurk shoved me aside roughly. ‘Haven’t I taught you shower anything? If we’ve lost fair and square, then we cheat!’ And he and Troy raced off towards the prize.

I looked over to Gemma. She was following them. ‘Well, what are you waiting for?’ she barked over her shoulder. ‘Pull up your knickers and run!’

Chapter Fifteen

Outprint from Gargantua, the pocket Quanderdictoscribe. Dateline: Sunday the 6th of January, 1952 02.16 hours

NEW GEMMA: Brian! It’s those dreadful coarse people from outside!

NEW BRIAN: They’ll never reach us in time Just two more steps, poppet…

NEW GEMMA: What’s that peculiar ethereal music? Where’s it coming from?

NEW BRIAN: Good heavens! An astonishingly bright light has just fired up right above us, illuminating an intricately carved plinth, which is rising from the floor… and displayed on top of it is—

NEW TROY: A dirty old bucket?

Chapter Sixteen

From the journal of Brian Nylon, 6th January, 1952 – [cont’d]

Guuuurk and Troy had reached the steps, but my splay-footed jogging had left me seriously behind Gemma, who stopped and turned to urge me onwards. ‘I think they’ve found it, whatever it is!’

‘Why are we doing this?’ I panted, ‘We’re honour-bound to enter the Obliteration Chamber.’

‘No,’ Gemma insisted. ‘Pure rationality: who doesn’t get the relic gets obliterated, and it isn’t in their hands yet.’

We started up the vertiginous steps.

Guuuurk, already halfway up, yelled: ‘No! Wait! Stop! Don’t touch it!’

‘Too late!’ My doppelgänger (excuse the German!) did that annoying Robin Hood laugh again and nudged his Gemma. ‘Look at them: the Losers’ 800 yard relay! Truly pathetic. And why is the other me waddling like a platypus?’

‘He isn’t wearing any trousers!’ she squealed, staring incredulously.

‘The man’s a downright pervert! Don’t look at him, darling.’

‘I can’t help it! His legs are smoother than mine! He looks like Betty Grable—’

Guuuurk, almost at the top now, shrieked breathlessly: ‘Keep your filthy hands off that bucket!’

‘And what if I don’t?’ My duplicate reached out, hand teasingly hovering over the relic, but not quite touching it.

Guuuurk cried, rather desperately I thought, ‘You realise it could be dangerous!’

Guuuurk’s other shook his head. ‘That’s a scurrilous lie. As usual.’

The smile died on my other self’s face and he drew back his hand. ‘Actually, he could be right.’

Troy stepped up to the platform. ‘But it’s only a bucket!’

I still had at least twenty steps to go, and my calf muscles were cramping up like billy-o.

The other me smiled patronisingly at Troy. ‘Only a bucket? Look at the symbols running round the dais: they can only mean one thing…’

‘What’s that, Brian?’ his Gemma simpered.

Meanwhile, my Gemma had reached the others at the top and was peering intently at the inscriptions. ‘It can’t be! I’ve heard tales of it, but I never dreamt it was real.’ She straightened, her eyes wide. ‘It’s the Gaulus Tempus.’

New Gemma looked at her with faux innocence. ‘Which, translated for all us Latin duffers, means…?’

‘Oh, for pity’s sake,’ Gemma snorted, ‘you’re me! You have a double first from Oxford!

The other Gemma smiled with a superior air. ‘There’s nothing worse than a self-important clever clogs, is there, though?’

‘Well, let me see… There’s a self-denigrating, simpering man-worshipper?’

‘I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.’

‘And I’m absolutely certain you do.’

I reached the platform, wheezing and holding up my pants. My namesake ended the incipient catfight. ‘It’s the legendary Gaulus Tempus. Literally translated: the Bucket of… Chicken.’

We all stared at him.

‘Chicken?’ I echoed.

‘Bucket of Time!’ He was suddenly sweating a little. ‘What did I say? I seem to be feeling rather peculiar—’

‘We came through all that for a bucket?’ girly Gemma pouted. ‘Why?’

The other me seemed to have recovered somewhat. ‘You scatterbrained lovely! It’s no ordinary bucket: It holds time, and it’s bottomless.’

Troy’s duplicate frowned. ‘But if there’s no bottom, won’t the time all fall out though it?

‘Ha!’ our Troy laughed. ‘You’re so stupid!’

‘No, you are!’

‘No, you are!’

‘No, you are!’

‘No, you are!’

‘No, you are!’

‘No, you are!’

‘No, you are!’

Sensing victory, our Troy announced triumphantly: ‘No, you really really really are!’

‘I’m not.’

Troy was crestfallen. ‘He’s done it again!’ he yelped. His brow creased. ‘But he is right: if there’s no bottom, the time would fall out through it.’

My duplicate explained: ‘Not literally bottomless, Troy, figuratively barnacles.’ He blinked and shook his head to clear it. ‘Bottomless. I’m getting a little confused.’

Both he and the ersatz Gemma were indeed looking distinctly peaky. ‘I’m feeling a bit queer myself, darling,’ she trilled, wiping her brow, ‘but at least the Gaulus Tempus is ours.’

