Star Blaze (4 page)

“No time,” came the reply. “We must meet. Tomorrow, at noon. These coordinates: 52.904N01.468W. Everything depends on it.”

“But who are you?” Johnny asked again, at the same time shushing Bentley.

“He's coming. I must go.” The man looked scared.

“Who? Who's coming?”

“Tomorrow at noon.”

The image dissolved and was replaced by Louise talking about a pop group she was going to see next week.

“Hold on a sec,” said Johnny, interrupting her mid-flow. “Kovac, where was that transmission from?”

“I was right when I said I'd overestimated your intelligence,” said the computer. “Louise is broadcasting from Yarnton Hill, where she always transmits from.”

“Not Louise … the man … from the spaceship. It's important.”

“I think I would know had I been relaying a second transmission.”

“Louise,” said Johnny desperately. “You saw the screen go blank. How long were we out of contact?”

“Sorry, Johnny,” she replied. “I don't know what you mean. We were talking the whole time.”

Johnny pushed his chair back from the table, the wheels scraping along the floor. From Louise's end it was possible that nothing odd had happened, but surely Kovac should be aware? “Look, something's up,” he told the curly haired girl. “I'd better go.”

Louise said, “OK—laters,” waved goodbye and the screen went blank.

This was even more reason to contact the
Spirit of London
, but any message would take five and a half hours to get there and the same to get back, unless the ship folded and returned. “Kovac—I need you to send a message to Sol. She should be on Pluto.”

“Is that a real or imaginary message?” asked Kovac. “There are things I would rather be getting on with instead of being your personal videophone.”

“Kovac—it's really important,” said Johnny. “Someone just hijacked your systems.”

“How dare you?” the computer replied. “You know very well I am the most advanced computer on this planet, and several others besides I don't doubt. As if it's not enough that you give me tedious tasks such as, ‘Kovac—check my school records … Kovac—run a simulation of the Sun going supernova … Kovac—it's Louise. I've got a message for Johnny,' now you insult me. Well I won't have it. Read my lips, not that you've ever bothered to give me any—no more messages.”

“What?” said Johnny, hardly able to believe his ears, but the quantum computer had decided to shut himself down. “Don't bother then—I'll talk to Bram,” Johnny mumbled to himself. “Come on, Bents.” With that he stomped off to the door with Bentley following on behind. Kovac had been a lot easier to deal with when he was just Johnny's homewritten operating system.

It was late and the Halader House corridors were deserted. Johnny and Bentley passed the kitchen–dining room, climbed a flight of stairs and walked along another corridor until they turned a corner and came to a wrought-iron spiral staircase leading up into the ceiling. At the top was a trapdoor, with a “no entry” sign screwed into it. Johnny pulled the door open and he and Bentley clambered through into Johnny's bedroom. Built into the roof space of the children's home, every inch of the sloping walls was covered with posters of space scenes. There was one of Saturn, showing the rings in full from above; another displayed all the planets in the solar system in order, and to scale; a third was of the International Space Station, albeit with fewer modules than Johnny had seen just a few hours earlier. But his pride and joy was one he'd printed himself. It was of
Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the very center of the galaxy. The blackness almost spilled out of the picture while, just above the dark globe shone a brilliant white jet of magnetically charged matter, streaming away to escape its doom. Johnny had made sure the
Spirit of London
was at a very safe distance when capturing the image, but it didn't stop his blood running cold when he remembered that day.

The end of the room had been extended into a box shape and Bentley, still chilled after his many hours outside in the cold, pattered straight over and underneath the bed, curling up beside the radiator below the window. As he did so, he nudged a little cardboard box out of the way, to make himself more comfortable. Apart from Johnny's handheld games console, anyone looking in the box would have thought it full of junk, but the other little odds and ends were the only things he had left of his dad's. Sometimes, Johnny rummaged through and held the precious contents, just to feel close to his father again. Now, though, there was something more pressing to be done.

