The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes--The Martian Menace Page 22

“The very same thought crossed my mind,” I replied.

  “I suspect the Martians spared us from death only to exact greater depredations. We are more valuable to them alive, for the time being.”

  “They wish to learn how we passed ourselves off as simulacra,” I said.

  “They will have discovered our secret already, Watson, when they found the batteries,” he said. “They will no doubt wish to learn the whereabouts of Chesterton, Shaw and our contacts in the Resistance.”

  “And knowing the Martians as we do, Holmes, I suspect they will not go about the business in a civilised manner over a cup of tea.”

  His lean visage looked grim. “Agreed. There is always the possibility that they might resort to torture.”

  He was lost in thought for a while, then said, “When they do question us, the best course of action will be to play the innocent. Claim ignorance of any knowledge of the Resistance. When they ask us where Chesterton and Shaw are, we tell them that the last we saw of the pair, they were leaving Baker Street in a taxi, bound for we know not where. I have no doubt the Martians will see through our lies, but it might buy us time.”

  “For what, Holmes?”

  “For the opportunity to work out a means of escape,” he said. “We must remain vigilant.”

  I agreed, and pointed to his bare head. “I see the Martians have taken your deerstalker.”

  “And they are welcome to the wretched thing—”

  A hatch between the rear of the vehicle and the cab slid open, and the ugly visage of a Martian stared through the bars at us.

  The Martian spoke in English – for my benefit, presumably.

  “Gentlemen, you are to be commended on your resourcefulness. I assumed that you had perished on Mars, even though my compatriots failed to find your bodies.”

  “Assumptions are often dangerous things, ambassador,” said Holmes. “One should never place much credence in them.”

  Until then I had not been aware of the Martian’s identity – one Arkana looked very much like any other, as far as I was concerned. I wondered whether I should read anything into the fact – to our advantage or not – that Grulvax-Xenxa-Goran had seen fit to accompany us to wherever we were to be imprisoned.

  The ambassador waved a tentacle. “Imagine my surprise when I was informed that two of my simulacra were assisting our opponents. It was something of a shock, I must admit, when we discovered that you were indeed the original Holmes and Watson. Now, I would like to know how you escaped from Mars – who assisted you, and who your contacts were when you made landfall on Earth. Also, the writers you assisted yesterday evening: their whereabouts, please?”

  I looked at Holmes. He regarded the opposite wall and remained obdurately silent. I felt the urge to curse the ambassador and spout indignant platitudes, but likewise held my tongue.

  “You will soon have plenty of time in which to think about the benefits of cooperating,” the Martian said, “which are these: give me the information I require, and you will be released under house arrest.”

  “And if we do not cooperate?” Holmes said.

  Grulvax-Xenxa-Goran hesitated, and then his V-shaped mouth flipped open. “Then when we reach Pentonville we will take Dr Watson and remove his limbs one by one, until he agrees to be more amenable. When he is reduced to just a torso, Mr Holmes, we shall repeat the process on you. If both of you are still of a mind to remain silent, then the real torture will begin.”

  I almost flung myself at the bars, but Holmes gripped my arm and hissed, “That would gain us nothing, Watson.”

  To the Martian, he said, “You might threaten us with torture, ambassador, but never will we accede to your wishes.”

  I stared into the Martian’s oily eyes, hoping that he might feel irked by my friend’s defiance, but the alien’s inscrutable physiognomy gave away nothing.

  He muttered something in his own language and slid the hatch shut.

  “So there we have it, Watson. Betray our friends and live under house arrest – though, of course, I would not trust the Martians to keep their word. They would happily execute us just as soon as they have the information they require—”

  He was brought up short by a screech of brakes, quickly followed by a jarring impact as the wagon hit something with a resounding crunch. We were flung from our crouching positions and slammed against the bulkhead.

  “Watson?”

  “I’m all right,” I said, rubbing my shoulder in the flickering light of the malfunctioning bulb.

  Cries sounded in the night – both Martian and English – followed by the crack of multiple gunshots.

