“Albert’s girth!” I exclaimed. “Elizabeth!? Is that you?”

“It is, doctor,” she said, stepping inside without invitation and allowing me to cast my eyes over Carruthers’ niece from a more favourable angle. She was a sight for sore, watering eyes, and more besides, but I regained my composure quickly and glanced outside. Of Carruthers there was no sign; only a tandem penny farthing stood propped against the wall that mostly surrounded my country retreat in Sussex.

Over my best attempt at a cup of tea – one really doesn’t appreciate a housekeeper as good as Mrs Amersham until she is of necessity called away to attend a family bereavement; a cousin killed just the weekend past by an anti-suffrage mob in Brixton – Elizabeth told me that it was imperative I accompany her to her uncle as he was certain he had found the fabled City of the Amazons and felt the chance of success in such a mission would increase with my accompaniment. It was difficult to say no to Elizabeth and I suspected that had been Carruthers’ intention.

“Elizabeth, dear Elizabeth,” I said, trying to find the right words. “As you know I have not been well ever since that horrible incident that saw the three of us set foot on Saturn. I have self-administered a dose of trepanning but the mental ailment that yet still afflicts me has left me with little desire” – I choked on this word and blushed, I’m sure – “for adventure or the company of man. I find myself thinking dark thoughts from time-to-time and I have not fully gotten over the loss of Mr Hawkes, I’m certain.” I glanced at the empty picture frame on the mantelpiece; it ashamed me that my intention to sketch my former spacefaring companion in tribute had been scuppered by a frightening inability to recall his features. “I am sure your uncle can cope without me. Indeed, he may be better off without worrying over what I might say or do next as it’s a constant threat at the back of my own mind.”

“My uncle wouldn’t ask this lightly,” answered Elizabeth. “And neither would I,” she continued, fixing a stare at me that I hurriedly broke. “Normalcy may be just what the doctor should be ordering.”

Carruthers and his niece made a compelling argument even when one of them wasn’t present but I mustered whatever fortitude I still retained and both apologised and gently refused. Eventually, the beautiful Elizabeth stood and slowly flattened the front of her skirt where it had crumpled on her lap during the short stay. “I hope you’ll reconsider and I wish you a speedy recovery in the meantime,” she said with a sad smile. “At the very least my uncle will be pleased when I tell him you’ve taken up mechanising insects as it’s long been a hobby of his too.”

My puzzled look immediately led to Elizabeth pointing to the small book case by the open bay window on which there was quite clearly a butterfly flexing its white wings; strapped to its back was a piece of brass equipment that resembled a gramophone shrunk to appropriate proportions. I took a step towards it and the thing immediately lifted clumsily into the air and escaped outside. Realisation dawned on me.

“Victoria’s stilts!” I shouted. “The lepidopterists!” I spun around to face Carruthers’ niece. “I’ll warrant that contraption was a recording mechanism and right now the bug is making its way back to its masters. They’ll know your uncle’s plans before nightfall. He could be in mortal danger!”

With my previous affliction miraculously seeming to have been vanquished there was nothing else for it and I quickly took leave of Elizabeth to freshen up and pack a few things. Inside one half of an hour I was mounted behind Elizabeth on the bike – though, for once, my mind was so sharply focused on the task at hand very few thoughts of a lustful nature found their ways into my head – and we were pedalling as swiftly as the nation’s road laws and conditions allowed towards Carruthers.

* * *

There were pleasantries, of course. Carruthers told me that I had changed when we met up at his new house in Wimbledon. I explained that I’d had a rough time mentally but that I felt I was on the mend. I then told Carruthers that he too had changed.

“Oh, this?” he asked, pointing with his good hand at the brass object protruding from his features fashioned to resemble the ear that had once adorned the left side of his head. “A punishment from a tribe of pygmies in deepest Devon for delving where I probably ought not to have delved.” It had never stopped him before and I suspected it wouldn’t slow him down in future either and we both smiled as we recognised this truth without speaking. He continued: “It was on that very quest that I happened on the map that I suspect reveals the secret location to the entrance to the lost City of the Amazons!”

“Elizabeth told me about this,” I confirmed. “In fact, in the doing so we uncovered a potential plot to usurp your plans by my old foes, the lepidoterists. It’s why I’m here. I know I’ll never talk you out of going and I’d never forgive myself were something to happen so your best chance is to have me along as protection if possible, as a decoy if necessary, and for us to reveal this wonder to the world before they can claim its discovery as their own.”

“Brunel’s hat! There’s no time to lose!”

Thus it was that Carruthers, his niece, and I headed to the Clapham Pneumatic and took the tube to the Ryde terminal, arriving at its cushioned end a mere fifteen minutes after ensconcing ourselves within the velvet upholstery of the cylindrical vessel. On the high velocity journey I had my first look at the map to the Amazons’ lost city and we discussed what we knew of the mythical race. It transpired that it was very little and common decency prevented Carruthers and I from saying half of that as there were women present in the carriage. Our plan, therefore, became of necessity one that relied on us using our wits to discern the best outcome from any incident that arose; oddly enough, the same plan we employed on most of our adventures together.

At Ryde we discovered the winds were favourable and there was just enough light in the day to take an air balloon to Blackgang Chine, it being the swiftest means of travel on the rather backward island off the coast of Portsmouth. With the sun starting to dip the lower edge of its golden orange disc into the sea on the western horizon we arrived at the coastal ravine and peered into its shadowy mouth.

“If the map is right,” said Carruthers, stating what we all already knew, “then the entrance lies at the base of the chine, exposed only at low tide. If my memory is correct then low tide will occur in a little under an hour.” The ability of Carruthers to recall and calculate UK coastal tide times never ceased to amaze me.

