Live and Let Drood

build something that dangerous. And then live over it. Alpha Red Alpha was designed to send you beyond space and time, into dimensions and realities we don’t even have proper names for. That’s why we never used the damned thing until I persuaded my family we needed it.
    “It’s supposed to have been reverse-engineered from the stardrive of an alien ship that crashed in a field in Wiltshire in 1855. Personally, I’ve always thought that if you’re going to reverse-engineer alien tech, pick it from something that hasn’t actually plummeted from the sky and crashed. Doesn’t exactly fill you with confidence, does it? ‘We’re proposing to send you through unknown dimensions, using an engine derived from something that fell from the skies and we had to dig out of a field.…’ Yeah, right—after you.”
    “Do you know which alien species the ship belonged to?” said Molly. “Your family is supposed to keep track of all the aliens currently playing tourist behind what they think are cunning disguises. Maybe you could contact them, and…”
    “Rather worryingly, we have no idea who the ship belonged to,” I said. “No bodies anywhere on board, no record systems we couldrecognise or understand, and nothing in the tech that looked at all familiar. There are always a few Visitors who don’t want to play nice.…This particular starship was apparently like nothing we’d ever encountered before. Word is, just looking at the ship too long or studying the technology too closely was enough to drive unprepared human minds right over the edge. After we’d ripped out the stardrive, my family broke up the ship into small pieces and then dropped them in the deepest parts of the various oceans. Just to be on the safe side…”
    “Could anyone else have gained access to this technology?” said Molly. “Through the traitor in the family, perhaps? Yes, I know you don’t like to talk about him, but think, Eddie.…Could someone else have their own version of Alpha Red Alpha that we could make use of?”
    “Unlikely,” I said. “The family Armourer who designed Alpha Red Alpha was half-crazy when he started, and all crazy by the time he’d finished it. Supposedly the family had to lock him away for everyone’s safety. They left him alone to die, but there are stories that he didn’t die. Couldn’t die after what exposure to the stardrive had done to him. That he’s still locked up somewhere in the Hall…”
    “None of this is filling me with confidence,” said Molly. “Though I will take a moment to say Your family in a very disapproving voice. Eddie, if they were the only ones to possess a dimensional engine that powerful…how can we hope to go get them, even if we do get our hands on this compass of yours?”
    “One step at a time, Molly,” I said. “You have to have faith.…”
    “How long ago was this Egypt thing set up?” she said suddenly. “How far back are we talking about?”
    “Oh, centuries,” I said. “At least. My family’s been around long enough to think up plans and responses for pretty much every situation you can think of. Everyone knows some of them, and I know more than most because I used to run this family. But I’d never heard anything about this particular backup plan until Uncle Jack took it upon himself to tell me.…Apparently not everyone else thought I needed to know. They didn’t think I’d be in command long enough for it to matter. And as it turned out…”
    “Are you sure this thing is still there?” Molly said bluntly. “I mean, hidden in Egypt for all this time?”
    “If it isn’t, we’re screwed,” I said. “So think positively.”
    I held the Merlin Glass up before me, and Molly and I both regarded it thoughtfully. It looked very much like the hand mirror I remembered, but there was definitely something different, even…off, about it. I remembered my uncle Jack telling me he was half-convinced there was something, and perhaps even someone, trapped inside the mirror. And that whatever it was could be glimpsed sometimes in the background of a reflected image. An extra face in a group, or peering out from behind something…I looked carefully, but all I could see was Molly and me looking dubiously back at ourselves. So that…was a problem that could wait for another day.
    Just as long as it didn’t turn out to be some blond-haired Victorian child called Alice. I’d already encountered a giant white talking rabbit in the Old Library.
    I