  I gripped my friend’s arm. “Do you think…?”

  I was silenced by a sound from the wagon’s doors behind us. A gunshot ricocheted off the metalwork, and a second later the door swung open.

  We staggered to our feet and stared out in disbelief at the woman who stood in the darkened street.

  “Quickly!” said Miss Fairfield, and disappeared down a narrow alleyway.

  I gripped Holmes’s arm in jubilation and lost no time in jumping from the back of the vehicle and taking to my heels. I chanced a quick glance over my shoulder: the wagon had slewed sidewise across the street, its front end buckled from the impact with the vehicle which had brought about the accident. I saw one Martian sprawled dead in the moonlight, and two others staggering from the crumpled wreckage of the cab. Hardly able to believe our good fortune, I dashed down the alley after Holmes’s hurrying form, my heart thumping dangerously. It was a measure of my giddy relief that I even laughed at the horrible irony that I might drop dead of a heart attack as we fled.

  “Halt!” came the cry from behind us, followed by the sound of gunfire.

  “The ambassador,” said Holmes. “Duck!”

  I did so, panting for breath as we sprinted after the distant figure of Miss Fairfield.

  The cry came again for us to halt, and I looked over my shoulder. The ambassador had been joined by two others, one of them armed with a rifle of alien design. The next second I heard the deafening report of its discharge. The projectile smashed into the wall a mere foot above my head and peppered us with a spray of pulverised bricks and mortar.

  “This way!” Holmes cried, taking my arm and dragging me into a narrow defile to our right.

  I ran on, relieved that at least now we were out of sight of our pursuers.

  For the next few minutes we turned this way and that down a series of narrow alleys and ginnels, the Martian cries and gunshots sounding ever fainter as we fled.

  At last we emerged into a wider alleyway, where an electrical car was waiting.

  Miss Fairfield opened the rear door and we needed no encouragement to dive inside. She hurried around the car and climbed into the passenger seat, and then we were careering at breakneck speed down the canyon between buildings.

  I leaned forward, eager to congratulate the driver.

  The blood ran cold in my veins, and I felt Holmes’s grip on my arm.

  The driver’s bulbous head was horribly familiar, even when seen from the rear. He turned, briefly, and smiled at us.

  “Moriarty!” Holmes declared.

  Miss Fairfield – or rather her simulacrum – twisted in her seat and raised what I initially thought was a bottle of perfume, then pumped the rubber bulb first at Holmes, and then at myself.

  I was overcome with the familiar, sickly-sweet stench of chloroform, and for the second time in twelve hours I slipped into oblivion.

  Chapter Thirty

  France… or beyond?

  “Out of the frying pan,” said Holmes, “and into the fire.”

  I surfaced through a sickly sea of nausea, only dimly aware of my friend’s words, though sufficiently compos mentis to register relief at his presence. I was lying on my back, staring up at a low metal ceiling, which was divided into rectangles by a reticulation of girders. A dim bulb provided meagre illumination. The floor beneath me was likewise of metal, and ice cold. I struggled into a sitting
position, still woozy from the chloroform, and winced at the pounding pain in my head.

  Holmes was on his feet and inspecting the door of our cell, a rectangle of metal about five feet high, its threshold a raised lip of some six inches after the fashion of a doorway found aboard a steamship.

  I had the sudden notion that Moriarty was taking us out to sea and dumping us there, but then reason took a grip and I asked myself why he would go to such lengths to effect our demise when a simple bullet would achieve the same end.

  Moriarty had spent many years out of the country, and he must have established a base somewhere on the Continent. Perhaps he was taking us thither, for his own devious ends.

  Holmes moved back to where I sat, lowered himself to the floor, and leaned back against the bulkhead.

  “Where the blazes is he taking us, Holmes?”

  “I could guess, but you know how averse I am to guesswork,” said he. “The question I would rather ask is this: why has he elected to rescue us from the ambassador’s custody?”