“And even if the lepidopterists are hot on our tails they’ll be forced to wait until the next low tide giving us an unassailable advantage,” I beamed.

We clambered down the ravine. Fortunately, its sides were not so steep that we had need of the stout rope that I had wrapped around my torso beneath my undershirt. Only once – a pity! – did I need to assist Elizabeth down some tricky scree. In that increasing gloom I could still pick out her magnificently handsome features silhouetted as they were against the deepening blue of the sky above.

As the tide receded to its lowest point we donned the bowlers that Carruthers had completed modifying just prior to the arrival of Elizabeth and me on the tandem bike earlier that day. Into a shallow recess at the front of each hat was a clockwork and sprung contraption not far removed from the innards of a fine timepiece. Suspended from the rear of each bowler – and attached through a gearing system around the hat’s rim to the clockwork – were chains wound through toothed pulleys that were hooked both at the heels of our shoes and at the waistband of our trousers, in the men’s case, or bustle, in Elizabeth’s. Taking a step would engage the chains and pulleys with the power ultimately winding the clockwork at the front of each hat, storing the energy in the spring, then releasing it to rapidly strike flint set around the mechanism’s recess. The result was a sparkling glow that illuminated several feet ahead of the wearer and which would be powered by human movement, a most ingenious solution to the problem of not knowing just how long we would be underground.

“I see it!” said Elizabeth suddenly, pointing towards what looked to me like nothing more than a jagged shadow against some recently wet rocks. Still, trusting to her younger eyes Carruthers and I led the way and found, not surprisingly but most excitedly, a cleft descending below ground level; a doorway of sorts! With our hats sending out flickering beams of light ahead the three of us squeezed into the gap – I was required to breathe in somewhat, a legacy of my lazy recuperation after Saturn; I vowed to engage in a regime of fitness upon our safe return to the surface world – and into that darkness we descended.

Immediately we brushed up against and then slowly through the unsettling mass of a great amount of seaweed; its arrangement seemed somewhat unnatural, forming multiple layers that took several seconds to slip through. Elizabeth remarked it was possibly the method by which the Amazons prevented the sea from encroaching on their hidden city and Carruthers and I could find no fault with the statement. I quite fancy that I saw my old friend smile with pride at his niece in the dingy surroundings. It was possibly being enclosed as we were but I envied him his close relationship and a wave of loneliness flashed over me before I brushed it off with a thrusting out of my chest and renewed determination to uncover our prize.

* * *

Progress was slow, as you might expect. The rocky corridor we traversed felt as if it were winding downwards slowly, spiralling beneath the crust of the Earth, although it was not possible to be very certain in those conditions; at times the path would climb sharply or take a sharp left, yet still I couldn’t shake the sensation that like a corkscrew breaking into a fine bottle of port we were twisting down and right. The coolness as we had entered the subterranean world quickly gave way to a more humid atmosphere.

We stopped for a snack, opening up one of the prepared packages of ham sandwiches and apples from the bag I carried across my back. To ensure we had enough illumination to eat – my doctor’s training telling me that consumption of food in pitch blackness was bad for the digestive tracts – one of our group marched on the spot as quietly as a person connected to a mechanical lighting system can to power the bowler beam. Carruthers and I were probably comical sights during our bout of enforced exercise but as for Elizabeth, well, I dared not look.

Not long after we had resumed our push into the planet’s bowels we entered a wider section of cavern and Carruthers brought us to a silenced halt with the merest waving of one hand. We stood still and waited while the whirring of the winding mechanism in our hats slowed, quietened, and reduced eventually to darkness. It wasn’t perfectly without sound, of course; blood pumping through my veins thumped and rocked the inside of my head and seemed loud enough for all to hear yet I assured myself it couldn’t possibly be the case. I became aware of the sound of the breathing of all three of us and toyed with holding my breath only to discard the thought as pointless as the deep inhalation and exhalation that must surely follow would render useless whatever environment Carruthers was hoping to create. Cocking my head this way and that I strained, trying to coax any sound to enter from outside but could discern nothing I felt wasn’t natural in some form or other.

“My ear,” said Carruthers after a couple of minutes, stamping up and down to bring some light into the situation, “is rather more sensitive these days and I could hear something ahead. Quiet, yes, and human almost certainly. I warrant that we are within a few hundred feet of discovering our Amazons and their lost city and that we should proceed with more caution for there is no telling how they will welcome strangers.”

A few hundred feet does not seem like much now that I write it down yet, even as we intended to make a more cautious approach, we encountered a far more difficult path that slowed us even further. Stooping often, by necessity removing our various bags and packs on occasion, and even at one point encountering a small cavern containing a near vertical passage along one edge that, had we not been wearing our illuminated inventions, might have led to one or more of us falling to a fate we dared not imagine.

As it happened we did not need Carruthers to warn us when we were approaching what we assumed must be the city for there grew by stages a change in our surroundings. The rocky walls had hitherto appeared as oil, deeply black and wet, seeming to slide and shift as we stepped past and our head-mounted lighting threw out shadows and reflections, the stuff of nightmares no doubt to those of less stern minds; yet now we observed in whispers that there was some faintly green luminescence in the rock surface growing in intensity the further on we pressed inwards and downwards. I chipped a piece of rock off – accidentally, I should admit; clumsiness and a strong toecap on the shoes by Mr Pettigrew, the only cobbler I entrusted with my feet’s care, being far more than a match for millions of years of nature’s pressures – and toyed with it in my hand before offering it to Elizabeth.

