The Japanese Devil Fish Girl and Other Unnatural Attractions Part 34

'Impressive,' said Mr Winston Churchill.

General Darwin cast covetous eyes towards the bra.s.s contraption.

'How many Martian airships?' asked Mr Churchill.

'My contact counted fifty, maybe more.' Nikola Tesla shook his head. 'We may not win this war.'

'We will win it,' quoth Mr Churchill. 'We will fight them on the beaches, in the parlours and up the back pa.s.sages. We will never surrender. Some chicken, some neck. Some giblets.'

'Still needs a bit of work,' said Mr Tesla. 'I am thinking to make my departure now, if you have no objection. I have been working for some months past upon a time machine. I think now might be the moment to test its capabilities.'

'You do that,' said Mr Churchill. 'And if you get it working, come back yesterday and tell me about it.'

Mr Tesla carelessly thrust his personal telephonic communicator into what he thought was his his trouser pocket, saluted Mr Churchill and left. trouser pocket, saluted Mr Churchill and left.

Mr Churchill chuckled to General Darwin. 'An impressive feat of sleight of trouser,' he complimented the ape. 'Kindly lend the thing to me I have to speak with the Queen.'

General Darwin offered Mr Churchill one of those old-fashioned looks.

'Yes, all right,' said Winston. 'Perhaps after I have spoken with the lady known as Lou.'

The whistles on the speaking tubes now shrieked in ill harmony.

Winston Churchill shook his head and lit another cigar.

In the eye of a smoking hurricane, on the flight deck of the airship, Ada Fox acquainted herself once more with the on-board controls. Flying the craft would be easy, for the Martian pilot had unknowingly shown her how. First, release the cable that moored the airship. Ada flung the lever, shot the bolt.

The craft lifted rapidly. Ada Fox applied herself to steering the ship down. She felt that perhaps she might have but a single attempt at this. Crashing the airship through the stained-gla.s.s window might well rupture the gas bag. Hooking up the statue and hauling it out into the night was something that would have to be done speedily. There were perhaps terrible flaws to this plan. Insurmountable flaws.

The actual act of desecration, of destroying the beautiful window, meant very little to Ada. Windows, any windows, could be replaced. Balanced against all of the rest of London, the window seemed a tiny sacrifice.

But hauling out the statue was another matter entirely.

What if it was to be damaged?

What if she accidentally destroyed it?

And then a sudden thought came unto Ada. On the face of it, a terrible thought. A mad and desperate thought. An iconoclastic thought. What if she was to purposely destroy the statue?

Blow it up?

Smash it utterly to pieces?

Destroy it beyond all repair?

Surely then there would be nothing left to fight over.

Surely then the alien craft would simply fly away.

As Ada brought the airship low and backed it away from St Paul's, preparatory to taking a great rush forward at the window, she mused upon just what might happen if the statue simply ceased to be.

It was, if one thought about it dispa.s.sionately, only only a statue. As the stained-gla.s.s window was really a statue. As the stained-gla.s.s window was really only only a window. a window.

A religious faith that was sincere and devout did not depend upon the existence of some manufactured object. True, the claim was that the statue had never been created. That it had always existed. But it was was only a statue. Wasn't it? Ada Fox took very deep breaths and clung to the controls. Haul it out, or smash it up? only a statue. Wasn't it? Ada Fox took very deep breaths and clung to the controls. Haul it out, or smash it up?

A terrible dilemma.

But then, of course, Ada had seen the statue. Had witnessed its mind-rending beauty. Its absolute perfection. Its aura of the divine. Could she, Ada, really destroy such a thing? Did she have the right?

'One way or the other,' said Ada, 'something is going to happen.'

She disengaged the air brakes, jammed her foot down onto the accelerator pedal and clung for the dearness of life as the airship thundered forwards.

Again there came a moment. Of silence and of peace. When everything happened in the slowness of slow motion. Serenely, with queer dignity.

The nose cone of the airship ploughed into the cathedral window.