Above his bed was a shimmering haze, like dust particles glinting in the moonlight. Only, despite the open curtains, tonight there was no moon. Johnny took a deep breath, closed his eyes and placed his face into the twinkling cloud. When he opened them he was looking out onto the central courtyard of the Imperial Palace on Melania, the planet that was the capital of the galaxy. The dim red light and single shadows meant only one of the twin suns, Arros or Deynar, was above the horizon, but Johnny couldn't see which.

The Wormhole connected Johnny's bedroom to this place—it was the reason Johnny wasn't living permanently on the
Spirit of London
. It had been created by a Cornicula Worm (given to Johnny by the Emperor, along with a supply of eggs to hatch more) burrowing back through the fabric of time and space to its home world. You couldn't travel through it, but you could send a
signal and see what was going on. The square was quiet. Johnny opened his mouth and said, “Bram,” quietly at first, but much louder the second time. He hoped the Emperor was nearby.

“Who's there?” came a high-pitched squeaky voice from somewhere behind. Then, into the half-light, stepped a very thin creature, nearly three meters high, with a long face and wearing robes of the same electric blue as a dragonfly. It was a Phasmeer, a type of alien (neither male nor female) that seemed common in the Imperial Civil Service.

Whenever Johnny saw one he was reminded of the traitor Gronack, who'd been aboard the
Spirit of London
for a while until it had betrayed Johnny and Clara and handed them over to Colonel Hartman, someone high up in a sinister organization that suspected their half-alien parentage. When that backfired, it tried to sell them to the Andromedans instead. Even now, it made Johnny mad just remembering—he hadn't yet met one of these aliens he liked. “I need to speak with Bram,” he said. “Can you get him?”

“I take it you are referring to His Divine Imperial Majesty, the Emperor Bram Khari?” squeaked the Phasmeer. “I'll just run along and fetch him, shall I?”

“Yes please,” Johnny replied, but the creature didn't move.

Instead it folded two long arms, jointed only near the very end, in front of its robes (which were beginning to turn pink) and replied, “And who might you be who dares to summon the Emperor?”

“I didn't mean it like that,” said Johnny. “It's me—Johnny Mackintosh. He'd want to speak to me.”

“Oh he would, would he, Johnny Mackintosh? I rather think I would have the shortest tenure of any Chancellor in Melanian history were I to summon His Divine Imperial Majesty for some young upstart who just happened to stumble upon a Cornicular opening.”

“It's not like that,” Johnny replied, as earnestly as he could. “We're friends. Bram …”

“This is a priority channel for direct communication with the Emperor over matters of state,” shrieked the Phasmeer, its voice higher than ever and robes now bright red. “I shall be reporting its abuse to the appropriate authorities. Good day to you. Your transmission is terminated.” A fine spray wafted from one of the Phasmeer's hands in the direction of Johnny face. As it reached him, the Wormhole contracted around his head, forcing him back onto his bed in Halader House. He sneezed several times, before trying to re-establish the link to give the Phasmeer a piece of his mind. It was no use. Somehow the Wormhole was closed for now, and Johnny wouldn't be able to tell the Emperor about the nearest star to the Sun being turned into a supernova, or the mysterious transmission he'd received in the computer room.

Sol was out of contact on Pluto. Bram was otherwise engaged. The more Johnny thought about it, the more he knew it would be madness for him to meet the dark-haired stranger without telling anyone, but something, somewhere in the back of his mind seemed familiar about that face. He went to sleep knowing he had to find out what it was.

Johnny bashed his alarm clock until it finally stopped making the deep growling noise he loathed, and lay staring at the strange numbers piercing the gloom. Finally, he registered that they were telling him it was 05:30 a.m. One of the things he really hated was getting up while it was still dark outside. It took a few moments before he remembered he'd decided to read up on supernovae before joining Mr. Wilkins in the Halader House kitchens.