True enough. In a moment, the Bucket would be in their hands, and it would all be over for us.

Amazingly, inspiration struck.

I turned to our Guuuurk and raised my eyebrow meaningfully. ‘Guuuurk, old chap,’ I crooned, casually, ‘this may be the time for you to show us all that delightful childhood game from your homeland…’

He looked baffled. ‘What? Pin the Tendrils on the Blubber Beast?’

‘No!’ I smiled. ‘The other game.’ I squinted with one eye and pointed to it inconspicuously. Everyone stared at me strangely for some reason.

‘What?’ Guuuurk frowned. ‘Hop Round the Snakes? 1-2-3 Stab?’

‘No!’

‘Children Skittles?’

‘No, I mean…’ and I hummed through my teeth, ‘Mnnhun clurzee urszey.’

‘Martian Closey-eyesy? Oh, no. Martian Closey-eyesy would be totally inappropriate at this moment.’ A thought appeared to strike him. ‘Just a minute, though – how foolish of us!’ He peered at the relic. ‘It’s the final trap! Obviously this rusty old bucket isn’t the true Gaulus Tempus at all. Clearly, it’s that splendid golden thing right over there in the other direction!’ He pointed to the far end of the chamber, and naturally we all turned to look, before we realised we’d been had!

We heard an odd clicking sound and all turned back to see Guuuurk with his hands in the air, frozen in the act of reaching for the relic.

Slowly, he stepped back, revealing his counterpart brandishing a rather fearsome-looking Ray Gun.

‘Hands up, everybody, and keep absolutely still,’ Copy-Brian warned, arms akimbo.

There was a blinding green flash and a deafening zap!

My duplicate’s recording device was blasted off his shoulder, leaving only smouldering wires and a metallic stench.

‘As your pathetic Earth “hero” says,’ the alternate Guuuurk snarled, ‘put your hands up.’ He carefully edged his way over to the bucket, keeping his weapon trained on us. ‘With this relic, the Glorious Martian Attack Force can turn the clock back to the last invasion – only this time, victory will be ours!’

‘Great plan, Martian brother!’ Guuuurk stepped forward again with seemingly genuine enthusiasm. ‘I say, is that the Blast-O-Matic E-Z Kill DeLuxe? That’s my favourite Ray Gun!’

‘Get back in line, you nauseating spuuung-deng-bankkerrtt!’

I’ve no idea what it meant, but Guuuurk visibly stiffened and stepped back immediately.[25]

‘Brian – do something!’ replacement Gemma pleaded.

‘Do what, darling?’ other me replied. ‘The Martian devil’s beaten us fair and squirrel. Square!’

Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted Gemma surreptitiously sliding her hand towards the clasp of her duplicate’s handbag, in which there would certainly be a compact mirror…

As I made to step forward to distract the mad Martian, there was another blast and the handbag blew to bits with a shriek from substitute Gemma, and a resigned sigh from the proper one. I noticed, with some horror, that the blast had scorched her hand. I began to feel real hatred for this ignoble alien fascist.

‘It would be a serious mistake to think me a foolish posing popinjay, like that ridiculous purple quisling.’ The rogue Guuuurk nodded towards his counterpart. ‘Now – all of you get back down the steps,’ he rasped, ‘except, of course, for Imperial Spy X-One-Zero.’

Chapter Seventeen

Private Diary of Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill: Sunday the 6th of January, 1952

Having explored every possible recourse with the Air Chief Marshal himself, I was compelled to conclude there was no earthly way to recall those deadly bombers.

I hastened back to the platform to find Quanderhorn cursing his stenographic machine, which seemed to have seized up like a motor car engine on a frosty morning.

‘Dammit – they’re not transmitting!’ the reprobate spat. ‘Something’s gone terribly wrong in there. And now there’s no way of finding out what.’

‘I care little to what desperate reckless shenanigans you refer, Quanderhorn. The darkest hour is now irrevocably upon us.’

‘What? You can’t even reverse your own bombers, you septuagenarian incompetent?’

‘Rant and rave as you wish, it will avail you nothing. I now have the solemn and unenviable duty to inform Her Majesty the Queen that, regrettably, the entire fabric of existence is about to come to an end in a little under seven minutes. And, for all it matters, Her Royal Highness the Princess Margaret might just as well go and marry Group Captain Townsend. Or, for that matter, Admiral Nelson, General Custer or Colonel bloody Mustard in the library with a candlestick, should she so desire!’

‘It still may not come to that.’

‘If by some fantastic contrivance it does not, and we somehow survive, be warned.’ I fixed him with my fiercest stare. ‘I intend to put an end to your infernal “Xperimentations” once and for all!’ I slammed my Homburg onto my head and turned. ‘I bid you farewell, Qu wwaaaaaa nderhorn!’

I left the scoundrel to his own devilish machinations, much good would they do him.

Much good would they do anyone, now.

Chapter Eighteen

The Rational Scientific Journal of Dr. Gemini Janussen, Sunday 6th January 1952 (Again)

The evil Martian was looking directly at Brian, who seemed utterly poleaxed by the suggestion.