  At that second we heard a sound from without: the shuffle of tentacles on metal, followed by the report of bolts being shot. The heavy metal door swung ponderously outwards to reveal two squat Martians on the threshold, both of them armed with electrical guns.

  One spoke, and Holmes said to me, “We are to follow him, Watson.”

  We climbed to our feet and stepped from the cell, emerging into a dimly lit corridor of the same rolled metal floor and walls as our erstwhile prison. It came to me that we were not aboard a ship at all, but confined beneath the sea in a submarine.

  We followed the first Martian, the second bringing up the rear and covering our backs with his weapon.

  I put my submarine theory to Holmes as we went, to which he replied, “I agree that it does not seem to be a conventional ship, Watson. Observe the lack of portholes, for one thing. I have a theory—”

  He was prevented from expounding upon it by a guttural grunt from the second alien. Holmes murmured, “He takes exception to the sound of our voices, and says that he will gladly shoot us dead if we continue the conversation. A threat that I rather think, all things considered, to be so much hot air.”

  He then lapsed into Martian, and a rapid back-and-forth between my friend and the alien ensued. “I put it to him,” Holmes said a little later, “that whoever is in control here may take exception to our deaths, and he soon retreated into abject silence.”

  “Well done, Holmes,” I enjoined, taking comfort from such a scant victory.

  The leading Martian came to a bulkhead and an inset metal door. He pulled it open to reveal a roomy chamber equipped with rugs and floor cushions – which Martians used in lieu of furniture like armchairs and settees. Tapestry hangings depicting various Martian scenes hung about the walls.

  Only then did I see the room’s only inhabitant, standing with his back to us and staring through a long rectangular viewscreen. It was dark beyond the glass, and I made out distant lights and nothing else. Were we underwater, I wondered, and were the distant lights those of some luminescent marine fauna?

  Professor Moriarty turned and lifted his thin, bloodless lips in what might have been a smile. The Martians took up positions to either side of the door.

  “Can I provide you with refreshment, gentlemen?”

  “You can provide us with an explanation,” Holmes said. “Are you the original Moriarty – or his simulacrum? And where are you taking us?”

  “All in good time, my friend. A drink?”

  “Nothing for me,” Holmes said.

  “Nor me,” said I.

  Moriarty shrugged his sloping shoulders, then gestured towards the piled cushions in the centre of the room, saying, “Please, be seated.”

  “We’d rather stand,” Holmes said.

  Moriarty snapped something to the Martians in their own tongue, and the next I knew the aliens were forcing us down onto the cushions. I arranged myself with as much dignity as I could muster, while Moriarty seated himself on an upright chair, regarding us with his hooded, deep-set eyes.

  “Enough of the games,” Holmes said. “State your business—”

  “Such demands!” Moriarty chuckled. “And not a word of thanks for saving you from the ambassador’s clutches.”

  “As if we are in any better a situation in your custody,” Holmes said. “I repeat: where are you taking us?”

  “Where else,” Moriarty said, “but to the great man himself.”

  “So you are his simulacrum,” I said.

  “And what,” Holmes said, “might the ‘great man’ want with us?”

  The simulacrum was silent for a moment, and then by way of a reply, he said, “Recall 1891, Holmes? Switzerland, and the Reichenbach Falls?”

  “How could I ever forget?”

  “I, or rather my original, lured you to what I hoped would be your demise—”

  “And failed!” I put in.

  “Granted… But this time,” the simulacrum said, “we will not fail.” He leaned back in his seat and smiled across at my friend.

  Holmes matched the smile. “So it comes down to that: simple, atavistic revenge? Revenge born of… what? Let me surmise… Insecurity? Jealousy? In a one-to-one contest, between the original Moriarty and myself, he could never best me. He failed to kill me at the Falls, and I subsequently succeeded in putting an end to his evil empire – even if he did survive. He has harboured an abiding grudge ever since, and unable to defeat me by himself, he crawled cap in hand to the Martians, and only with their aid could he succeed in capturing me… Oh, the once proud professor with all before him, reduced to throwing in his lot with a race as merciless as the Martians!” Holmes leaned forward, peering at the simulacrum. “But then, perhaps,” he went on in almost a whisper, “you have found your match in the extraterrestrials, beings equally as evil as your original.”

