Birdlip and the Homunculus Depart Aboard the Starship

Dr. Randal Birdlip and the Homunculus depart aboard the starship after the Homunculus breaks free of its confinement and restores movement to Birdlip’s skeletal body. The episode brings Birdlip’s voyage through the heavens to its startling culmination: no longer merely the absent or enervated explorer, he becomes the craft’s pilot, guided by the tiny being he once encountered.

Release and Reunion

The departure follows the Homunculus’s emergence from the shattered Keeble box on the green at Hampstead Heath. While Theophilus Godall watches Willis Pule creep away, spent and unpursued, a strong wind rises from the south and buffets Birdlip’s dark dirigible, making it sway on its makeshift moorings. The Homunculus turns instead to Birdlip, addresses him, and points toward the heavens. It removes its little hat and gestures animatedly, as if conveying an urgent purpose.

Then it leaps onto Birdlip’s skeletal form and climbs into his ribcage. The image of the tiny figure peering out through the ribs recalls a prisoner behind bars, but the apparent enclosure becomes a means of return: Birdlip takes a tentative step, animate once again. His skull seems, as far as it can express emotion, suddenly elated, and the narration connects that change to the wanderlust that had driven his journey through the heavens.

The Journey to the Starship

Those near enough to understand the sudden transformation cheer. Jack Owlesby’s own cheer is interrupted when Kelso Drake strikes him from behind and knocks the box from his hands. As Godall and Langdon St. Ives stop Drake from smashing it, the fallen box shudders and opens; a bird-eating cayman rises from within and snatches up the little birds before sinking back into its tomb. The departing pair’s passage therefore unfolds amid competing shocks: the crowd sees strange marvels, but cannot make sense of what it is witnessing.

The multitude’s cheers nevertheless follow Birdlip as he moves across the grass, now piloted by the Homunculus within him, with Parsons at his heels. At the starship, Birdlip pauses and looks back for a long moment at London’s jeweled lights. He bends down, unties the rope fastened around one of the craft’s small feet, and clambers woodenly through its open hatch. The hatch closes; emerald lights flare inside. The ground shudders, and almost at once the ship dwindles to a point of fire in the immense heavens.

Departure and Aftermath

The crowd’s acclaim gives the departure a public scale without giving it public comprehension. A hundred voices begin the cheer, which swells through the multitude, although the people have no earthly idea what they are celebrating. The contrast is central to the scene: the Homunculus and Birdlip undertake a purposeful journey, while the onlookers can only respond to a spectacle whose meaning remains beyond them.

The final image carries Birdlip and the craft outward among countless stars, suspended above the streetcorners of space like gaslamps. The departure is also a loss for St. Ives, but not one he regrets. In the epilogue he reflects that he has had his voyage and believes the future promises more, making the starship’s disappearance an ending to this expedition rather than a surrender of his curiosity.