‘I-I’m a spy for Mars?’

‘Yes,’ Guuuurk nodded with considerable enthusiasm. ‘You’re an honorary Martian, Brian.’

Brian’s shoulders sank. ‘I am? I… That can’t be…’

‘I recruited you, remember. I gave you the discounted membership rate of three shillings and sevenpence ha’penny…’

The other Guuuurk looked at him askance.

‘Purely to cover administrative expenses… It’s non-returnable, unfortunately.’

‘That’s simply not possible,’ Brian protested. It couldn’t be true, could it?

‘Surely you remember the initiation ceremony?’ Guuuurk insisted.

The other Martian took it up: ‘You swore allegiance to the Sacred Bag of Dust, and we hung you up by hooks through your cheeks for forty-eight hours.’

‘But I don’t have any scars on my cheeks.’

Our Guuuurk raised all his eyebrows. ‘Not those cheeks, I’m afraid.’

‘I’m fairly sure I’d have remembered dangling from hooks skewering my buttocks for two whole days,’ Brian protested with genuine indignation.

‘Well, I remember it,’ his duplicate raged. ‘I still make a whistling sound when I sit down! What is wrong with you? You’ll agree to do almost anything just to avoid making others feel uncomfortable, won’t you?’

Well, that was Brian, all right! But would he really take it to such an extreme he’d betray his own planet?

‘Right.’ The bad Guuuurk waved the gun. ‘Stay next to me, Agent X-One-Zero—’

Brian bunched his fists unconsciously by his side. ‘Please don’t call me that,’ he cautioned, coldly. I’d never seen him in such an icy fury.

The Martian was oblivious. ‘The rest of you line up over there. I’m taking the bucket now. Agent X-One-Zero…’

Brian’s knuckles turned white.

‘…pick it up!’

Poor old Brian was clearly suffering. There was a battle raging inside him. A civil war between the man he was now, and the man he’d once been.

I suddenly felt such a pang of sympathy for him, I could scarcely breathe. I ached to tell him he didn’t have to be that man any more. The past meant nothing. The things he’d done – they’re not what Brian was any more. He was his own man now. A good man. Kind. And faithful. And a jolly decent sort. ‘Don’t be the man you were!’ I wanted to shout. ‘Be the man you’re becoming!’

‘X-One-Zero! I said pick that up!’

Brian thrust out his chest. ‘No,’ he insisted firmly.

‘No?’ Bad Guuuurk repeated, incredulous.

‘No.’ Brian was quite calm and steady now. ‘I’m not going to do it.’

‘Then,’ the Martian said, quite matter-of-factly, ‘I shall have no option but to kill you.’

Brian met his gaze. ‘There are worse things than death.’

The Martian levelled his gun.

Brian folded his arms. ‘You can shoot me if you want, but I’ve had it up to the eyeballs with being special agent Cheaty Liar for every Tom, Dick or Bastard who asks me.’

His ersatz counterpart chided: ‘Old chap, this isn’t the moment.’

Brian stood firm. ‘It’s never the moment. There’s never any time to explain. There’s never any time to think. Enough’s enough—’

I wanted to hug him so very much right then.

‘I’m drawing a line in the sand,’ he went on, and then his eyes caught something on the floor. He frowned. ‘Actually – what is this sand? Where’s it all come from?’

There were, indeed, loose crystals of what looked like silicon drifting over our feet.

‘I don’t want to make a fuss,’ my floozy counterpart stammered, ‘but my legs seem to be crumbling…’ And they were!

‘Darling.’ The other Brian looked on, aghast. ‘It’s all right – take my…’ He peered down his empty sleeve. ‘Hang on a second: where is my hand?’

‘Hey, look.’ Duplicate Troy’s voice came from ground level. ‘I can play football with my head!’ He started playing keepy-uppy with his own cranium, yelling, ‘One – ow! Two – ow! Thr—’ His head fragmented into a cloud of dust, followed momentarily by the rest of him.

‘Wow!’ Troy said. ‘I wish I could do that.’ He tried to bicycle kick his own head and fell over heavily, scattering the mound of his duplicate’s remains.

The Ray Gun clattered to the floor next to him.

We all turned to the rogue Martian, or rather, what was left of him. He was already up to his waist in a pile of himself and dwindling rapidly.

‘Yes!’ he cried. ‘I’m going! I’m going to Bzingador!’ He gazed in wonder at a vision none of us could share. ‘Ahhh! I am at the Great Black Door. It opens! Yes! I see the twelve-breasted serving wenches awaiting my commands. Lord Phobos himself is gliding forth to greet me – I see the bounteous tables of cream horns and mountainous pink blancmange glimmering in the firelight…’ His eyes widened and his mouth sagged. ‘What? No! They’re scorning me! Something’s opening beneath my feet! It’s the Pit! It’s the Pit! They’re saying I’m a snivelling coward and repulsive turncoat!’

‘Oh, hard cheese!’ Guuuurk grimaced unconvincingly. ‘They must have muddled you up with me!’