Bentley's snores confirmed it would take more than a radio alarm to rouse the sheepdog at this time of night, but Johnny still tried to be as quiet as possible as he slid the box of stuff from under the bed and pulled out the handheld games console. It had a bigger display than the wristcom and a dedicated link to Kovac. He switched the device on and soon the blank screen came alive with the simulation he'd asked the quantum computer to prepare. A bloated star was in its death throes, having finally run out of usable fuel to keep shining. The next moment it was collapsing under its own weight as the force of gravity took hold. The commentary told Johnny he was watching Earth's own Sun, somehow altered. All the remaining matter of the star, its spent fuel, was being crushed ever more tightly together, the temperature rising higher and higher. The very atoms were being squeezed and something had to give. The screen on the console flared brilliant white as the handheld
depicted one of the biggest explosions the Milky Way would see. The galaxy might contain hundreds of billions of stars but, in this moment, their combined light would be outshone by this one cataclysmic event.

Kovac said that a man called Chandrasekhar had shown a star needed to be much bigger than the Sun to become a supernova, but it was clear to Johnny that Nymac had somehow found a way round that. The simulation showed a vast fireball spreading out into the solar system, obliterating everything and anything it encountered. It would take just over an hour before Earth was vaporized. He fast-forwarded to a point when North and South America were facing the Sun and felt the full force of the impact. It took only a couple of seconds before the molten red glow spread from there around the globe and Earth itself began to disintegrate. Even though it was only a simulation, it was terrible to watch. Whatever the cost, Nymac had to be stopped. Johnny lay on his bed for a few minutes contemplating what he'd seen, before he looked again at the clock and couldn't believe it read 06:30. He was already late.

Mr. Wilkins's warnings had been stern, but Johnny wondered if he'd got away with it as he stumbled, bleary-eyed, along the corridor and into what seemed a deserted dining room. Watching the simulation first thing had wiped him out and he couldn't help stretching his arms wide and letting out an almighty yawn. Then he saw something move along the far wall. A giant shadow rose upward, before the great mass of the Halader House cook appeared from behind the large fridge in the far corner. The chef was carrying a long knife in one hand and a sharpening steel in the other. He ran the blade quickly backward and forward as he walked slowly toward Johnny, who stood his ground but wished he could cover his ears to shut out the high-pitched scrapes of metal against metal. As Mr. Wilkins approached he bellowed at Johnny for being late and
slammed the end of his sharpened knife into the long wooden table so that the neatly laid-out cutlery jumped into the air, clattering back down out of position.

“I'm not your slave,” said Johnny defiantly, but it didn't stop the cook dragging him by the ear into the kitchen and placing him in front of a near-empty pan of gray sludge bubbling on the hob, like hot mud around a volcano.

“Porridge, sonny,” said Mr. Wilkins in answer to Johnny's questioning look. “Four cups of water to one of oats. I want ten times that much—get cracking.” Johnny set to work as the cook sat down and opened up a newspaper. “And make sure there's enough salt,” Mr. Wilkins shouted, as his beard bristled against the paper. “A tablespoon for every cup.”

Johnny didn't add any salt. Although he turned on a rusty tap, he didn't use the brown water which flowed from it either. Once he was sure the cook wasn't looking, he opened the fridge and, after sniffing several cartons, found some milk that hadn't gone off to use instead. Finally, as he ladled the steaming porridge into bowls, he topped each portion with a dollop of golden syrup. Breakfast proved much more popular than normal, but washing up all the pots and pans took forever.

Exhausted, his fingers wrinkled from spending so long in the lukewarm dishwater, Johnny was finally allowed to leave. Shutting the dining room door behind him, he found himself standing in front of Spencer Mitchell, dressed in a hooded sweatshirt and holding a deflated football. Despite being a few years older, Spencer invited Johnny outside for a kickabout in the station carpark. Johnny's reputation as a footballer had spread through Halader House after his team had won the Essex Schools Cup last year. It was cool to be included, but Johnny still said no. He knew he had to talk to Kovac before leaving for the rendezvous.

The quantum computer had surprised himself by calculating
that the Andromeda and Milky Way galaxies were due to collide in
only
half a billion years, apparently much sooner than Earthbound astronomers had predicted. Johnny said how impressed he was and then indulged the intelligent machine by asking how many new prime numbers it had discovered in the last week. Kovac sounded very proud to announce that there were four more, taking the total unknown to Earthbound mathematicians to seventy-nine.