“It’s warm,” she remarked, and thanked me before pocketing it.

“I recalled you had an interest in geology,” I answered as we crept on.

“I am a member of a women’s letter-writing group and we’re interested in all the sciences. I have a friend in Poland who may find this far more interesting than me if you’ll allow me to pass on your gift.”

I had no objection, naturally, and again we moved on.

The green of our enclosed surroundings continued to push back the boundaries of the black such that at my suggestion we disconnected the pulleys from our bowlers. The silence that blossomed in that place without the whirring of gears and shuffling of clothing on legs was quite disconcerting. Added to the colour of our environs we could easily have been on another planet rather than in the alien underworld of our own. Then, suddenly, Carruthers – who had maintained the lead for most of the trek – brought us once more to an abrupt standstill with the wave of a hand and instant crouching. Like him, Elizabeth and I sank down too.

“Look!” whispered Carruthers with such excitement in his voice that I’d not heard since our trip to Mercury. Elizabeth leaned forward over her uncle’s shoulder. I stood a little, then leaned over Elizabeth and tried with only partial success to think of things other than those that jumped unbidden to mind. The three of us were at the end of a narrow passage that suddenly became the edge of a ledge that opened up on a cavern of such enormous size it made the brain swim trying to contemplate it. Green light filled the landscape or, rather, that part of the landscape that was not some immense city of rocky domes and houses and towers appearing to grow out of the floor and the roof so very far above, sometimes joining together, as often as not passing by like stalactites or stalagmites of gargantuan proportions scraping the ground in one direction, scraping the sky in the other. Our certainty that this was no natural phenomenon came from the myriad shapes of windows that festooned the buildings and yet as we gazed with awe we saw not a single sign of life.

“Did you not say you had heard sounds, Carruthers?” I asked as the three of us moved out onto the ledge into view of the lost but dead-looking city. We hoped to encourage a reaction from the natives if one was to be had.

“Darwin’s beard! A foul curse on this confounded ear!” muttered Carruthers, slapping the prosthetic on his head with the flat of his hand before mumbling an apology for his outburst to his niece.

“I am a doctor,” I said. “And while this marvel of modern mechanics is most likely beyond my understanding in its specifics, I imagine the general working – by which I assume it is fashioned on the human auditory system – should be familiar enough to me for me to gather an insight into why it has malfunctioned so.” With that I leaned towards Carruthers’ ear and peered inside. To my complete shock something emerged at the same time and I stepped back in most unmanly fright. Elizabeth clasped a hand to my back to prevent me stepping off the platform on which we stood quite precariously and the two of us stared at my friend’s face while he remained perfectly still, aware of some activity yet maintaining sense enough to not disrupt whatever it may be.

“It is an insect of some sort,” said Elizabeth after a few seconds.

“I concur,” I added. “An insect inside your latest brass appendage that has been undergoing some form of metamorphosis as it now appears to be making its way out of a cocoon. It was that activity which you heard. I shall rid you of it once it has hatched from its habitat.”

“No! We should kill it!” said Elizabeth sharply.

“Tsk, tsk, niece of mine,” said Carruthers with a smile. “That is no way to treat our lesser creatures. It has as much right to live as any other creature in Ra’s realm.” I suppressed the urge to continue our long-running argument over which deity had divine right over the universe for it seemed the occasion was not quite right.

“I’m thinking of this environment,” continued Elizabeth. “We have seen no insects or birds or creatures of any description since we have been below ground. “The introduction of a foreign species might cause untold damage and ruin any future exploration.”

“You are right, of course,” I said, agreeing with the youngest member of our trio. “We all remember the attempt to arrest Ireland’s potato famine with laboratory-constructed, blight-killing clover and the terrible impact this had on the nation’s cattle.” We bowed our heads in unison for a second as a sign of respect for those who fell in the bloody Cowpocalypse, as the gutter press had proclaimed it.

I retrieved a handkerchief from a pocket in my trousers with which I planned to wrap the interloper, dispatch it from this mortal coil, and carry it with us when we left. I plucked the wriggling form from the edge of the brass ear on Carruthers’ head and placed it on the handkerchief held out in my other hand. As I made to fold over the cotton the insect gave one last squirm, shaking itself free from the pupal casing that had still formed a shell around half of its body. Two wings rolled out from the brown and cream-coloured body (tinged with green, as with everything, of course) and all three of us stared first with scientific curiosity at the markings, then with dawning realisation at what was without doubt a moth bearing the symbol of the Imperial Lepidopterists Society.

“They have tinkered with the husbandry of moths!” exclaimed Carruthers. “Ra will not stand for this!” I sighed and rolled my eyes. This was a mistake.

That moment of delay was too much and the animal abomination flapped its silk wings and lifted away from us. I leapt and attempted to swat it but missed by some way. Carruthers – whose brass hand afforded him greater strength than most men – clambered quickly up the rocky face above our ledge. He leaned out to grab the insect as it fluttered by in its jerky, uncoordinated motion but the fiendish beast avoided his outstretched arms.

Then he fell.

I reacted swiftly and reached for my friend as he tumbled. By some miracle my hands gripped onto his coat and held him in place as he threatened to hurtle past the ledge. He lay there for a moment and panted a fearful thanks. Some instinct caused me to turn around at that instant and I saw Elizabeth, her eyes wide, her arms flailing. “Doctor!” she said quietly, then slipped backwards and disappeared. In my haste to save Carruthers I had nudged his niece. We scrambled to the edge of the ledge and looked down. Fifty feet below us in the cavern of the City of the Amazons lay the crumpled, seemingly lifeless body of our young adventuress companion.