‘I’m descending! I’m descending to the fiery pits of Croydon! Aarrrrghhhfgh!’

Then there was nothing left of him but a mound of grit, an empty safety suit and a pair of jackboots.

I found it surprisingly distressing to see my namesake and her paramour also sinking into heaps of their own detritus. Though it was rather touching that, even at this grimmest of moments, they had eyes only for each other.

‘I loved you, Bri-Bri,’ she whispered.

‘And I you, Gem-Gem…’ But she had wafted away.

To my surprise, at this terrible moment, he turned his decaying head to Brian. ‘You! Come closer,’ he rasped.

Brian looked at me, shrugged, then knelt beside his dwindling form. ‘What is it, old chap?’

‘Closer still,’ the moribund duplicate croaked.

Brian put his ear to the remains of the ruined mouth. The duplicate whispered something into it, which I couldn’t hear, then he, too, was gone.

Brian was very still for a moment or two. Then he slowly stood.

‘What did he tell you, Brian?’

But Brian said nothing, just shook his head.

Guuuurk broke the spell. ‘Now, are we going to take this bucket, or are we going to stand around all day knee-deep in piles of old eczema?’

I reached up and grasped the relic’s handle. It seemed to be slightly embedded in the stone plinth. ‘I think I’m going to need some help!’ I called. Then all of a sudden, it seemed to free itself. There was an ominous click.

‘Gemma!’ Brian yelled. ‘You’ve triggered something.’

It was a trap after all!

I froze, unsure whether to move or stay where I was. There was a swishing noise, and too late I saw the arrow heading straight for me.

And then the world was upside down.

I hit the floor, and simultaneously heard the terrible thwack of the shaft embedding itself in flesh.

I looked up to see Brian swaying with the arrowhead buried deep in his chest.

Chapter Nineteen

The Daybook of ‘Jenkins’ Jenkins, RQMS Royal Fusiliers (forcibly retired), Sunday the 6th of January, 1952

Obviously, that fake Prof ain’t going to shovel himself up, is he? I might eventually use him to grit the front steps – I reckon it’s what he would have wanted. But first things first: I has to call the real Professor and warn him about this disintegrating duplicates business.

Just as I’m reaching for it, the walkie buzzes of its own accord, and it’s Himself.

‘Interesting development, Jenkins,’ he says. Well, any conversation what starts off with that usually entails disinfectant and a mop. ‘That Neanderthal Churchill has launched a squadron of lab-busting bombers, and they’re headed your way.’

Beggar me, that’s going to need more than a mop, I thinks to myself.

And right on cue, the tocsin starts up, and that flippin’ woman announces: ‘Lab-Busting bomber squadron six minutes away.’

‘But what about your Alien Arctic Cat of Immense Power, sir? Have you got it yet?’

‘I’m afraid we’ve completely lost communications with the ziggurat. But I have every confidence those excellent improved duplicates will get it to us in time.’

‘Ah. That’s what I was wanting to tell you, sir,’ I says. ‘There ma-a-a-ay be a problem in that department.’

‘What sort of problem, man?’

I looks at the sack of dust beside me. ‘How can I put this, sir?’

‘We don’t have time for you to search through your colourful but limited selection of similes, Jenkins. Put the other me on.’

‘That’s just it, sir. He’s crumbled.’

‘Crumbled?’

‘He’s basically Harpic now.’

There’s a long pause. ‘I see.’

‘Chin up, sir. There’s still the Originals to rely on!’

Even saying it, my heart sinks. Poor comrade Brother Nylon. Nice enough bloke, but he stands about as much chance as Rin Tin Tin in a Korean restaurant.

Chapter Twenty

The Rational Scientific Journal of Dr. Gemini Janussen, Sunday 6th January 1952 (Again) – [cont’d]

Brian stared at the arrow buried in his chest in what looked like amused disbelief, then suddenly toppled onto his back, his shirt drenched in blood.

I scrambled over to him. ‘Brian!’ I cradled his head in my arms. ‘Don’t worry – you’re going to be all right.’

‘Of course he’s not going to be all right’ Troy exclaimed. ‘He’s got a dirty, great arrow in his chest, and he’s gushing blood all over the— Owwwwww.’ I horse-kicked him in the shins to shut him up.

Brian moaned and his eyelids fluttered.

‘Can you hear me?’ I coaxed. ‘Stay with us.’

Troy whispered loudly: ‘Nobody tell him he’s dying.’ He knelt down tenderly next to Brian, put a hand encouragingly on his shoulder and said: ‘Brian, you’re dying. Damn!’

‘He’s right, Gemma.’ Brian smiled sadly, looking down at the awful wound. ‘I’m afraid there’s no happy ending to this one.’

I blinked back a tear. What good would lachrymosity do?

He met my eyes. ‘Gemma, I have to know… If I’d ever mustered enough courage to ask… would you have married me?’

I smiled. ‘In a heartbeat, my darling.’

