‘Hush little baby, don’t you …’ began the Chief Psychiatrist.

The Monster looked down at the tiny figure and grunted. Tancredi gasped. Somehow he knew what was about to happen. He grabbed Tamany and covered the boy’s eyes. A great hand swung over the cliff top and caught hold of the Chief Psychiatrist. Tancredi watched in horror as the Monster stuffed him into its mouth.

‘Oh my goodness,’ said the Matron shaking with fear. ‘Here dearie, you’d better take this.’

She handed Tancredi her bedpan, then took off on her fat legs, practising can-can kicks as she went.

Tancredi, Tamany and Kasbek were left on the cliff top. Escaping an exploding ship was one thing, but facing this Monster was on another scale. Tancredi froze, his legs turned to jelly. Tamany tore free from his grasp and leapt onto Kasbek, who reared up on his back legs.

‘Come on, beast!’ echoed out across the cliff top in a treble voice.

Tancredi blinked and returned to reality. He was shamed by the lesson in courage from a seven-year-old. He too would die defiant.

His fear of death was now replaced by a feeling of humiliation. Here he was on the cliff top, bedpan in hand, staring stupidly into the eyes of his killer. The horror of execution wasn’t the blow itself, it was the indignity of being in someone else’s hands, of penitently bending your head beneath the blade. If he could resolve to die bravely, he would be a different man during the few seconds remaining. He held up the bedpan in a gesture of defiance.

The Monster bent down to examine the group, and opened its mouth. They stared into the maw of the beast. Bedpan enamel teeth dribbled fetid juices over them. The foul smell of the putrefaction of sickness – blood, pus and gangrenous flesh – enveloped the cliff top. Miraculously, they managed to stay upright as the Monster inhaled a breath so gigantic that it sucked the air out of the atmosphere. Then it exhaled with the power of a hurricane, and Tancredi and his companions were catapulted into the starry vortex.

IX
The Twin Moons Of Eros

Such was the force of the Monster’s breath that the group was shot straight through space towards a neighbouring planet. They landed on soft cushions in the courtyard of a palace on the first moon of Eros. One moment Tancredi was about to be swallowed alive, the next he heard the sound of a fountain playing. He couldn’t believe this act of providence. Tamany instantly forgot the Monster, picked up a cushion and accosted Kasbek. As the two began to chase around the courtyard, Tancredi went off to explore.

Despite his luxurious surroundings, Tancredi’s feelings were mixed. Although he knew he hadn’t conquered his cowardly tendencies, he had been brave in the face of death. He was no longer the man who had so recently left home. Still, his idealistic hopes had been dashed. He was no closer to finding a solution to Earth’s predicament. Sanitalis was no more a place of long-term thinking than the Invincible. As for the Matron’s proposed antidote to Armageddon, it seemed as if the further he travelled, the more delusional humankind became.