Such anguish washed over me yet I knew beyond any doubt it was as nothing to that which Carruthers felt. His face even in that green murk was ash white. Elizabeth was injured at best, at worst something not to consider. The moth had vanished. The city looked deserted.

To be continued…

I had now spent countless weeks in the admittedly well-furnished space-traversing vessel with just Mr Hawkes for company, and poor company at that. It is no exaggeration to say that my mind had entered a dark place just as my body was hurtling through dark space too.

“Damnation man!” I exclaimed loudly, wheeling around. “Won’t you just speak up for once! This solitude and silence are enough to fray the edges of my mind!”

Mr Hawkes kept himself just outside the edges of my peripheral vision. It was an extraordinary talent he possessed in this respect but it held scant recompense for his otherwise dreadful companionship. Our games of tag and hide-and-seek had been initially entertaining but ultimately grated on the senses. There was little entertainment in playing with someone as skilled as he was.

I prepared a meal for one from the ship’s kitchen. I didn’t like to exclude Mr Hawkes as it gnawed at my sensibilities, yet if the man would not so much as converse then he deserved to suffer. He hadn’t complained thus far and I suspected he was consuming ship supplies slyly while I slept. At the conclusion of the meal – a full Sunday roast for the seventh day running for I had determined there was an excess of potatoes that needed to be consumed before the eyes they had already sprouted started winking – there was a rather loud knock on the outside of the spaceship.

“Mr Hawkes! Will you get that?” I asked.

He would not, and there was a second knock, followed swiftly by a third. I put down the plate that I had been washing, dried my hands, and made my way to the foremost porthole. I glared at Mr Hawkes as I did so but he leapt away from my gaze preventing me from seeing whether he was in any way sorry for being so utterly unhelpful.

At the front of the vessel I expected to see what I always saw: the black beach of outer space sprinkled with star sand. I jumped back in shock. Needless to say but my eyes were greeted by something wholly unexpected.

“Carruthers!” I gasped. “It simply cannot be!”

Peering inwards was my old friend Carruthers. Through many decades I had assisted this genius with his many astounding inventions and experimentations. We had journeyed to the very centre of the Earth in his Marvellous Marble Mole Machine; there wasn’t much there. We had recreated living dinosaurs from fossils; they had succumbed to smog. We had created a method of travel that was nearly as fast as a beam of light from a gas lamp; women did not appreciate the weight-gain side-effect and the business collapsed. Most recently we had travelled to the inner solar system by brass tube and set foot on Mercury.

“They told me you were dead!” I exclaimed.

Carruthers pointed to his ear, shaking his head from side to side and mouthed something back to me. Through the sturdy English oak door and thick glass it was no wonder he could not hear me, nor I him. I shrugged by way of response and shouted loudly and slowly, hoping he would understand. “The door is locked from the outside.”

Clearly my message got through and Carruthers pulled out a small pistol from inside his tweed jacket. I stepped away from the area and told Mr Hawkes to do the same. There were two sharp cracks.

Suddenly the door swung open.

“Doctor, you’re a sight for sore eyes,” he said smiling.

“Carruthers, my eyes are surely more sore than yours and the merest glimpse of you is clearly far superior to any protracted stare at me,” I countered. There was a movement behind my friend as I said this and I gasped once more. “Elizabeth! You’re alive too!”

“Of course I am Doctor. Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Never mind this chit-chat,” shouted Carruthers hurriedly. “We must transfer to The Ringseeker at once!”

I had no time to gather my wits and was rushed out of the front of the space vessel and into another identical model that had been courageously and expertly tethered alongside. There I was urged to sit down while Carruthers and his niece flicked switches and twisted knobs. They knew what they were doing and I was happy to remain invisible for a few moments, still elated at my rescue. Mr Hawkes clearly felt the same way.

With a lurch we were on our way, but to where?

“To Saturn!” beamed Carruthers. Clearly I had spoken aloud without realising it. I started to shake my head but Carruthers held up a hand and stopped my questions before they could form. “There is much to explain Doctor but fortunately we have a half hour to kill. Elizabeth, would you be so kind as to make us all a nice cup of tea?”

Over the next thirty minutes I listened intently as my dear friend and his niece – both of whom I had believed to be dead – told me news of the past couple of months.

Carruthers, far from dying of complications to his severed hand, had instead made a swift recovery and over a weekend had fashioned a replacement limb from polished brass recycled from his Mercury tube. The fingers and thumb flexed just as a normal hand would, controlled by a series of levers near his elbow. I remarked that once we returned to my surgical practice in Woolwich I would endeavour to connect the levers to his brain allowing him to use the power of thought itself to move the mechanical digits. It was the least I could do, after all.

Elizabeth – dear, sweet Elizabeth – was fortuitously and obviously also not dead. There was no hansom cab incident and, indeed, she had not been in Whitechapel on the day of the alleged accident. She had, instead, infiltrated the lepidopterists at the behest of her uncle and it was through this subterfuge that she learned – sadly just too late – of their dreams of revenge against me.

At Her Majesty’s Imperial Spaceport near Dagenham Carruthers had used the superhuman power in his brass hand to break into and then steal a recently-repaired rocketship and with the aid of his niece the pair of them had then pursued my flying tomb, eventually catching up and releasing me just outside the jovian gas giant’s atmosphere.

“Carruthers and Elizabeth, I can never thank you enough for what you have done for me,” I stated with a trembling lip as I sipped the last of a rather lovely Darjeeling. “May I just ask, though, why we are on our way to Saturn rather than returning home?”

“Doctor, have you ever heard of the Sex Sirens of Saturn?” asked Elizabeth.