Brian’s voice was getting weaker. ‘I can’t feel my chest any more…’

‘Well,’ Guuuurk crooned, ‘just a theory, but that may be because it’s now crawling across the floor, spluttering…’

I glanced over. It was, indeed.

Of course – it was the bra!

Guuuurk peered warily at the stricken creature. ‘The arrow’s finally made it lose its grip! Look, there’s not even a mark on your actual chest.’

Brian sat up groggily and looked down. ‘The Living Bra! I’d forgotten I still had it on – it was so comfortable.’

‘The poor thing’s cowering behind the plinth, coughing up blood,’ Guuuurk announced, tugging on the jackboots. ‘I’ll put it out of its misery.’

He chased over to it and started trying to stamp it to death. It snarled and snapped back at him in wounded fury.

‘It’s a resilient little devil! Naaaaaaaaaah! It’s crawling up my leg!’

We ignored him. Brian struggled to his feet. ‘Uhm, about that getting married business…’

‘Ye-e-sss, well, of course I thought—’

‘Yes. So did I.’

‘It’s not that—’

‘No, no, no. Of course not.’

‘I t’s worse than the duck! It’s worse than the duck!’

‘But under the circum—’

‘Yes, yes, yes. You don’t have to say anything.’

We both looked at each other. Had we meant it?

I smiled at him gently. ‘We’ll talk about it when we get out of here. We’ll have all the time in the world.’

‘It’s on my face! Mah muhn mah fuuuumn!’

There was a tremendous clang as Troy hit Guuuurk in the face with a shovel. The bra fell off, stone dead.

Guuuurk was clutching his bloodied nose. ‘You absolute stinker!’ he snarled.

‘You’re welcome.’ Troy picked up the bucket. ‘Hadn’t we better get this to Pops?’

As he raised the relic into the light, it seemed to glow, and that strange, ethereal polyphony resounded again.

The floor beneath us began to rumble and shake.

We staggered against each other. ‘Hang on, everybody!’ Brian yelled.

The plinth slid down into the staircase, and then the staircase rumbled and began to concertina and descend into itself.

When it came to rest, we found ourselves at ground level of the chamber, facing two great golden doors, hitherto obscured.

‘It’s the final test.’ I fought not to show my frustration. ‘We had better choose wisely.’

Chapter Twenty-One

From the journal of Brian Nylon, 6th January, 1952 – [cont’d]

‘For the love of sand!’ Guuuurk railed, dabbing his nose with his ‘E. S.’ monogrammed handkerchief. ‘We’re never going to get out of this hellhole!’

‘Nonsense,’ Gemma countered. ‘All it takes is a little intelligence.’

‘For the love of sand!’ Guuuurk repeated. ‘We’re never going to get out of this hellhole!’

Suddenly, there was an ominous sequence of sounds – hatches opening – and all around the chamber great sluices started pouring forth tons of coal-black sand.

‘I didn’t mean I literally loved sand,’ Guuuurk whined. ‘If I’d said “I like peanuts” would we all now be inundated in a cascade of salty legumes?’

We studied the doors hurriedly. They seemed infuriatingly identical.

As we watched, there was a sizzling noise, and a white-hot arc carved symbols into each of them.

When the smoke cleared we could make out on the left a horizontal crescent, and on the right, a circle. ‘The Moon and the Sun?’ I offered.

‘We have to choose quickly,’ Gemma urged. ‘Which of them is the way out?’

‘Careful,’ Guuuurk cautioned. ‘I’ve heard a lot about these types of devilish two-door conundra. The wrong one probably leads to certain death.’

The sand was ankle-high now. This was the moment for leadership. I didn’t hesitate. ‘The Sun,’ I said, stepping forward with calm conviction, ‘obviously means “outside”.’

I wrenched the great door open.

Giant towers of crockery crashed to the floor, in what was becoming a rather familiar motif. The tumbling and smashing went on for several minutes.

‘That’s not a sun, it’s a plate!’ Troy pointed out rather unnecessarily.

I looked at the others and simply screamed ‘Why!’

‘Because,’ Guuuurk said, ‘you’re a confirmed nemesis to all baked earthenware?’

‘And the other one’s not a moon!’ Gemma cried. ‘It’s a smiling mouth.’ She pushed the door lightly with her finger, and it slid silently open.

There, grimly smiling before us on the Tube platform, was Professor Darius Quanderhorn.

Chapter Twenty-Two

From the journal of Brian Nylon, 6th January, 1952 – [cont’d]

Troy held up the relic. ‘We got it, Pops! We got it!’

‘Excellent. Don’t concern yourselves with the idiot original crew. They’ll doubtless be dead by now.’

‘Actually,’ I said, ‘we are the idiot original crew. The duplicates have crumbled to dust.’

‘As I said,’ he went on without pause, ‘don’t concern yourselves with the idiot duplicate crew. They’ve probably crumbled to dust by now. We have to get that bucket to the lab immediately.’ He busied himself wiring up a strange-looking heavily modified telephone booth.

‘First, there are a few things we need to clear up—’

‘There’s no time to explain right now.’

