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"How did you come to be here?" Mr Lacey asked Genevieve, the junior engineer, one day. Of course, since he posed the question from somewhere underneath the starboard furnace and with several screws between his teeth it came out as a muffled slur. Thankfully Genevieve, currently perched on a stool scrubbing rust from a spare valve, was getting used to her mentor's habit of talking from within machinery and it only took her a few seconds to work out what he had actually asked. "You mean, on dis ship?" she said, and got a vaguely affirmative noise back. "Long story." "I'm not going anywhere." This at least was true. "Fine den. Long time ago,

"What on earth is this?" Percy turned the mysterious object over in his hands. It was made of heavy rubber, painted a garish yellow and shaped approximately like a duck or, at least, a rather childish stylisation of a duck, with huge eyes and wings far too small to support its weight. It was obviously intended to be whimsical, but Percy thought its wide, empty eyes were actually rather terrifying. "Oh, that's Harold," Dr Rosenbaum offered as he rummaged around what passed for the ship's infirmary. "A gentleman who makes toys in Paris gave him to us. Apparently they are going to be very fashionable. I don't think we believe him. No, I don't

The box was thrust into Percy's hands accompanied with an awkward "Happy birthday." He got about halfway through the automatic response of "You didn't have to get me anything." before his brain caught up with his ears. "How did you know it was my birthday?" Blaise looked unusually sheepish. "It was on your calendar." "My what?" "Your calendar. On your desk. In your house." Percy hadn't set foot in the house in question in nearly three months – not since a certain reformed sky-pirate had seen fit to land in his compost heap and proceed to drag him on a series of harrowing but admittedly exciting adventures like some sort of stray dog

"You really should get a wristwatch," Clifton suggested, after the second time a wayward cogwheel had ripped Lacey's watch chain off his waistcoat, ruining the waistcoat, the chain, the cogwheel and Lacey's humour in one horrible crunching sound. "Fine," was all he got in response. Three days later, Lacey having done no such thing, the very same chain maliciously wound itself around a loose nail as its owner stepped out of a cab, snapping the link and sending the beleaguered timepiece flying out of Lacey's pocket and into a wall, where it promptly exploded in a shower of gears. Lacey merely left the pile of parts on his desk overnight and

"Damn spiders!" Clifton said exasperatedly, loud enough for Lacey to look up from the gutted engine in front of him and scowl through his goggles. "Problem?" "It's all those damn legs." Clifton watched glumly as his latest clockwork creation staggered drunkenly across the worktop, managing about two feet of progress before its eight jointed legs became irrevocable entangled. "Too many legs with too many joints. They just can't support the weight of the body." "Oh." Lacey had never really understood his partner's enthusiasm for the tiny, delicate spring-driven creatures he peddled to the high-society ladies. His normal response to faulty ma

It was a perfectly ordinary Thursday when Percy Weatherby woke up. It continued to be ordinary as he dressed himself in his customary grey tweed suit and ate the same breakfast he ate every weekday – two pieces of toast, a hard-boiled egg and a cup of coffee. At the normal time of a quarter past eight, he put his hat on his head and his watch in his pocket, picked up his briefcase and stepped out of his front door. The weather was fairly average for London in March, and the sky was an unexciting shade of blue-grey. When he reached the end of his road, he summoned a hansom in the standard fashion. The ride to the bank was rather dull; as

Mr Lacey didn't believe in the impossible. Rather, he considered the word 'impossible' to be more of a gentle suggestion than a hard and fast ruling. As far as he was concerned, the word was synonymous with 'challenge'. Mr Clifton had long ago grown used to this attitude, and in fact had become quite good at harnessing it as a method of controlling his partner's rather erratic work schedule. All one had to do was suggest that perhaps a certain thing was not possible, and by the end of the week one would have one disarrayed workshop, one exhausted but triumphant Lacey and whatever it was one had wanted, working better than could possibly be i