I confessed that I hadn’t. Mr Hawkes said nothing and I surmised he too was in the dark.

“During his recuperation my uncle learnt of their existence through old records unearthed in the recent global catastrophe,” continued the most handsome young woman with what might have been a small apologetic smile. I nodded understanding.

“To Saturn!” I exclaimed. “And the Sex Sirens!”

Under the expert guidance of Carruthers and Elizabeth, The Ringseeker switftly carried the four of us past the great mass of Jupiter where we witnessed my previous vessel of transportation spark briefly, burn rapidly, and extinguish sharply. I uttered a silent prayer of thanks that I had such a courageous and capable friend.

The descent to Saturn later that day was fraught with danger, as you would expect. The great planet’s rings were razor sharp and required supreme navigation skills to avoid a fatal piercing, but eventually there was a noticeable bump and we came to a rest. It was the first time in the best part of a couple of months that I and Mr Hawkes had been more-or-less stationary, and the experience was initially unsettling. I felt queasy – particularly around the midriff – though I tried to hide the discomfort through a breathing and gentle stretching technique Mr Hawkes and I had developed only recently.

“Doctor, is there something amiss?” asked Elizabeth, placing a warm hand on my arm.

“It appears your uncle is not the only inventor on board,” I replied. “I and Mr Hawkes have come up with a method that calms the spirit and relaxes the muscles. It requires no outlay of capital and I shall probably introduce it initially to the subcontinent to test the waters so to speak when we eventually return. We have decided to call it toga.”

Elizabeth looked slowly around the cabin and smiled once more. “Named after the Roman garment?” she asked quietly.

I was about to remark that the name was unimportant when a loud hiss of air interjected. Carruthers pushed open the door and the three of us took our first look and then first step out across the strange land that formed Saturn’s crust.

It was both a breathtakingly beautiful and bone-chillingly barren world. From horizon to horizon it was as flat as Norfolk but even more devoid of interest than that Godforsaken Slough of Despond. Its saving grace came in the colour of the soil; like the sand of Alum Bay on the Isle of Wight the ground was streaked with a myriad of colours: yellows and ochres and browns for the most part, but occasional rivulets of pinks and whites and even vivid blues punctuated the floor.

“Like a kaleidoscope,” said Elizabeth. I turned to her to nod and was struck by just how truly, marvellously handsome she was. In this strange place with its endless expanse she shone, and I found myself more in awe of her face and the curves of her body than of the planet Saturn with its halo of rings rising into the sky and out of sight in the dirty grey-green sky.

A sound – deep, rumbling, and decidedly unnatural – rolled across the land and we all stiffened (some of us needed little assistance there). I looked frantically around. There was The Ringseeker and ourselves but not a thing else to be seen. As the noise abated Carruthers clapped his hands – that sound of flesh on brass only marginally less strange than the Saturnian one that had preceded it – and beamed.

“Wonderful!” he exclaimed. “We can go now!”

“Go? We have only just arrived!” I blustered. “And while I would like nothing more than to return home to my Woolwich practice and undertake a nice, relaxing holiday around India we are nevertheless standing on Saturn, a world – need I remind you? – that you wished to visit in order that you might seek out these so-called Sex Sirens, damn it man!” I felt my face turn beetroot at such language in front of the lovely Elizabeth but she was her usual nonplussed self.

Carruthers looked taken aback but this gave way swiftly to bemusement. “Did you not hear the planet’s wail?” he asked. I was confused.

“Doctor,” said Elizabeth, interrupting me from my storm of tangled thoughts. She held my hand in one of hers and then reached out with her other to touch my sideburns and usher my gaze into her eyes. They were beautiful, of course, like lagoons in the milky sea of her face. A man could drown happily there and slide down her long neck into the recesses…

That sound returned, louder than before, and from every direction. We all jumped and Carruthers laughed. Elizabeth smiled too, and I came to a sudden realisation of my own.

“Oh,” I said, sheepishly.

“Let’s get you home Doctor,” said Carruthers. “It’s a long trip and I think some tea with an extra spoonful of bromide may be just what you ordered.”

I laughed, feeling the stress and embarrassment leave me. I pictured it in my mind as a physical thing: a trickle of tension manifested as blue soil joining the multicoloured surface of Saturn for all eternity. We boarded our vessel and left in due course heading home.

“Confound it!” I said loudly, startling my friends, as we negotiated safe passage past those rings once more. I ran to the porthole and looked frantically over the slowly shrinking world we were departing. I fancied I saw him once or twice but could not be certain. “Goodbye Mr Hawkes,” I said to myself.

As the Sunday wore on I found myself totally embroiled in removing a dartboard from the buttocks region of a portly woman of indeterminate age – aforesaid object having been inserted most forcibly upon the dear when the tsunami tore asunder The Courting Armadillos public house in Bunton Street – and neglected to notice that a visitor had entered the examination room without alerting Fanny, my usually reliable receptionist.

“The indentations of the twenty, one, and eighteen are really quite prominent, I’m afraid,” I remarked to my patient. “Liberal application of Burke and Hare’s Mystery Moisturiser should reduce the effect over time though. In the meantime, if you refrain from exposing your rear in public I imagine that there will be no lasting damage.”

“Thank you doctor. I … oh! Who’s that?”

I glanced over my shoulder to where the portly patient was looking and first observed the quiet visitor to the room who sat upright on the Chesterfield sofa against the back wall.

“You shouldn’t be here!” I blurted out immediately, but I confess that even as the words rushed past my lips my thoughts betrayed the very sounds they made. My new visitor was quite singularly the most handsome woman upon whom my eyes had ever rested.

