Martin King and the Prison of Ice (Martin King Series) (5 page)

The young Axis
Lady smiled. “It’s OK, Tommy. You should go.”

“Are you sure?”

Fire Opal
nodded. “I understand. I would come with you myself but I can’t leave the
planet because of that stupid satellite.”

“Well… all
right,” said Tommy.

Fire Opal took
Tommy’s hand. “But you will be back?”

“I promise,”
said Tommy.

“Well,” said Martin.
“Time to go to Pyridos…”

“It’s beautiful,” said Darcy.

“It’s hot,”
said Martin.

The sand dunes
stretched on for miles, the yellow bleakness broken only by several scattered
pyramids. The artificial sun was bright and fierce.

As Howell had
explained, the planet had been commissioned many years ago by the Axis Lords to
be used as an archive planet. The Axis Council had hired a galactic firm to
build the planet to their exact specifications. However, they had hired a rogue
contractor, who (unfortunately for the council) had both a great hatred for the
Axis Lords and a great love of Earth history. The contractor had built the
entire world as a planet-sized replica of Ancient Egypt—complete with pyramids.
The council had already exceeded the allocated budget for the planet, so they
had executed the contractor and called the planet Pyridos to make the best of a
bad situation.

“I thought it
would busier,” said Tommy.

“Yeah, it is a
bit deserted,” said Darcy, grinning at her pun.

Martin rolled
his eyes and glanced around at the desert. A thin wind stirred the sand.

“We need to
head over to one of the pyramids,” said Martin. That’s where the entrances
are.”

The three
teenagers walked away from the Time Sphere along the hot sand, the artificial
sun beating down upon them, towards the nearest pyramid. When they approached
it, Martin circled it slowly, looking for…

“Ah,” he said.
“Here it is.”

A small control
panel was built into one side of the pyramid. Martin followed Howell’s
instructions; he pressed the green arrow and typed the numbers
0041
into
the keypad. For a second, nothing happened. Then the sand around them began to
ripple. Martin realised that they were standing on some sort of platform. The
platform began to descend. They were carried beneath the ground.

Martin, Darcy
and Tommy stepped into the darkness, and the large platform began to ascend
again, leaving them underground.

“This is cool,”
said Tommy.

They were
standing in some sort of tunnel, which was lit by fluorescent lights. There was
a strong current of air blowing through it. Strangely, there were no guards. In
fact, there wasn’t another person in sight.

It was around
the year 500 B.C. The Axis Lords had hidden Abaddon’s recall device on Pyridos
over 3,000 years ago, but 1,000 years later the entire planet had been
demolished by the Axis Lords in a controlled explosion—and the recall device
had been lost with it. Martin and his friends had gone back in time to retrieve
the device before it was destroyed.

“I need to find
some sort of internal schematic,” said Martin. He approached a computer panel
on one of the walls and fiddled with the buttons. “Ah, here we go.”

A map of the
tunnels appeared on the screen. Martin had always been good with computers.

“How did you do
that?” said Tommy.

“Because I’m a
genius. Now, we need to head in this direction…”

Martin’s
friends followed him as he led them through the brightly-lit tunnels.
Eventually, they came to a large metal door.

“The recall
device should be through there,” said Martin, “in the main archive.”

At that moment,
a young Axis Lord appeared from around the other corner. He was carrying a gun.
The guard switched on his translator.

“Intruders!” he
said. “How did you get in here?”

“I don’t know,”
said Martin. “We were just walking around on our own planet and then
pop
!
We all appeared here.”

“Do you think
you’re being funny?” The Axis Lord raised his gun. “Explain yourselves
properly.”

Darcy took a
step forwards. “You don’t mind little old me, do you?” She stepped even more
closely towards the guard. “I was just having a little wander.”

The guard blinked,
going a little red.

“Well, I still
have to—”

Darcy leaned
forwards suddenly and kissed the guard. He looked bewildered. Then he grabbed
Darcy and kissed her again.

“Now, can we go
through?” said Darcy.

“Well, yes,”
said the guard, breathless. “You only have about ten minutes left anyway.”

Martin opened
the metal door and they stepped through it; it sealed itself behind them.

“What the hell
was that about?” said Martin, turning on Darcy angrily.

She didn’t say
anything.

“Aren’t you
going to answer me? What was that about—kissing the guard?”

“Oh, chill out,
Martin.”

“Chill out?
You’re supposed to be my girlfriend.”

“Well, it got
us through, didn’t it?”

Martin turned
away from her. “Let’s just find that recall device,” he muttered.

Tommy glanced
around the place they had just entered. It was some kind of massive warehouse; boxes
were stacked on metal shelves that seemed to stretch on for miles.

“The recall
device is in
Section 8F
,” said Martin. “Let’s spread out and look for
it.”

Martin didn’t
waste any time in getting away from his friends. He tried to look for
Section
8F
but the image of Darcy snogging the Axis Lord guard kept floating back
into his mind. Was he right to be angry with her? Or had she done the right
thing in the circumstances? It just didn’t seem like Darcy. First the strange
boy outside the flat, and now this…

Martin sighed.
His eyes fell upon a large sign reading
Section 8G
… the recall device had
to be close. Martin located
Section 8F
. It was a section comprised of
rows and rows of empty shelves. A single box stood on one of the shelves, and
Martin took it down. He pulled out the object that was inside it. It was a
smooth blue triangular prism. Inside the prism, there was a tiny speck of
bright light.

I’ve seen
this before,
thought Martin.
But where?

He suddenly
remembered. He had once met a billionaire called Harvey Longfellow who owned a
private museum of rare artefacts. This blue prism had been one of his exhibits.
So Harvey had owned the recall device all along. They could have saved themselves
the trip. But how had it ended up in his collection?