Images of saints and stern apostles. The Christ child in his virgin mother's arms. G.o.d Almighty clothed in golden raiment in the heavens. Noah in his wondrous ark and Samson as the pillars part. Angels at the dawn of man, the Architect's celestial plan. Eve and Adam in the garden, tempted by the evil serpent's charms . . .

. . . all rendered in a thousand glorious hues of tinted gla.s.s, struck and shattered by the airship's entrance. Spiralling shards and fragments of the holy tableaus, rent and violated, torn and tumbling. Light of sky-borne fires flaring in about the vast intruder. The nose cone of the airship jamming fast. Engines dying at the touch of Ada's hand.

What was to be done had to be done and as the Martian war craft gained the English coastline Ada scrambled down a landing line from the airship and ran at speed to re-enter the cathedral.

The devastation she had wrought was sickening. But Ada could think only of George. That she might do what she must do most quickly, then return to him and pray he was not dead.

Ada tore away the remaining canvases from the horrid inner temple.

Gauged the statue's height and whether it might feasibly be hauled away without bringing down all the scaffolding upon it. And without bringing down all the scaffolding upon George.

There would be room.

A cable connected between the statue and the prow of the airship could, if pulled with sufficient care, ease the statue out, then carry it aloft.

Ada Fox did shakings of the head. It was all clearly ludicrous, the chances of actually getting the statue out without destroying it hopeless at best.

Ada slumped down and began to cry. It simply could not be done.

'A little too much for you, my dear?' The voice of Professor Coffin echoed hollowly in the vast cathedral hall. 'But thank you for your work so far. I will take charge of matters from here.'

Professor Coffin had regained his pistol. He limped towards Ada, b.l.o.o.d.y of face, his left arm broken and twisted.

'Allow me to direct,' said he. 'The cable you require is coiled within the statue's hollow base. Kindly remove it and I will instruct you how to link it up. I am somewhat wounded, thanks to you.'

Ada hesitated. She glared at the professor.

'Perhaps your husband still lives,' crowed the evil showman. 'Be advised that I will not hesitate to shoot you dead, should you play me false.'

By the light of the high church candles and the flaming braziers that flanked the pa.s.sive statue of the beautiful Sayito, Ada swung open the stone doors at the statue's base, dragged out the heavy cable, did as the professor ordered. Followed his instructions.

Instructed simply to 'fire when ready' all about London, gunners trained their weapons on the sky. Chaos reigned above and great confusion. There was no doubt in the minds of the Earthbound gunners that the alien forces were now not only bombarding the army of the British Empire, but indeed each other. Terror weapons buzzed and flashed, cloud-ships fell and bulbous craft exploded. The devastation was spreading now across the face of London, for every wounded craft, no matter its planet of birth, fell upon the city spread beneath it.

Beneath the airship's nose cone, Ada stood. Perspiring, bedraggled, utterly ravishing. The cable had been connected, the statue now could be dragged out into the night.

'Well enough, young woman,' said Professor Coffin. 'You are truly of heroic stock and quite a beauty too. Why not throw in your lot with me? I was born to adventure and so were you. Together who knows what we might accomplish. What marvels we might achieve.'

'I would rather die,' said Ada Fox.

'That is exactly what I expected you to say,' said Professor Coffin. 'Your husband is dead and you must join him in this death.'

And so saying he aimed his pistol at Ada and pulled on the trigger.

45.

Ada closed her eyes.

A shot rang out and echoed.

Ada did not fall.

She heard a thump, a clatter of steel.

She opened her eyes and beheld.

Professor Coffin was slumped on the floor. George stood over him, glowering down at the body.

'I hit him with a scaffold pole,' said George. 'I think I might have killed him, but it is probably all for the best.'

And then George cried, 'Ada!' For Ada had fainted away.

He awoke her with a kiss, as any gallant knight would do. Her eyelids fluttered and her green eyes opened.

'George,' she whispered. 'You are alive. You are alive. But how?'

'Saved by this,' said George Fox, and he pulled from the inner pocket of his punctured wedding jacket The Book of Sayito Book of Sayito. 'Its metal cover deflected the bullet. The force, though, knocked me out.'

'The book,' Ada whispered. 'A miracle,' she said.