The stranger pulled out a fan from the handbag she had clasped to her lap and gently wafted her face with it. I hadn’t thought it was that hot in the room but I could feel a warmth appearing on my face at that moment too, not to mention an ungentlemanly stirring within the lower regions of my physique.

“Mrs Warburton-Stimulant, perhaps you should leave now,” I informed my patient and I waited until she had extricated herself from the examining bench, pulled down her undergarments and overgarments, and hastened from the room before I attempted some form of conversation with the young lady with whom I suddenly realised I was all alone.

“If it’s privacy you required before talking then you now have it,” I stated in as commanding tone as I could muster. Apparently this was the case for the lady finally closed her fan with a snap, stood, and spoke.

“You are the doctor who recently ventured to the innards of the solar system and returned intact, are you not?” she asked.

“I suspect you are already fully aware of my credentials,” I spluttered, still transfixed by her youthful beauty. “Now may I know who you are? And perhaps you could fashion me with a reason as to your intrusion into my practice before I instruct Fanny to send for a member of the constabulary post haste.”

“Calm yourself doctor,” she commanded. Her commanding tone was more polished than mine had been. Indeed, her entire bearing belied her adolescent appearance and I surmised she was most likely the beneficiary of a most high standard of upbringing. “My name is Lady Jane Pearl-Necklace – of the Hertfordshire Pearl-Necklaces before you ask – and I need the urgent assistance of an experienced interplanetary explorer on a mission of utmost secrecy for Queen Victoria.”

Had I been sitting I would have stood at the very mention of our beloved monarch but alas! I was not and so was forced to merely puff out my chest as impressively as propriety permitted in order to display my pride.

“For Her Majesty I accept!” I exclaimed but then added, “Would not my old friend Carruthers be a more suitable candidate?”

“I’m very sorry to say but your old friend Carruthers died from complications relating to his severed hand on Mercury.” I was aghast at this news but had enough presence of mind to note the cold and unemotional way in which Lady Jane imparted it to me. I was both repelled by her inhumanity and deeply awestruck by the level of breeding that had produced such a fine example of British womanhood. Fleetingly, my heart went out to Carruthers’ niece Elizabeth. How must she be coping? I wondered.

“And Carruthers’ niece Elizabeth,” continued Lady Jane, shocking me with the coincidence of discussing my private thoughts, “was trampled to death by a runaway Hansom cab yesterday near Whitechapel.”

“Nelson’s ghost!” I whispered in despair. For a moment I was lost in a world of memories, replaying the time that Carruthers and I discovered Atlantis in Kent, and the time when Carruthers rescued me from the clutches of the Surrey Chess Cult, and, of course, our most recent jaunt to another world entirely. It was hard to believe that he was now gone and, with him, his niece, upon whose bosom I had once rested my face.

Suddenly I became aware of a change in the room and lifted my head from my temporary fugue. Lady Jane was crouched in front of me – startling me with her proximity – so that our heads were level.

“Look at me doctor,” she said calmly and, with some great struggle, I stopped staring down the valley of her cleavage and let our eyes meet. Time seemed to stop and I felt a most unsettling yet pleasantly exhilirating sense of vertigo as I tried to store away in my memory every blue and indigo facet of her irises. She blinked, breaking the enchantment.

“There will be time to mourn later but the urgency of which I spoke earlier grows with each passing moment and you must come with me now.”

I wanted to tell her that I would gladly follow her to the ends of the Earth for the flimsiest of reasons just to be near but I could not find the words and so nodded my head and asked where we were going.

“To Jupiter,” she said quite simply. “By way of Dagenham.”

On the short trip by taxiblimp to Her Majesty’s Imperial Spaceport just east of Dagenham Lady Jane expounded on the details of the mission. Naturally, I was sworn to the utmost secrecy at the time but with the ins and outs of this thrilling adventure recently released to the public in the tabloid journals I feel it is safe to confirm what you surely know I was told by now.

Queen Victoria’s bosom – as ample as it had ever been – simply wasn’t enough for her consort Albert any more, but the finest British astronomers at Greenwich had last year discovered evidence of Amazonian women living on our neighbouring planetary giant Jupiter. It was widely felt that if such a thing as an expert in the field of womanly chest cushions existed in God’s great galaxy then Jupiter was it. Everyone certainly hoped so, as the empire could well depend on it.

Dagenham Spaceport had not escaped the destruction of the previous week but a solitary rocketship was still fully intact and already loaded into the launching cannon when we touched down. There was very little time for formalities and both Lady Jane and I were rushed through the rubble-strewn former jewel in Britain’s cosmological exploratory arm. In no time we found ourselves within the confines of the rocketship.

“Am I to assume that you are an expert in the field of non-terrestrial encounters, your ladyship?” I ventured, as much as for something to break the silence while the launching cannon was packed with high explosive as for any other reason.

“I am,” she replied with perhaps the merest hint of a demure smile on her perfect lips. “You must remember the Martian invasion of two years ago? Their war machines were in the end no match for the biological arsenal developed to fight the Turks and it was I who infected the aliens by courting their leaders and slipping the tainted sugar cubes into their teas.”

“What a remarkable young woman you are Lady Jane!” I said with genuine pride at being in her presence. I had heard tales of the persuasive aristocrat who had nearly single-handedly defeated our three-legged enemies through the art of seduction but never imagined that the hero was actually a heroine or that I would even meet such a person, let alone share a rocketship journey to another planet.

“And you are a fool my dear doctor!” she suddenly cried, leaping from her cushioned rocket seat and disappearing through the brass hatch before I could convince an exasperated “What?” to emerge in response.