I wasn’t falling for that old chestnut this time. ‘You already knew the Time Bucket was in the ziggurat, didn’t you, Professor?’

‘Yes, yes. If you must know.’ He fired up his soldering iron. ‘Six months ago, I located it using Gargantua, the subterranean X-ray surveying mole and potato planter. I realised it might be our only hope for the future if things went wrong. Now, why don’t—’

I wasn’t letting him off the hook. I held firm. ‘But the problem was – how to trigger the ziggurat?’

‘Yes!’ he snapped, irritably. ‘I realised only the presence of superior technology that doesn’t currently exist on Earth would do it. Can’t we do this later?’

Gemma stepped forward. ‘Are you saying… you deliberately rigged the lift to send us to the Moon, and marooned us there, so we’d pilot the Mercurian vessel back to Earth?’

‘Of course I did. No choice. Not even Nylon would have volunteered for that! And it worked! Well done everybody, but mostly—’

‘Soooooooo—’ Guuuurk menacingly selected a teal Sobranie from his musical cigarette case and screwed it violently into his holder. ‘—why did you try and blast us out of existence with the Giant Space Laser?’

A look I’ve never seen flitted across the Professor’s face. Was it… could it be… shame? Confusion? Despair? It was impossible to read.

‘There seriously is not time to explain right now,’ he recovered. ‘That maniac Cheeuuuurchill has launched a bomber squadron to take out the laboratory. We needn’t go into detail, but if that cellar takes a bomb…’

Oh my Lord – the cellar? If those tanks down there were to suffer a hit – it didn’t bear thinking about. ‘The lab? But we’ll never get anywhere near there in time.’

‘Wrong.’ The Professor smiled grimly. ‘There is just one way…’ He tapped the phone booth with his soldering iron.

Guuuurk dragged his hand across his face. ‘No, Professor! Please tell me that thing isn’t your notorious Not Entirely Tested Matter Transfuser Booth!’

Chapter Twenty-Three

The Daybook of ‘Jenkins’ Jenkins, RQMS Royal Fusiliers (don’t care any more), Sunday the 6th of January, 1952

That tocsin’s still blaring away. I don’t even bother to switch it off.

I’ve jemmied open the Prof’s locked desk drawer and liberated his bottle of twenty-year-old Napoleon Brandy. I must say it’s pretty good stuff for a shortarse Frog to have knocked up. Slips down the gullet like wax off a floozy’s hairpin. I’m all comfortable now, boots off, feet up on the radiator, third tumblerful to hand and a well-filled roll-up going – no point saving any snout for later now, is there?

I’m just getting all relaxed and totally plastered-like, when that tinny voice comes over the tannoy: ‘Lab-Busting bomber squadron five minutes away.’

I leans over to the speaker behind me and has a word. ‘Don’t take this the wrong way, sweet lips,’ I breathes, all polite, ‘but I always wondered what a striking woman like yourself – I assume you’re striking, by your voice – statue- esque, I mean. That’s what I’ve always pictured – classy, but with a generous chestillage. I always wondered what you get out of a job that’s so bleeeeeding depressing? I mean – “Two minutes to the end of the world” – “Five minutes to the bombing” – “Atomic blast in ten seconds” – don’t you ever feel the urge to announce something – well, a bit more cheerful?’

She don’t answer me, of course. Never does. I takes another long swig of the old Dutch courage. Dutch? Don’t like ’em. Too much like the Belgians. Don’t like ’em either… and don’t start me off on the Luxemburgians…

Where was I?

Oh yes. ‘I don’t suppose,’ I says to the loudspeaker, ‘now that we do only have five – well, less than five minutes now – I don’t suppose you’d consider – not a complete cod supper – but a short romantic interlude with a extinguished decorated war hero, such as oneself – who has the greatest of respect for ladies with enormous—’

‘Lab-Busting bomber squadron four minutes away,’ she cuts in.

‘No? No, I thought not. No harm in asking, though.’ I adds another dribble to the tumbler, looks at it, fills it up to the top. ‘I bet if you could answer, though,’ I says, ‘you wouldn’t turn me down, would you, luv?’

There’s a crackle from the speaker.

‘Don’t kid yourself, Jenkins, you unctuous little powder-monkey.’

Blimey! Who rattled her cage?

‘Lab-Busting bomber squadron three minutes, forty-five seconds away,’ she says, and sarkily throws in: ‘But on the bright side, the weather for it’s looking marvellous!’

Then, blow my pipes, if there isn’t another alarum. This time it’s that Not Entirely Tested Matter Transfusification Booth thingumabob in the corner. Ain’t used that in a while, and with good reason. Last time it went off, I had to spend the whole day cleaning up an inside-out monkey.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Mission log. Flight number 001, Advanced Laboratory-Blasting Squadron (‘The Lab Busters’) Wing Commander William ‘Wee Willy Winkie’ Watkins, Officer Commanding. Dateline: Sunday the 6th of January, 1952 02.58 hours

It’s a grim business. And I don’t just mean bombing your own. I mean the pipers, currently murdering the score of Show Boat. That infernal instrument can only play nine notes, and none of them appeared to be in ‘Only Make Believe’. Or, as they insisted on caterwauling, ‘Ownlah Mak’ Bellee’.