'That I would agree with,' George said, 'for I know full well that I did not not put the book in put the book in that that pocket.' pocket.'

'Oh, George.' The two embraced.

Ada, tears in her beautiful eyes, said, 'You must help me, George. Together we can move the statue, drag it into the open.'

'No.' And George raised a high hand. 'Disconnect the cable,' he said. 'The statue must not not be moved.' be moved.'

Ada said, 'Are you all right? The statue must not be moved?'

'I had a revelation,' said George Fox. 'I have seen the light.'

Light as air, fast and deadly, Martian forces closed upon London. Mr Churchill had now pulled the whistles from the speaking tubes. He and General Darwin were into their second bottle of port, the map table upon which they lolled a matted tangle of colourful flags, with several stuck in the end of Darwin's cigar.

The militarist and the monkey were all that remained in the war room. The elderly generals in their exaggerated uniforms had fled; Mr Tesla had gone to whenever he might have gone.

'We are doomed,' slurred Mr Churchill. 'd.a.m.ned unfortunate, as it happens. It will look bad on my record.'

General Darwin toasted Mr Churchill.

'But you,' Mr Churchill continued, 'are my bestest friend.'

General Darwin broke wind tunefully.

Both were reduced to giggles.

But Martians knew not laughter, only vengeance wanted they. Vengeance and Sayito's safe return. The Lemurian airships swept in low from the west, laying waste to everything before them. Guns and tanks and troops and British airships. Cloud-ships of Magonia and Jupiterians too. The devastation was epic. It was biblical.

'A revelation,' George Fox continued. 'The book saved my life, do you not see? The book did it. It saved my life because it is my destiny to read it. That is what the prophecy said, that I would read the book and that the future of the planets would depend upon me.'

'But I do not understand.' Ada clung to George now. The walls of the great cathedral shook with the shockwaves of explosions. Shrapnel whined. Mark 5 Juggernauts thumped at the sky. The heavens were in flames.

'It is what I have to do,' said George. 'Now is the time the time that the book should be opened and I should read from it.'

The whirling hulk of a Jupiterian man-o'-war collided with the dome of St Paul's, tearing away a mighty section and opening the cathedral to the h.e.l.l that reigned above. Lath and plaster, stone and gilt-girt timber tumbled into the nave. None fell on the holy statue. None on Ada and George. Above the ragged hole, elemental forces roiled and twisted in a firmament of fire. Within the cathedral, before the statue of Sayito, there was a sacred calm.

George Fox opened the book.

The letters on the pages, lit by the flaming censers, danced as curious hieroglyphics, mystical and quaint. But as George stared they straightened, changed their form that he could read the verses of the Revelation of St John the Divine: And there was war in Heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought against his angels. And there was war in Heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought against his angels.

Magonian cloud-ships engaged the Jupiterian war craft. And the sails of the Magonian ships fluttered as dragons' tails. Though those who stood upon the decks looked very much as angels.And I stood upon the sand of the sea and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon the heads the name of Blasphemy.

And the Lemurian craft that had risen up from the island in the sea bore down upon the inner city of London. Tongues of flame licked out upon all. The End of Days had come.

Ada looked desperately to George as a great crack shot up above the fractured window and spread across what remained of the dome. The roaring of the battle was deafening. The End of Days had had come. come.

George held the book in trembling hands and read once more aloud.And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars.

And George and Ada looked up towards the statue of Sayito. And the helmet of the j.a.panese Devil Fish Girl was no longer to be seen. Instead there was a great wonder. Upon her golden head she wore a crown of twelve stars. Beneath her feet the crescent of the moon.

The pages of The Book of Sayito The Book of Sayito moved of their own accord. Turned to display the words of other gospels. Gospels not of this Earth. moved of their own accord. Turned to display the words of other gospels. Gospels not of this Earth.And she shall rise at the saying of the sacred word. At that word through which all might be achieved.

'She will rise?' said George. 'What does that mean? What is the sacred word?'

The great cathedral shook, rumbled to its very foundations, preparing itself, as it were, to crumble into dust.