The hatch swung heavily and clanged loudly. The reverberations could be felt through the suddenly ominously blood red carpet and I gripped the armrests quite roughly with a cold dread. Silence descended while I gathered my wits and tried the hatch. Locked from the outside, as I’m sure you could guess. There was just the sound of my breathing for company until the telephone rang on the mahogany bureau.

“Hello,” I said as calmly as possible into the mouthpiece.

“Hello doctor,” came the reply. An angered ruffian’s voice. The speaker had the lilt of an Essex docker’s upbringing with undertones of a later interest in botanical or zoological studies to my admittedly untrained ear. “As you may have guessed the secret mission to Jupiter will not be taking place quite as planned.”

“The mission is too dangerous for the lovely Lady Jane to undertake?” I asked hopefully.

Another voice answered the phone; female and undeniably cockney, quite strange and yet quite stomach-churningly reminiscent. “I was never going on this particular journey old man,” she hissed.

In the background I heard the sound of a scoundrel counting down from ten: 10 … 9 … 8 …

“You caused us a lot of pain last week and now you’re going to pay,” she resumed. My mind – normally as sharp as a tinker’s wit as it needs to be when one embarks on adventures or repairs ruptured spleens – would not churn over the facts smartly enough for my liking. 7 … 6 … 5 …

“Now it’s time for some payback. You’re still going to Jupiter, doctor, but it’s a one way trip with no buxom amazons awaiting you at the end!” 4 … 3 …

A convoluted and cunning plan to seek revenge on me! And all because of an accidental catastrophic disaster upon the planet that killed millions. My mouth was a flurry of activity as I tried to form apologetic sounds that might appease my kidnappers. At their core they were still human beings capable of love and sympathy and impersonating the aristocracy. 2 …

“Don’t ever mess with lepidopterists again!” she signed off. My heart sunk. Oh blast! 1 …

Blast off!

After losing my pursuers through a slight deception – I convinced a constable at one end of a long alley that the pack of irate fellows some seconds behind were Hungarian assassins trying to silence me for discovering their plan to kidnap Her Majesty and blackmail our country into commencing war with Austria – I rested to recover from my exertions and rapped the door to Carruthers’ home.

“Doctor! Come in!” exclaimed Carruthers and he ushered me inside hastily. I barely had time to draw breath before my friend was urging me down the unlit hallway towards the drawing room.

“Steady now, Carruthers, there’s plenty of time!” I blurted. It was a little after nine in the morning and Carruthers had been most insistent that I was to arrive as early as possible and no later than ten. His palm in the small of my back – at least, I hoped it was his palm – nudging me forward, therefore, was most unseemly.

We reached the drawing room and I found myself staring at the thing which nearly filled the entire area.

“As you can see Doctor, the tube is complete!” said Carruthers proudly as he rounded the great cylindrical object. I was momentarily distracted by my reflection in the brass outer casing, distorted somewhat by the many protruding coils, pipes, and bolts and didn’t immediately answer. I imagined briefly that I was a half-man, half-machine construct; a brass being; perhaps the future of humanity.

“Tsk, tsk, you’re drifting off into one of your flights of fantasy again, aren’t you Doctor?” said Carruthers as he appeared from the opposite side of his tube.

“I’m afraid you’re right, Carruthers,” I replied. “Unlike you, I keep my fantasies locked inside my head. Yours become terrifying reality.”

Carruthers beamed first at me and then the tube. “It is a work of beauty, is it not?” he sighed. And then, suddenly, he shouted “Well, come come, dear man! We’re all here! Let’s not delay! Inside! Inside!”

Once again I was ushered by Carruthers, this time around the tube to the side facing away from the entrance to the drawing room. Here there was a small entrance that required a grown man to stoop ever so slightly in order that he might pass. As I was a grown man and had been one now for a good few years I duly stooped ever so slightly and so found myself within the confines of Carruthers’ great creation.

As a member of the Victorian Inventors Guild Carruthers had been obliged to follow the dictates of his fellow geniuses and the innards of the tube was decorated in as much plush red upholstery as he could obtain. Numerous dials and levers lined the walls and a small pedestal in the centre of the cylindrical chamber contained a single switch clearly in an Off position.

Besides Carruthers and myself there was one other occupant. Elizabeth, Carruthers’ niece, sat to my immediate left as I was pushed gently into a seating position by her uncle. Elizabeth nodded and smiled politely at me and I returned the gestures. There was a tension in that room that may not entirely have been due to the dangerous trip upon which we were about to embark but perhaps that was my libido thinking; Elizabeth was a most handsome young woman and this was the closest I had been to her while she was awake.

The room was sealed following a flurry of activity by Carruthers and then he too, eventually, became settled and calm. His wide smile never faded.

“Elizabeth and Doctor, I think we are ready for the adventure of a lifetime. I assume you are ready for … your trip to Mercury!”

I patted my gentleman’s briefcase. “As instructed, Carruthers, I have come with a stout pair of hiking boots fixed with studs so that I will not fly off the surface of the planet owing to its low gravity. I have purchased a new hat with a wide brim to protect my head from the closeness of the Sun and I have obtained from my Aunt a fan from the orient so that we may all keep cool. Finally, a hip flask with liquid opium, in case the planet fails to deliver any excitement of its own.”

“As dependable as ever Doctor! Splendid! Then I think it is time we left.”