Suddenly, the target approach light flicked on, and I was finally able to yell: ‘Shut up that filthy racket! We have visual on the Quanderhorn Lab.’ I twisted to look through the canopy glass either side and hoisted my thumb to signal to the rest of the Wing.

One by one they peeled off into attack formation, opening the bomb bay doors as they slipped aside.

I sighed a fathomless sigh. No escaping it now: orders are orders. With my guts knotted like an amnesiac’s handkerchief, I called out: ‘All right, pipers, this is it: let’s have the Wagner!’

I waited. There was only silence from the back of the plane.

I craned round.

The pipe major, despite having lost a tooth and gained a black eye, was looking rather coy. ‘If it’s all the same to you, sir, we’d prefer to segue into “Life Upon the Wicked Stage”. Only, Angus here has been practising his fingerwork and—’

‘This isn’t a matinée at the [PROFANITY EXPUNGED] Victoria Palace! You’ll do as you’re ordered, you check-skirted drunkards! And while I’m at it, can one of you, just one of you, for once in your life introduce yourself to a pair of [PROFANITY EXPUNGED] underpants?’

There was a brooding silence behind me. I thought for one dreadful moment that I’d gone too far, and I’d wind up with an angry Scotsman’s dirk in my back.

Then, mercifully, the pipes started up, and the strains of the ‘Valkyries’ swelled through the cabin.

I began the final descent…

Chapter Twenty-Five

From Troy’s Big Bumper Drawing Book

[PICTURE OF A STICK MAN BEING SENT ALONG A PHONE WIRE, LABELLED ‘ME!’]

Chapter Twenty-Six

Mooday the rth of Phobos, Martian Year 5972 Pink

Secret Report to Martian Command, by Guuuurk ‘the Valiant’, also called: ‘Guuuurk the Dauntless’ and ‘Guuuurk the Dreadnaught’. Holder of the Imperial Star (23rd Class), the Imperial Leaf (honorary only), and the Grand Jewel-Encrusted Imperial Gold Wedge (temporarily in pawn shop) (all rescinded by Emperor pending embezzlement investigations).

When the Professor explained exactly what was in the cellar, you can imagine how overjoyed and delighted I was to discover we were on our way to the Most Dangerous Place in the Universe.

In the unlikely event we were to succeed in preventing the destruction of the entire fabric of reality, we would merely be blown to pieces by vast barrages of enormous bombs.

A glorious death, in any eventuality.

Eager to seize the honour of this hideous fate for the glory of Mars, I insisted, nay, insisted, on entering the Not Entirely tested Matter Transfuser ahead of all the Terraneans, despite their desperate pleading with me not to do so. Anyone who knows me well would confirm that I laugh at Danger, and guffaw at Death! I also chortle at Horror, chuckle at Torment and grin wryly at Hideous Dismemberment.

I stepped jauntily into the booth, and saluted jovially. ‘Toodle pip!’ I chirped. ‘I’ll see you all in Bzingador.’

Bzingador! The poor saps! Every Martian knows the sign on the Great Black Door reads: ‘No Blubber Beasts, Scum Slugs or Earthlings’.

Still, I didn’t mention that.

You have to keep the troops’ spirits up, don’t you?

Chapter Twenty-Seven

From the journal of Brian Nylon, 6th January, 1952 – [cont’d]

To decide who went through the machine first, Guuuurk insisted upon the Martian game of ‘ABC – That’s Definitely Not Me’, but we had no time for his monkey business, and despite his ferocious remonstrations – or to be more accurate pathetic begging – we bundled him straight in.

I elected to go next.

This time, I found being disintegrated into my component atoms not quite so pleasant an experience. Rather like having every single bone in your body simultaneously smashed with a toffee hammer, then being shoved into a toothpaste tube which someone then stamps on with enormous hobnail boots.

I arrived in the assembling booth feeling nauseous and giddy, but I did at least seem to be in one piece.

I pushed the glass door to step out and nearly fell over Guuuurk, who, apparently unaware he’d already been transferred, was still protesting. ‘No! No! I absolutely refuse to travel in this thing! You can’t send a living person through a copper wire!’

Jenkins turned from concealing what looked like an empty bottle amongst the straw lining an empty rat’s cage. He over-enunciated, in that way dipsomaniacs do: ‘Ah! Mr. Guuuurk! Are you all right?’

‘All right? Look at this!’ He swept his hand in the direction of his legs.

Jenkins blinked at them. ‘Never fear, sir, we can soon put your trousers back on the right way.’

‘It’s not my trousers!’ Guuuurk slapped his groin. ‘Those are my buttocks! My entire lower half is on backwards!’

There was a sort of fizzing, popping sound, and Gemma arrived in the booth behind me.

‘Are you all there?’ I asked.

She patted herself down. ‘I think so. That was… disturbing.’

