Pooley, Neville, and Professor Slocombe peered around in the darkness. The only light available flickered through the Swan’s front windows from a roaring inferno which had once been much of Brentford.
“What now?” Pooley asked. The Professor shook his head.
“You’ve done it, you’ve done it! Crack the champagne.” Neville performed a high-stepping dance before the now darkened and obviously defunct Captain Laser Alien Attack machine.
“Free beer for a year,” moaned a voice from the deck.
“For a century,” sang Neville. “Oh bliss, oh heaven, oh no!”
From the distance came a faint whine of unearthly engines. Something large and deadly was approaching, and all means of confounding its destructive intent had vanished away.
“Oh dear,” said Professor Slocombe, “anybody want the last rites?”
“Prepare the Gamma weapon,” ordered Lombard Omega.
“Gamma weapon prepared, sir.”
“Take out the entire quadrant, spare not an inch.”
“Not an inch, sir.”
“Fire the Gamma weapon.”
The navigator flinched and touched a lighted panel upon the master console. A broad beam of red raw energy leapt down from beneath the ship and struck home upon the Kew side of the river Thames.
The five-hundred-year-old oaks of the Royal Botanic Gardens took fire and half a millennium of history melted away in a single moment. The beam extended over a wider area and tore into the river. The waters thrashed and boiled, like a witches’ cauldron, hissed and frothed beneath the unstoppable power of the deadly Gamma weapon.
And the beam moved forward.
The mother ship ground on over the river, a vast chromium blimp filling a quarter of the sky. Along the length of its mirrored sides, lights glittered and twinkled like oil beads. Above it, great dorsal spines rose sharklike and menacing.
The hideous beam moved up from the churning waters and ripped into the river bank, hewing out a broad and ragged channel into which the old Thames gushed in a billowing flood tide.
Ahead lay the Brentford Quadrant, the Ealing Road, and the Flying Swan.
Brentonians fled from their shelters out into the streets. They shielded their faces against the all-consuming heat and took to their heels. The world was coming to an end and now was not the time to take the old Lot’s wife backward glance.
In the Swan the lads cowered in terror as the ghastly rumble of falling masonry and the death-cry of splintering glass drew ever nearer.
Outside, the Ealing Road, crammed with screaming humanity, pouring and tumbling in a mad lemming dash away from the approaching holocaust. Behind them the blinding red wall of fire pressed on, destroying everything which lay in its path.
Omally was upon his knees. “Stop it!” he screamed at Professor Slocombe. “Do something, in the name of our God. Only you can.”
The Professor stood immobile. The cries of terror rang in his ears and stung at his soul. The town he had for so very long cared for and protected was being razed to ashes and he was powerless to stop it. He turned a compassionate face towards the Irishman and tears welled in his eyes. “What can I do?” he asked, in a choked voice. “I am truly sorry, John.”
Lombard Omega stared down upon the carnage, with a face of hatred and contempt, “Run, you bastards!” he shouted, as the antlike figures beneath scattered in all directions. “I will have every last one of you, look at that, look at that.”
The crew of the mother ship craned their necks to the portholes. Below, the destruction was savage and sickening. The streets were being cleaved apart, the houses and shops, flatblocks and places of worship driven from existence.
More than thirty Morris Minors, some even priceless collectors’ models with split windscreens, suicide doors and hand-clap wiper arms, had already been atomized, never again to sneak through the dodgy back street MOT.
Professor Slocombe closed his hands in prayer. As the wall of fire moved relentlessly forward and the buildings fell into twisted ruination, he knew that only a miracle could save Brentford.
“What’s that, sir?” asked a Cerean deckhand, pointing through a porthole.
“What’s what?”
“That, sir.”
Lombard Omega strained his eyes through the rising smokescreen of burning Brentford. “Jesus Christ!” he screamed, catching sight of a floating object directly in the ship’s path. “It’s a fucking camel! Hard to port! Hard to port!”
“You are at the controls,” the cringing navigator informed his captain.
Lombard swung the wheel and the craft veered sharply to the left, avoiding the drifting mammal by a hairbreadth.
Caught in the slipstream, a certain small postman let fly with a volley of obscenity which would have caused even the ship’s captain to blush.
“That was fucking close,” said Lombard Omega, wiping creosote from his brow. “Those bastards don’t miss a trick, do they? Give me more power, Mr Navigator. More power!”
The navigator upped the ante and covered his eyes. A great vibration filled the air. A fearsome pressure driving everything downwards. The flood waters ceased their frenzied rush and hung suspended, as if touched by Moses’s staff. The scattering Brentonians tumbled to the pavements, gasping at the super-heated air and clutching at their throats. The Captain Laser Alien Attack machine lurched from its mountings and toppled into the Swan, bringing down the side-wall and exposing the horrors of Archie Karachi’s kitchen to Neville, who, borne by the terrible force, vanished backwards over the bar counter, losing the last of his fillings.
As Pooley and Omally struck the fag-scarred carpet, their last glimpse of anything approaching reality was of Professor Slocombe. The old man stood, the hell-fire painting his ancient features, hands raised towards the burning sky now visible through the Swan’s shattered roof, his mouth reciting the syllables of a ritual which was old before the dawn of recorded history.
Above came the deadly whine of engines as Lombard Omega and the crew of the Starship
“Finish them!” screamed the Captain. “Finish them!”
The ship rocked and shivered. Needles upon a thousand crystal dials rattled into the danger zone. A low pulsating hum set the Captain’s teeth on edge and caused the navigator, who had suddenly found Christianity, to cross himself. “Finish them!” screamed Lombard.
The ship’s engines coughed and faltered. The air about the craft ionized as a vague image of something monstrous swam into view. It wavered, half-formed, and transparent, and then, amid a great maelstrom of tearing elements, became solid.
Lombard Omega stared in horror through the forward port. “What’s that?” he cried drawing up his hands. “What in the name of F…”
His final words, however obscene, must remain unrecorded. For at one moment he was steering his craft through empty air above Brentford Football ground and at the next it was making violent and irreconcilable contact with the capping stone of the Great Pyramid of Cheops.
Whoosh, wham, crash, and