I was nervous, or the butterflies were not digesting properly. Either way, there was a cramp in my stomach like I had not felt before as Carruthers reached across and flicked the switch on the pedestal. I think I wanted to take a deep breath but there wasn’t time. Immediately the sound of many pistons firing sounded and reverberated and there was a sudden lurching that threw me sideways. I found myself head first in the bosom of Elizabeth suddenly pressed down by a great force. My face burnt red with embarrassment and I struggled to right myself pawing away wildly at whatever was within reach. Mostly, it appeared I was groping the poor girl.

And then, as suddenly and as violently as it had started, the sensation and sounds abated.

“We’ve arrived!” shouted Carruthers from behind me. “And you can stop molesting my niece,” he added as I pushed myself away and back into my seat. I started to stammer an apology but Elizabeth, I saw, shared her uncle’s single-minded fascination with the events unfolding and had no time to reflect upon my ungentlemanly behaviour. The pair of them were looking through the shiny periscope with wonder on their faces.

“What exactly has happened?” I asked, keen to put my impropriety behind me and act part of the expedition. It was Elizabeth who turned from the viewing apparatus and explained: “While the Earth and Mercury were at their shortest distance from one another, Uncle extended a tube of rings – much like an extendable telescope – from his drawing room in South London to the surface of this extraterrestrial world using the power of steam. We are now locked onto the surface of Mercury at this end and can explore at our leisure.”

I tried to picture a long tube stretching between the Earth and Mercury and my mind swam with the immensity of what Carruthers had achieved. I was concerned also that the tube, despite being made of the best brass available, might deform under the pressure of space exerted on it making our return even bumpier but kept that to myself as the thought that I might also be able to get away with slipping a couple of fingers where they shouldn’t go suddenly popped into my head.

Carruthers’ hands were a blur over a set of knobs to one side. “Let’s not dilly-dally!” he said, straightening up suddenly. “The planet Mercury awaits. On with your boots and hat, Doctor. Elizabeth, your parasol if you please, and make sure the lead weights in your bustle are secure.”

And with that the door was opened and Carruthers set about ushering us outwards onto the strange planet on which we were securely fastened.

We landed on our heads as the tube was effectively upside-down. Fortunately, the low gravity of the strange world softened the landing on Mercury’s soil.

It was hot. Carruthers had estimated that the temperature of Mercury would be comparable to Brighton in the height of Summer but I suspected it was even warmer than that. The sky was a vivid orange and the Sun appeared massive and low over the horizon. The landscape in which we had touched down was a drab affair; brown rocks similar in appearance to slate and dirt, and small bushes, also brown, with small brown fruits on them. The air felt thick and there was a distinct taste to it with every intake of breath.

“I do believe the air contains fine particulates of oxygen-carrying sand,” I told my colleagues. “I recognise the taste.”

“Just as I expected,” remarked Carruthers as he approached one example of the small, brown flora nearby. He tugged at the fruit but it refused to budge. “Blast!” he suddenly cried.

Elizabeth and I gathered around in horror as we suddenly saw that Carruthers’ hand had come off at the wrist. Blood from his arm was spraying in a strange, low-gravitational arc over the soil.

“I see this Mercurian plantlife has a rather effective defence mechanism against poachers. I should have been more careful and realised that leaf was serated. Doctor, some assistance please.”

I marvelled at his calmness and instructed him to put his stump in his pocket to stem the bleeding. “You should really get to a hospital Carruthers. There’s no telling how long it will take for an artery to clot on this planet and there’s a danger of fainting.” I offered him the contents from my hip flask which he gratefully accepted and gulped down.

“Uncle, if this plant is this dangerous then what other danger might befall us on this world?” asked Elizabeth as she nervously scanned the horizon. I too looked around worriedly but there appeared to be nothing to see. Only the tube, which towered into the sky and disappeared into space towards where the Earth must surely be, seemed to move; an illusion caused by the slow progression of the wispy clouds high above.

“Perhaps you’re right and we were too hasty,” agreed Carruthers. “A slight recess back in London for some bandages and to hunt down some hardy gloves is what is needed. Only …”

“What is it, Carruthers?” I asked.

“I know,” said Elizabeth. “It will be several months before Mercury revolves into position once more and Uncle is worried that events may transpire to prevent our return. We are here now after all.”

Carruthers was down spiritually and it took some effort on behalf of Elizabeth and myself to get him inside the tube ready for the return trip to Earth. As the door closed he lifted his still-profusely-bleeding arm from his now-stained linen trousers and sighed. “We never even got to meet the Leopard Ladies of Mercury,” he said quietly.

“Liquid Opium,” I mouthed towards Elizabeth. She nodded knowingly, leaned over, and flicked the switch on the pedestal.

The lurching, the noise, and the extreme pressure all returned but I missed landing in the softness of my young companion’s breasts this time around and ended up with the groin of Carruthers for olfactory company instead. I much preferred the outward journey.

Elizabeth insisted on taking Carruthers to hospital by herself and I took advantage to simply go home, suddenly finding myself tired and in need of a warm, wet flannel on the face.

London was much as it had been prior to our exciting-but-brief adventure except for the tsunami that had destroyed two-thirds of the buildings and killed tens of thousands, leaving hundreds of thousands more battered and destitute in our absence. Earthquakes and volcanic activity had done for most of Asia we later learned and the continental United States had slipped entirely off its tectonic plates and fallen into the ocean. Stopping the Earth’s rotation by fixing a long brass tube between it and the planet Mercury, it turned out, had a few global side-effects.

Nevertheless, I put that all to one side and returned to what was left of my practice in Woolwich, eager to hear from Carruthers once more, dreaming of some new adventure – perhaps with half-men, half-machine people -, and with half an eye out for wrongly-arrested lepidopterists out for revenge. Little did I know what thrilling event was waiting to entangle me later that week, but that story must wait for another day.