  The simulacrum, to his credit, failed to rise to the bait. He heard Holmes out with an infuriating smile on his wan visage. “Your eloquence is scant disguise for your essential impotence, Holmes. Your impassioned rhetoric means nothing to me. You will be taken to Moriarty and he will humble you, and then put you to death as you should have been put to death more than twenty years ago.” He gestured. “My only regret is that I will not be around to witness your end, but then it is almost enough to know that it will come to pass, and that I have been instrumental in bringing it about. Reichenbach will not be repeated.”

  “Where are you taking us?” I asked.

  “Where else?” came the reply. “Where else but where my original now resides.”

  As if events had been orchestrated to illustrate his words, I became aware of a low rumbling sound – a sound that was almost a vibration at first, but which then mounted little by little to an audible roar. The room vibrated and shook to such an extent that my vision blurred.

  And then it came to me: we were not aboard a submarine at all.

  “Where else but Mars, my friends?” the simulacrum said.

  In due course we were taken to a room containing two metallic tanks identical to the ones I recalled from my first trip to the red planet, tanks which looked so much like coffins. While one Martian stood in the corridor and covered us with his weapon, the other barked an order.

  “We are to undress and then climb into the pods for the duration of the journey,” said Holmes.

  The Martian passed us two small vials containing the fluid that would render us unconscious, then withdrew from the chamber and slammed and locked the door.

  “We would gain nothing by disobeying,” Holmes said. “I for one do not relish the prospect of spending seven days confined in here, fully conscious throughout.”

  We undressed back-to-back and climbed into the pods, draining the sedative in one gulp. I sat back and laid my head against the wooden rest, and as the strange, warm gel flooded the pod and climbed the length of my body, I considered our return to Mars and what might await us there.

  Chapter Thirty-One

&n
bsp; Towards Hakoah-Malan

  It seemed that no time at all had elapsed between my draining the sedative and my awakening at journey’s end. The sensation was similar to that of having undergone an operation – the time spent under the knife seeming an impossibly brief duration – though without the post-operative feeling of wooziness and confusion. Indeed, I felt fresh and invigorated – but then I recalled Moriarty’s words and I was beset by apprehension.

  Holmes was already dressed, his head cocked as he listened to the diminuendo of the interplanetary ship’s engines. “From the turbulence we experienced a few minutes ago,” he said, “I surmise that we have entered the Martian atmosphere and are approaching the port at Glench-Arkana.”

  I crossed to the metal door and attempted to turn the handle, but of course found it locked.

  “Did you expect to find Moriarty living on Mars?” I asked, finding my clothes and dressing quickly.

  “I had given the possibility some thought, Watson. Where better a place to hide than Mars itself? I expect we’ll find him living in the lap of luxury, sunning himself on the clement uplands of the equator and enjoying all the ill-gotten gains that a collaborator can expect to find lavished upon him.”

  “The idea fair makes my blood boil, Holmes. And to think…”

  “Go on.”

  “No, I can’t bring myself to give voice to my thoughts.”

  Holmes regarded me shrewdly. “You were about to say, ‘And to think, he will have the last laugh when he executes his wish to see us dead,’ or some such.” He shook his head. “The game is not yet over, Watson. As long as there is life in our bodies, and breath in our lungs, we are not defeated. We have faced many a peril between us, my friend, and this is but one more.”

  “I can’t say I’m much looking forward to meeting the original Moriarty,” I admitted.

  “It will be interesting to see how the years have treated him. Whether experience has tempered the brash certitude of his self-regard, or whether age has bequeathed him a modicum of modesty, though I doubt it.”

  “As do I!”

  “A man of Moriarty’s single-minded megalomania can only be encouraged by the success he has achieved in siding with the Martians. I assume he will be even more insufferable than of old – and the thought makes me more determined that he shall not get his way.”