‘Get out of my way!’ Guuuurk waved his hands wildly. ‘I’m going back through that thing until my feet point the right way! How on earth can I tie my shoelaces when they’re round the back? I shall have to wear my boudoir slip-ons outside, like a louche Italian roué!’

He marched off resolutely in completely the opposite direction, the back of his head hitting the wall with some force. ‘Hang it all!’ he wailed, rubbing his pate.

Troy popped into view, holding the bucket.

‘Wow!’ he grinned, wide-eyed.

‘Don’t tell me,’ Gemma interjected. ‘That was great.’

‘Wasn’t it, though?’ Troy looked down at his body and frowned. ‘Aww! I’m still exactly the same!’

‘Oh, rub it in, why don’t you?’ Guuuurk staggered backwards and forwards, like a remote-controlled toy robot being operated by a small, tired child on Christmas morning after an accidental box of chocolate liqueurs. ‘Blast! I’ll never get the hang of this.’

‘Shall I hit you in the face with a shovel again?’ Troy offered with genuine concern.

‘No! How is that supposed to help, for Phobos’ sake?’

We were all silenced by the arrival of Quanderhorn himself, who was in no mood for levity.

‘Jenkins, put your boots on, you idle man, and hand out the black goggles and sound-deadening helmets.’

‘Sound-deadening helmets?’ Gemma glanced at me.

‘There may be…’ Perhaps the others didn’t notice Quanderhorn’s almost imperceptible hesitation, but I did. ‘…temporal hallucinations down there, and we can’t risk them disorienting you. Not at this critical moment.’

Temporal hallucinations indeed! He knew jolly well what was down there, and he knew jolly well they were real.

He slickly moved on: ‘Troy, bring the Gallus Tempus. We have to get to the cellar and start bailing as soon as humanly possible. The rest of you will need to take over in turns. This way.’

He raised a section of carpet in the corner, wrenched open the trapdoor concealed beneath, and disappeared down some rough wooden steps, followed by Troy tugging a wildly tottering Guuuurk. ‘How am I supposed to run down stairs when I can only see where I’ve been?’ he wailed.

I made to follow, but Gemma caught my arm and in a confidential tone asked: ‘You never said – what was it your duplicate told you back there?’

Now it was my turn to hesitate.

‘He told me,’ I replied honestly, but not quite fully, ‘where I could find all the answers I sought. The answers to everything.’

‘Lab-Busting bomber squadron ninety seconds away.’

‘Not that it will matter if we all get blown to smithereens first.’

There was a scream and a clattering noise below us, and Guuuurk yelled: ‘Who left that beastly invisible shield there?’

We descended breathlessly through the gloom towards the faint blue glow from the cavern at the base.

By the time we arrived in the cellar, a begoggled Troy was already jamming the helmet and specs onto the protesting Martian. I gratefully accepted my own from Jenkins – I had no desire to repeat the mind-warping experience that close proximity to the time tanks had induced the last time I’d been in there.

‘Bombers three minutes away.’ The metallic voice paused, and in a new tone announced: ‘You’re not getting out of this one, Professor. I’m handing in my resignation and leaving the building.’

‘You can’t leave the building, Delores!’ Quanderhorn yelled as we all lurched into the frightful chamber itself. ‘You’re completely synthetic.’

There was a horrible, crackling pause. ‘Now you tell me!’

The goggles didn’t exactly black everything out – I could easily perceive the others and the outlines of the vast storage tanks. In the helmet there was mercifully no sound from those dread phantasms, but Quanderhorn’s voice came over loud and clear.

‘Troy, take the bucket over to that tank, and up the access ladder.’ I made out the blurred outline of the Professor as he grabbed a sturdy lever. ‘When I open it up, you’ll have to start bailing the time into the bucket for all you’re worth.’

‘Do you know?’ Guuuurk was staring down at his front. ‘I’d never realised my bottom was so extraordinarily dashed attractive! It’s usually round the back, you see.’

‘I’m on it, Pops!’ Troy shouted, shimmying lithely up the ladder.

He reached the top with astonishing speed, and I began to believe there could really be a chance we might, just might survive this.

Then the first bomb struck.

Although we didn’t technically hear it, it felt like we did, and the ground shook mightily under our feet.

‘Well, I’m luckier than you chaps!’ Guuuurk announced rather bitterly. ‘If I bend forward, I can now literally kiss my arse goodbye.’

A second, stronger tremor.

Cracks networked across the ceiling, and chunks of limestone and chalk dust started showering down on us.

Gemma slipped her hand into mine. Even though the circumstances were dire, I still felt that amazing electric frisson at the touch of it. I squeezed it back gently.

Then another, more violent blast.

Then another.

They were coming every few seconds now. Each one closer than the last, each one bringing bigger chunks crashing all around.

Troy yelled: ‘Pops! What are you waiting for? Pull the switch!’

The Professor’s hand was frozen on the lever. His whole body was shaking, shucking off clouds of chalk dust. Was I going insane, or was he actually laughing?

‘What the devil is so funny, Quanderhorn?’ I screamed over the deafening avalanche.

‘To think, that I, of all people,’ he grinned bizarrely, ‘should finally run out of…