At that moment,
Darcy and Tommy appeared at his side.

“You found it!”
said Tommy.

“That’s the
thing we saw in Harvey’s museum,” said Darcy, puzzled.

Martin nodded.
He was feeling uneasy about something… something the guard had said to them.

“You only
have about 10 minutes left anyway.”

What had he
meant? As if to answer Martin’s thoughts, a siren began to blare through the
hangar, accompanied by red flashing lights. An alien voice sounded through the
speakers. Tommy went pale.

“What is it?”
said Martin. “What did it say?”

“We’re going to
die,” said Tommy.

“But what did
it say?”

“It said that
the self-destruct process has been initiated. We only have 2 minutes before
this place blows.”

“But…”

So this was the
day—the day that Pyridos was destroyed in a controlled explosion. Alexander
Howell had given them the wrong date. So that was it. They were going to be
blown up. It would be impossible for them to get back to the Time Sphere in 2
minutes. There was nothing they could do.

“What do we
do?” said Tommy.

The voice came
on over the speakers again.

“Can’t you ask
the Wheelmaster for help?” shouted Darcy.

Martin shook
his head. A year ago, when his duplicate had taken over as the Wheelmaster, he
had made a pact with XO5. Neither the Wheelmaster nor XO5 would help or harm
the three friends. It meant that they were safe from XO5, but it also meant
that the Wheelmaster couldn’t offer them any assistance.

Martin ran a
sweaty hand through his hair. If the recall device
had
been destroyed
today, it couldn’t have ended up in Harvey Longfellow’s museum thousands of
years later. Perhaps it had just landed on Earth by chance after the explosion.
No, the chances of that happening would be astronomical…
astronomical! Of
course!

Martin laughed.

“What are you
smiling about?” Darcy yelled. “We’re about to be blown to bits.”

“No we aren’t!”

Martin grabbed
Darcy’s handbag and ran. His friends ran after him. He entered the
corridor—which direction? There was a clicking sound from inside Darcy’s bag
and he took a left turn. At the next junction, he took a right turn.
Eventually, Martin came to a row of escape pods.

“40 seconds!”
said Tommy.

Martin put the
recall device into one of the escape pods. His indestructible watch got caught
on the side of the pod and came off his wrist. Martin left it.

“What are you
doing?” said Darcy.

Martin closed
the escape pod. He pressed a random button and the escape pod containing his
watch and the recall device was fired out into space. Martin opened another
escape pod.

“Get in!”  

The three
friends climbed into the escape pod and Martin started pressing random buttons.
The device in Darcy’s bag clicked. Their pod was launched out of the
underground tunnel. As soon as Martin saw daylight, he pressed another random
switch—the Coincidence Machine clicked again—and the pod crashed to the
planet’s surface.

The teenagers
climbed out of the escape pod, bruised but otherwise unharmed. They had dropped
right next to the Time Sphere.

“Quick!” said
Martin.

They climbed
back into the gold time machine and Martin set the controls. The Time Sphere
vanished. A second later, Planet Pyridos exploded.

*

The sphere appeared outside the
back of Tommy’s hotel again, and they climbed out into the sunshine, panting.

“What did you
do?” said Darcy, once she had caught her breath.

“Well, the
chances of the recall device reaching Earth after the explosion were a
billion-to-one,” said Martin. “But we already knew that it had—we’d seen it in
Harvey’s collection. I knew that the Coincidence Machine must have caused the
escape pod to take the right course. The pod must have eventually
disintegrated, but the recall device and my watch survived—another
billion-to-one chance. The recall device landed on Earth thousands of years ago,
but my watch took a bit longer. Maybe it was stuck in orbit for a while.”

“Lucky,” said
Tommy.

“Literally,”
said Martin, grinning. He took his watch out from his pocket and put it back on
his wrist.

“So what do we
do now?” said Tommy.

“We need to get
the recall device back,” said Martin. “I think it’s time we visited our old
friend Harvey Longfellow.” He turned to Tommy. “Are you coming?”

“Er…” Tommy
looked apologetic. “No offence but I think I should go back to Fire Opal now.”

Martin smiled.
“No worries. I understand.”

Tommy grinned
and walked back round to the hotel entrance. Martin looked at Darcy. He decided
to try to forget what had happened on Pyridos—for now, at least. He smiled.

“Looks like it’s
just the two of us, Darcy.”

*

Martin and Darcy were standing
outside the gate of a grand house. Martin pressed the intercom. They had called
in advance, so Harvey was expecting them.

“Oh, hello!”
said an American voice. “I’ll let you in!”

The gate swung
open automatically, and Martin and Darcy walked along the gravel path towards
Harvey’s house. Harvey greeted them at the door and led them inside. They
descended the steps and followed him into his underground museum.

Harvey led them
to a glass case, and pointed at the exhibit.

“So that’s it,
right?”

Darcy nodded.
The blue triangular prism was inside the glass case.

“And you said
it’s a… recall whatsit?”

“A recall
device,” said Martin, nodding. “There’s a fleet of ships heading to Earth,
which means trouble. We need the recall device to summon an ancient warrior to
defend the planet.”

Harvey laughed.
“Fair enough.”

“So, can we
have it?” said Darcy.

The American
businessman laughed again.

“It’s not as
simple as that, Darcy. That little thing cost me over a million dollars.”

“But the world
is in danger!” said Darcy.

“Not my
problem,” said Harvey. He smiled. “I am grateful to you, Martin, for fixing my
telescope last year. But you must understand that I can’t just
give
away
something so valuable.”

Martin paused.
He had known all along what he would have to do. But it still seemed a great
shame. He held out a hand to Darcy.